Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (published in 1919) is regarded by many as the most important work in Jewish religious and philosophical thought since Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed. In the excerpt below, Cohen examines the pantheistic response to the problem of pain, then contrasts it against the religious response to the problem of pain in the Jewish tradition. In this tradition, according to Cohen, suffering “is a force in God’s plan of salvation. This plan however, is obscured and dissipated unless the sufferer is considered as suffering for the sake of others.”
Cohen argues that the suffering of the stateless Jewish people is a sacrifice that they endure as they carry monotheism to the world. In this way, Israel serves as a model for the suffering of individuals, who likewise suffer for the sake of others: “This suffering within the human race has been primarily the suffering of Israel. This is the ancient theme that resounds through all the prophets, the psalms, and the entire literature that follows. We shall see later how the highest figure of monotheism, the Messiah himself, is transfigured through this suffering so that he suffers for mankind. And as he himself is only a symbol for Israel, so Israel suffers for the peoples who do not accept the unique God.”
Excerpts from Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism
17. Pessimism laments the sum total of human existence. Moreover, pantheism puts on a mask of wisdom when it finds all this perfectly in order, because, in relation to the cruel necessity of natural laws, all moral as well as aesthetic distinctions are nothing but isolated individualizations (modes) of thinking. From this point of view the individual phenomenon has its value in itself: it cannot be excelled by any other. This is the wisdom of the fool lamenting the suffering of man. But monotheism must consider suffering, ordained to man by God, differently.
In the divine order of the world there is only good and bad. “Woe to them, who say to the good bad and to the light darkness.” [Isa. 5.20] If the Second Isaiah draws the defiant conclusion that God also “creates evil” (Isa. 45:7), we have rather substituted ill . . . for this evil. What man calls ill because it hurts him, this is in truth not ill but happens for his own good. Suffering is the punishment that man demands inexorably of himself for himself.
With regard to the suffering of one’s fellowman, one is not entitled to interpret his suffering as punishment that befalls him because of his sin. For one has to discover and affirm one’s fellowman through compassion. For oneself, on the contrary, one cannot waive punishment. Hence, suffering is proper to oneself: one considers it a punishment that one has to demand for oneself and for which one calls and appeals.
18. It would be an immoral confidence in God if man were to expect forgiveness merely because of God’s goodness and if he would not rather establish this confidence upon his own confession of sin along with the declaration of his readiness to accept punishment. He himself has to recognize that he deserves and is in need of punishment. Deeming oneself deserving of punishment manifests itself in the acknowledgment of suffering as a necessary step in the self-development of man.
19. The morality of pantheism is based on the principle of the instinct for self-preservation. In pantheism the natural instinct for life becomes the foundation of morality. Life demands preservation. The preservation of the elemental power of life is the elemental right of man. The instinct for the preservation of life establishes the identity of might and right; but the self that this instinct tries to preserve is the natural being, the biological creature.
20. Religion does not recognize such a notion of an isolated creature who exists merely to stay alive. For religion, the self exists only in the correlation with God, within which alone the correlation of man to man comes to be. I am not permitted to explain the suffering of my fellowman as punishment. I am in no way interested in his possible guilt. Perhaps he suffers for my guilt. One may confidently ascribe such intimate effects to the correlation of man with man. My own self, on the contrary, with all its hidden motives, becomes a necessary problem to me, and when I come so far in the solution of this problem that I have gained self-recognition of my sin and achieved confession of it, I am not even yet at the end of the road, until the confession has as its consequence the acknowledgment of suffering as the just punishment. For the affirmation of my self, for the preservation of my self, I may not be satisfied merely with my trust in God’s forgiveness.
The confession of sin, despite it all, would be merely a formality if the declaration of my willingness to suffer did not confirm it. Suffering is related not so much to sin as to its forgiveness, and to redemption, insofar as the latter is dependent on self-sanctification. Self-sanctification culminates in the insight into the necessity of suffering and in the voluntary self-sacrifice of submission to the suffering of punishment.
21. It is Maimonides’ profound idea that Job also is a prophet, that suffering is a genuine form of prophecy. Through this idea he interprets the meaning of this prophetic, didactic poem, in which suffering as a form of prophecy is incorporated into the theodicy of the organization of the moral world. Suffering is not a defect, no dysteleology, but an independent link in the moral system and, thus, full of purpose.
Job’s friends are not right when they wish to console him in his suffering by reminding him of his sin. His friends should have acknowledged him as a prophet who could instruct them about the value of suffering. Job is a prophet from whom his friends should have learned that suffering is a force in God’s plan of salvation. This plan however, is obscured and dissipated unless the sufferer is considered as suffering for the sake of others. It is obscured if one thinks erroneously that suffering and punishment are related as cause and effect.
