Cohen was legendary as a professor for his wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and ability to demolish philosophical systems. "He could and did tear things apart in the most devastating and entertaining way; but...he had a positive message of his own", saidRobert Hutchins.Bertrand Russell said of Cohen that he had the most original mind in contemporary American philosophy.[4]
In 1923 he edited and penned an introduction to a collection ofCharles Sanders Peirce essays entitledChance, Love and Logic.[5]
In the 1930s, Cohen helped give CCNY its reputation as the "proletarian Harvard," perhaps more than any other faculty member. He advocatedliberalism in politics but opposedlaissez-faire economics.[6] Cohen also defendedliberal democracy and wrote indictments of bothfascism andcommunism.[7] Cohen's obituary in theNew York Times called him "an almost legendary figure in American philosophy, education and the liberal tradition".[7]
From his work,Reason and Nature:
To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. But there is obviously an important difference between an establishment that is open and invites every one to come, study its methods, and suggest improvement, and one that regards the questioning of credentials as due to wickedness of heart, such asCardinal Newman attributed to those who questioned the infallibility of the Bible. . . . Rational science treats its credit notes as always redeemable on demand, while non-rationalauthoritarianism regards the demand for the redemption of its paper as a disloyal lack of faith.
On May 3, 1953, under PresidentBuell G. Gallagher, the City College Library was dedicated to and named for Morris Raphael Cohen.[8]
^Arriving in New York City in 1892 and "obliged to indicate his date of birth, Cohen chose 25 July because it was the approximate date of his arrival in his new country. His parents were unable to specify even the year of his birth, but agreed upon 1880 in order to justify Cohen’s bar mitzvah in 1893, which was to take place at the end of his thirteenth year."[1]
^Cahoone, Lawrence (2017). "The Metaphysics of Morris R. Cohen: From Realism to Objective Relativism".Journal of the History of Ideas.78 (3):449–471.doi:10.1353/jhi.2017.0025.PMID28757489.S2CID33434862.
