DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE IM TALMUD as an Introduction to Hermann Cohen’s Thought in Its Historical Context

• In Event: Drawing Cohen into the Conversation: A centennial commemoration of Hermann Cohen

Abstract

Hermann Cohen’s 1888 monograph, DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE IM TALMUD, a published version of expert testimony Cohen delivered orally at a local Marburg trial, serves as an excellent entry point into Cohen’s life and thought, in the broader context Jewish history in the German Empire. A translation of this work would greatly enhance interest in Cohen among English-speaking audiences not otherwise acquainted with Cohen’s work. The text, which presents a philosopher’s meditation on the LEITBEGRIFF (guiding principle) of the Talmud, readily lends itself to both historical and philosophical analysis. One of the rare works in which Cohen provides some autobiographical information about his upbringing and education, DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE is set in the dramatic context of a courtroom in which the morality of the Talmud and the value of the Talmud for modern Jews, are being adjudicated. The trial sheds light on both the rights and the vulnerabilities of the Jewish community newly-emancipated in 1871, and offers insight into Cohen’s role as a public intellectual. DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE is a text that cannot be understood outside of its historical context, and thus immediately asserts the importance of history for understanding Jewish philosophy. The work also introduces, for the first time in Cohen’s oeuvre, central themes that would endure throughout Cohen’s corpus. DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE offers Cohen’s first published meditation on biblical neighborlove, and introduces Cohen’s philological and philosophical disagreement with Christian readings of Old Testament neighborlove. Cohen introduces the Talmudic Noahide as a central contribution of Judaism to the history of ethics. Reading DIE NÄCHSTENIEBE in connection with parallel passages from the 1904 ETHIK DES REINEN WILLENS (which also ought to be translated) and the 1919 RELIGION OF REASON OUT OF THE SOURCES OF JUDAISM sheds light on the development of Cohen's thought on these issues central to his mature philosophy. Finally, DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE introduces a key aspect of Cohen's methodology of reading "cultural" texts for philosophical purposes, and his understanding of the vocation of the philosopher as an authoritative interpreter of cultural “texts.” Making DIE NÄCHSTENLIEBE accessible to English-speaking audiences is surely a desideratum for those committed to generating more interest in Cohen’s thought.

Author

• Shira Billet, Princeton University