Moses Mendelssohn

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The German philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was a major figure of the German Enlightenment. An intellectually emancipated and cultured German as well as a faithful Jew, he was referred to as the "German Socrates" and as the "Jewish Socrates."

Moses Mendelssohn was born on Sept. 6, 1729, in Dessau. He suffered from curvature of the spine. His father was a Torah scribe. The young man followed traditional Talmudic studies under Rabbi David Frankel, who introduced him to the thought of the medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides. In 1743 Mendelssohn's teacher received an appointment to Berlin, and the young student accompanied him. During the next years Mendelssohn's intellectual training expanded to include Latin, French, and English as well as mathematics and science.

At 21, Mendelssohn began a chain of fortunate associations. He became a tutor to the family of Isaac Bernhard, and he rose successively to bookkeeper and partner in a silk manufacturing firm. This position made him financially independent and left him free to follow his studies. Bernhard also introduced him to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the writer and dramatist. Lessing and Mendelssohn began a lifelong friendship and active collaboration. The noble and enlightened Jew in Lessing's famous comedy Nathan the Wise is modeled after the philosopher. Lessing encouraged Mendelssohn in his writing and arranged for the publication of his first essays and his translation of Jean Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on Unequality (1756). With Friedrich Nicolai, Mendelssohn edited a radical and popular magazine, Letters on Literature, which made Mendelssohn well known. In 1762 Mendelssohn married, and he and his wife eventually became the parents of six children. Two of his sons established a famous banking house, and the world-renowned composer Felix Mendelssohn was the philosopher's grandson.

In 1764 Mendelssohn competed against Immanuel Kant and won the Berlin Academy prize with an essay, "Evidence of Metaphysical Science." His main philosophic reputation stemmed from his influential treatises on esthetics and on the philosophy of religion. In 1776 he published a work on immortality. The Phaedo was modeled on Plato's dialogue of the same name. This book became the most popular work in German philosophy. Mendelssohn's writing skill was also reflected in his translation of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into German (1778-1783) as well as in Morning Hours (1785), a volume dealing with the existence of God.

The remainder of Mendelssohn's important work stemmed from two specific controversies. He was challenged by Christian writers either to convert or to explain the compatibility of his philosophy with Judaism. In a response to the Swiss theologian J. K. Lavater (1769) and in Jerusalem (1783) Mendelssohn attempted to interpret Judaism as a religion of reason available to all enlightened humanitarians. After Lessing's death, Lessing was attacked as an atheist, and Mendelssohn produced a series of writings in defense of his friend. Mendelssohn died in Berlin on Jan. 4, 1786.

Further Reading

The only work of Mendelssohn to appear recently in English translation is Jerusalem and Other Jewish Writings (1969). Secondary literature includes Hermann Walter, Moses Mendelssohn: Critic and Philosopher (1930), and a chapter on his philosophy in Jacob B. Agus, The Evolution of Jewish Thought: From Biblical Times to the Opening of the Modern Era (1959).

(1729-86). German-Jewish pioneer of Emancipation and communal leader, philosopher and literary critic, Bible scholar and translator. Born in Dessau, son of a Torah scribe, he received a traditional Jewish education and was a pupil of the local rabbi, David Fränkel. When Fränkel became Chief Rabbi of Berlin (1743), Mendelssohn followed him there, earning a meager living as a copyist and private tutor. Only 20 years after his arrival in Berlin did he obtain a limited residence permit.

Mendelssohn taught himself High German and, with the help of friends, Latin, Greek, French, and English as well as philosophy and mathematics. He was befriended by the writer and dramatist G.E. Lessing. Mendelssohn had been an ardent student of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed in his boyhood, and early in his career wrote a commentary on Maimonides' treatise on logic. He wrote metaphysical-psychological-esthetic treatises, such as Phaedon on immortality (1776) and Morning Hours on the existence of God and theodicy (1785), which won him a place as a leading philosopher of the European Enlightenment. His Jerusalem, with a more Jewish angle of vision, postulated the separation of Religion and State and freedom of worship and conscience and represented post-exilic Judaism as non-dogmatic, non-coercive revealed legislation rather than in terms of self-evident philosophical truths. As a literary critic he wrote review articles for a scientific-artistic journal, making him, with his pure and elegant style, a leader in German literature.

