Heres a draft of my presentation on Hermann Cohens Religion of Reason: Arian Cato [email protected] 10/23/13 Presentation on Religion of Reason Introduction and Chapter 1 One cannot know the content of religion if one does not know its history to attest to the content developed. However history cannot account for the fact of religion itself. For not, reason is relied on to “engender the concept of religion [for] a presupposition for the problem of development” (3). In other words, “history by itself does not determine anything about the essence and peculiarity of the concept.” An epistemological problem arises, no matter if we attach religion with a corpus of sources from which to determine a definition of religion, and this problem Cohen claims is a “fundamental question of all knowledge” (also addressed in Plato’s Meno): How can one know what is sought if one doesn’t have a concept of what’s sought already? To ascertain the definitions of the concepts religion and Judaism, one can look beside literary sources at reason itself. Taking from Kant, “reason is the rock out of which the concept originates and out of which it has to originate for the sake of systematic examination” (5). Yet “reason itself is the problem that exists for every concept,” each concept which must be presupposed in pursuits of knowledge, and so Cohen “introduces the problem of religion into general philosophy,” so in the end “the concept of religion should be discovered through the religion of reason.” In this capacity, what holds true for science holds true for religion, since insofar as both depend on concepts both derive from philosophy, which is the “science of reason.” So, define reason to define concepts to define religion and Judaism, priorities which warrant the concept and operations of the religion of reason. A. Reason Cohen sets out to define reason. It is opposed to the senses, animal intelligence and affect, “all the alleged powers of the self [ . . . ] rooted in pleasure and pain,” materialism (“consciousness of animal sensuality”), “naturalness in its primitive historical form” since it is based on contingency and relegates religion to mere imagination or social determinism (whereas reason “elevates historical actuality to necessity”) (6). From this, and taking from Kant, Cohen deduces that reason is a peculiar feature of man, such that “the religion of reason turns religion into a general function of human consciousness; it makes consciousness human” (7). Through reason, and “insofar as reason is the beginning of all human consciousness,” we are able to think of the “history of religion.” Given the purview of reason, religion of reason “stands for the specific content that actualizes itself in the general spirit of peoples, in their science, in philosophy as well as in religion,” so that the only limiting condition is “the degree to which humanity has reached the stage of articulation displayed in scientific culture” (7-8). So why limit our research to the Jewish tradition? We are interested in sources of “historical actuality” bestowed upon with a necessity that has wrestled “its way into the history of the particular people,” since only through this “wrestling” can “reason bring itself to the light of day” (8). If reason can bestow necessity upon the Jewish sources, then the Jewish sources chart a “history of reason,” which can then support the religion of reason. What’s unique about Judaism is that it possesses a “supremacy of reason” in “an original source for other sources,” a notion which unfortunately is lent methodological bias once it’s purported to have “such an undeniable spiritual and psychological advantage.” What is this “original source” (Urspruenglichkeit)? It is characterized by a “peculiarity of method” and is opposed to a “derivative actuality” (9). An example of such a “peculiarity of method” is given of the Greeks and their imparting of philosophy as that which is intimately involved with science. So what is so original in Judaic thought? Before the Greeks and Jews influenced one another, there was already an “original philosophic motive,” a strain of “philosophical reasoning,” in Judaism. Religion outside of science still tarries with reason, and in the remainder of philosophy (without science) there remains “positively an intrinsic rule of lawfulness,” and this lawfulness is declared as “the foundation of primary origin” (10). Primary origins are thus beyond the contingencies of history, and if Judaism has a primary origin, then perhaps Judaism is an “archetype of reason.” B. Religion Religion and philosophy are connected by reason, but what does religion uniquely offer to the knowledge of man? Beyond science and “historical anthropology” there remains ethics as a sphere of knowledge of man (it claims to “govern all human affairs”). However, ethics denies to share in the knowledge of man with every other type of knowledge, including religion. Two problematic options arise in the confrontation between ethics and reasons. If religion falls under ethics