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This paper is a revised version of my article ‘Una debole forza messianica’, in: Annuario filosofico 12 (1996), 299–327. Translated from the Italian by John Denton. One example is the extensive interest and widespread discussion, in European philosophy, following R. Koselleck’s reflections on ‘experience space’ and ‘expectation horizon’ in Vergangene Zukunft (Frankfurt am Main, 1979).
Cf. H. Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung (Frankfurt am Main, 1979). Cf. also the widespread, predominantly Anglo-American discussion on responsibilities and obligations to future generations.
Cf. J. Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie (Paris, 1983).
I am especially thinking of the international best-seller by F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992).
Such a strong contrast between the teleological and eschatological interpretation of history is a recurrent theme in J. Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt. Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987).
The expression comes from N. Bolz, Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt. Philosophischer Extremismus zwischen den Weltkriegen (München, 1989).
A ‘kurze Rekapitulation des Herganges, in dem die Marburger Philosophie zwar verdrängt, aber nicht “überwunden” wurde’ opens D. Adelmann’s dissertation: Einheit des Bewußtseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Heidelberg 1968), which has the merit of opening up a new phase in the reception of Cohen’s philosophy. Similar considerations lie behind studies by H. Holzhey: Cohen und Natorp (Basel/Stuttgart, 1986), and A. Poma, La filosofia critica di Hermann Cohen (Milano, 1988), English translation: The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Albany, 1997).
It is clearly impossible to consider all the aspects of these outlooks in the brief space of one article. A better strategy is to concentrate on the most essential relevant features in this sense of Cohen’s less well known approach. A collection of the main links between decisionism and eschatology is to be found in Taubes’ writings on Schmitt (see note 5). For an interpretation of the common features of the different forms of decisionism, including Heidegger’s, cf., in addition to the well known concluding pages of the essay by K. Löwith, ‘Der okkasionelle Dezisionismus von Carl Schmitt’, in Sämtliche Schriften (Stuttgart, 1981ff.), vol. 8, 32–71, the persuasive views, influenced by Taubes, of N. Bolz in Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt, 47–94.
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 505.
Cf. K. Löwith, Meaning in History (1949), 17; German edition (1953), revised by the author: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, in: Sämtliche Schriften (Stuttgart, 1983), vol. 2, 28.
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 305, 291f. — Löwith is actually quoting from the 1919 Leipzig edition, which, however, has no variations compared with the Frankfurt edition published ten years later, as far as the passages in question are concerned.
The book’s complicated publishing history evidently affected attention to detail. It is significant that not only this last quotation, but also the lack of precision in the quotation of the other passages are absent from the version Löwith prepared for Anteile, the Festschrift for Heidegger published by Klostermann in 1950, i.e. a year after the publication of Meaning in History in the USA. Cf. the essay ‘Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen’ (1950), now in: Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 2, 240–279, esp. 255. Löwith himself points out in the introduction to the 1953 German edition that in 1949 he had had to use a language that ‘the author had to make his own’ and that ‘does not lend itself to conceptual and verbal subtleties’. Since several terminological and conceptual clarifications were introduced into the 1953 text, for the above reasons, it is from this edition that we shall quote, though also with reference to the American edition.
The same orientation in an eschatological direction of Cohen’s thoughts and expressions can be traced in the passage where Löwith writes: ‘“mankind” has not existed in the historical past, nor can it exist in any present. It is an idea and an ideal of the future, the necessary horizon for the eschatological concept of history and its universality.’, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 29; Meaning in History, 18; cf. Religion der Vernunft, 292.
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 57.
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 336.
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 11; Meaning in History, 1
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15; Meaning in History, 5
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15; Meaning in History, 6
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 16; Meaning in History, 6
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 29; Meaning in History, 18
‘Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen’ (= essay for Anteile, see note 12), 259.
Cf. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 29; Meaning in History, 18
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15 — words added to the German edition.
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 15; Meaning in History, 5
Cf. ‘Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen’ (see note 12), 258f.
‘Geschichte, Geschichtlichkeit und Seinsgeschick’, in: Heidegger. Denker in dürftiger Zeit, (Göttingen, 19602), 44–71, reprinted in vol. 8 of Sämtliche Schriften (henceforth: ‘Geschichte’).
