Abstract

The present article offers a discussion of the question 'Why study Cohen?′. The author′s first and preliminary answer to the question is that the study of Hermann Cohen′s thought is relevant for contemporary philosophy for at least five reasons. They include Cohen′s improvement of critical idealism of the subject which he substitutes with his idealism of the idea; the exposition of thought as an ethics of law; the articulation of the notion of anticipation as the principle of time, history, and interpretation; the exposition of critical idealism as a form of idealism that is not violent, totalitarian or reductive, but idealism in terms of alterity and the other, instead; the role of history and especially the history of the religion of Judaism in the construction of the religion of reason and the conception of Judaism