Levinas rejects the notion that the meanings of the texts of the past – philosophical and religious – derive from the contexts of their own historical eras. Instead, Levinas contends, all philosophical truth derives its meaning from its ethical significance. In Chapter 3 we explored Levinas's philosophical relation to a particular trajectory of post-Kantian philosophy that presumes the inherent superiority of ahistorical philosophical reflection to historical truth and the harmonious interchange, if not overlap, between revelation and philosophy. In this chapter, we turn in greater detail to the interconnection between these two claims in Levinas's philosophy by comparing his thought to the great neo-Kantian and Jewish philosopher's, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918). Half a century before Levinas, in the context of an argument for modern philosophy's need of “Judaism,” Cohen held the very positions about truth and history, on the one hand, and revelation and philosophy, on the other, that Levinas holds. The coincidence of their claims about Judaism, philosophy, revelation, history, and truth allows us an opportunity to probe more deeply into Levinas's relation to the German metaphysical tradition and to the different trajectories of modern Jewish thought.

Before turning to the relation between Levinas and Cohen, we should note that Levinas, in his published works, mentions Cohen only a few times by name and does not seem to have engaged directly with Cohen's work. But despite this lack of historical influence, Levinas's claims about revelation, philosophy, and ethics repeat (albeit unconsciously) Cohen's earlier contentions.