‘Geschichte’, 67. See also 47.
‘Geschichte’, 47.
‘Geschichte’, 56. Cf. also 45. The expression ‘eschatology of being’ is used by Heidegger, as is well known, in his essay on the saying of Anaximander, where it is stated that ‘being itself, inasmuch as it is geschicklich, is in itself eschatological’, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main, 19806), 323. On the meaning of this ‘eschatology’ cf. G. Vattimo, Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger (Genova, 19892), 23–25; here see also the considerations on the eschatological structure of temporality in Sein und Zeit, 77f.
‘Geschichte’, 49. — As can be seen in his autobiographical work Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933 (Stuttgart, 1986), this expression comes from a successful parody of Heidegger by one of his students.
‘Geschichte’, 49.
‘Geschichte’, 51.
‘Geschichte’, 44 and 50.
Cf. the final pages of the essay ‘M. Heidegger und F. Rosenzweig. Ein Nachtrag zu “Sein und Zeit”’, now in: Sämliche Schriften, vol. 8, 161–188.
Cf. J. Habermas, ‘Karl Löwiths stoischer Rückzug vom historischen Bewußsein’, in: idem, Theorie und Praxis (Neuwied am Rhein/Berlin, 19672), 352–370, as well as the concluding pages of A. Caracciolo, Karl Löwith (Napoli, 1974).
This is a revised and expanded version of the lecture he gave in Marburg on 21 June 1968 on the occasion of the fiftieeth anniversary of Cohen’s death. It was first published in the same year in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften and reprinted in vol. 3 of Sämtliche Schriften, 349–383, from which quotations are taken here. Although this is his only work dealing specifically with Cohen, Löwith’s familiarity with some of the former’s writings is borne out by his Habilitationsschrift: cf. Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen (München, 1928), 2 and 55, reprinted in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1 (1981), 17 and 71. Cf., however, his letter dated 15 April 1935 to Leo Strauss, where he admits that he had ‘not studied [Cohen] very much’.
Sämtliche Schriften vol 3, 381f.
Sämtliche Schriften vol. 3, 381.
Cf. Sämliche Schriften vol. 3, 383: ‘Die Welt der Geschichte bezeugt sich in historischen Dokumenten, die Welt der Natur bezeugt sich unmittelbar selbst.’ (The world of history testifies in historical documents, the world of nature immediately testifies by itself.) This presumed ahistorical immediacy of our access to nature is actually, perhaps beyond Löwith’s intentions, the exact overturning of that ‘in gedruckten Büchern gegebene und in einer Geschichte wirklich gewordene Erfahrung’ (experience given in printed books and become real in history) which Cohen mentions, cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik (Berlin, 19102), 35.
Cf. M. Heidegger und F. Rosenzweig, 188.
Cf. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 213.
Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus und Sozialismus’, in: idem (ed.), Ethischer Sozialismus. Zur politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 23.
G. Scholem, über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), 167. Scholem underlines this idea by the use of the concept of ‘life in postponement’ (Leben im Aufschub). He had originally developed this train of thought on this theological category in his notes ‘Ueber das Buch Jonas und den Begriff der Gerechtigkeit’ written in Bern in 1919; now in: G. Scholem, Tagebücher 1917–1923 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 522–536. He attributed the inapplicability of the written Torah to the fact that, though it is divine law, it is not yet justice. It becomes the latter in ‘the infinite postponement of tradition’. In this sense, ‘justice is the idea of the historical annihilation of divine judgment’. These notes considerably influenced Benjamin: cf. Scholem’s remarks in: Walter Benjamin — Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 93, 181, 213 and Benjamin’s texts in Gesammelte Schriften vol. 2, 427 and 1191, vol. 6, 60. It is also significant that Aufschub is the German translation of Derrida’s term différance: cf. the translation of L’écriture et la différence: Die Schrift und die Differenz, trans. by R. Gasché (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), especially 311: ‘Der Aufschub bildet das Wesen des Lebens’. It also appears relevant that this interpretation of messianism met with disagreement by J. Taubes in his Jerusalem lecture ‘The Price of Messianism’, now in a German edition in: idem, Vom Kult zur Kultur (München, 1996), especially 48f.
