Hermann Cohen

German Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, who is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century".

He devoted three early volumes to the interpretation of Kant (Kant's Theory of Experience, Kant's Foundations of Ethics, and Kant's Foundations of Aesthetics). In 1902 he began publishing the three volumes of his own systematic philosophy: Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (1902), Ethik des reinen Willens (1904) and Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls (1912). The planned fourth volume on psychology was never written.

Cohen's most famous Jewish works include Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, 1919), Deutschtum und Judentum, Die Naechstenliebe im Talmud, and Die Ethik des Maimonides.

An English translation of some of his Jewish writings is available in Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen, translated by Eva Jospe (1971).

Cohen was an outspoken critic of Zionism, as he argued that its aspiration to create a Jewish state would lead to "return the Jews to History". In his view, Judaism was inherently a-historical, with a spiritual and moral mission far transcending the national aims of Zionism. Despite his attitude, Tel Aviv has a Hermann Cohen Street.

In 1878, Cohen married eighteen-year-old Martha Lewandowski, a daughter of the composer Louis Lewandowski. (She was murdered in Theresienstadt on 12 September 1942.) Hermann Cohen died on 4 April 1918 at age 75 in Berlin, German Empire.