 In Jewish religious thought, Cohen’s influence is highly visible, and substantive doctrines he developed in the Ethics of Pure Will and the Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism are still topics of debate. Martin Buber’s 1923 I and Thou was explicitly indebted to, and a response to, Cohen’s Religion. Inspired by Cohen (see §8 above), Buber elaborated an account of a relationship between the “I” and the “Thou.” Like Cohen, for Buber this relation is the central part of how an individual establishes a profoundly personal relationship with God. Also like Cohen, Buber thinks establishing that relationship with God is essential to strengthening the ethical bonds in one’s community. But unlike Cohen, Buber thought the I-Thou relationship was essentially beyond language’s ability to express—a view strikingly at odds with Cohen’s rationalist philosophical tendencies.