Science, Finitude, and

Infinity: Neo-Kantianism
and the Birth of
Existentialism

Peter Eli Gordon

Where when I am wander-wearied

Is my resting place to be?
Shall I under palms be buried?
Under Rhenish linden tree?
Or will somewhere in the desert
Bury me in a stranger's hand?
Shall I rest by some strange hazard
On a seacoast in the sand?
Never mind! I'll be surrounded
By God's heaven where'er it be,
And, as candles, in the unbounded
Skies the stars are over me.
—Heinrich Heine, Letzte Gedichte, 1869

Amos Funkenstein now lies buried just north of Berkeley in a Richmond

/% cemetery—seemingly a modest end for an intellectual of such remarkable
JL A, accomplishments. But like Heinrich Heine, whose poetry he loved to cite,
Funkenstein was by nature peripatetic. No country and no doctrine seems to have
been large enough to encompass all his various passions. He traveled freely across
jealously patrolled academic borders, bridging religion and science, politics and
 logic, fudaism and scholasticism. Those who attended his seminars or have merely
glanced^ at the titles of his books know that he could move with ease from
Nachmanides to Nicholas of Kusa, from Kepler to the Kabbalah, and from [31]
Gersonides to Galileo, as if they were all participants in a single conversation. He
often seemed to take a small measure of delight in such transgressions. Yet he wasNeo-
never disrespectful. Like Heine, Funkenstein's irony wasfundamentally humane. Kantianism
He combined sincerity with a sharp, almost cynical cast of mind—their volatile •
combination is found in all his scholarly work. For this reason, I think, he was Peter Eli
Gordon
capable, as few others in his profession, of recognizing the subterranean bond
between science and faith. Indeed, it is Funkenstein's unique sensitivity to the
comingling of religion and science that perhaps best characterizes his legacy. In
what follows, I pay homage to this kind of inquiry by addressing one of his most
cherished topics—the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge and its effect on modem
fewish religious thought. In marrying these distinctive domains, he attempted to
show how faith no longer exists—if indeed it ever did exist—in comfortable
isolation from reason. No region of life, he urged us, is so holy that its origins are
not also nourished by science and logic. The following, therefore, is written in
homage to Funkenstein, who now lies "surrounded/By God's heaven where'er
it be."

