We are trying to determine with Derrida what it means that Cohen was an exemplar of the Jewish-German spirit incarnated in the figure of Kant.  In order to think this let’s go back a little to the Apostle Paul.

Debating the dates and authenticity of the Pauline letters is very difficult.  Seven are generally considered authentically penned by Paul, but there are issues here.  For one thing some letters seem to be multiple letters cobbled together.  Moreover, as Jacob Berman notes, Paul seems to be alluding to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE:

1 Corinthians 3:16-17: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” (Often plural/corporate emphasis: the church community as God’s singular temple.)

We seem to have a similar sentiment in the disputed 1 Thessalonians Jewish polemic passage:

1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last

Some Pauline specialists think this is authentic as an intra-Jewish polemic in the context of Paul thinking the apocalypse was underway, but it works with Berman’s model too if we suppose as some clearly thought the destruction of the second temple was God passing judgment of the Jews for killing Christ as was the later booting of the Jews out of the land post Bar Kokhba revolt.  Some interpretations the OT (chiefly Daniel) predict the destruction of a temple (understood as the Second) in the era after the Messiah’s coming, with end-times language.  This along with the resurrection appearances may be why Paul thought the apocalypse had begun, although there was nothing about someone being raised from the dead or ghost sightings that implies the advent of the apocalypse, so Paul’s imagery of the end times (the resurrected Christ as the first fruits of the end times harvest of souls that was underway) may reflect post 70CE theology, making Paul’s letters fall in the genre of fictive epistles as Nina Livesey argues.

Whatever the case, we are interested in the Jewish-German spirit in relation to Kant, and Paul is helpful here.  Paul said the gentiles do what is right even though they don’t have the law because the law is written on their hearts.  The Jews have the law, not as a burden, but a treasure to show their love for God and God’s love for them, like a t-shirt of one’s favorite baseball team or rock band.  Paul says righteousness does not come by the law, for if it did Christ died for nothing rather than the twofold substitutionary and moral influence cross Paul is advocating for.  Paul also notes through the law sin becomes sinful beyond measure as experts in the letter of the law will bend the law to their own interpretations and purposes rather than follow the spirit of the law/God’s will.  In this way we have Mark’s satire of the Jewish trial of Jesus (e,g., meeting on Passover Eve), where loophole after loophole are found for transgressions of Jewish custom.

The idea of the law being written on people’s hearts will be key to Cohen’s interpretation of Kant.  The categorical imperative has a number of formulations in Kant, and some interpreters think it doesn’t only or primarily mean “if you want to be moral do x,” since that would be a hypothetical imperative (if-then), not a categorical one.  Rather, according to this reading, Kant is replacing the definition of man as rational animal with moral animal.  The dog is not immoral if it chews up the couch, it’s just being a dog.  Unlike certain mentally challenged individuals, human minds unconsciously legislate a rule/law that we unconsciously obey that we are morally accountable and morally attached to all our actions.  This metaphysics of morals makes ethical/moral judgments possible.  This is Kant’s interpretation of Paul’s observation that

(Romans 2:14-15)14 When gentiles, who do not possess the law, by nature do what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, as their own conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them…

Paul argues that all people—Jews and Gentiles—are accountable to God and without excuse. Jews have the written law but often fail to obey it. Gentiles, without the written Torah, still have an innate moral sense (conscience and inner awareness of right and wrong). This “work of the law” (or “what the law requires”) written on their hearts echoes the language of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:33 (“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts”), but here Paul applies a similar idea to Gentiles more generally in the context of universal judgment.

“I will put my law [Torah] within them, and I will write it on their hearts (Jeremiah)”:

• In the old (Mosaic) covenant, the law was external—written on stone tablets (Exodus 31-34) and taught outwardly. Israel repeatedly broke it because of stubborn, sinful hearts.
• In the new covenant, God Himself will internalize His torah (instruction, teaching, law). The “heart” in Hebrew thought is the center of intellect, will, emotion, and decision-making—not just feelings. God will transform people from the inside so they want to obey and naturally align with His ways. Obedience becomes instinctive and relational rather than forced or mechanical.

