Consciousness with Body and Soul: an Attempt at Cohen’s Never-Written Psychology

Summary

The essay argues against reducing human consciousness to algorithms, natural processes, or social constructions, which challenge ethical humanism. It seeks to defend embodied subjectivity, freedom, and the unity of thought, will, and feeling, while reviving the concept of the soul. Drawing on Hermann Cohen's Neo-Kantian philosophy, the first part examines his early interpretation of Plato as the foundation for a systematic psychology Cohen never wrote. It shows how Cohen's Logic, Ethics, and Aesthetics address questions from his early work, with special attention to his philosophy of religion. The self-movement of the soul and its connection to the body are understood through the unity of human culture and the wholeness of man.

Study at a glance

Abstract

There are contemporary tendencies to regard the human consciousness as an algorithm, or to reduce the human subjective to organic-natural processes or to see it as a social construction depending on cultural conditions. Such approaches pose a challenge to ethical humanism, as it seems, as if it requires new justification and groundings. How can we grasp and defend the concept of embodied subjectivity of man and its freedom to act? How can we think of its unity including thought, will and feeling, preventing it from getting lost in specialized potentials, and maintaining the person as an alert, responsible and self-founded unit? Furthermore, how is it possible to preserve the meaning of the name of the soul, since the notion of this traditional limit concept of the human subjective has fallen into disuse and likely vanished from the horizon? The essay asks for answer with the help of Hermann Cohen, the great Jewish philosopher of Neo-Kantianism, following the traces of his repeatedly stated, however never written systematic psychology. This first part of investigation confines itself to understand Cohen's early interpretation of Plato as the "primordial cell" of his psychology in order to show how the first three parts of his system of philosophy (Logic, Ethics, Aesthetics) answer to some of the questions and problems the early work had raised, with special attention to Cohens philosophy of religion. Self-movement of soul and its deep connection with the human body could be viewed and grasped from the unity of human culture as well as of the allness of man.