The Neo-Kantian Legacy

In Perceptions of fewish History, Amos Funkenstein observed that "the

excellence of philosophical systems is often recognizable by their ability
to dig their own graves."' Like much of the book (the last to be published
during his lifetime), this remark is an aphorism, a conceptual shorthand
that condenses into very few words a whole wilderness of argument. The
crucial idea is Hegelian: philosophical movements do not follow each
other in the fashion of waves, one succeeding another in mere series.
Rather, schools of thought emerge in violent opposition; they protest
some older doctrine whose very radicalism has grown intolerable and
seems in any case on the verge of internal collapse. Funkenstein offers
this "digging one's own grave" metaphor as a means of explaining a
crucial moment of intellectual history: the progression in modern
Jewish thought from neo-Kantianism to existentialism. One of the
difficulties of understanding this fateful transition is that neo-Kantian-
ism itself was so thoroughly extinguished as a living scholarly movement.
Its memory, if one may speak of the "memory" of a philosophy, was so
thoroughly refashioned, indeed caricatured, by the succeeding genera-
tion of existentialist thinkers that today there remains little widespread
knowledge of its original aims and methods. Yet to a striking degree, the
 memory of neo-Kantianism is a memory constructed by a knowledgeable
opposition, students who were themselves schooled in the philosophy
[32] they then set about dismantling. This phenomenon of philosophical
burial is therefore one illustration of what Funkenstein called "counter-
Jewish history."^
Social Spawned in the last third of the nineteenth century, the fortunes of
Studies the neo-Kantian movement were intimatedly tied to the fate of Central
European liberalism—its star rose and fell with the progressive spirit of
the German bourgeoisie.'Yet even before the founding of the Weimar
Republic, the radically intellectualist character of the neo-Kantian phi-
losophy had begun to provoke violent opposition, and throughout the
1920s it waged a losing batde against the younger fashions of neo-
Hegelianism, phenomenology, and existential ontology. In 1929, Ernst
Cassirer, the most famous (though hardly the most faithful) student
of the neo-Kantians, complained in a public disputation with Martin
Heidegger that "neo-Kantianism has become the scapegoat of the newer
philosophies.'"* Indeed, Heidegger himself was only the most vocal of
the many younger philosophers who blamed neo-Kantianism for the
allegedly moribund condition of Central European thought. According
to Cershom Scholem, in Berlin at the time students liked to quip that
"die Philosophie ist mit Stumpf und Riehl ausgerottetworden" (philoso-
phy has been destroyed root and branch), a resentful pun on the names
of Carl Stumpf and Alois Riehl, two of the oldest and most revered
professors of "critical" or "scientific" philosophy.' Such resentments
finally helped to extinguish the flame of neo-Kantianism, which by the
end of World War II was remembered as a purely academic school, traces
of which may be found, if anywhere, in certain contemporary interpre-
tations of Kant's theory of science.^ Generally speaking, neo-Kantianism
today has become in great measure a philosophical ghost, and like many
such ghosts it has taken up a home in the history of ideas, where it
troubles no one.
Some background history is therefore required. The various forms of
neo-Kantianism—whether one speaks of the "Southwestern" school of
Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, the "Marburg" school of
Paul Natorp and Hermann Cohen, the expansive "symbolic forms"
philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, or the value-free sociological science of
Max Weber—make the movement in its entirety difficult to define.
Perhaps what most united its many schools was a shared conviction that,
by the middle of the nineteenth century, the metaphysical extravagances
of romanticism and speculative ideahsm had at last been spent, and that
genuine philosophical renewal could be achieved in Germany only
by returning to the methodological rigor of epistemological critique.
"Zuriick zu Kant" was the battle cry of the movement. Taking their cue
from Kant's critique of metaphysics, the neo-Kantians set out to demon-
strate that philosophy properly conceived must confine itself to laying [33]
down the formal conditions for knowledge, whether such knowledge be
that of natural science or of culture,' Neo-
Neo-Kantianism, therefore, was first and foremost a "theory of knowl- Kantianism
edge" (Erkenntnistheorie), which followed the reflexive principle of tran- •
Peter Eli
scendental idealism by insisting that the mind possesses certain formal Gordon
conditions a priori necessary if there is to be any experience as such. In
sensibility, the neo-Kantians were radicals, stringently anti-metaphysical
yet faithful to reason almost to the point of worship. In politics they were
moderates dedicated to rational progress, and they tended to believe
that counter-currents (such as neo-Hegelianism and the philosophy of
life) were threats, not only to German intellectual life but to German
culture as well.* Through its varied and diverse schools across Germany
and Austria, neo-Kantianism more or less dominated much of Central
European university life from the founding of Bismarck's Reich until
World War I. Perhaps its greatest and most zealous representative was
Hermann Cohen, whose interpretation of Kant {Kants Theorie derErfahr-
ung, 1871), marked the true beginning of the critical revival, and whose
mature theory of knowledge (elaborated most famously in his Logik der
reinen Erkenntnis, 1902) represented its zenith,^
But soon thereafter, neo-Kantianism fell into decline. Toward the end
of his life, Cohen quit his post in Marburg to teach at the Hochschule fur
die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. Here he wrote his last work,
the posthumously published Religion der Vemunft aus den Quellen des
fudentums (1919; Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism),
which many of his contemporaries considered a betrayal of the critical
spirit. Some believed that Gohen had struck out into the dark and
unfamiliar territory of his own religious faith and had thereby betrayed
the radically anti-metaphysical thrust of his own system.'" Julius Gutt-
mann, in the closing lines of the original (1933) German-language
edition of his now-classic study. The Philosophy offudaism, praised Her-
mann Cohen as the last great thinker of the Jewish tradition." By the
1920s, however, neo-Kantianism as a whole was often described as a
"defunct philosophy."'^ Partisans who still confessed fidelity to the spirit
of Marburg now spoke of a "crisis of modern epistemology" born of an
acknowledged insufficiency in the neo-Kantian theory of Being." But
the younger generation, seized by a new hunger for metaphysical
speculation, turned away in droves from the critical model and in its •
stead forged diverse philosophies of religion, revolutionary Utopia, and
existence.'''
 In retrospect, however, it appears that the relationship between neo-
Kantianism and existentialism was often as much dialectical as it was
[34] oppositional. This is especially the case of the curious bond between
Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig. At first glance, these philoso-
Jewish phers exhibit a startling lack of similarity: against Cohen's neo-Kantian
Social faith in reason, Rosenzweig speaks the customary existentialist com-
Studies plaint of the 1920s. According to Rosenzweig, the history of philoso-
phy—"from Parmenides to Hegel"—may be characterized as a grand
intellectual delusion: philosophy once claimed knowledge of the total-
ity, it wanted to extinguish the independent facticity of the world, it
asserted that the "given" and the "particular" are ostensibly products of
thought itself. Yet this tradition, according to Rosenzweig, amounts to
little more than a spectacular exercise in wishful thinking. Human
existence, objects Rosenzweig, belies the placid dream of transcendence
with the simple facticity of the individual who is always "still here." The
reduction of all phenomena to the index of thought is therefore unten-
able; the hoped-for union of thought and being is shattered, and we
emerge from the illusory stasis of absolute knowledge into a new appre-
ciation of temporality and dependency. The very architecture of Der
StemrfCT-^rZoiMwg-(1921), Rosenzweig's most systematic (yet nonetheless
bewildering) magnum opus, seems an explicit rejoinder to the neo-
Kantian dream that existence itself is somehow generated from thought.
The book famously begins with a fierce polemic against the vain at-
tempts by "philosophy" to conquer death,, and after innumerable paro-
dies of Kantian "categories" and "faculties" and "epistemologies," the
book finishes (over 400 admittedly philosophical pages later) by return-
ing the reader through a "gateway" of diminishing text, pointing at last
away from further speculation and "into life."'^
The contrast with Cohen could hardly seem more stark. But one
would be wrong to draw too strong a distinction between Cohen and
Rosenzweig. All too often, Rosenzweig's philosophy has been portrayed
as little more than the Jewish variant of a commonplace "humanistic"
existentiahsm, and his deeper philosophical commitments have been
lost. More recently, scholars have begun to grasp those commitments,
although they have often been interpreted in a manner that ends by
confirming Rosenzweig's place in a tradition of specifically "Jewish"
ethical thought,'" Such interpretations, however, run the risk of ignoring
the astonishing degree to which Rosenzweig understood and consciously
adapted the methodologies of Cohen's neo-Kantian theory of science (a
theory having only the most tangential relationship to Judaism). To be
sure, Rosenzweig's adaptation turned Cohen's own logical instruments
against him. But for this very reason, one cannot understand Rosen-
zweig's success without understanding some of the intricacies of the
original neo-Karitian problematic.
Writing on this very question, Funkenstein succeeded in elucidating [35]
the intimate bond between Cohen's epistemology of science and Rosen-
zweig's existential speculations. The relationship between them is not Neo-
Kantianism
widely acknowledged, partly due to the general neglect of neo-Kantian-
•
ism in the history of ideas. Little has been written—^virtually nothing in
Peter Eli
the English-speaking world—on Cohen's notoriously difficult philoso- Gordon
phy of science and logic. Here Funkenstein was uniquely equipped: his
earlier work. Theology and the Scientific Imagination, is expressly concerned
with showing the dialectical connection between science and faith. Even
in this book, neo-Kantianism already played an important role. Indeed,
if one were to survey Funkenstein's entire oeuvre, one might begin to
suspect that Cohen's logical theory was something of an idee fixe. The
idea, like an animating principle, appears in various incarnations in
different texts and different chapters; in one place we read about
Kant's treatment of infinite judgments, in another we read about Mai-
monides' theory of the negation of privations, and in yet another we
read of Cohen's principle of origins.
All of these ideas are, in essence., variations on a single theme: the
problem of how the logical form of negation may be said to generate
positive knowledge." Funkenstein's most extensive treatment of this
problem is found in the chapter of Perceptions ofjewish History entitled
"Franz Rosenzweig and the End of Germanjewish Philosophy." In the
remaining pages of this article, I want to explore the suggestion that
Cohen's "principle of origins" somehowfound its wayfrom neo-Kantian-
ism to existentialism. I begin with a brief excursus on Cohen's place in
the origins of the neo-Kantian movement. I will then offer a short
account of Cohen's idea of the "principle of origins" as it is found in his
philosophy of logic. A third section examines how Rosenzweig appro-
priated and transformed Cohen's ideas. A brief, concluding remark
will address the nagging question as to whether Rosenzweig remained
in anyway faithful to rationalism.'*

