Mendelssohn, Moses

Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729–86, German-Jewish philosopher; grandfather of Jakob Ludwig 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).

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Mendelssohn, Moses

 orig. Moses ben Menachem

(born Sept. 26, 1729, Dessau, Anhalt—died Jan. 4, 1786, Berlin, Prussia) German Jewish philosopher and scholar. The son of an impoverished scribe, he began his career as a tutor but eventually won fame for his philosophical writings, which would become influential among the 19th-century U.S. Transcendentalists. He combined Judaism with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, becoming one of the principal figures in the Haskala, which helped bring Jews into the mainstream of European culture. His works include Phädon (1767), a defense of the immortality of the soul, and Jerusalem (1783), on the relationship of religion and the state. His friend Gotthold Lessing based the protagonist of his celebrated drama Nathan the Wise on Mendelssohn. He was the grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn.

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Mendelssohn, Moses 

Born Sept. 6, 1729, in Dessau; died Jan. 4, 1786, in Berlin. German idealist philosopher and representative of the moderate wing of the German Enlightenment.

Mendelssohn came to Berlin in 1742, subsequently becoming a tutor to the children of a manufacturer and later his book-keeper. Together with G. E. Lessing, Mendelssohn wrote Pope the Metaphysician, published anonymously in 1755, defending Leibniz’ theodicy against the criticism of the English poet A. Pope. Mendelssohn was one of the most important popularizers of the teachings of Leibniz and C. Wolff and attacked Voltaire’s critique of Leibniz’ theodicy. In his treatises on the existence of god (Morgenstunden, 1785) and the immortality of the soul he added moral and theological proof to the arguments of Plato and Leibniz (Phaedo, or on the Immortality of the Soul, 1767; Russian translation, 1811). He called for toleration and religious freedom and advocated the separation of church and state. The controversy between Mendelssohn and F. Jacobi over Lessing’s Spinozism led to a dispute about Spinoza’s pantheism, in which many German philosophers of the time became involved.

WORKS

Gesammelte Schriften: Jubilaumsausgabe, vols. 1-16. Berlin, 1929.
Schriften zur Philosophic, Asthetik und Apologetik, vols. 1-2. Hildesheim, 1968.
In Russian translation:
Rassuzhdenie o dukhovnom svoistve dushi chelovecheskoL Moscow, 1806.

REFERENCES

Gulyga, A. V. Iz istorii nemetskogo materializma. Moscow, 1962.
Kayserling, M. M. Mendelssohn: Sein Leben und Wirken, 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1888.
Bamberger, F. Die geistige Gestalt M. Mendelssohns. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1929.
Baumgardt, D. Spinosa und Mendelssohn. Berlin, 1932.
Nador, G. M. Mendelssohn. Hannover, 1969.

T. M. RUMIANTSEVA