Salomon Maimon

Maimon, Salomon 

(pseudonym of Salomon Heiman). Born 1753 (1754), in Mirts (Mir), near Nesvizh, present-day Byelorussian SSR; died Nov. 22, 1800, in Nieder-Siegersdorf, Silesia. Self-taught philospher, subjective idealist.

Maimon was educated in the Judaic tradition; he became an admirer of the philosophy of Maimonides and as a result changed his surname. In 1777 he settled in Prussia, where he made contact with M. Mendelssohn. Maimon criticized the philosophy of Kant; in particular, he rejected Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” attacking this concept from a position close to the idealistic viewpoints of F. H. Jacobi. Maimon formulated a “principle of determinacy” as the fundamental law of logic.

WORKS

Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie. Berlin, 1790.
Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens. Berlin, 1794. New edition: Berlin, 1911.
Lebensgeschichte, vols. 1-2. Berlin, 1911. (Russian translation in Evreis kaia biblioteka, vols. 1-2. St. Petersburg, 1871-72.)

REFERENCES

Fisher, K. Istoriia novoi filosofii, vol. 6, St. Petersburg, 1909. Chapters 6-7.
lakovenko, B. “Filosofskie kontseptsii S. Maimona.” Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii, book 4 (p. 114); book 5 (p. 115), 1912.
Atlas, S. From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of S . Maimon. The Hague, 1964.
Bergman, S. H. The Philosophy of S. Maimon. Jerusalem, 1967.
Kozlowski, R. Salomon Maimon jako krytyk i kontynuator filozofii. Poznań, 1969.