From Metaphysics to Method: Kant's Theory of Experience

Cohen's singular importance in the history of philosophy can be traced

to the publication of his first major work in 1871, Kant's Theory of
Experience.^^ His chief contribution to the interpretation of Kant's phi-
losophy was to radically revise the contemporary understanding of the
Kantian doctrine of the thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich). Throughout the
 1860s, there had been a unresolved debate between Adolf Trendelen-
berg and Kuno Fischer over the status of space and time in relation to
[36] things in themselves, as presented in the "transcendental aesthetic" of
the first critique. In Trendelenberg's view, Kant was without warrant in
Jewish concluding that space and time are pure forms of intuition only and can
Social have no further application to things in themselves. It seemed clear that
Studies there was a gap (Liicke) or neglected alternative in Kant's argumenta-
tion.^" In his many rejoinders to Trendelenberg, Fischer pointed out that
this objection utterly misses the nature of the Kantian distinction be-
tween transcendental and empirical ideality: as the formal conditions by
which objects are known to us, space and time must apply to all possible
experience. As such, they are empirically real. But according to the very
meaning of space and time as conditions for the objects of experience,
they cannot also be the conditions for things as such. This, Fischer
concluded, is precisely what Kant meant by the "transcendental ideality"
of space and time: "Regarded as the conditions of things (transcenden-
tally), space and time have no reality [Wirklichkeit]."^^
Cohen's own contribution to the debate, as presented in Kant's Theory
of Experience, undercut the arguments of both Trendelenberg and
Fischer.^^ Although Cohen had studied under Trendelenberg, he did
not share his teacher's views regarding the supposed gap in Kant's
exposition.^^ Both of the older scholars, Cohen argued, had misunder-
stood the true character of the thing-in-itself in Kant's philosophy.^'' The
distinction between the thing-in-itself and appearance, he argued, is not
a metaphysical distinction, it is methodological. The rule of method in
Kant's philosophy can only be understood when we grasp that his
primary objective was not to lay the groundwork for a future metaphys-
ics. Rather, it was to seek the justificatory principles that guide us in the
infinite progress of scientific discovery. The realm of appearance is
nothing other than the realm of nature as described by science. The
status of the thing-in-itself is simply the as-yet-unknown, the uncondi-
tioned; it is that which is the goal {Zwech) of scientific inquiry and which
will one day be integrated into the system of natural-mathematical
explanation. Where appearance is the known, the thing-in-itself is the
task (Aufgabe) of knowledge.^' Accordingly, the world as a whole is a
"problem," to be examined and eventually known through natural-
mathematical explanation. In Cohen's words, it is "the task of the thing-
in-itself."^'' For Cohen, even Fischer had not fully liberated himself from
a metaphysical understanding of the transcendental/empirical distinc-
tion. At some level, Cohen suggested, Kant's most eminent interpreters
were still beholden to the scholastic (pre-critical) vision of philosophy as
a voyage beyond the sensible world.
 In Cohen's opinion, however, Kant's true achievement was precisely
to have abandoned the metaphysical worldview and to set the questions
of philosophy on a new, properly scientific foundation. With the publi- [37]
cation of the Gritique ofPure Reason, said Cohen, philosophy first under-
stood that its true task is critical, not constructive: it sets out the facts of Neo-
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science as they are given at the time, asking not what is known but how
such knowing is possible. Once we have grasped this methodological
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purpose, we can easily see that it makes little sense to speak of time and Gordon
space, the conditions of objects in appearance, as features of the thing-
in-itself as well. The notion of objective description for a realm beyond
experience—as it is defined by science—is meaningless. Time, like
space, is nothing but a "form of scientific sensibility."^' For Cohen,
therefore, Kant represented a major turning point in Western thought:
"Before [Kant] there was metaphysics as art; with him for the first tim£ there is
metaphysics as science."^^
Cohen's strongest criticism was reserved for those, like Wilhelm
Wundt, who misunderstood the Kantian vision as that of "metaphysical
fantasy" rather than "methodical criticism."^^ This misunderstanding, in
Cohen's view, commonly grew out of the post-Kantian attempt to col-
lapse the distinction between sensibility and understanding. Kant had
insisted on the division between intuitions and concepts, whereas knowl-
edge is only possible thanks to their synthesis. But many of his successors
(notably Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel) had committed a grossly meta-
physical error by cutting across these two elements, thereby transform-
ing what was, in Cohen's opinion, Kant's purely regulative notion of an
"intellectual intuition" {intelkktuelle Anschauung) into a real possibility.
But this was a violation of Kant's systematic intentions. The thing-in-itself
may be thought, but it cannot be known; it is a regulative Idea, or
Grenzbegriff necessary for the progress of science.^" If the distinction
between sensibility and thought is collapsed, then there is no longer a
place for the unconditioned; all discovery vanishes in the permanence
of the Absolute. This, in Cohen's view, is the common mistake shared by
pantheism, Spinozism, mysticism, and all varieties of fanaticism {Schwdr-
merd): none of them allowed for the proper understanding of the thing-
in-itself as the "infinite task" (unendliche Aufgabe) of science.^'
The importance of Platonic themes in this interpretation should not
be missed. Cohen often indicated the close affinity, already apparent to
Kant himself, between the Platonic theory of Ideas and the Kantian
doctrine of regulative Ideas. Both of these doctrines suggest that the
ideas prized as reason's greatest possessions do not have their origins in
empirical experience. In fact, they both function as conditions for the
possibility of sensual knowledge. Cohen therefore went so far as to speak
 of Plato as the true "founder" of philosophical criticism (Erkenntnis-
kritik) .^^ The association with Kant is further reinforced through the fact
[38] that it was Plato who was largely responsible for turning philosophy
toward the question of the specific Being {Sein) associated with math-
Jewish ematics.'^ But here, Cohen insisted, the parallel comes to an end. For
Social Plato, the Idea is not only presumed to be the ground of experience but
Studies represents experience of a superior kind: by transcending the world of
the senses for this higher sphere, the philosopher can arrive at a final,
perfected station of insight. Yet Cohen perceived that for this reason
Plato could easily, though perhaps one-sidedly, be interpreted as a
theorist of "intellectual intuition."''' The Platonic theory of ideas lay the
foundations of systematic philosophy, but it became overzealous in its
appreciation of reason as a faculty that is believed capable of producing
knowledge even when it is set free of the "fertile plain" of the empirical
ld'^
According to Cohen, Kant's "theory of experience" is the solution to
this danger. The "riddle" of experience is announced in the famous
opening lines of the first critique:

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow
that it all arises out of experience.'^

In Cohen's view, these phrases inaugurate a new direction for philoso-

phy, a "riddle" for which Kantian criticism provided the only adequate
solution."The distinction between where knowledge "begins" {anfange)
and from what sources it "originates" (entspringt) provided Cohen with
the basis for his interpretation of Kant, and it also anticipated Cohen's
own critical method, the "principle of origins." Kant, as Cohen ex-
plained, understood that the true task of philosophy lies not in the
search for new knowledge or "matter." Rather, its task is merely to justify
the sensuous, a priori (space and time) elements by which kriowledge is
first possible. Cohen calls these elements "forms of spirit"'{Formendes
G«'ste5).'» While the world of the senses is also the world "foundation,"
this does not compel us to surrender ourselves to the senses entirely: the
Kantian revolution transforms philosophy into a science of the empiri-
cal, but this science is guaranteed of its rights by means of a new, idealist
theory of the a priori.^^ This doctrine, in Cohen's view, represented a
revolution in philosophy that Kant himself had justly compared to the
Copernican revolution in astronomy.'"' Cohen believed that this insight
had radically transformed the modern understanding of the task of
philosophy. In fact, one could credit the Critique of Pure Reason with
having inaugurated a truly modern vision of the place of the human
being in the world: we are no longer condemned to a role of receptivity,
where we are mere spectators confronting an already-finished creation. [39]
Rather, the knowing subject is granted new dignity as a spontaneous
agent in the production of knowledge. Cohen's interpretation is not, Neo-
Kantianism
therefore, confined to an analysis of scientific method. For Cohen,
•
"experience" in the Kantian lexicon ultimately meant nothing less than
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the activity of thought as such.'*' Gordon
From this brief summary, it is clear that Cohen's fame was due in large
part to his uncompromising vision of philosophy as science in which
metaphysics in the traditional sense no longer had a rightful place. This
contribution, although it may seem in retrospect a rather familiar
interpretation of Kantian epistemology, in its time implied a far-reach-
ing transformation of the philosophical enterprise. The radicalism of
Cohen's perspective, which became the heart of the "Marburg school,"
gradually encouraged all sorts of associations, foremost among them
Rosenzweig's claim that Cohen was at heart a Hegelian because his
"panmethodism" seemed to have robbed the world of its independent
being. This claim was not entirely without warrant. Cohen placed great
emphasis on natural-scientific reasoning as the dominant model for
philosophy. Indeed, in the later, revised editions of Kant's Theory of
Experience, he even strengthened the equation between Kant's critical
philosophy and the progress of modern science. He also radically
expanded his treatment of the thing-in-itself as the task of scientific
discovery. Cohen now surpassed Kant as an enemy of traditional meta-
physics. By conceiving of the thing-in-itself as little else than a method-
ological idea, or "task," Cohen's interpretation contained a hidden
threat to the metaphysical independence of the world as such: the
beings that are to be encountered in sensibility threatened to dissolve
in a system of intellectual immanence, such that transcendental ideal-
ism now seemed to verge on panlogism. The decisive step toward such
an idealistic theory was finally taken in Cohen's mature theory of
knowledge.

