The Figure of the Suffering Servant in Hermann Cohen

Abstract

In his late work Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (1919), Hermann Cohen, the founder of the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism, interprets the figure of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53) in a way that contradicts the letter of the biblical text. Although the Hebrew text as well as the LXX and the Vulgate clearly express the thought that the Suffering Servant carries the sins of others, Cohen criticizes this idea of vicarious atonement in the name of Kantian ethics, where ethical responsibility for one’s actions can never be delegated. Moreover, he develops the thesis that the messiah is in no way, shape or form a concrete person but just an idea that realizes itself through a gradual historical progress towards the ideal of an ethical humanity.