Morris Raphael Cohen

Morris Raphael Cohen achieved prominence as an educator and author.

Cohen was born July 25, 1880, in Minsk, Russia. He emigrated to the United States in 1892 and earned a bachelor of science degree from the College of the City of New York in 1900 and a doctor of philosophy degree from Harvard University in 1906. Cohen was the father of Felix Cohen, who became a somewhat noteworthy philosopher/writer in the jurisprudential school of LEGAL REALISM.

In 1899, Cohen began his teaching career as a history teacher at the Educational Alliance in New York. He also taught at Davidson Collegiate Institute from 1900 to 1901, and in 1902 he accepted a position as mathematics teacher at his alma mater, the College of the City of New York. He held that position until 1912, when he switched his interests to philosophy and served as a professor until 1938. In that year, he accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago and continued his career as a philosophy professor.

In addition to his permanent teaching duties, Cohen also served at numerous institutions as a temporary professor—including his presentation of a series of lectures at Columbia Law School from 1906 to 1907, 1914 to 1915, the summer of 1918, and the summer of 1927; at Yale from 1929 to 1931; and at Harvard from 1938 to 1939.

Cohen is the author of several noteworthy publications, including Reason and Nature (1931), Law and the Social Order (1933), and Faith of a Liberal (1945).

He died January 28, 1947, in Washington, D.C.