Imperatives, as Immanuel Kant observed, differ from laws. Laws set limits through coercion, whereas imperatives imagine infinity through freedom. What does it mean for the nation to be an imperative? Starting with the famous 1916 controversy on Zionism between the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen and the philosopher of dialogue Martin Buber, this essay explores how Buber developed Cohen’s dialectic of Machtstaat (power-state) and Kulturstaat (culture-state) into a model of cultural cooperation. Unlike Cohen, whose understanding of nation and nationality relied on Herder and Fichte, and who feared that Zionism would always be exclusionary, Buber believed that Zionism could be the inclusive self-realization of the Jewish people. Yet Buber’s Zionism of meta-national cooperation also deeply echoed Cohen’s own understanding of the German State as transcending itself in cooperative federalism. In the end, both believed that human culture offered ways of solidarity and community that the state per se could not provide and which, in fact, functioned as a corrective to the state’s “omnipotence.” For Buber, the pragmatic acceptance of the State of Israel was but the beginning of a meta-political imperative articulated by the prophets, and anticipated a time when the state, as Cohen believed, would be “displaced by messianism.”

中文翻译：

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国家是当务之急：马丁·布伯和赫尔曼·科恩的合作民族主义和国家理念

正如伊曼纽尔·康德（Immanuel Kant）所观察到的，命令与法律不同。法律通过强制设定限制，而命令则通过自由想象无限。国家成为当务之急意味着什么？本文从 1916 年新康德主义哲学家赫尔曼·科恩和对话哲学家马丁·布伯之间关于犹太复国主义的著名争论开始，探讨布伯如何将科恩的 Machtstaat（权力国家）和 Kulturstaat（文化国家）辩证法发展为文化合作。与科恩不同，科恩对民族和民族的理解依赖于赫尔德和费希特，担心犹太复国主义永远是排他性的，布伯认为，犹太复国主义可以是犹太人的包容性自我实现。然而，布伯关于超国家合作的犹太复国主义也深刻地呼应了科恩自己对德国国家在合作联邦制中超越自身的理解。最后，双方都认为，人类文化提供了国家本身无法提供的团结和社区方式，而事实上，这些方式起到了对国家“全能”的纠正作用。对布伯来说，对以色列国的务实接受只是先知们阐明的元政治命令的开始，并预见到一个时代，正如科恩所相信的那样，国家将“被弥赛亚主义取代”。