Volume 44, Issue 2/3, Summer/Fall 2014
New Directions in the Thought of Leo Strauss
Dana Hollander
Pages 263-279
Understanding Law (“Gesetz” and “Recht”) in Hermann Cohen, with Help from the Early Strauss
I present the early, incisive reading of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) offered by Leo Strauss in parts of the book Philosophy and Law (1935) and in the closely related lecture “Cohen and Maimonides” (1931), and show that that reading can help frame and sharpen our analysis of Cohen’s approach to law in both his ethics and his philosophy of Judaism.