then religion of reason loses its independence, and if ethics falls under religion, then there is a contradiction in definition and methodology: Ethics claims “offer the doctrine about man,” and so there “cannot be two independent methods, side by side, for the solution of the problem of man” (13). Cohen defines ethics as that in which “the I of man becomes the I of humanity” and that without man is not even a “historical individual,” since the “methodological means of history have as their final goal humanity.” Ultimately, ethics makes it such that humanity bestows upon a person “true individuality” by making that person a “symbol”-carrier of humanity. But individuality as bestowed by humanity through an ethical procedure is not the only way to individualize; there is also the process of citizenship or declaring nationality whereby one is individualized as an individual carrying forward humanity in terms of statehood. Furthermore, individuality itself is incomplete without considering the difference between the He/It derived from statehood or ethics and the Thou derived not from either. The He/It defined as an individual in respect to a totality is troubled by the “problem of plurality” from the direction of (Mehrheit), which is presumed to be “an aberration from ethics’ unifying goal of totality” (15). The problem, approach, and solution to the Thou is “a new one, but not a foreign one,” and it is a “supplement” not a contradiction to the bulwark of ethics, since ethics is through which an individual within a totality can come to be. What is deduced is the “personality” of the individual, and the “new problem of the individual” connects religion with ethics. Cohen turns to the history of philosophy in order to parse out these difference. The Stoics, he notes, did address suffering in their ethics, but delegated it to something to be ignored since it pertained to the physical body. Cohen objects to this neglect, asserting instead that “perhaps because of its moral demands, the self-consciousness should not be indifferent to one’s own physical suffering (this is noted in Kant’s Religion . . . ),” and subsequently the observer should not be “indifferent to the other man’s suffering” (16-7). From this sequence from suffering to compassion there arises the transformation of the He to the Thou. Cohen derives from this the paradox that “the passion (Leiden) is for the sake of compassion (Mitleid)” (17). He then ponders a possible postulate of ethics: “What else should be the moral vocation of man but the transfiguration and elevation of his earthly existence?” Yet though ethics can abolish suffering, it cannot “satisfy compassion.” Cohen criticizes Schopenhauer and Spinoza for their inadequate resolutions to this problem of compassion. And if we take ethics to mean a system to abolish suffering and improve the experience of existence, then we still have to differentiate ethics from pessimism, since pessimism sees all of existence as suffering and thus can only be satisfied with the negation or “repeal of existence” (18). But in direct contrast, ethics is “throughout the affirmation, development, and elevation of human existence.” Cohen joins to this definition the role suffering plays: “In suffering, a dazzling light suddenly makes me see the dark spots in the sun of life,” and against suffering ethics must teach the “specific worth of man” (19). What suffering arouses is not a theoretical interest, but a practical one. But “what does ethical practice gain?” Also, what causes suffering? Moral frailty and sin is presumed in the I, for the Thou must be vouchsafed as someone worthy of compassion, lest the I, which is derived from compassion for the suffering of the Thou. This consideration of personal sin leads to a religion established “in man’s self-knowledge of his sin,” and a consequence of this is that a “person is founded in this soul who in self-knowledge of his sin lays the foundation for the self-origination of his morality” (20). Here Cohen begins to articulate his understanding of God as God objecting to ethics and one who is transferred from monotheism to become an ethical God in turn, one that is not yet “the God of religion proper” (21). But first what does God object to? To the indifference of the “autonomous law of its reason” whose “scientific rigor” ignores the confluence between actuality and ideality whereby “the inexorable goal of the approximation is the permeation of actuality with the ideal.” Interestingly, Cohen writes that the “God of whom religion teaches means nothing else but the repeal of this prejudice of ethical rigor.” Thus the dichotomy between actuality and ideality is resolved in peace, in perfection, buried by the Messiah. A propos, Cohen asserts that Messianism is the summit of monotheism since Messianism is precisely “the dominion of the good on earth” and that Messiah means “injustice will cease.” As written earlier, this messianic God is depicted as an ethical God, not yet the religious God proper, since monotheism is concerned