Mendelssohn was publicly challenged by the Swiss pastor J.C. Lavater either to disprove the truth of Christianity or to convert. This forced him to publish a dignified reply, proudly proclaiming his Jewishness and his loyalty to Judaism. This incident represented a crisis in his life, and he now turned to more specifically Jewish concerns. He had always been a loyal and honored member of the Berlin Jewish community, for which he composed prayers, hymns, and sermons for various patriotic occasions. Communities and individuals turned to him for help in their distress, as did harassed Alsatian Jewry, and Mendelssohn prevailed on C.W. Dohm to write a memorandum for submission to the French government, "On the yCivil Improvement of the Jews" (1781), which proved to be a major event in the fight for the emancipation of European Jews. For the use of the Prussian courts, Mendelssohn wrote Ritualgesetze der Juden (1778), a precis of Jewish laws and customs. Again at government request, he reformulated the infamous More Judaico Oath into a milder version, not daring to demand its abolition.

Though always maintaining tradition, Mendelssohn realized the need for an inner religious emancipation as much as a civil one. To this end he published in 1783 a translation of the Pentateuch into German (in Hebrew characters), accompanied by a commentary (Bi'ur) written in part by himself. This project had a revolutionary impact on German Jewry, whom it taught High German and gave a rational explanation of their Torah, based on the main classical commentaries. Many contemporary rabbis welcomed the work, but some remained fiercely antagonistic. Mendelssohn also translated the Psalms and the Song of Songs. He supported attempts to reform Jewish education by means of modern schools and textbooks and at his initiative a Jewish Free School was opened in Berlin in 1781, an example followed in other communities, particularly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The new cultural tendencies included the revival of classical Hebrew. Mendelssohn himself wrote an excellent Hebrew, and as early as 1758 published (anonymously) with the help of a friend a Hebrew journal (Kohelet Musar), of which only two issues appeared. He supported, and contributed to Ha-Me'assef, the periodical of Berlin Enlightenment. When approached about plans to settle Jews in their own land and state, he considered this premature but prophetically thought that such a project would have to await a major European war. He was also a pioneer of understanding between Judaism and Christianity, writing: "What a world of bliss we would live in if all men adopted the true principles which the best of the Christians and the best of the Jews hold in common."

Mendelssohn broke through the barriers of prejudice to become the most widely admired Jew of his time (he inspired Lessing's "Nathan the Wise"). He guided the Jews of Germany out of the ghetto and into the environment of Emancipation and Enlightenment.

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Mendelssohn, Moses (Dessau, 1729-86, Berlin), at first a tutor and later secretary to a silk manufacturer in Berlin, was a friend of G. E. Lessing and F. Nicolai. His writings are primarily philosophical, and derive mainly from Leibniz, Locke, and Shaftesbury. His principal works are Brief über die Empfindungen (1755), Abhandlung über die Evidenz in den metaphysischen Wissenschaften (1764), and Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (1767), which his contemporaries regarded as his most important contribution. In Über die Hauptgrundsätze der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften (1757) and Betrachtungen über das Erhabene und Naive in den schönen Wissenschaften (1758) he grappled with aesthetic problems, and in the latter he anticipated in some degree Schiller's views. In the purely literary field Mendelssohn contributed to Nicolai's Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freien Künste and to Lessing's Literaturbriefe. Lessing cited his character to justify the courageous and gentlemanly Jew (Der Reisende) in Die Juden, and probably had him in mind in the composition of Nathan der Weise. Himself an outstanding representative of the enlightened Jew of high character and humane rationalism, he strove in his later years for Jewish emancipation (Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum, 1783). His rejection of the assertion, made in 1775 by F. H. Jacobi, that Lessing inclined to Spinoza's philosophy (Über die Lehre des Spinoza) is conveyed in Moses Mendelssohn an die Freunde Lessings (1786).

Gesammelte Schriften (7 vols. in 8), ed. G. B. Mendelssohn, appeared 1843-5 (repr. 1972-6). Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. I. Elbogen, J. Guttmann, E. Mittwoch, began to appear 1929-38; in 1971 it was resumed, initially with reprints of the original vols., ed. A. Altmann et al., from 1991 ed. A. Altmann and E. J. Engel.

