Hermann Cohen and Jewish Religious Education; [Герман Коген и еврейское религиозное образование]

The eminent philosopher and Jewish intellectual Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) lived his life in accordance with the principles and ideas he developed in his philosophical and religious thought. His work fell during the German Empire, a difficult historical era for Jewish society, when anti-Semitism and immature liberalism were gaining ground. In the history of Jewish philosophy, Cohen’s writings stand out as systematized and rationally grounded. The article presents a range of biographical facts that had a direct influence on the religious and philosophical views of the founder of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. In his philosophy of religion, Cohen sharply criticizes both Zionism and anti-Semitism, which are extremely harmful for understanding the ideas of true Judaism. Anti-Semitism, in his view, blocks the possibility of a synthesis of Jewish religion and German culture, and Cohen sees in Zionism a dangerous attempt to downplay the role of the ethical core of the Jewish religion and to reduce its significance to a narrowly national and state-centred one. Hermann Cohen’s philosophy of religion is characterized as an attempt to synthesize Kantianism and Judaism and as a necessary part of his philosophical system, giving it the specificity that largely determines the originality of Cohen’s philosophical position both in relation to Kantian philosophy and to neo-Kantianism in general. It is noted that the Marburg philosopher was an important thinker in the Jewish community of his time, a well-known supporter of Judaism, and the problem of Jewish religious education was by no means marginal or private for him. © St. Petersburg State University, 2024.