The Myth of Permanence and the Task of Eternity: Ernst Cassirer and Hermann Cohen on the Self-Transcendence of the State

First published in 1946, Ernst Cassirer's The Myth of the State is a passionate plea against the irrational forces in politics and for a restoration of the Kantian task of freedom. For Cassirer, only a fully rational state can subdue the resurgent forces of myth, and it is the philosopher's task to continuously question, as the Hebrew prophets did, the foundations of human power and to think against and beyond the present time. Cassirer's critique of the state intersects in many points with Hermann Cohen's ambivalent understanding of the state as a myth of permanence and moral institution of eternity. Like Kant's freedom, eternity, for Cohen, cannot be but task. The myth of the state is undermined by the prophetic vision that the state is no self-sufficient goal, but a transitory concept towards the concept of peace. Reading Cassirer and Cohen side by side, this essay reflects on their shared affinity to prophetic politics as a self-revision of the state.