P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik. Systematische Untersuchungen zu Hermann Cohens Rechts-und Tugendlehre (Würzburg, 1995), 197.
Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Hermann Cohen: der Philosoph in Auseinandersetzung mit den politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen seiner Zeit’, in: R. Brandt, F. Orlik (eds), Philosophisches Denken — Politisches Wirken (Hildesheim, 1993), 15–36, especially 32. Cohen’s interpretation of the legend of the three rings is of particular significance here: Der Begriff der Religion, 119f.
This aspect has been especially highlighted in Cohen’s case by H. Holzhey, ‘Hermann Cohen: der Philosoph in Auseinandersetzung mit den politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemen seiner Zeit’, passim, and by P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 168–173 and 293–309.
Religion der Vernunft, 278.
The ‘motive of humanity as a fundamental, systematic problem’ is the core of the third chapter of D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewußseins, 109ff.
For the relationship between truth and system in Cohen cf. especially Chapters 1 and 9 of the Ethik.
‘Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik’ (1878), in: Schriften I, 336–366, esp. 348.
On spiritualism, materialism and idealism cf., in this sense, Ethik, 315.
Cf. Logik, 80f.
The expression ‘meontologia’ is used by S. Givone, Storia del nulla (Roma-Bari, 1995), xviii. Certain similarities and differences between Cohen’s negative ontology (with the raising of Plato’s mè ón to a structural principle) and an ontology of nothing originating in Heidegger will emerge from subsequent pages. Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Heidegger und Cohen. Negativitāt in Denken des Ursprungs’, in: G. Hauff, H.R. Schweizer, A. Wildermuth (eds.), In Erscheinung treten. Heinrich Barths Philosophie des Āsthetischen (Basel, 1990), 97–114.
Cf. Begriff der Religion, 46f., 50 and Religion der Vernunft, 38, 51f. I attempted a more detailed treatment of this aspect in my article ‘Problematologia divina. La filosofia dell’origine in Cohen tra ontologismo cristiano e nichilismo’, in: Discipline filosofiche 9 (1999), 103–120.
Logik, 127f.
Cf. in this sense M. Heidegger, Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 390.
Cf. the relevant chapters in Logik, 79–104.
‘Die Bedeutung der Einheit ist keineswegs einheitlich; sondern sie spiegelt die Unklarheit ab, welche über dem Grunde des reinen Denkens schwebt’, Logik 144.
Logik, 134.
Logik, 129.
Logik, 134.
Cf. Logik, 84.
Logik, 31
Logik, 135
Logik, 146.
Ethik, 399.
Logik, 228. An emphasis somewhat analogous to the spatial component of the ‘ordinary present’ can be found in E. Bloch, Experimentum mundi (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), 84ff.
Logik, 155.
Logik, 154.
Cf. Ethik, 399.
Logik, 154f.
Logik, 155.
Religion der Vernunft, 291.
Ethik, 408.
Religion der Vernunft, 360.
Logik, 155.
Cf. Logik, 151–153.
Religion der Vernunft, 312.
For an adequate treatment of this problem area in Cohen’s thought cf., the pages of Religion der Vernunft where the ethical optimism of messianism is contrasted with the subtle metaphysical lure of pessimism (Religion der Vernunft, 20f., 524), and also the final statement of the first edition of Kants Begründung der Ethik (1877): ‘Es ist in Wahrheit nicht nur ein Fortschritt der ethischen Kultur, sondern mittelbar auch ein solcher der ethischen Wissenschaft, da Frage des Optimismus in unserm Jahrhundert, sofern man von der Unterhaltungs-Philosophie abzusehen hat, abgelöst ist durch das Problem des Sozialismus’. (368) (Actually the fact that the question of optimism has been substituted, in our century, regardless of drawing room philosophy, by the problem of socialism is a sign of progress, not only of ethical culture, but, indirectly, of ethical science).
Ethik, 140.
