Ethics Out of Law: Hermann Cohen and the "neighbor"

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was a leading figure in the Neo-Kantian philosophical movement that dominated European thought before 1918. He is also the inaugural figure for what is meant by ＂modern Jewish philosophy＂ in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book explores Cohen’s striking claim that ethics is rooted in law - a claim developed in both his philosophical ethics and his philosophy of Judaism, in particular in his writings on ＂love-of-neighbor,＂ up to and including his well-known Religion of Reason.

Dana Hollander proposes that neither Cohen’s systematic philosophy nor his ＂Jewish＂ philosophy should be seen as the dominant framework for his oeuvre as a whole, but that his understanding of key philosophical questions takes shape in the passages between both corpuses, a trait that could be seen as paradigmatic for modern Jewish philosophy. EthicsOut of Law taps into one of the prime topics of current interest in the field of Jewish philosophy: the nature of Jewish political existence and the changing configurations of ＂law＂ that this entails.