with the “relation between God and the individual.” Cohen brings in the importance of Ezekiel, the one who apparently “transmitted to religion the God of the individual man,” referring back to the earlier comments on how wickedness should not be confused with “ill fortune” and that if there’s sin, then it must first be sought in the I. In this circuit of sin and Though and I, God of the individual resides. Cohen draws some interesting conclusions from this notion of compassion for others. In Thesis 16 he remarks how prophets tended to be politicians, and that the politicians, in seeing their own state as a “stepping-stone to the federation of mankind,” also saw that in order to ascend to the high state of a humanity of humanity (or, federation of states) the “poor [had to become] for them the symbol of suffering humanity” (23). Whereas in the previous thesis Cohen states that “God is not a concept of fate,” here he asserts that the prophet-politicians’ “practical view is diverted from any eschatology of the mysteries,” and in this way did away with any black magic superstition of a necessary or helpless poverty. In this way, deriving from compassion and the identifications therefrom of the Thou and I, “religion itself becomes a peculiar branch within the moral teaching.” C. The Sources of Judaism Having defined the concepts of reason and religion, Cohen turns to the sources of Judaism to discern how Judaism can yield us the religion of reason. He prefers analyzing the literary sources versus institutions and monuments of Judaism, since in the literary sources there is “the immediate manifestation of the spirit, which are the “true sources for the workings of the spirit, of a national spirit, which strives to produce something of its own and of primary origin” (24). Cohen then defines the national spirit as the primary origin, which in turn serves as the “prime ground for the individual.” What’s more, the primary origin in Jewish literature consists in the idea of the unique God, primary because even the “spirit of Israel is determined by the idea of the unique God.” The spirit of Israel derives equally from the unique God and the “national spirit in its primary origin and peculiarity.” There is thus established a “connection between religion and social politics,” which also manifests as a connection between religion and ethics, insofar as the “statutes and ordinances” of the Deuteronomy guide ethical practice (25). In fact, he notes that the national history changes into a national politics, since Moses’s speeches on his people’s histories end up expounding how to apply them “to future politics.” A propos the “native ethics” mentioned earlier, Cohen concludes that “politics seems to be properly native to the ideas of the prophets,” and that “prophecy is the spiritual focus of Jewish creativity.” Prophecy, it seems, is political and practical. Chapter 1: God’s Uniqueness Cohen attempts to explain, in contrast to but in tandem with “general historical conditions,” the “spiritual impulse with which the spiritual movement” begins. Beside this “spiritual impulse,” presumably towards monotheism, Cohen posits a “national spirit” of the Jewish people that “unfolds in the creation and development of this thought which impregnates the entire thinking of the people” (36). Cohen seems to warrant an inquest into the historical conditions of Judaism as the apex of monotheism because it is a religion with a consistency spanning the whole of the Jewish people’s culture and thought. The sources which Cohen considers are primarily literary works (he analyzes an original tradition adhering in other parts of Judaism), a preference biased by his belief that poetry “can make thought more spiritually inward than plastic art” (37). In considering the Judaic literary tradition, he also looks at the epic form as a sort of counter example to the “inwardness” supposed by the earlier orientation of poetry, writing that the later epics are “intelligible only through the original epic form of the national spirit.” The concept of a “national spirit” underlying all sets up some sort of telos or Ursprung from and through which every succeeding artifice or, apparently, interpretation can make sense. The Judaic literary sources thus offer themselves through their “peculiar style” as a massive palimpsest. Cohen’s hermeneutic is dependent on an original or primary source, a case made explicit by his own setting up of a methodology in the text. Interestingly, the term style is used frequently in these first sections. Already on page 38 Cohen writes in relation to the seeming contradiction of God’s name Elohim being in the plural form and yet requiring its adjectives be in the singular form, and that this contradiction from duality is “unable to do justice to the problem of the style of a national spirit in its historical development” (38). I am without argument as to why Cohen attributes to “style” such seeming eminence, so for now let us continue. Cohen spends the rest of the chapter on God’s uniqueness