“AUTONOMIE UND FREIHEIT” (1900) as an Introduction to Critical Idealism

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

Abstract

Cohen’s essay “Autonomy and Freedom” (1900) appeared in a memorial volume for David Kaufmann, indicating Cohen’s abiding connection with the luminaries trained at the Breslau seminary. The presentation will show how, at that stage in his work, Cohen differentiated between the lexicon of ethics and the vocabulary of religion. Translating the essay requires a precise rendering of the terminology Kaplowitz will discuss in his presentation on the LOGIK DER REINEN ERKENNTNIS (1902). Properly annotated, this essay can serve as a short introduction to Cohen’s systematic philosophy. It also offers a charitable reading of Spinoza, specifically of Spinoza’s identification of will and intellect, balancing out his better-known later attacks on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. “Autonomy and Freedom” thus provides a glimpse of a more sanguine phase in Cohen’s philosophical thought, when he was unreservedly convinced of the spiritual power of rigorous philosophy as the arbiter of all “work on myth,” as Blumenberg was to call it. It can serve as an introduction not just to the concepts but, more importantly, to the method of critical idealism, as understood by Hermann Cohen.

Author

• Michael Zank, Boston University