Last works / Moses Mendelssohn ; translated, with an introduction and commentary by Bruce Rosenstock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729-1786.

Contributor:

Rosenstock, Bruce (Bruce Benjamin)

Standardized Title:

Selections. English. 2012

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

God--Proof.

God.

God (Judaism)--Knowableness.

God (Judaism).

Jewish philosophy--18th century.

Jewish philosophy.

Faith and reason--Judaism.

Faith and reason.

Enlightenment--Germany.

Enlightenment.

Pantheism--History.

Pantheism.

Jews--Germany--Intellectual life.

Jews.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 1729-1781.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim.

Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677.

Spinoza, Benedictus de.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction to the Translation

Notes on the Translation

For Further Reading

Morning Hours or, Lectures on the Existence of God

Preliminary Remarks

Part One Epistemic Groundwork, Concerning Truth, Appearance, and Error

Lecture I What Is Truth?

Lecture II Cause. Effect. Ground. Power.

Lecture III Self-Evidence-Immediate Knowledge. Rational Knowledge-Natural Knowledge.

Lecture IV Truth and Illusion.

Lecture V Existence. Waking. Dreams. Delusion.

Lecture VI The Connection of Our Ideas. Idealism.

Lecture VII Continuation. Quarrel of Idealists with the Dualists. Truth Drive and Approbatio

Part Two Systematic Exposition of the Concepts Related to the Existence of God

Lecture VIII Introduction. Importance of the Investigation. On the Principle of Basedow's Pri

Lecture IX Certainty of the Pure and Applied Doctrine of Magnitudes. Comparison with the Cer

Lecture X Allegorical Dream. Reason and Common Sense. Proofs of the Existence of God, Accord

Lecture XI Epicureanism. Luck. Coincidence. Number of Causes and Effects, without End, with

Lecture XII Sufficient Reason Grounding the Contingent in the Necessary. The Former Is Somewh

Lecture XIII Spinozism. Pantheism. All Is One and One Is All. Refutation.

Lecture XIV Continued Quarrel with the Pantheists. Convergence, Point of Union with Them. Inn

Lecture XV Lessing. His Service to the Religion of Reason. His Thoughts Concerning Purified

Lecture XVI Explanation of the Concepts of Necessity, Randomness, Independence, and Dependen

Lecture XVII A priori Grounds for Proof of the Existence of a Most Perfect, Necessary, Indep

To the Friends of Lessing

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Translated from the German.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786613895165

9781283582711

1283582716

9780252093999

0252093992

OCLC:

809032422