Reason and Hope Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen

Hermann Cohen studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau but gave up a rabbinical career to study philosophy. He devoted himself to the analysis of Platonic and Kantian idealism and became full professor at the University of Marburg at the age of 34. His personal philosophy placed ethics at the center of human experience. He later left Marburg to teach at the Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. Although Cohen's early writings located the realm of ethics within autonomous human reason, his work in Berlin saw God as the foundation for any ethical system.