Morris Raphael Cohen

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Morris Raphael Cohen
Legal philosophy

Morris Raphael Cohen (

legal scholar who united pragmatism with logical positivism and linguistic analysis. This union coalesced into the "objective relativism" fermenting at Columbia University before and during the early twentieth-century interwar period.[1] He was father to Felix S. Cohen
and Leonora Cohen Rosenfield.

Life and career

Cohen was born in

Harvard in 1906.[2]

He was Professor of Philosophy at CCNY from 1912 to 1938. He also taught law at City College and the

New School for Social Research, and lectured in Philosophy and Law at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Yale
, and other universities.

Cohen was legendary as a professor for his wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and ability to demolish philosophical systems. "He could and did tear things apart in the most devastating and entertaining way; but...he had a positive message of his own", said Robert Hutchins. Bertrand Russell said of Cohen that he had the most original mind in contemporary American philosophy.[3]

In the 1930s, Cohen helped give CCNY its reputation as the "proletarian Harvard," perhaps more than any other faculty member. He advocated

New York Times called him "an almost legendary figure in American philosophy, education and the liberal tradition".[5]

From his work, Reason and Nature:

To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. But there is obviously an important difference between an establishment that is open and invites every one to come, study its methods, and suggest improvement, and one that regards the questioning of credentials as due to wickedness of heart, such as
Cardinal Newman attributed to those who questioned the infallibility of the Bible. . . . Rational science treats its credit notes as always redeemable on demand, while non-rational authoritarianism
regards the demand for the redemption of its paper as a disloyal lack of faith.

On May 3, 1953, under President Buell G. Gallagher, the City College Library was dedicated to and named for Morris Raphael Cohen.[6]

Cohen helped,

Conference on Jewish Relations to study modern Jewry scientifically; he also edited its quarterly journal Jewish Social Studies.[8]

Main works
Published posthumously
  • A Dreamer's Journey (1949), his autobiography.
  • Reason and Law (1950)
  • American Thought, a Critical Sketch (1954)

References

  1. S2CID 33434862
    .
  2. ^ Morris Raphael Cohen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ Holmes-Laski Letters. Edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe. Harvard University Press, 1953 (p. 483).
  4. ^ Cohen,The Faith of a Liberal: Selected Essays by Morris R. Cohen. H. Holt and Company, 1946 (p. 110).
  5. ^ a b The Jew in the American World: a source book. Edited by Jacob Rader Marcus. Wayne State University Press, 1996, (pp. 317-22).
    ISBN 0-8143-2548-3
  6. ^ Rosenfield, Leonora Davidson Cohen "Who Was Morris Raphael Cohen?" The City College Alumnus, v. 76 #2, December 1980, p. 8-9.
  7. ^ "Morris Raphael Cohen | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
  8. ISBN 978-1-4128-2977-9
    .

External links

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