On the other hand, Job himself does not lack the deeper insight that he is in need of suffering and deserves to pass through it, though not so much as a single individual but as a self in its correlation with God. Our routine thinking of sin and punishment, of punishment and suffering, as cause and effect should cease. God makes this moral of the fable known at the end of the poem. At the same time in God’s justification of Job it is explained that Job suffers for the sake of his own justification.
What God proclaims to be the meaning of the entire poem is expressed negatively in Job’s conviction, in which he rejects sin as the cause of his suffering. He is a prophet, and as such the symbol of humanity. But insofar as he is aware of his prophetic position, he needs to recognize the cause of his suffering in order to preserve his self. Job has had earthly enjoyment and possessions in abundance, and after he has lost them they are given back to him. Is there anything that could give his life more value when he has already participated in all wisdom and piety? Are prosperity and earthly self-esteem the highest things for human self-consciousness? Is not the moral economy of the world deficient precisely in that the prophet is needed for the world? Job points to this deficiency in his lamentations. And he bases his suffering on the need for his prophecy.
But that which the world is in need of, the prophet, in the first instance, is in need of for himself. However, the need of the human self seems to recede in the consciousness of the prophet. This difficulty exists for the self-awareness of the prophet in general, and it is indeed not lacking in Job’s case. The ambiguity in Job’s suffering therefore remains: as a prophet he suffers for others, but he himself remains a man and, as such, is in need of suffering for his own self.
22. The value of the biblical poem is limited to the refutation of the prejudice that there is a causal relation between sin and suffering; it rather introduces suffering, as do all the other prophetic writings, into the working of the theodicy of the moral world. However, the Day of Atonement does not pursue such a poetic solution of the riddle of the world. Its task is to affirm and preserve, in spite of sin, the self-awareness of the I of the individual in his correlation with God. The Day of Atonement therefore puts suffering into an immediate relation to the individual’s own problem.
Jewish piety accordingly recognizes suffering as a step to redemption. Suffering is indeed not longed for as in ascetic mysticism, but it is validated in prayer by the entreaty for liberation from and protection against it in all detail. The fast on the Day of Atonement is the symbol of this understanding of the necessary value of suffering.
Suffering may be the common lot of men. Nevertheless, it must first of all become the watchword for the I. I am not merely an organism. Eudaemonism cannot become the key to my being. The blind alternation of pleasure and pain cannot regulate my moral life. Only a certain permanency of suffering gives my existence its correct meaning. My suffering is not an effect but an end for my self, or, possibly, only a means to this, my final end . . .
24. This suffering within the human race has been primarily the suffering of Israel. This is the ancient theme that resounds through all the prophets, the psalms, and the entire literature that follows. We shall see later how the highest figure of monotheism, the Messiah himself, is transfigured through this suffering so that he suffers for mankind. And as he himself is only a symbol for Israel, so Israel suffers for the peoples who do not accept the unique God.
This is precisely the theodicy, the moral that the story of Job is meant to teach us. Is not the people of Israel itself in need of suffering and of the recognition of its obligation to suffer? If this were not the case, Israel, too, could not be redeemed. This is the highest meaning of the Day of Atonement, that repentance is in earnest only in the recognition and taking upon oneself of suffering.
Israel stands, as everywhere, simply as the symbol of the individual. Since Ezekiel, every one has become “a soul,” and since that time the soul no longer means merely life and person, but the self that strengthens itself in self-responsibility. One measure of this self-responsibility is the acknowledgment of the value of suffering. It cannot be ignored, it cannot be eliminated. It is the precondition for the individual who is conscious of himself. And from the individual it is transferred to the people.
What other people, what other religious community is there whose distinctive mark in history is such martyrdom? As a Job it wanders through world history. And always and everywhere the surrounding contemporary world destroys itself through the self-righteousness with which it interprets for itself Israel’s suffering as the result of Israel’s unworthiness. When will the time dawn in which the peril of this self-righteousness will be recognized? . . .
25. Other systems of faith made the mistake of thinking that suffering is not a means but a final end. Thus it became possible to represent the divine itself as suffering, as human suffering. Although in this idea the end of the redemption of men is seen along with and beyond suffering, yet the redeemer himself must take this suffering upon himself. And through this idea, suffering becomes and is the end. Moreover, there is a corrupting attraction in the idea that suffering is a divine end in itself.
Nonetheless, this idea is false. Only morality itself, only the correlation of God and man can be an end in itself. Everything else in morality, everything else in religion, is accessory and a means to this unique end. Therefore, suffering also can only be a means. And the end itself, which is redemption, cannot be thought of in isolation from its means; both have to cooperate in order to achieve the end. Hence, redemption and not suffering is the final meaning of life. In order to consummate redemption man and God cooperate; in this the correlation of man and God receives its highest confirmation.
Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972), 226-30.