From his early philosophical writings on Kant in the 1870s to his late writings on Judaism, Hermann Cohen’s philosophical method relied on establishing the proper relationship between philosophy and philology. Influenced by the historical methods of both classical philology and the Wissenschaft des Judentums, Cohen brought philological methods to his study of Kant and the history of philosophy. Later, he would bring his training in classical and modern philosophy to the study of Judaism, to establish modern methods for reading Jewish sacred texts not only philologically but also philosophically. This lecture will examine the relationship between philosophy and philology in Cohen’s thought and the hermeneutical method that emerged from this approach, through examples from both his philosophical and Jewish writings.
Shira Billet is assistant professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics at JTS, academic director of JTS’s Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice, and the BA and MA advisor for the Jewish Ethics program at JTS.
Dr. Billet completed her doctorate in 2019 in the “Religion, Ethics, and Politics” subfield of the Department of Religion at Princeton University. Her PhD was about “The Philosopher as Witness: Hermann Cohen’s Philosophers and the Trials of Wissenschaft des Judentums.” Dr. Billet’s research focuses on 19th-century and early 20th-century German Jewish philosophy, both in historical context and in relation to contemporary conversations in philosophical ethics.
Dr. Billet’s recent publications include “‘Do Not Grieve Excessively’: Rabbis Mourning Children Between Law and Narrative in The Rabbinic Laws of Mourning and Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man” (Journal of Textual Reasoning, 2023); “Hermann Cohen’s Virtue Ethics,” in Jewish Virtue Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023); and “Between Jewish Law and State Law: Rethinking Hermann Cohen’s Critique of Spinoza” (Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2018). In addition, she has several forthcoming articles on Hermann Cohen and other aspects of modern Jewish philosophy and ethics.