Cadenza 1 yearning for form

Hermann Cohen in postmodernism

pp. 3-50

in: Andrea Poma, Cadenzas, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

The question I intend to face here is, I believe, a simple and relevant one: if and how Hermann Cohen's thought can be an important point of reference in present day postmodern culture. The implicit assumption is that nowadays we live and think in a completely new cultural context, which is radically different from modernism and aware of this difference. Postmodernism is not only a current of thought, which reached its climax in certain philosophical theorisations and artistic expressions between the 1960s and 1990s, doomed to oblivion, like all fashions, but a profound turning point, involving all aspects of contemporary society and culture, with which philosophy must also come to terms on a stable basis. This is the assumption, and the consequence is clear: either Hermann Cohen's thought has perspectives and themes that are relevant for the development of philosophical thought and culture in general in the postmodern period, or it will be relegated to archaeology and the museum, which, at most, would justify going on with historical and philological research into it, but not theoretical development starting out from it.