Can one propose another possibility for politics in this historical reality? Cohen responded in the affirmative: We can do so by introducing hope into history. When we succeed in changing humanity’s perspective toward the future—toward hope—we can produce political action that does not merely seek to mitigate aggression, but also seeks to direct humanity’s efforts toward a positive future. This is the most profound message of the prophets of Israel: Man can direct his efforts toward the future because it is better than the past. The end of something is better than the beginning.

According to Cohen, to believe in the end of days and the coming of the Messiah is not to despair of the here and now, but rather to embrace the great hope that can enter into current reality. Cohen’s approach to politics emphasized the difference between political action based on despair and political action based on hope. Political action based on despair is incapable of attaining anything more than deferral and concession. The Zionist endeavor, Cohen claimed, is such an act. It despairs of Judaism, despairs of humanity, and despairs of hope. Zionist thought, which appears to be practical, viewing reality “as it is,” in truth structures and generates political action that is based on despair and is thus unable to see beyond it. There is significance to the basic insights that motivate people and the political horizons they create.

This is also how we should understand Franz Rosenzweig’s remark that redemption is the day that knows that it is more than today. When Rosenzweig writes that redemption is coming into the world, when he describes and explains its internationalization in the life of this world, he means not the salvation of the realm of the spiritual alone, but rather the very possibility of a spiritual action within the bounds of current reality.

Pessimistic thought, which acts in the face of death, is capable only of making an accounting of despair that deals solely with the present and cannot see beyond itself. The introduction of a dimension of eternity into the finite, however, has an impact on reality and on the willingness to act within it.

Cohen’s insight, however, goes farther than Mittleman gives him credit for. Cohen was not naןve, nor was he convinced that politics and political action would necessarily lead to the good. On the contrary, he was concerned about the power of the political act and wanted to change it. His declared goal is to act on two ethical levels of a complicated reality—the ethics of justice and the ethics of compassion. While an ethics of justice is based on equality and applies equally to all citizens under the law, regardless of race, religion, or sex, an ethics based on compassion takes into account the differences between people and the uniqueness of each one of them. This ethics is the product not of politics, but of the religious dimension. Standing before the One God, a God who is transcendent and wholly other, orients man toward his fellow men, each respected in his uniqueness and difference.

The ethical discussion proposed by Cohen includes a far-reaching, neo-Kantian discourse regarding the meaning of ethics and the manner in which it operates. But this ethical discourse did not satisfy Cohen, and he identified both its limits and the limits of ethical action deriving from it. As a result, he addressed the issue of religious discourse, which recognizes the importance of the individual in his uniqueness. The profound meaning of religion is not that it reveals the unity of creation but rather that it incorporates the different and the unique into social and ethical discourse. The meaning of messianic thought is not to defer hope until the end of days, but rather to introduce a divine dimension into reality through the possibility of acting in this world while aiming at a better future.

This demonstrates the importance of the discourse Mittleman is discussing. This discourse is based on the profoundest understanding of the ethical and its meaning for human action: The ethical is not self-evident. It is complicated, and guides man to different types of good and different modes of action. Ethical action in the name of human unity differs from ethical action that is committed to the unique and to the multiple aspects of humanity.