answering all the apparent contradictions of and arguments against the necessarily unique aspect of God, necessary because without uniqueness God would be anthropomorphic, and subsequently religion would be incapable of becoming a religion of reason, and finally there wouldn’t be any grounds for an ethics from this religion of reason. In response to this grammatical contradiction between plurality and singularity, Cohen curtly asserts that “the new God was thought of as a unity” and that “the preservation of the plural form testifies to the vigor of the new thought, which simply took no offense at all at the plural form.” On the question of unity we’ll get back to, but for now note how the polytheistic plurality of Elohim and Yahveh is tied up with this monotheistic unity. Taking from the literary sources still, Cohen connects linguistics (in terms of a “literary advantage”) with religion when he notes that Yahveh also refers to himself as El Shaddai, a name which derives from the word shed, meaning “demons.” This linguistic connection for Cohen reveals God positively as a creator and negatively as a destroyer. What’s more, Cohen notes that Maimonides interpreted with “a correct feeling for language” that by starting out with the root __ (self-sufficiency) of ___ we are able to ascertain God’s capacity as a creator (as in the Biblical assertion “that He is sufficient in himself to bring forth the world”). In the next section, taking his cue from Maimonides’s interpretation, Cohen now connects philology with religion to assert that by juxtaposing both names properly [this development] shows that God’s relation to the world is of primary origin and based on the essence of God. Thus every trace of artificial interpretation and unhistorical rationalization disappears when we assume that the share monotheism has in reason extends also to the problem of being, and when we try to derive this share of reason from the sources. In any case, the connection of the root of the word Yahveh with the word “being” is a philological fact. 39 At the root of the literary sources we can arrive at a “primary origin,” and ultimately at the three concepts of being, unity, and God. Cohen now shows how pantheism as conceived by the Greeks threatens monotheism. It is noted how Xenophanes posits that since there is an “ordered unity of the cosmos” there must be some distinction between nature as an object of thought, as opposed to as object of perception. Xenophanes puts unity on the side of nature as an object of thought, and thus tying being with unity; “without unity the cosmos could not be thought of as being.” Without iterating why, Cohen writes that Xenophanes asserts that if being is what’s united, then God is being, a pantheistic thought produced by the philosophical need for unity and order. But it is precisely this shared root with philosophy where religion confronts pantheism (since they both share in reason). The issue is that pantheism doesn’t go beyond unity, the unity of monotheism only being its proof against polytheism as well as a guard against the ‘identity of God with the world’ in composition. Weirdly, Cohen writes that though religion from the Greeks entails pantheism, monotheism is opposed to pantheism. Developing further downstream in history, Cohen notes how uniqueness has a positive meaning, and that is that “unity becomes identity,” meaning that God is being. To prove this historical development he juxtaposes Jihud with Ahduth, the latter representing “unity as actuality,” the result being that “in comparison with which all other being vanishes and becomes nothing” (41). Against Greek speculation, Cohen asserts that Judaism transforms the neuter of the “One Who Is Being” into a person. This isn’t anthropomorphism, however, since it is a person as being, as the “Unique One that is” (42). To elucidate this Cohen resorts to the “first origin of monotheism,” the tale of the burning bush and Moses. When God speaks from the bush for Moses to tell his enslaved Israelites, “I am that I am,” Kautzsche mistranslates this as “I am who I am,” an identity which Kautzsche reasons is the “perpetual and unchangeable One,” which in its “philosophical sense” speaks nothing to the uniqueness of God. Rather, Cohen thinks that God’s proclamation should be read as “I am the One, that can be named in no other way than by ‘I am’” (42-3). (Interestingly, the logic here still leaves the alternative that there can be others who can identity as “I am.”) What’s important is that “being is named as that element in the name that designates the person of God”—this is what’s meant by Judaism’s transformation of the neuter into the person. The consequence of this transformation is that “being here loses its philosophical meaning” in God’s difference from the world which has no being next to God. As a result of God’s uniqueness there can in turn be no other god (otherwise the unique God as being would be negated), and what’s more, no other being: “Nonbeing, as nothing, is opposed to the unique