Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung

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Karl Barth - Paul S. Chung


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be deeply related to the field of socialistic analysis that would later become manifest in Barth’s pastorate at Safenwil. Like Kant, Cohen was interested in establishing the epistemological foundation of modern science. Cohen tried to develop his philosophy on the basis of mathematical physics. Kant’s basic insight, the so-called Copernican revolution in philosophy, comes from the fact that objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the knowing mind.

      Things are known as they appear to our senses and are formed into objects by the categories of understanding. The thing in itself (Ding an sich) is not known to us. Kant distinguishes phenomena, namely things as they appear, and noumena, namely things as they are in themselves. It is the noumena that give rise to our knowing. Generally Kant uses noumenon (thing in itself) to refer to an object existing apart from any relation to a knowing subject. All we know are phenomena, as they are present in our experience. Because we cannot gain knowledge of things in themselves, Kant’s theory of knowing puts restrictions on transcendental realities (God, the immortal soul, human freedom). Such postulates are to be seen and discussed in other domains of human reason, namely reason in its practical area. The noumenon is conceived of as free. Freedom exists apart from the relationship between reason and understanding.

      Cohen takes issue with the precritical and ontological existence of Ding an sich in Kant. Thought as such, and not the world of the noumena, gives rise to cognition. By taking “being” to be the product of thought, Cohen argues that the real being is generated not by empirical sensation but by the thought itself. The knowing subject is a transcendental, pure and simple consciousness as a mathematical point. Thought has no origin in anything outside itself, because it is self-originating. Sense experience is not a source of the content of knowledge but a basic feature of human experience. Cohen’s concept of origin (Ursprung) refers to the beginning of cognition in thought itself. As far as the origin, as the logical originator gives rise to its content, Ursprung is originative and creative of the objects of its knowledge.

      For Cohen, logic, ethics, and aesthetics are valid patterns of cognition, especially in logic where all scientific knowledge is asserted to be valid. The reduction of human knowledge to the three patterns of logic, ethics, and aesthetics raises a question of the whereabouts of religion. Cohen was a pious liberal Jew. He placed religion under the heading of ethics. In agreement with Kant, Cohen maintained that ethics had to be universal. According to Kant, ethics are centered in his categorical imperative. This law has its source in the autonomy of a rational being. The moral law confronts us as an “ought” demanding our will in conformity to the law. Morality requires a belief in the existence of God, freedom, and immortality.

      Like Kant, Cohen was convinced that there would be moral progress of the human race in the teleology of history. The interest that the Marburg school aroused among Marxists was less due to its radical apriorism than to its attempt at grounding socialist ethics on Kant’s theory of the practical reason. Cohen and Natorp did not regard themselves as Marxists, but as socialists with a conviction that socialism could only be founded in ethical idealism. A striving for the ethical is an endless process toward complete social justice in our world. Because the goal of ethics is to attain universal global justice, we must have hope of attaining that goal. Therefore, Cohen argues that a socialist society would be established through moral progress.


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