Hermann Cohen on the Rational Necessity of Religion

It is widely recognized that Hermann Cohen holds that religion goes beyond ethics and that it even somehow grounds ethics, but his argument for this claim has not been properly appreciated nor, consequently, is the claim itself fully understood. Readers have tended to focus on his proof texts from Jewish sources, on the parallels between his position and that of Kant (Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone), and on whether this view of religion is properly philosophical. It should be clear, however, that Cohen propounds, in just a few dense pages at the beginning of chapter 8 of Religion of Reason, a rational deduction of the necessity of religion as a sphere that is not only beyond ethics but that is necessary if there is to be an ethics. On the one hand, the argument proceeds from the ethical duties that we have to any other rational agent (Nebenmensch) to the recognition of the necessity for a closer relation to another person, a relation to a “fellow man” (Mitmench) and, with it, the identification of duties that extend beyond ethical duties. On the other, the argument aims to show that the extended duties make rational, ethical duties possible. This paper expounds Cohen’s argument. It shows that the chapter’s opening distinction between plurality, totality, and individuality is the key to appreciating the rational deduction: the unity of any individual presupposes the unity of a plurality. Cohen is, I argue, using abstract logical relations to support conclusions about morality and religion.