Hermann Cohen

Born in Coswig, Anhalt, on July 4, 1842, Hermann Cohen became one of the central philosophers of late nineteenth-century Germany. He is best known as a founder of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, a movement that returned to Kant in order to rethink logic, science, and ethics.

Cohen taught for many years at the University of Marburg, where his lectures influenced a generation of students and helped establish neo-Kantianism as a major force in academic philosophy. Reference works such as Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describe him as a key interpreter of Kant and an important voice in German philosophy.

He also played a major role in modern Jewish thought. His later writings brought philosophical ideas about ethics and reason into conversation with Judaism, and his posthumously published Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism became especially influential. Cohen died in Berlin on April 4, 1918.