Being Out of Nothingness: Cohen's Logic

Cohen's Logic of Pure Knowledge,firstpublished in 1902, begins by

positing the identity of thought (Denken) and being (Sein) .*^ With this
simple claim, Cohen displayed a radical idealism that far surpassed the
idealism of Kant: in Kant'sfirstcritique, it was still assumed that thought
must begin with something that is external to itself, with that which is
 given in intuition (Anschauung). For Cohen, however, this was the weak
moment in Kant's philosophy, which was responsible for the apostasy of
[40] his followers. If the purpose of critique is to discover the pure, a priori
element in our knowledge (as illustrated by mathematics), then we must
Jewish begin with thought alone, taken as a pure and independent faculty. The
Social element of thought that will be our sole concern is thought insofar as it
Studies is the condition for the possibility of knowledge—i.e., transcendental
logic. But "[t]hought must have no origin [Ursprung] outside of itself,
when its purity is to be without limit and uncorrupted."^' The only being
allowed in the investigation of the a priori in knowledge must be that
being which is generated wholly from thought alone. Cohen now in-
sisted that the ideal of philosophy as a science of pure knowledge had
been founded with an insight attributed to Parmenides: "Being is the
Being of Thought."^'* In Plato, this insight became fixed in the doctrine
of the Idea, as a hypothesis or question: "What is x?" is in essence a
question regarding the origin of x. The being that is in question
discovers its origins beyond itself, in thought. In fact, Cohen suggested,
theological faith in eternity depends on the doctrine that being is
generated in thought: "In this belief there is expressed a willing confi-
dence in the eternity of thought, or, as is meant here, in the sovereignty
of thought." But this sovereignty would be thrown into jeopardy if
thought were to be compelled to acknowledge that it depends in the
slightest measure on a source of givenness outside of itself. "Thought
can and must disclose being.""*^
The heart of Cohen's doctrine concerning the generation of being
from thought was to be found in the "principle of origin" (Ursprungs-
prinzip). In his discussion of the historical sources of this principle,
Cohen credits Nicholas de Cusa with the crucial "discovery" that there is
no element in our knowledge more certain than mathematics.'*'' Specifi-
cally, the mathematical concept of the infinite (das Unendliche) is the
linchpin of all our scientific knowledge. Accordingly, Cohen explained
the principle of origins as follows: all that can be posited or known is
finite. Yet all finite being (Seiende) is first thought by means of the
infinite. There is no finitude whatsoever unless it is created in thinking
of it as a hmitation of the infinite. The infinite, therefore, is the "tool and
instrument" for the discovery of finite being.'*'
Specifically, the instrument that serves to generate being is the
concept of the infinitesimal, or infinitely small magnitude {das unend-
lichklein) as it took shape in the calculus of Gottfried Leibniz.''* In
Cohen's view, infinitesimal analysis is notjust "the legitimate instrument
of mathematical-natural science." In fact, science as such depends on
the infinitesimal for its methodological integrity and its claims to cer-
tainty.'*' In physics, the infinitesimal method maybe used to demonstrate
that being, mass, and force are all functions of motion.'^" In calculus,
whose methods form the theoretical basis of physics and geometry, the [41]
infinitesimal method allows us (for example) to compute the area under
a curve: its area is equal to the sum of an infinite number of rectangles Neo-
Kantianism
with infinitely small widths—that is, rectangles with bases of lengths
approaching zero. In this sense, a magnitude that is given the math-
ematical definition as tending toward nothing becomes the originating Peter Eli
Gordon
point in thought for the generation of reality as such. Kant, although his
achievement was corrupted through his devotion to the doctrine of the
sensuous given, was the first to recognize by means of an analysis of the
infinitely small, that reality {Realitdt) is generated in thought; it is a
category of mind, which, in Kant's words, "represents only that some-
thing the very concept of which includes being."" The importance of
the infinitesimal, therefore, cannot be underestimated. For Cohen, it
served as the grand model of philosophical idealism as such, signifying
"undiminished certitude, the uninhibited and creative [schopferische]
independence of pure thought."^^
For our purposes, the most consequential element of Cohen's critical
idealism is the notion, already mentioned above, that being is first
generated by thought, by thinking in terms of a continuity from nothing-
ness. The historical and philosophical details of this notion are discussed
by Coben in Logic of Pure Knowledge in tbe section entitled "The Some-
thing and the Nothing" {DasEtwas und das Nichts) and in those sections
that immediately follow.^' The concept of origin, in Cohen's view, was
first discovered in myth: whereas Thales believed that all is water,
Anaximander argued that the infinite itself is the point of origin for
being. With this insight, the concept of origin first assumed its character
as "spirit" (Geist) instead of substance. But, unfortunately, the concept of
origins assumed a metaphysical rather than a logical character: in the
many quarrels concerning the ontological problem, it was debated
whether even Cod's being might be created in thought. The modern,
logical principle that must now be obeyed is thus: "Only Thought itself
is capable of creating that which qualifies as Being."^'' But it is clear that,
insofar as knowledge is certainty, thought cannot depend upon a sensu-
ous given. For the Greeks, the meaning of the given was that which is
derived from thought by means of analysis alone. Thougbt must only
accept as given that which it can discover alone. What it wishes to
discover is the "something" (Etwas), that which can be determined: in
matbematics, this determinability is denoted by the sign x. The question,
'What is :x:?' summarizes the problem of origins. But the origins of
something cannot be discovered in another something, as this merely
 reiterates the question anew. The origins of a something lie not in
another something but rather in the nothing {das Nichts) ?^
[42] Cohen admits that, at first glance, this might appear nonsensical: "It
seems absurd that in order tofindsomething, one would turn toward the
Jewish nothing, which seems to constitute the true abyss for thought \_Abgrund
Social fur das Denken} ."^^ But the apparent absurdity is in fact unavoidable. For
Studies since something cannot lie at the origin of something without infinite
regress, the remaining alternative must be that the nothing is a "station"
in the generation of being. This nothing is not erected, as it were, as an
"un-thing" that stands in contradiction to the something. Rather, it is
the "offspring" {Ausgeburt) of "the deepest logical dilemma" in which
thought cannot help but find itself.*' The relationship between nothing-
ness and being isfirstillustrated in the grammatical association between
the particle of privation (Un) and the idea of negation (nicht). The
proposition, 'xis un-31' was called by Aristotle a "privative"—and by Kant
an "infinite" {unendliche)—judgment. Thus the negation of an attribute
can take an affirmative form, and nothingness can thereby assume a role
in the determination of an object."^" Cohen employs a classical example:
'the soul is not mortal' is a negative proposition. But 'the soul is
immortal' employs a privative concept, immortality, which was derived
by injecting the negation into the predicate itself. In this way, we have not
only determined what the soul is not, but we have also taken a small step
toward a positive determination of what the soul must be. In sum, we
have employed the "nothing" in order to progress toward the determina-
tion of a "something." The relationship between the nothing and the
something is therefore one of continuity: "Being [Sein] itself" Cohen
concludes, must receive its origin through not-being [Nichtsein]." Noth-
ingness is not a mere correlative concept for being; in Cohen's words, it
is the springboard from which Being is

