Hermann Cohen’s Political Philosophy and the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism

Harry van der Linden, Butler University

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This article was also published in French under the following title, "La Philosophie Politique de Hermann Cohenet la Critique Communautarienne du Liberalisme" Both the English and French versions are included in the document.

Abstract

My main aim here is to examine what the significance is of the communitarian critique of liberalism for Hermann Cohen's political philosophy. I will conclude that Cohen's socialist Kantianism can successfully meet this critique. Also, I will argue that his political philosophy can better deal with some of the problems that communitarians detect in our Western democracies than can communitarianism itself. One crucial reason for this is that Cohen completes the original Kantian liberal project by making all agents fully autonomous in the economic sphere.