Prayer as socialist praxis: religion and recommitment for Hermann Cohen and the doubly marked martyrs of the November revolution in Germany

Abstract

This paper explores German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen's challenge to materialist theories that anticipate capitalism's collapse and assert socialism's dependence upon self-interest. It places Cohen's religious socialism in conversation with a cohort of Jews who led and sacrificed their lives for the German revolution of 1918–1919. I argue that although self-interest and an insistence upon socialism's inevitability may motivate revolutionary action, it can also result in quietism. Through Cohen's Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, I show how Jewish prayer functions as a ritual practice of ethical recommitment to a cause that appears unrealizable. Cohen's notion of prayer as dialogical monologue—wherein the petitioner addresses a unique and, according to Cohen, silent God—allowed him to overcome doubt and self-interest. Beyond what Kant understood as prayer's socializing power, this paper uncovers the capacity of dialogical monologue to re-tether individuals to movements that cannot guarantee victory, yet which make ethical demands of us anyway.