Negation and Nothingness: Rosenzweig's Appropriation

When one now turns from Cohen's logical philosophy to Rosenzweig's

"new thinking," one is immediately struck by the elaborate use Rosen-
zweig makes of Cohen's principle of origins in the opening chapters
of The Star of Redemption. In a small introductory section entitled "The
Origin" {Der Ursprung), Rosenzweig praises Cohen for having recog-
nized the crucial role mathematics must play as "an organum of reason-
ing." According to Rosenzweig, Cohen's principle of origins "teaches us
to recognize the origin of the something in the Nothing" {im Nichts den
Ursprung des Etwas erkennen) .^^ And yet Rosenzweig seems all too aware
that Cohen would not have recognized the new uses to which his logical
discoveries were now put: "[Ejven if the Master would be far from
admitting it, we are continuing to build on the great scientific achieve-
ment of his logic of origins, the new concept of the Nothing."^' Rosen- [43]
zweig claims that he has borrowed from Cohen, but he further claims
that his employment of Cohen's categories is true to their original ^'">-
meaning, even ifthis claim runs "against his [Cohen's] own conception Kantianism

There is something rather suspicious about this way of borrowing Peter Eh

from another thinker. Although Rosenzweig belonged to the movement
that performed a revolt against neo-idealism, he also wished to claim
that the "Master" thinker of Marburg had anticipated this rebellion.
Cohen, Rosenzweig suggested, would not have recognized his own
logical principles in their new application, but Rosenzweig claimed to
have discovered in them a "deeper" meaning his teacher had not seen.
Throughout Rosenzweig's writings on Cohen, this same gesture is re-
peated innumerable times. One must say that, even if it is not wholly
convincing, it allowed Rosenzweig to see his own philosophy not as the
negation of neo-Kantianism but rather as its radical fulfillment. Uncan-
nily, Rosenzweig's self-understanding in the history of philosophy seems
to be yet another application of Cohen's "principle of origins"—a
negation that is also a continuity.
But what is the actual philosophical application of this principle in
Rosenzweig's philosophy? Here one must quarrel with Rosenzweig's
profuse gestures offidelityto the Master, since it is quickly apparent that
his application militates against the deepest premises of what was re-
ferred to above as neo-Kandan panmethodism. Cohen introduced the
Ursprdngsprinzipwith the claim that it expresses the idendty of being and
thought {Denken und Sein). That is, one generates finitude out of the very
thought of the infinite, and such finitude is the sufficient meaning
ascribed to any and all objects of scientific enquiry. But Rosenzweig
opens The Star with the dramatic claim that being and thought are
irreparably torn, that the idealist's dream "from Parmenides to Hegel"
has come to an end.^' "In that very first proposidon of philosophy, that
'All is Water,' there is already hidden the premise that it is possible to
think the world [Denkbarkeit der Welt], while it remained for Parmenides
to explicitly announce the identity of being and thought." But this
idendty is no longer possible: it is "the non-identity of being and
thought" that must "present itself' to being as well as to thought. Once
this nonidendty is established as the basis of all future speculadon, logic
itself loses its sovereignty; it is displaced by what Rosenzweig now called
"metalogic."
It is difficult to imagine that such argumentation would have anything
to do with Cohen's philosophy. Although it seems clear that Rosenzweig
 was reading Cohen's Logic when he composed the opening section of
The Star, it is quite obvious that Rosenzweig did not wish to ratify Cohen's
[44] idealist conclusions.^"* Rosenzweig makes use of Cohen's "principle of
origins," but it becomes the instrument for ideahsm's defeat. How was
Jewish such a reversal possible? One might argue that Cohen himself was pardy
Social reponsible: by casting aside the metaphysical independence of the
Studies given, Cohen's panlogical method seemed no longer "critical." Indeed,
his faith in the sovereignty of thought seemed itself a new kind of
metaphysics—as Rosenzweig correctly observed, it was more Hegelian
than Kantian. But Rosenzweig, too, bears partial responsibility, as his
use of Cohen's philosophy was, from the neo-Kantian point of view at
least, deeply suspect. According to Funkenstein, Rosenzweig turned
what had been for Cohen "a heuristic device" into an allegory, a descrip-
tion of the actual coming-into-existence of the elements of reality. That
is, in Cohen's philosophy the principle of origins was (in Funkenstein's
words) "a form of thought only," whereas Rosenzweig employed the
principle "almost exclusively as a metaphor."® Let us follow Rosenzweig's
argumentation more closely.
In The Star, this metaphorical use is most evident in Part One, in which
Rosenzweig describes the independent status of Cod, World, and Man.
These, of course, are the three elements that will come together through
a kind of temporal "schematism" (borrowed from Kant) in order to form
Creation, Revelation, and Redemption, and from these constituents to
create the six-pointed star of the book's title. In the first part of the text,
however, Rosenzweig presents each of these elements as they might exist
in their shattered disunity. Just why there are three elements is never
justified, but Rosenzweig seems to presume that these correspond to the
tripartite division of Kant's three areas of scientific investigation: theol-
ogy, cosmology, and psychology. ^^
The primary elements are first confronted in isolation from one
another. In each case, Rosenzweig argues, we discover that if the element
is considered in abstraction from our customary sense of its "bond" to
the others, then we confront it in its "existential essence" {daseiendes
Wesen): Cod in this primitive condition is "the metaphysical," the World
is "the metalogical," and Man is "the meta-ethical." A discussion of each
element follows that attempts to employ the principle of origins so as to
unfold the intrinsic meaning of each of these spheres. Thus Rosenzweig
writes: "Of God we know nothing. But this ignorance is ignorance of
God. As such it is the beginning of our knowledge of him—the begin-
ning and not the end." In brief. The Star begins with the absolute
negation of all relation and leads toward an absolute "positivity." That is,
Rosenzweig wishes at first to employ the principle of origins to explore
each element "for itself," where it is dependent "on itself alone." But
understanding the element in its positivity therefore demands that it be
"generated" from negation alone. Rosenzweig's exposition is far from
clear: [45]

Each individual positing of a subject is for itself merely a groundless ^"°'

position, but the original positing, which lies before every individual, the '*" lanism
pre-sup-position, is negation [Vemeinung] namely of the Nothing [des *
Nichts].^'^ Peter Eli
Gordon
This exceedingly difficult passage is intended to explain how the ab-
sence of any knowledge about a particular (Cod especially, but also Man
and World) is itself the basis for grjisping that particular. In the case of
Cod, we begin by admitting that we know "nothing" about him. But as
this "nothing" (Nichts) is ignorance of Cod, it is also "the beginning of
our knowledge of him." That is to say, to generate for ourselves an
understanding of Cod that is wholly dissociated from all the worldly or
human notions commonly obscuring our vision, we are forced atfirstto
picture Cod as something dangerously close to a "nothing" in the midst
of phenomena. But we will take it on faith that, as an element of
phenomena. Cod must indeed be something {Etwas) and not nothing
{Nichts). We therefore resort to a mathematical analogy, imagining God
to be like a something that first originates in a dramatic negation of this
primal nothing. Thus: "Cod is 'not-nothing.'" Yet logic provides us with
two distinctive ways to construe this proposition: on the one hand, we
may understand it as an affirmation that Cod is not of the class of
"nothing" objects (Cod is not-Nothing). On the other hand, it may
construe the proposition as a negation of a finite entity called "Nothing"
(Cod just is not Nothing). The first is associated with an infinite judg-
ment, the second with afinitenegation. Yet somehow Cod's relationship
to nothingness is both—at once infinite andfinite,at once affirmation
onrfnegation. For Rosenzweig, this double meaning can only refer to tbe
double sense of Cod, who is at once essence anrf action. As essence. Cod
remains infinite, unknown beyond the simple fact of his dissociation
from all Nothingness. As action. Cod begins with a resolute and finite
"no" in the face of Nothingness itself.
If all of this seems highly obscure, we must now recall that Rosenzweig
only introduced the logical tools so as to elucidate what Cod must be like.
It cannot be that mathematics is actually an adequate instrument for
generating the three constitutive phenomena God, Man, and World, as
this would imply the identity of thought and being that Rosenzweig set
out to destroy. Rather, it must be that mathematics provides us with a
helpful model or analogy for picturing these three phenomena in their
primal dissociation. In his commentary on this problem, Funkenstein
 helpfully observed that Rosenzweig obscures his meaning by seeming at
times to suggest two distinct readings of this argument: either mathemat-
[46] ics just is the symbolic instrument for picturing reality, or this symbolic
instrument "is only like mathematics." Funkenstein concludes that, "of
Jewish course it could only be the latter." The metaphorical function of math-
Social ematics becomes most overt in the second part of The Star, where
Studies Rosenzweig discussess the three mutual "involvements" of the primal
elements—creation, revelation, and redemption. Each of these phe-
nomena is located in time: creation displays a temporal index of "past"—
it has "always already happened"; revelation is always presentness; and
redemption is always "not yet." Each of these, as Funkenstein helpfully
observes, therefore seems to be the "schematization" of a category, much
as Kant's schematism realized the categories in time. But if these are
actual, temporal phenomena, then what has become of the logical
instruments Rosenzweig borrowed from Cohen? As Funkenstein notes,
mathematics cannot itself be the governing "principle" of reality. It must
be that, for Rosenzweig, mathematics is being used "almost exclusively as
a metaphor" for a real process: Cod's act of creation, like revelation and
redemption, turns out to be just what one would expect it to be in a work
that takes faith as a philosophically consequential fact: it is an "event"
(Ereignis). In the face of what Rosenzweig called "metalogical" phenom-
enon of the world, logic turns out to be a helpful yet ultimately provi-
sional