being” (44). In other words, God is incomparable, a quality that leads to the assertion of a distinction between being and existence, in that if God (and being) are incomparable with both persons and things, then there is a gap between being and the set of things and person (existence). This reasoning confers upon reason a priority over sensations, since reason “against all sense-appearance, bestows actuality upon existence, discovers and elevates the nonsensible to being, and marks it out as true being.” From this opposition between being and existence it would still be presumptuous that God’s uniqueness is also on the side of simplicity as opposed to composition, “which is the general characteristic of matter.” It is true that God “does not admit any mixture, any connection with sensible existence,” but if this were the only condition for uniqueness then this would merely be an ontological condition, a state which would not protect against pantheism and in turn anthropomorphism. The logic to these connections is such that pantheism arises from the unity and identity of God with existence (deriving from Xenophanes’s philosophy). So since we are left with God and being opposed to existence (“cosmos and nature are negated”), it is reasonable to ask, “What could be the final meaning of God if he had no world, which is after all the human world?” But just because there must be a (human) world does not mean that nature must “be set up in being together with God,” since nature is limited by space and time: “Although formerly the earth, the world was nothing; it should now contain in it the fullness, the infinitude of God’s glory” (45). There is space because there is God, which is why “space” is another name of God. (This somehow prevents anthropomorphism.) As to time, God is both the first, the last, and the present, since “nothing is beside me”; God is not limited by time, but rather he exists in eternity. Now things get interesting. Opposed to time, God excludes change, and this unchangeableness “touches upon the boundary of ethics” (46). Cohen opposes the negative unchangeableness to the positive notion of continuance, claiming that the latter describes becoming, too, which God cannot do since becoming and change are qualities of the “motion of matter.” So God’s uniqueness opposes materialism, but also idealism, since the latter “is based on the idealism of nature,” which then “justifies the natural science” as well as the “idealism of ethics.” Judaism rejects this idealism, stating that “thinking is limited to reflection on the unique being of God,” and that in the subsequent loss of science compensation “is to be sought in the depreciation of all earthly things in view of their irrelevance with regard to the knowledge of the good.” Between unchangeableness and continuance there is the ethical meaning of God, the Unique One. After asserting against eudaemonism that “there is no interest in heaven and earth” (for it is transitory and not being), Cohen points towards a “sublimity that is beyond all the beauty of nature,” before concluding that “only in this way [of not partaking in science] could the metaphysics of monotheism be the origin of the unique God of ethics. Only in this way could the causality of nature be the origin of the teleology of morality” (47). What is teleology of morality? It is not made explicit, but we begin towards a definition when we consider monotheism’s defense against Persian dualism of two divine powers (light and darkness). Where God proclaims “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace,” the last word in Hebrew interchangeable with perfection. The maneuver asserts that plurality of worldly or imaginary powers will resolve into one object of perfect being. Now one last consideration against God’s uniqueness: If nature is something, even if given being to by God, then it must be a being “similar, though not equal,” to God’s being. To account for this “extra” being of nature, Logos is inferred as some sort of mediating being, though Cohen doesn’t explain why. Anything that derives from Logos or anything resulting in a multiplicity of beings (any being beside God’s being) broaches the opposition between uniqueness and unity, the latter being the foundation of all pluralisms. Unfortunately, Cohen writes that we cannot “judge the legitimacy” of the above claim of the distinction between monotheism and polytheism except on the basis of “morality alone,” for nature and man can attain any worth at all only if worth it derived from “the unique worth of God’s being” (48). Regarding the purported immortality adhering to Catholicism, Judaism asserts that the being of man exists only when given by God and only when “the form of human appearances passes away” (49). This mortality of immorality “allots sublimity to the unique God exclusively.” Cohen, Hermann. Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Print.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 01:07:49 +0000
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