Mendelssohn, Moses (1729-86) The most influential German Jewish philosopher of the 18th century. Born in Dessau, Mendelssohn received a rabbinic education. He is mainly remembered for his work on aesthetics, which had some influence on Kant, although his proof of the immortality of the soul (the soul is simple, therefore indestructible) is one of Kant's most famous targets. Mendelssohn was a friend of Lessing and in his later years became involved in the Pantheismusstreit or pantheism controversy, whose ostensible point was whether Lessing was a closet Spinozist, but which drew all the central German philosophers of the time into the muddy waters of teleology and theology.

Mendelssohn, Moses (mĕn'dəlsən, Ger. mō'zĕs mĕn'dəls-zōn'), 1729-86, German-Jewish philosopher; grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn. He was a leader in the movement for cultural assimilation. In 1743 he went to Berlin, where he studied and worked, becoming (1750) a partner in a silk merchant's firm. In 1754 he met Lessing, and a life-long friendship began, out of which grew Lessing's play Nathan the Wise (1779). Mendelssohn's philosophy anticipated the aesthetics of Kant and Friedrich Schiller. His writings include Philosophische Gespräche (1755), Philosophische Schriften (1761), Phädon (1767), and Jerusalem; oder, Über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783). He also translated the Psalms and the Pentateuch into German.

Bibliography

See biography by A. Altman (1973).

Mendelssohn, Moses (Moshe ben Mendel mi-Dessau; 1729–1786), philosopher of the German and Jewish Enlightenments, leading literary critic in Prussia, biblical scholar, and Jewish communal leader and advocate. Mendelssohn was born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau. His father, Mendel Heymann, was a Jewish religious teacher and scribe. His mother, Bela Rachel Sarah, was descended from an illustrious line of rabbis. As a child, he received a traditional Jewish education, studying the Bible with its commentaries, the Mishna and Talmud, and Jewish legal codes. At age ten, he became a student of the famous Talmudist David Fränkel, and in 1743 followed Fränkel to Berlin when the rabbi received a post there.

In Berlin, Mendelssohn met the Jewish philosophers Israel Samoscz and Aaron Salomon Gumpertz. Under their guidance he studied Latin, Greek, English, and French and read the works of the Enlightenment philosophers Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, and John Locke. These thinkers formed Mendelssohn's philosophical orientation, from which he never departed. He espoused "moderate Enlightenment"—a belief in rational or "natural" theology.

In 1754, Gumpertz introduced Mendelssohn to the young Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, with whom Mendelssohn developed a lifelong friendship. Lessing encouraged the young Mendelssohn to develop his ideas about metaphysics and aesthetics, as well as to write pieces of literary criticism. In 1763, Mendelssohn won a prize competition held by the Berlin Academy of Sciences on the question whether metaphysical truths allowed of the same certainty as mathematical truths. His essay defeated an entry by Immanuel Kant.

In 1767, Mendelssohn published his Phädon (Phaedo), a reworking of Plato's famous dialogue of the same name. This work used Leibnizian-Wolffian arguments to prove the immortality of the soul. The work was a sensation, running into four editions, and was translated in Mendelssohn's own lifetime into Italian, French, Danish, and Russian. Mendelssohn became recognized as a leading philosopher of the German Enlightenment and was dubbed by his contemporaries "the German Socrates."

While as a youth he had published a few pieces in Hebrew seeking to promote enlightenment among his coreligionists, initially Jewish apologetic concerns were not in the foreground. This changed in 1769 when the Pietist Swiss theologian and preacher Johann Caspar Lavater challenged him to either refute Christianity or convert. Mendelssohn defended himself by contrasting the religious tolerance in Judaism with Christianity's theological intolerance, but the "Lavater affair" shook his faith in the ability of Jews to be accepted in Prussian society.

Throughout the 1770s, the German Enlightenment came under increasing attack from the counter-Enlightenment Sturm und Drang ('storm and stress') movement as well as from English empiricism, idealism, and skepticism. Despite being plagued by a nervous debility from the 1770s to the end of his life, Mendelssohn worked tirelessly on three projects: improving the civil status of the Jews, defending Jewish particularity, and defending the German Enlightenment.

In 1779, Lessing wrote his most famous play, Nathan der Weise (Nathan the wise), an apology for religious tolerance. The hero, the Jewish merchant Nathan, was widely seen as having been modeled on Mendelssohn. In 1781, Mendelssohn sought to actualize the tolerant ideals espoused by Nathan by commissioning the Christian German ministerial councillor Christian Wilhelm Dohm to write a book advocating Jewish civil improvement. In 1781 Dohm's Über die bürgliche Verbesserung der Juden (On the civil improvement of the Jews) appeared and was widely debated.