Logik, 155. These expressions are used by E. Bloch in his essay ‘Differenzierungen im Begriff Fortschritt’, see: idem, Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), 119f.
Logik, 31.
For Cohen’s criticism of the postulates of practical reason, cf., especially, Kants Begründung der Ethik 344–369.
P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 101–109. But on the systematic meaning of Kants Begründung der Ethik, cf. also D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewuβtseins, 142–165, and G. Gigliotti, Hermann Cohen e la fondazione kantiana dell’etica (Firenze, 1977), 31–66.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 185.
P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 147. For an exhaustive analysis of the problems concerning the concept of intelligible contingency (developed by Cohen especially in the first chapter of Kants Begründung der Ethik) cf. 115ff. As is evident both from the Kommentar zu Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Leipzig, 1907), reprinted in Werke, vol. 4 (1978), 150, 198, and from Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 636ff., Cohen is not so much thinking of the note to the thesis of the fourth antinomy, where Kant refers specifically to intelligible contingency, but rather of the passage on the contingency of experience in Kritik der reinen Vernunft B 764f. Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Wissenschaft und Gottesidee. Cohen vor dem “Abgrund der intelligibeln Zufälligkeit”’, in: I.U. Dalferth, Ph. Stoellger (eds.), Vernunft, Kontingenz und Gott (Tübingen, 2000), 273–290.
P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 170.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 79.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 48.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 103.
For an analysis of these problems cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 151–167.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 110.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 103.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 110f. For an interpretation of this passage cf. D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewuβtseins, 149f.
Ethik, 320.
Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 113.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 274.
Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag, 113.
Ethik, 319.
Besides the contributions collected in the volume Ethischer Sozialismus, cf. H. van der Linden, Kantian Ethics and Socialism (Indianapolis, 1988).
Cf. Kants Begründung der Ethik, 265.
Cf. H. van der Linden, ‘Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants’, in: H. Holzhey (ed), Ethischer Sozialismus, especially 154–159.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 227.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 272.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 270.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 270.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 227.
Ethik, 411 — my italics.
Ethik, 408.
Cf. Ethik, 400. In Logik der reinen Erkenntnis the category of space had been placed in the context of the quantitative determination of totality (Allheit); cf. Logik, 188ff.
That time should not be reduced to ‘an infinite sum’, but rather that ‘any sum is an impediment’ is the theme to which Cohen frequently returns in already mentioned parts of the Ethik, against easy misunderstandings of his remarks on the ‘plus sign’ as a’ symbol of time’ (cf. Ethik, 400, 409).
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 291, 305.
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 533.
I attempted to demonstrate this in greater detail in Geschichtliche Ewigkeit. Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Würzburg, 1993).
Ethik, 408.
Ethik, 417.
Cf. Ethik, 400f. and Religion der Vernunft, 292.
The fact that such characteristics cannot be attributed to the ‘idea of God’ in Cohen’s ethics, has been pointed out again by P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 222ff.
Ethik, 410.
Ethik, 410.
Cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 201.
Ethik, 411.
Cf. note 43.
Ethik, 411.
Cf. S. Kaplan, Das Geschichtsproblem in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Berlin, 1930), 40f.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 8.
Ästhetik I, 47.
Religion der Vernunft, 238, 269, 355.
Ästhetik II, 192.
Logik, 125.
Logik, 80; cf; also 51f.
Religion der Vernunft, 508.
Religion der Vernunft, 530. An exhaustive, systematic treatment of this page within Cohen’s thought can be found in A. Poma, ‘Humour in Religion: Peace and Contentment’, in: S. Moses and H. Wiedebach, (eds), Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion. International Conference in Jerusalem 1996 (Hildesheim, 1997), 183–204.
On the relationship between irony and resignation in Cohen, cf. the detailed remarks of P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 262f.
K. Löwith, ‘Philosophie der Vernunft und Religion der Offenbarung’ (see note 36, above), 381.
Cf. P.A. Schmid, Ethik als Hermeneutik, 167, 174–177.
Cf. H. Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus und Sozialismus’, 28.
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Fiorato, P. (2005). Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen’s Anti-Eschatological Messianism. In: Munk, R. (eds) Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4047-4_5
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