Jeremiah 31:33 envisions God solving the problem of Jews’ unfaithfulness by transforming hearts, creating a people who know and obey Him intimately because of internal renewal and forgiveness. This is one of the highest peaks of Old Testament hope.  This is what the cross of Christ does not only for the Jewish people but humanity, paying the sin fine and exposing the corruptness of Pagans like supposed just administrator Pilate who killed Jesus because it would have been a nuisance not to and the corrupt Jewish elite who knew they couldn’t kill Jesus and so got Rome to do it like in the case of Jesus be Ananeus in Josephus. 

So, we can see the connection between the actual law and the figurative law in Christianity and Judaism.  Cohen looks at spiritual culture (religion, philosophy, etc as opposed to pure science like math which is universal) to uncover Germanness, beginning with philosophy

The question “Was ist deutsch?” which runs from Wagner to Nietszche, Adorno, and so on, amounts here essentially to the question “What is German philosophy?” The simple, straightforward, unequivocal answer: the essence of German philosophy is idealism. “Was bedeutet aber Idealismus?” (But what does idealism mean?) The answer, as one may suspect, is more complicated than the question…  Through Kepler, after him, German thought is supposed to have given the authentically scientific idealism (which Platonism had not yet been) its full effectiveness. Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 154). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

This connects back to the question of the exemplar I noted previously,

It is a subtle wrinkle. What is German is not science or the hypothesis. These, as we have seen, are universal. But the inaugural philosophical interpretation, the determination of the Idea as hypothesis, opening the problematic of scientific knowledge, that is supposed to be Platonico-German; that is the historical event which properly institutes and constitutes the German spirit in its exemplary mission, hence in its responsibility. If, as Cohen recognizes, science in its methodic hypothetic procedures is universal, if it is the “condition of all natural thought in human life, as in the historical conduct of peoples” (§5), the property of the German spirit and of philosophical idealism, which it has somehow marked, is to have borne within itself this universal possibility, to have made it come about by testifying for it. Here again lies its exemplarity.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 155). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Plato’s key discussion of “hypothesis” and the “anhypothetic” (ἀνυπόθετον / anhypothetos) appears in the Republic, especially Book VI (the analogy of the Divided Line) and Book VII.1. Hypotheses in the Divided Line (Republic 510b–511e)

Plato divides knowledge into four levels, with the top two being:  Dianoia (thought/discursive reasoning): Mathematicians and geometers use hypotheses (assumptions) as starting points. They treat these as “given” (e.g., odd/even, figures, angles) and proceed downward to conclusions, but they do not question the hypotheses themselves. This is a step above mere opinion (doxa) but still not the highest knowledge.

Noesis (understanding/intelligence): The dialectician (philosopher) goes beyond hypotheses. He uses them only as “stepping stones” or “springboards” to reach something higher.

2. The Anhypothetic / Unhypothetical Principle (ἀρχὴ ἀνυπόθετος)This is Plato’s most famous formulation (Republic 511b):“…the soul is compelled to use hypotheses in the investigation of it [the intelligible], not as first principles, but really as hypotheses — as stepping stones and springboards — in order to reach that which is anhypothetic (ἀνυπόθετον), the first principle (ἀρχή) of everything.”

Anhypothetos literally means “not posited underneath” / “unhypothetical” / “that which does not rest on any assumption.”

It is the ultimate First Principle (the Form of the Good, or the Good itself), which needs no hypothesis beneath it. Everything else depends on it, but it depends on nothing.

Dialectic ascends by destroying or examining hypotheses until it reaches this unhypothetical starting point. From there, it descends again, now grounded in true knowledge rather than mere assumption.

3. Plato contrasts this with the method of the mathematicians: Mathematicians: Assume hypotheses → deduce consequences.

Dialecticians: Question and transcend hypotheses → reach the anhypothetic arche → true wisdom (sophia/episteme).

In Book VII (the Cave), the prisoner’s journey upward to the Sun (the Good) is the dramatic image of this same movement: from shadows (eikasia) → objects (pistis) → mathematical objects (dianoia) → the Forms and ultimately the Good itself (noesis).  Hypothesis = a useful but provisional assumption. Necessary for lower sciences, but a limitation.

Anhypothetic = the self-sufficient, ultimate foundation of all reality and knowledge. Only dialectic (philosophical reasoning) can reach it.

True knowledge (episteme) requires going beyond all hypotheses to this unhypothetical principle.

This idea had enormous influence on later philosophy (Neoplatonism, Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” medieval theology, etc.).

