Zionism, the Political, and the Social: A Reconsideration of Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber remain two of the giants of twentieth-century Jewish thought. For a variety of historical and intellectual reasons, their thought is now experiencing a revival. At the same time, contemporary political thought on Zionism remains entrenched between the two opposing positions Cohen and Buber held toward Zionism a century ago – a nationalist-particularist view and a liberal-universalist view – views they debated in an important written exchange. At this moment in Jewish philosophy and in Jewish politics, there are thus good philosophical as well as political reasons to reconsider Cohen and Buber together. Intellectual friends and to some extent rivals, the younger Buber was deeply indebted to Cohen’s Jewish thought, even as he would go on to lead a largely successful philosophical coup against what he took Cohen’s philosophy to represent – a politically problematic liberalism, and a philosophically disembodied Judaism. In recent years, both in Jewish thought and in religious ethics more broadly, Cohenian neo-Kantianism has experienced a resurgence as more scholars see in Cohen resources to get beyond Buber’s critiques, specifically, relating to the social and political elements of his philosophical system.

Our panel proposes to rethink Cohen and Buber together, with respect to the political and social aspects of their thought. Sam Brody’s paper analyses the letters on Zionism that Cohen and Buber exchanged, and assesses the philosophical ways in which contemporary debates on Zionism are indebted to – and stuck in – the categories that Cohen and Buber had formed. Paul Nahme’s paper casts Cohen’s critique of Zionism in the context of Cohen’s more general anticipatory critique of Schmittian political theology. Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction is contrasted with Cohen’s Noahide as a neighbourly proximity beyond friendship or enmity, a messianic friendship that exceeds individual judgment. Shira Billet’s paper argues that the Jewish philosophies of Cohen and Buber challenge a notion shared by the political thought of Schmitt and Arendt, namely that there is a sharp philosophical distinction between the social and the political, by way of a comparison of transformations of Cohen’s DER MITMENSCH (“fellowman”) and Buber’s DAS ZWISCHENMENSCHLICHE (the “interhuman”). The respective social-politicals of Cohen and Buber have implications for their positions on Zionism.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Thought and Theology

Chair

• Dana Hollander, McMaster University

Individual Presentations

• Which Ships Pass in the Night? The Buber-Cohen Debate on Zionism Reconsidered - Samuel Hayim Brody, University of Kansas

• The Friend, the Enemy, and the Noahide: Of Jewish Political Myth in Carl Schmitt and Hermann Cohen - Paul E. Nahme, Brown University

• The Fellowman and the Interhuman: The Jewish Political-Social of Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber - Shira Nomi Billet, Princeton University