Rosenzweig, Metaphysics, and Rationalism: Concluding Thoughts

The question remains, in what way did Rosenzweig understand the

inadequacy of logic? Does the merely "metaphorical" status in The Star
suggest that logic must, in the court of life, confess its irrelevance in the
face of life's greatest riddles? Or should we suspect that Rosenzweig's use
of logic as a metaphor must somehow hint at a deeper affinity between
logic and experience? Did traces remain, even for Rosenzweig, of that
"world-logos" Hegel once imagined? One of the most puzzling questions
about Rosenzweig as a philosopher is the extent to which he remained at
peace with rationalism.^^ The status of Cohen's logical instruments in
The Star is an obvious illustration of Rosenzweig's ambivalence. On the
one hand, his violent and often caricatured picture of "Ideahsm" as the
presumption of a divine convergence between thought and being would
suggest that Rosenzweig rejected all attempts to find logical structure in
the diverse phenomena of the world. On the other hand, his willingness
to enlist mathematics as his "guide" {Euhrerin) through the obscurities of
theology would suggest that he had not wholly relinquished his faith in
reason.
But a balance sheet of such examples would ultimately show that [47]
Rosenzweig was carried away—perhaps unduly—toward those streams
that Julius Guttmann called (in an oblique reference to Rosenzweig's Neo-
philosophy) "the metaphysical and irrationalist tendencies that gener- Kantianism
ally dominate contemporary thought."™ Among other thinkers who •
might be named as sharing those tendencies, one must surely count Peter Eli
Gordon
Martin Heidegger. Indeed, it could be argued that Heidegger only
exacerbated what was already a gathering storm against intellectualism
found in Rosenzweig's philosophy. A brief look at the complaint Heideg-
ger directs against Cohen's logical theory may therefore prove helpful in
our attempt to understand Rosenzweig.
This complaint is especially evident in the 1929 lecture, "What Is
Metaphysics?" Originally written as Heidegger's Eintrittsrede upon assum-
ing the Freiburg Chair in philosophy (formerly occupied by Husserl),
the lecture was expressly aimed against Cohen and the neo-Kantian
theory of logic.^' Heidegger argued that "the nothing" {das Nichts)
should never be equated with negation. By doing so we would attain
merely "the formal concept of the imagined nothing but never the
nothing itself." This was a more or less explicit attack on Cohen's
panlogism:
The nothing is the origin of negation, not vice versa [Das Nichts ist der
Ursprung der Vemeinung, nicht umgekehrt]. If the power of the intellect in
thefieldof inquiry into the nothing and into Being is thus shattered, then
the fate of the reign of "logic" in philosophy is thereby decided. The idea
of "logic" itself disintegrates in the turbulence of a more original ques-
tioning.^^

Heidegger's discussion of the "origin" {Ursprung) of negation, one may

surmise, is clearly a reference to Cohen's Ursprungsprinzip. As we have
seen, Cohen insisted that Being may be generated out of thought alone,
through the logical instrument of infinite negation. For Heidegger,
therefore, the principle of origins typified the neo-Kantian attempt to
supplant metaphysics with method. But for Heidegger, as for Rosen-
zweig, this central achievement of neo-Kantian logical theory was intol-
erable. It meant that Being had lost its independence in relation to
concepts and that "authentic" metaphysics had been purged from
philosophy. Much like Rosenzweig, Heidegger wished to reverse this
neo-Kantian achievement, to surmount panmethodism, and to inaugu-
rate a new species of metaphysics. Clearly, the previous generation's
ideal of "philosophy as a rigorous science" (Husserl) is the unspoken
 target in Heidegger's essay: Heidegger proclaims that "philosophy can
never be measured by the standards of science," a signal of Heidegger's
[48] successful rebellion against his mentor. The title of Heidegger's lec-
ture—^What Is Metaphysics?—is less a quesdon than a challenge: "What,
Jewish after professional philosophers have worked so zealously to destroy it, is
Social still to be retrieved as the authendc discipline of metaphysics?" There is
Studies also a sadrical edge in the final reference to a "more original" {urspriing-
licheren) questioning in which Cohen's theory of origins itself loses its
force. Heidegger's hostility toward Cohen was curiously pronounced—
it apparendy extended even toward Cohen's most creative student, Ernst
Cassirer. It has been suggested that this hostility was overdetermined,
that it was a vehicle for Heidegger's ambivalence toward Jews and toward
a radically un-metaphysical modernity in which the most "original" of
philosophical quesdons had been forgotten.''
The social "codes" of Heidegger's philosophy have been explored
elsewhere, and there is no need to dwell upon them here. But it is
interesdng that Rosenzweig, like Heidegger, built much of his philoso-
phy out of a protest against what he conceived to be a single, trans-
historical "error" in the philosophical tradition. Ultimately, Cohen came
to represent for Rosenzweig the final stage, perhaps even the quintes-
sence, of that pan-historical error. It is hardly surprising, then, that at the
end of his life Rosenzweig willingly and without irony announced his
intellectual kinship with Heidegger.''' Rosenzweig learned from Cohen,
to be sure, but much of his philosophy had as its uldmate aim the
"dissolution" of precisely those rationalist values Cohen himself most
deeply cherished.'^ In this sense, the two rebels stood in parallel but
slightly dissimilar relations to the "Master" from Marburg: Heidegger's
stance toward Cohen was that of simple negation, whereas Rosenzweig's
stance was dialecdcal. A great admirer of Cohen, Rosenzweig made
creadve use of Cohen's logical theory. But infidelity can be a student's
greatest gesture of love: having borrowed from neo-Kantianism what was
perhaps its most delicate instrument, Rosenzweig used it as a spade to
assist him in the burial of that very tradition.