It is going to be Kant, as the titan of the protestant reformation who is going to be the key figure here,

This movement leads, then, to Kant. Who is Kant? He is the holiest saint of the German spirit, the deepest, innermost inner sanctum of the German spirit (in diesem innersten Heiligtum des deutsches Geistes), but he is also the one who represents the innermost affinity (die innerste Verwandschaft) with Judaism… The Reformation, something irreducibly German in Cohen’s eyes, places the German spirit “at the center of world history” (in den Mittelpunkt der Weltgeschichte)… What does Cohen say when he names the event of Protestantism? He speaks cautiously of the “historical spirit of Protestantism” (der geschichtliche Geist des Protestantismus). This spirit is not to be confused with the empirical history of factual events; it is a current, a force, a telos. It is so strong, internal, and undeniable that even the non-Protestants, the Catholics and the Jews, must recognize it. It is as if Cohen were saying to the latter: become Protestant enough to recognize, beyond the institutional dogma, scientifically, rationally, philosophically, by consulting nothing but your conscience, the very essence of Protestantism, of this Protestant spirit that you have already become. The hidden axiom of this provocation is not only the paradox of some logico-speculative perversity. It is also like a grand maneuver: that of philosophy, of the conversion to Protestantism, of conversion in general. If you recognize that Protestantism is basically the truth, the very demand for truth beyond instituted dogma, the demand for knowledge and freedom of interpretation without institution, then you are already Protestant in submitting to this demand for truth; you are such whatever the religious and dogmatic institution to which you think you otherwise belong. It is because you were already Protestant (and this temporal modality is the entire question of truth) that you converted. And you converted secretly, even if ostensibly, dogmatically, institutionally, you are Catholic, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, or even atheist. Likewise, you are Kantian but also Jewish, Jewish and German, the Jew himself being, as we shall verify, a Protestant and the Protestant a Platonic Jew, if only you are a philosopher and have within you, conscientiously [en conscience], the demand for hypothesis for truth, for science.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 156-7). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

We see a direct resonance here with Kant who lays the groundwork for the metaphysics of morals with Hume waking Kant up from dogmatic slumbers inaugurating the critical period a Protestantism rejected the catholic idols of church and priests as mediators between human and God and pointed instead to the conscience/ law written on our hearts

Protestantism commands us to put no trust either in the Church itself and its works, that is, in the institution, or in its priests, but “only in conscience’s own labor” (allein die eigene Arbeit des Gewissens). Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 160). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

It was this critical spirit Cohen also found in the Jews, such as Ibn Ezra challenging the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the bible

Let us not forget, by the way, the enormous respect Luther has always inspired among the Jewish German intelligentsia. Rosenzweig and Buber, for example, when it comes to translating the Bible from Hebrew into German, consider Luther as the great ancestor, the formidable rival, the unequaled master. Rosenzweig speaks of him at times in a tone of crushed fervor… God is being; it is in him that the world and humanity have their foundation, that which guards and maintains them. Judaism would thus merge with Platonism, Yahweh with the agathon or the anhypotheton. Like the Good, God escapes any image, any comparison, any perception. He remains unrepresentable. The purely intuitive thought relating to him is not a thought of knowledge (Denken der Wissenschaft), but a thought of love (Denken der Liebe): “The knowledge of God is love,” says Cohen… The authority of this Ibn Ezra, let me note in passing in order to recall Spinoza once more, is invoked at some length in the Theologico-Political Treatise, particularly in Chapter 8, when the issue is the authorship of the Holy Scripture, especially of the Pentateuch.  Everybody used to believe it was Moses, notably the Pharisees, who resorted to an accusation of heresy against anyone who doubted this. Ibn Ezra, however, “a man of a rather free spirit and of immense erudition,” says Spinoza, “was the first who, to my knowledge, has noticed this prejudice,” But he dared not say so openly, and in order to dodge what was also the authority of an institution, he said it cryptically.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 162;4). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Thus in the Jewish tradition we see a fusion with the Protestant challenging of the authority of the church and priests

What, however, does Ibn Ezra say, the one whom Cohen now cites? One of his maxims states that there is no mediator between God and man other than human reason.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 164). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

In the ground of reason and obeying of law such as we find in Kant I noted above, here Cohen places Judaism, for example requiring no mediator for God unlike in Catholicism

