ABSTRACT
Hermann Cohen explains his conception of logic in the introduction to Logik der reinen Erkenntniss. The first basic feature of Cohen’s conception of logic is that it is epistemological, i.e. it investigates the conditions for knowledge. Cohen goes so far as to say it is necessary to rehabilitate Parmenides’ old dictum about the identity of thinking and being. The whole sense and meaning of logic, Cohen writes in the conclusion of his book, is the identity of thought and being. Cohen resists any reduction of the forms of logic down to how human beings think about the world or to the mechanisms of the mind. Three of the salient features of Cohen’s logic—its epistemological, non-formal and metaphysical aspects—have their source in Adolf Trendelenburg’s Untersuchungen. Trendelenburg also anticipated Cohen’s views about the shortcomings of formal logic. Cohen’s concern with Immanuel Kant’s concept of the given goes back to 1871 and the first edition of Kant’s Theorie der Erfahrung.