In 1783, Mendelssohn wrote his philosophical masterpiece Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (Jerusalem or on religious power and Judaism). The book comprised two parts. In the first part Mendelssohn argued that religious institutions had no right to exercise political power. In the second part he offered a philosophical defense of Judaism showing that the applicability of Jewish ceremonial law did not depend on religious coercion. Through the 1770s and 1780s Mendelssohn multiplied his Hebrew literary work, most notably producing a highly regarded translation and commentary on the Pentateuch known as the Biur (Elucidation). In 1783, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi disclosed to Mendelssohn that Lessing, who had died in 1781, had been a Spinozist at the end of his life. Spinozism was then widely equated with atheism, and Mendelssohn understood Jacobi's disclosure as an attempt to undermine the rational theology of the German Enlightenment. This sparked the so-called Pantheism Controversy. In Mendelssohn's contributions to the controversy, the Morgenstunden (Morning hours) and An die Freunde Lessing (To Lessing's friends), he attacked Spinozism and revised his metaphysics and epistemology.

At the end of his career, Mendelssohn aimed to achieve a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism and thereby save the German Enlightenment. In this respect, his project was quite similar to that of his friend and fellow Aufklärer Immanuel Kant, though Kant's critical synthesis was far more philosophically sophisticated and influential.

Mendelssohn is widely considered the father of modern Jewish philosophy. His was the first attempt to articulate a conception of Judaism using modern philosophical concepts. Furthermore, he is seen as the spiritual ancestor of two of the main forms of nineteenth-century German Judaism—Neo-Orthodoxy and Reform. His defense of Jewish ceremonial law as "living symbols" of theological truth prefigures Samson Raphael Hirsch's Neo-Orthodoxy, while his defense of the rational, universal foundation of Jewish belief prefigures Reform Judaism. His attempt to develop a German-Jewish symbiosis likewise set the agenda for later German-Jewish thought, and his work on behalf of Jewish civil improvement anticipated later attempts to achieve Jewish emancipation in Europe.

Despite his importance as a philosopher, Judaic thinker, and mediator of German and Jewish culture, Mendelssohn's reputation shrank after his death. His metaphysics and epistemology were thought to have been overshadowed by Kant. His Jewish philosophy was seen to have been an unacceptable compromise between obedience to particularistic Jewish law and espousal of universal religious ideas. His interpretation of Judaism was accused of being inattentive to Judaism's historical development.

Recent scholars have debated the relationship between Mendelssohn's philosophical positions and his Jewish commitments. Some have subordinated his Jewish commitments to his philosophical concerns, and others have done the opposite. Of late, Mendelssohn's defense of religious pluralism on the basis of profound Jewish learning and subtle philosophical thought, along with his espousal of political liberalism, have made him appear a particularly prescient thinker.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Mendelssohn, Moses. Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe. Edited by Alexander Altmann, et al. Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt, 1971–.

——. Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism. Translated by Allan Arkush. Edited with introduction and commentary by Alexander Altmann. Hanover, N.H., 1983. Translation of Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783).

——. Philosophical Writings. Translated and edited by Daniel Dahlstrom. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1997. Translation of Philosophische Schriften (1761).

Secondary Sources

Altmann, Alexander. Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study. Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1973. Classic study by the leading Mendelssohn scholar of his generation. The starting point for all subsequent Mendelssohn scholarship.

Arkush, Allan. Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment. Albany, N.Y., 1994. Provocative reading of Mendelssohn as an esoteric deist who sought to transform Judaism into a civil religion.

Breuer, Edward. The Limits of Enlightenment: Jews, Germans, and the Eighteenth Century Study of Scripture. Cambridge, Mass., 1996. Study of Mendelssohn's biblical work that argues that this work must be viewed as both an extension and response to its contemporary Christian biblical scholarship.

Sorkin, David. Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment. Berkeley and London, 1996. A reading of Mendelssohn's Jewish works in the context of the German religious Enlightenment. Claims that Mendelssohn limited speculative metaphysics to make room for Jewish piety and ritual observance.

—MICHAH GOTTLIEB

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