Morris Raphael Cohen is important for his writings on logic, philosophy of science, and legal philosophy and as a teacher. Abraham Edel says that "Cohen grappled with nothing less than major intellectual problems of the 20th century. . . . He helped usher in directions of work that in later hands were to prove extremely fruitful." A centenary celebration of his life was held at a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in 1980.

Although many important philosophers, including Ernest Nagel, Justus Buchler, Paul Weiss, Sidney Hook, Herbert Schneider, Morton White, Joseph Ratner, Sidney Ratner, Lewis S. Feuer, Philip W. Wiener, Joseph Lash, and Paul Goodman, were students of Cohen's, none of them could be described as followers of his philosophy. Despite his lack of followers, however, he had an important influence. His collection of Charles Sanders Peirce's essays in Chance, Love, and Logic (1923) introduced the largely forgotten...