COHEN, HERMANN. - German philosopher, born at Goswig on 4 July 1842, died in Berlin on 4 April 1918. From 1879 to 1912 he taught at the University of Marburg, and thereafter until his death at the «Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums» in Berlin.
His principal work was the System der Philosophie, in three parts: 1st: Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (Berlin, 1902); 2nd: Ethik des reinen Willens (ibid., 1904); 3rd: Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls (ibid., 1912). He also wrote: Religion und Sittlichkeit (ibid., 1907); Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie (Giessen, 1915), etc.
C. was the founder of the Marburg school (P. Natorp, E. Cassirer), which, in opposition to naturalism and positivism, inaugurated a new interpretation of Kant in the sense of an uncompromising logicism, unaffected by Hegelian influence. The balance of the Kantian system, based on the distinction between transcendental aesthetics and analytics, whereby intellectual functions cannot be exercised unless sensibility provides them with suitable material, was disrupted by C., who denied this duality. For him, concepts do not represent being but are identified with being; and, just as thought posits reality, so the will produces the moral order, and the sense of beauty the aesthetic order.