Notes

1 Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of history," see Funkenstein,

Jewish History (Berkeley, Calif., Perceptions, esp. 32-49. See also
1993), 279. David Biale, Gershom Scholem,
2 On the concept of a "counter- Kabbalah and Gounter-History
 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), and
Biale's contribution in this issue
ofJewish Social Studies.
3 On the social meaning of neo-
Kantianism, see Timothy Keck,
Kant and Socialism: The Marburg
School in Wilhelmian Germany
(Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Wisconsin at
Madison, 1975), and Klaus
Kohnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg
des Neuhantianismus: Die deutsche
Universitdtsphilosophie zwischen
Idealismus und Positivismus
(Frankfurt am Main, 1986).
4 "Davoser Disputation zwischen
Ernst Cassirer und Martin
Heidegger," appendix FV, in
Martin Heidegger, Kant und das
Problem der Metaphysik, 5th ed.
(Frankfurt am Main, 1991). For a
detailed account of the Davos
disputation, its relationship to
neo-Kantianism and to Franz
Rosenzweig, see Peter Eli
Gordon, Under One Tradewind:
Philosophical Expressionism in
Weimar Thought from Rosenzweig to
Heidegger (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of
California at Berkeley, 1997), esp.
chap. 5.
5 Gershom Scholem, Walter
Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship,
trans. Harry Zohn (New York,
1981), 21. Of course, philoso-
phers who extolled the ideal of
thought as a "strict science" were
not always neo-Kantian in
inspiration. Carl Stumpf, the
teacher of EdmUnd Husserl, was
one of the grandfathers of
phenomenology; yet for younger
thinkers such as Heidegger he
represented the very same of
"scientism." See Husserl's
programmatic lecture, "Philoso-
phie als strenge Wissenschaft,"
Log-Oil (1910-11): 289-341.
6 Occasionally one comes across
distinguished philosophers who
claim their work is animated by [49]
the "spirit of Marburg," such as
Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Neo-
Philosophy of History (Princeton, Kantianism
N.J., 1980). •
7 For an overview of the entire Peter Eli
neo-Kantian movement, see Gordon
Thomas Willey, Back to Kant: The
Revival of Kantianism in German
Social and Historical Thought,
1860-1914 (Detroit, 1978).
8 See, for example, the warning
call by Wilhelm Windelband,
"Die Erneuerung des Hegelian-
ismus," in Prdludien: Aufsdtze und
Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer
Geschichte (Tubingen, 1915), vol.
1, 273-89.
9 The best overview of Cohen's
work remains Walter Kinkel,
Hermann Gohen: Eine Einfuhrung
in sein Werk (Stuttgart, 1924).
10 Many scholars in the first decades
of this century addressed the
problem of how best to construe
Cohen's religious writings given
the neo-Kantian animus against
metaphysical speculation of any
kind. Representative works
include Heinz Graupe, Die
Stellung der Religion im systemati-
schen Denken der Marburger Schule
(Berlin, 1930); Ernst Troeltsch,
"Cohen, Hermann: Der Begriff der
Religion im System der Philosophie
(Besprechung)," in Theologische
Literaturzeitung 43, nos. 4/5 (Feb.
1918): 57-62; Albert Lewkowitz,
"Die Religionsphilosophie des
Neukantianismus: Fin Beitrage
zur kritischen Lehre von der
transcendenten Realitat,"
Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und
Philosophische Kritik 144, no. 1
(1911): 10-34;Johannes Hessen,
 "Die Religionsphilosophie des
Neukantianismus," Freiburger
[50] TheolopscheStudien23 (1919);
Kurt Kesseler, Kritik der Neukanti-
schen Religionsphilosophie der
Jewish
Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1920); and
Social Siegfried Ucko, Der Gottesbegriff in 17
Studies der Phibsophie Hermann Gohens
. (Berlin, 1927). Two more recent
studies are Mechthild Dreyer, Die
Idee Gottes im Werk Hermann Gohen
(Konigstein, 1985), and Sylvain
Zac, La Philosophie Religieuse de
Hermann Gohen (Paris, 1984).
11 Julius Guttmann, Die Philosophie
desjudentums (Munchen, 1933), 18
562.
12 The remark occurs in the context
of the study by Johannes Hessen,
Die Religionsphilosophie des 19
Neukantianismus (Freiburg,
1924), 114. Hessen was later a
prominent figure in the popular-
ization of Heidegger's philoso-
phy.
13 Albert Lewkowitz, "Die Krisis der
modernen Erkenntnistheorie,"
Archivfur systematischen Philosophie 20
21, no. 2 (1915).
14 An important contemporary
review of this philosophical
transformation is Fritz Heine-
mann, Neue Wege der Philosophie:
Geist, Leben, Existenz. Eine
Einfuhrung in die Philosophie der
Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1929).
15 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stem der
Erlosung (Frankfurt am Main,
1921). All citations that follow
are from the 4th edition (Frank-
furt am Main, 1993).
16 This may be the ultimate (if
unintended) effect of two recent
and highly instructive works
comparing Rosenzweig and the
French-Jewish philosopher
Emmanuel Levinas: Robert
Gibbs, Gorrelations in Rosenzweig
awrfLwmai (Princeton, N.J.,
1992), and Richard A. Cohen,
Elevations: The Height of the Good in
Rosenzweig and Levinas (Chicago,
1994).
A short though highly elusive
account may be found in Amos
Funkenstein, "The Persecution of
Absolutes: On the Kantian and
Neo-Kantian Theories of
Science," The Kaleidoscope of
Science: The Israel Golloquium for the
History and Philosophy of Science 1
(1986): 329-48.
The remaining portions of this
article draw upon material found
in the second chapter of Gordon,
Under One Tradewind.
Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie
der Erfahrung (Berlin, 1871).
Cohen himself significantly
expanded this book. Reprinted
in Hermann Cohen, Werke, 5th
ed. (Hildelsheim, 1987), vol. 1,
part 1. Unless otherwise noted, I
cite this edition hereafter.
Trendelenberg argued as follows:
it may he correct, as Kant
claimed in the transcendental
aesthetic, that time and space are
forms of intuition—i.e., they are
subjective determinations of all
possible experience. But this
does not rule out the possibility
that they may also he objective
features of things in themselves.
The Fischer-Trendelenberg
debate can be traced back to the
first publication of Trendelen-
berg's Logische Untersuchungen
(Leipzig, 1840), with subsequent
editions printed in 1862 and
1870. Kuno Fischer took issue
with Trendelenberg's conclusions
in his System der Logik und
metaphysik oder Wissenschaftslehre,
 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1865), esp.
175-80. Trendelenberg re-
sponded in an essay, "Uber eine
Lucke in Kants Beweis von der
ausschliessenden Subjektivitat
des Raumes und der Zeit: Ein
kritisches und antikritisches •
Blatt," Historischen Beitrdgen zur
Philosophies (1867): 215ff.
Fischer offered a rejoinder,
"Kants Vernunftkritik und deren
Entstehung," in Geschichte der
neueren Philosophie, 2nd ed.
(Heidelberg, 1869). Trendelen-
berg offered a final summary of
the dispute in an extended form
as Kuno Fischer und sein Kant, Eine
Entgegnung {Leipzig, 1969). See
