Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was the central figure in the emancipation of European Jewry. His intellect, judgment, and tact won the admiration and friendship of contemporaries as illustrious as Johann Gottfried Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Immanuel Kant. His enormously influential Jerusalem (1783) made the case for religious tolerance, a cause he worked for all his life. Last Works includes, for the first time complete and in a single volume, the English translation of Morning Hours: Lectures on the Existence of God (1785) and To the Friends of Lessing (1786). Bruce Rosenstock has also provided an historical introduction and an extensive philosophical commentary to both texts. At the center of Mendelssohn's last works is his friendship with Lessing. Mendelssohn hoped to show that he, a Torah-observant Jew, and Lessing, Germany's leading dramatist, had forged a life-long friendship that held out the promise of a tolerant and enlightened culture in which religious strife would be a thing of the past. Lessing's death in 1781 was a severe blow to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn wrote his last two works to commemorate Lessing and to carry on the work to which they had dedicated much of their lives. Morning Hours treats a range of major philosophical topics: the nature of truth, the foundations of human knowledge, the basis of our moral and aesthetic powers of judgment, the reality of the external world, and the grounds for a rational faith in a providential deity. It is also a key text for Mendelssohn's readings of Spinoza. In To the Friends of Lessing, Mendelssohn attempts to unmask the individual whom he believes to be the real enemy of the enlightened state: the Schwärmer, the religious fanatic who rejects reason in favor of belief in suprarational revelation.

Last Works

Politics & Social Sciences

Mendelssohn, Moses

Philosophy

University of Illinois Press

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Moses Mendelssohns Gesammelte Schriften, Sechster Band (German Edition)

Brandis, Christian August

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Wentworth Press

Moses Mendelsohns's gesammelte Schriften, Vierten Bandes, erste Abtheilung (German Edition)

German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment. Until now, attention was focused on Mendelssohn’s German works—such as his groundbreaking Jerusalem—which have been duly translated into English. Edward Breuer and David Sorkin assert that his Hebrew works are essential for understanding both his biography and his oeuvre. This volume offers expertly translated and generously annotated selections from the entire corpus of Mendelssohn’s published Hebrew writings. Mendelssohn wrote in Hebrew throughout his life, but these works—mainly grounded in biblical and other Hebrew classical works—have been hitherto inaccessible to most scholars. In this volume, Breuer and Sorkin make an important contribution to modern Jewish and religious thought, refuting the notion that Mendelssohn led a bifurcated intellectual and spiritual existence and demonstrating Mendelssohn’s ability to transform traditional religious genres into vehicles for philosophical argumentation.

Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew Writings (Volume 33) (The Yale Judaica Series)

History

World

Yale University Press

Phaedon: The Death of Socrates (The Jewish People: History, Religion, Literature) (English and German Edition)

Ayer Co. Pub

Moses Mendelssohn: Philosophical Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, published in 1761, bring the metaphysical tradition to bear on the topic of "sentiments" (defined as knowledge or awareness by way of the senses). They include a nuanced defense of Leibniz's theodicy and conception of freedom, and examination of the ethics of suicide, an account of the "mixed sentiments" so central to the tragic genre, an hypothesis about weakness of will, an elaboration of the main principles and types of art, and a brief tract on probability theory, aimed at rebutting Hume's skepticism.

Cambridge University Press

MOSES MENDELSSOHN CL

Literature & Fiction

Penguin Adult HC/TR

A translation of the famous 18th-century German treatise with introduction and detailed commentary.

Jerusalem, and Other Jewish Writings.

Schocken Books

Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism

A classic text of enduring significance, Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem (1783) stands as a powerful plea for the separation of church and state and also as the first attempt to present Judaism as a religion eminently compatible with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Allan Arkush’s new translation, drawing upon the great strides made by Mendelssohn research in recent decades, does full justice to contemporary insights into the subject while authentically reflecting a distinguished eighteenth-century text. Alexander Altmann’s learned introduction opens up the complex structure and background of Mendelssohn’s ideas. His detailed commentary, keyed to the text, provides references to literary sources and interpretations of the philosopher’s intent.

Brandeis University Press

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