The fundamental thought of Judaism, if there is one and if one interprets along with Cohen, would thus be stretched between two poles: freedom of the soul in the immediate relation to God, respect for transcendent law, duty, and commandment. Now, who has done this? Who has thought, en bloc, like a single revolution, that which revolves about these two poles, both freedom and duty, autonomy and universal law? Kant, and this thinker presumably delved deep into Judaism, into its spirit or its soul. Since he is the holiest saint of the German spirit, it is in “this innermost sanctum of the German spirit” (in diesem innersten Heiligtum des deutschen Geistes) that we find “the innermost kinship” (die innerste Verwandschaft) or affinity of the German spirit with Judaism. “Duty is God’s commandment, and in Jewish piety, it must be on an equal footing, for the free service of love, with respect [here not Achtung, Kant’s word, but Ehrfurcht]: for the love of God in the love of men.” The spiritual consanguinity, the psycho-spiritual symbiosis is sealed in the Critique of Practical Reason and in everything which accords with it in Kant’s work and elsewhere.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 165). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

As we said previously, the exemplar is susceptible to the cautionary example, so the Jewish/German ideal Cohen finds (pre WW2), is going to be undermined by the quiet antisemitism of that time which Cohen downplays

Concerning details and anti-Semitism in its most visible empirico-political manifestation, Cohen is well aware that at the very moment he is writing to celebrate his sense of sublime sacredness and of moral law, this German culture or society practices, officially and institutionally, legal anti-Semitism. This anti-Semitism touches Cohen quite closely in his own institution: it takes the form of excluding Jewish students from corporate student associations. Cohen devotes to it no more than a brief allusion, and this in no way disorganizes his discourse, which would like to remain “spiritual,” not factual. He claims not to be able to embark on this question “in detail” (wir hier keine Einzelförderungen aufstellen) (§42). There is a war on, this is not the time to open fronts at home, national and Jewish-German solidarity must come first, we shall see later, there is still progress to be made, our Jewish American coreligionists are well aware of this (and it is true that a certain numerus clausus was for a long time applied to Jews in a practically official official manner in the United States, and in fact still after the Second World War with regard to full professors in Ivy League universities). Cohen is aware then, as a university professor (and, to recall once more, he was the first Jewish professor of that rank in Germany), of the existence of this embarrassing detail, the exclusion of Jewish students from the corporate community. He puts the analysis off: “We are living in the great German patriotic hope that the unity between Judaism and Germanity, to which all the past history of German Jewry committed itself, should finally be brought to full light and radiate, like a truth of cultural history [my italics] in German politics and in life but also in the feeling of the German people [im deutschen Volkgefühl: we shall return to Gefühl shortly]” (§41)… But this, for him, is only a contextual and an institutional question. It remains a relatively minor question; dealing with it “in detail” may be put off until later. What counts, in the order of urgencies of a time of war, is the most fundamental thing, namely Judeo-Kantian law and its correlation to the freedom, the autonomy of the subject as spirit, soul, and conscience [or consciousness, conscience].  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 166-7). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Cohen places the greatness of moral institutions in relation to this German/Jewish/Kantian foundation

In fact, this divine law and this Mosaic code were, according to Cohen, at the origin of legal justice. They have made possible the correct [juste] establishment, the institution of legal justice, and first of all the juridical sense. The latter exhibits some analogy, at a level other than that of the moral law, with the sense of respect defined by Kant. It commands the universal consciousness of rightness [conscience universelle du juste], even beyond the Judeo-Christian cultures, for instance in Islam (here Cohen cites Trendelenburg, author of a Naturrecht [1860]). By uniting freedom and duty in “personality” Kant states simultaneously both the difference and the intimate link, a new “Verbindungslinie” between ethics and religion. In religion, this new “line of alliance” gathers together “the soul and the spirit” (die Seele und der Geist).  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 168). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

With Kant’s interpretation of Jeremiah and Paul noted above, Kant provides the philosophical foundation for ethical thought

Cohen’s strategy aims at demonstrating to all the Jews of the world, primarily but not only to American Jews, that the universality of the moral subject came to be rooted in an event: the history of the German spirit and the German soul. So that Germany is the true homeland of every Jew in the world, “the motherland of their soul (das Mutterland seiner Seele).” If religion is their soul, the homeland of their soul is Germany.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 168). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.