also his footnote to this literature
in the third edition oi Logische
Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1870),
164-65, nl.
21 Kant's own discussion of the
distinction between empirical
reality and transcendental
ideality of space and time can be
found in his "Transcendentalen
Aesthetik, Zweiter Abschnitt, Von
der Zeit," in KHtik der reinen
Vemunft {\icre&ix.er KdrV) (1787;
2nd ed., Leipzig, 1913), §6, 52-
53. Eor a recent discussion of the
so-called "neglected alternative"
in Kant's treatment of space and
time, see Henry Allison, Kant's
Transcendental Idealism: An
Interpretation and Defense (New
Haven, Conn., 1983), 111-14.
22 Cohen elaborated his own
perspective in an article pub-
lished the same year: Hermarin
Cohen, "Zur Kontroverse 37
zwischen Trendelenberg und 38
Kuno Eischer," Zeitschrift fiir 39
Volkerpsycholigie und Sprachwissen- 40
schafti (1871): 249-71. Re-
printed in Cohen, Jiidische
Schriften, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1924),
229-75.
23 On Cohen's apprenticeship with
[51]
Trendelenberg, see Willey, Back to
Kant, 106-7. Neo-
24 See the section entitled "Tren- Kantianism
delenbergs Ansicht von der •
'Liicke' im transcendentalen
Peter Eli
Beweise," in Cohen, Kants Theorie, Gordon
lsted. (Berlin, 1871), 62.
25 Cohen, Kants Theorie, 5th ed.,
661-62.
26 Ibid., 662-70.
27 Ibid., 700: "The vehicles of the a
priori in the Kantian theoretical
structure, time and space, like
the categories, are to be under-
stood as methods, not as forms of
spirit."
28 Ibid., 732 (my emphasis).
29 Ibid., 682-700.
30 Ibid., 645.
31 Ibid., 769-70.
32 Ibid., 13.
33 Ibid., 21. See also Cohen's essay,
"Platons Ideenlehre und die
Mathematik" (1878), reprinted
in Hermann Cohen, Schriften zur
Philosophie und Zeitgeschichte
(Beriin, 1928), 336-66.
34 Cohen, Kants Theorie, 5th ed., 643.
35 Ibid., 25.
36 "Dass alle unsere Erkenntniss mit
der Erfahrung anfange, daran ist
gar kein Zweifel. . . . Wenn aber
gleich alle unsere Erkenntniss
mit der Erfahrting anhebt, so
entspringt sie darum doch nicht
eben alle aus der Erfahrung."
Erom Kant, Kritik der reinen
Vemunft, "Einleitung," 1 (Bl).
Cohen, Kants Theorie, 1st ed., 3.
Ibid., 243.
Cohen, Kants Theorie, 5th ed., 270.
The crucial passage is found in
Kant, "Vorrede zur zweiten
Auflage," in KdrV, xvii, 28.
 41 Cohen, Kants Theorie, 1st ed., 3.
42 Hermann Cohen, Lo^k der reinen
[52] Erkenntnis (Berlin, 1902, rev.
1914). Hereafter I cite the 4th,
J •, revised edition found in Cohen,
. Werke (Hermann Cohen Archiv
und Hermut Holzhey, Hrsg.,
Studies Hildesheim), vol. 6.
43 Cohen, Logik, 13.
44 Ibid., 15.
45 "In this belief one finds an
expression of open confidence in
the eternity of thought [Ewigkeit
desDenkens], or, as is meant here,
the sovereignty of thought.
Thought can, indeed it must,
disclose being [das Sein ent-
decken]" {Ihid., 31).
46 Ibid., 34.
47 Ibid., 32.
48 The earliest systematic treatment
of the Ursprungsprinzip in Cohen
can be found in Walter Kinkel,
"Das Urteil des Ursprungs: Ein
Kapitel aus einem Kommentar zu
H. Cohens Logik der reinen
Erkenntnis," in Festheft zu
Kantstudien, zu Gohens 70.
Ge6Mrt5tog-(Berlin, 1912). Further
clarification of the infinitesimal
in Cohen's thought can be found
in Amos Funkenstein, Theology
and the Scientific Imagination
(Princeton, NJ., 1986), esp. 351-
60.
49 Cohen, Logik, 33.
50 Ihid.
51 Kant, "Anticipations of Percej>
tion," in KdrV, A170/B212 to
A176/B218. This is discussed by
Cohen in Logik, 35.
52 Cohen, Logik, 35.
53 But see the discussion on the
"judgment of origins" in its
entirety, 79-93. The section "The
Something and the Nothing"
begins at §5, 84.
54 Cohen, Logik, 81.
55 Ibid., 84.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 84-85.
58 Ibid., 89: "Thus the so-called
nothing [Nichts] . .. becomes an
operational tool [Operationsmitte[\
whereby one brings each and
every something that is in
question into its origin, and
thereby to its actual generation
and original determination."
59 Ibid., 93.
60 Rosenzweig, Stem, 23.
61 Ibid., 23.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., 12-13.
64 Taken together, the references to
Cohen, to Parmenides, and to
Thales, the discussion of "ori-
gins," and the references to a
mathematical "tool" for deriving
"something" from "nothing"
would all seem to suggest that
Rosenzweig was intimately
familiar with Cohen's book and
may even have consulted it as he
composed his book. For related
arguments, see Gibbs, Gorrela-
tions, esp. the section from chap.
2, "Getting Something From
Nothing," 46-54.
65 Funkenstein, Perceptions, 289.
66 Rosenzweig, Stem, 21.
67 Ihid., 30.
68 On Ereignis in Rosenzweig, see,
e.g., ibid., 183, 205.
69 This is one point on which
Funkenstein and I were never to
agree. For Funkenstein, Rosen-
zweig's faith in a universal
mission ofJewish education and
his accompanying emphasis on
 "healthy common sense"
{gesunder Menschenverstand)
meant that Rosenzweig was
fundamentally an heir of the
Enlightenment. But I must agree
with Steven Aschheim, who has
suggested that Rosenzweig
belongs together with other
Weimar-era German-Jewish
thinkers in a movement that
transcended liberal-Enlighten-
ment values. See Aschheim,
Gulture and Gatastrophe: German
andfewish Gonfrontations with
National Socialism and Other Grises
(NewYork, 1996), 31-44.
70 Guttmann, Die Philosophie des
Judentums, 362. I cite the German
original from 1933. Guttmann's
later revisions of the text (in
Hebrew, later in English under
the pluralistic title Philosophies of
Judaism) added a full chapter on
Rosenzweig and considerably
qualified the criticism of his
thought.
71 On Heidegger's relationship to
Marburg, see Martin Heidegger,
"Zur Geschichte des philosophis-
chen Lehrstuhles seit 1866,"
appendix VI, in Kant und das
Problem der Metaphysik, 304-11.
72 Martin Heidegger, "Was ist ,
Metaphysik" (1929; 14th German
ed., Frankfurt am Main, 1992).
73 Pierre Bourdieu, The Political [53]
Ontology of Martin Heidegger
(Stanford, Calif., 1991).
Neo-
74 Franz Rosenzweig, "Vertauschte Kantianism
Fronten," originally published in •
Der Morgen, Zweimonatsschrift 6, Peter Eli
no. 6 (1930), reprinted in Franz Gordon
Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein
Werk. Gesammelte Schriften.
(Dordrecht, 1984), vol. 3:
Zweistromland, Kleinere Schriften zu
Glauben und Denken. On Rosen-
zweig's perceived affinities with
Heidegger, see the suggestive
comments in Karl Lowith, "M.
Heidegger and F. Rosenzweig, or.
Temporality and Eternity,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research3, no. 1 (1942): 53-77.
75 Cohen, unlike Rosenzweig,
believed in a deep, inner bond
between Judaism and Kantian
rationalism. See, for example,
Cohen's essay, "Innere Bezie-
hungen der Kantischen Philoso-
phie zum Judentum," originally
published in Bericht der Lehrand-
staltfur die Wissenschaft des
Judentums in Berlin 28 (1910): 4 1 -
61, reprinted in Cohen, Jiidische
Schriften, 284-305.