Salomon Maimon
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Salomon Maimon | |
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German skepticism[1] | |
Main interests | Epistemology, metaphysics, ethics |
Notable ideas | Critique of Kant's quid juris and quid facti,[2] the Doctrine of Differentials (die Lehre vom Differential),[2] the Principle of Determinability (der Satz der Bestimmbarkeit)[2][3] |
Salomon Maimon (
Biography
Early years
Salomon Maimon was born Shlomo ben Joshua
Interest in Kabbalah
Maimon describes how he took an interest in
In Germany
In his mid-twenties Maimon left his home area in the direction of the German-speaking lands. His first attempt to take up residence in
In 1783, Mendelssohn asked Maimon to leave Berlin due to Maimon's open
After many years of separation, Maimon's wife, Sarah, accompanied by their eldest son, David, managed to locate him in Breslau. She demanded that he either return to their home in Lithuania or give her a divorce. Maimon eventually agreed to the divorce.
It was not until 1787 in Berlin that Maimon became acquainted with Kantian philosophy, and in 1790 he published the Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie), in which he formulated his objections to Kant's system. Kant seems to have considered Maimon one of his most astute critics.[4] Maimon published a commentary on the Moreh Nebuchim [מורה נבוכים] of Maimonides in 1791 (Gibeath Hamore [גבעת המורה], The Hill of the Guide). In 1792/3 he published his Autobiography (Lebensgeschichte).
In Silesia
In 1795, Maimon found a peaceful residence in the house of Count von Kalckreuth (1766–1830),[7] a young Silesian nobleman, and moved to the latter's estate in Siegersdorf, near Freistadt in Niederschlesien (Lower Silesia). Maimon died there at the age of 48 from apparent alcoholism.[8][9]
Thought
Thing-in-itself
He seizes upon the fundamental incompatibility of a
Application of the categories
The Kantian categories are demonstrable and
Doctrine of differentials
Whereas Kant posed a dualism between understanding and sensibility, or between concepts and the given, Maimon refers both these faculties back to a single source of cognition. Sensibility, in Maimon's view, is therefore not completely without conceptual content, but is generated according to rules that Maimon calls differentials. In calling them this, Maimon is referring to the differentials from the calculus, which are entities that despite being neither qualitative nor quantitative, can nevertheless give rise to a determinate quantity and quality when related to other differentials. The operations of the faculty of sensibility are for Maimon therefore not principally different from those of mathematical intuition: seeing the color red is the same procedure as drawing a geometrical figure such as a line in a circle in thought. The reason that qualities are nevertheless 'given' is that it is only an infinite understanding that can grasp the rules for the generation of qualities in the way that a human understanding can grasp the rules for drawing a circle.
Kant's comments
Kant had received the first chapter of Maimon's book in manuscript from Markus Herz. In a letter to Herz from 26 May 1789, Kant writes the following:
"I had half decided to send the manuscript back in its immediately .... But one glance at the work made me realize its excellence and that not only had none of my critics understood me and the main questions as well as Herr Maimon does but also very few men possess so much acumen for such deep investigations as he..."[10]
Nevertheless, Kant does not agree with Maimon's assessment. For Kant, the question of the relationship of the faculties is adequately answered by the Transcendental Deduction, in which Kant argues that the categories make experience possible. Furthermore, as an explanation of the harmony of the faculties, Kant offers the Leibnizian account of a
Bibliography
Collected works in German
- Maimon, Salomon. Gesammelte Werke, edited by Valerio Verra, 7 volumes, Hildsheim: Olms, 1965–1976.
English translations
- Maimon, Salomon. The Autobiography of Salomon Maimon with an Essay on Maimon's Philosophy, Introduction by Michael Shapiro, Translated by J. Clark Murray, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001 (original edition: London, Boston : A. Gardner, 1888).
- Solomon Maimon’s Autobiography, translated by Paul Reitter. Edited and introduced by Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Abraham P. Socher (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). [This is the first complete English translation of Maimon's autobiography].
- Maimon, Salomon. Essay on transcendental philosophy. Translated by Nick Midgley, Henry Somers-Hall, Alistair Welchman, and Merten Reglitz, London, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4411-1384-9.
- Maimon, Salomon. Essay Towards a New Logic or Theory of Thought, Together Letters of Philaletes to Aenesidemus in: G. di Giovanni, H.S. Harris (eds.), Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001, pp. 158–203.
- Maimon, Salomon. Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. A Short Overview of the Whole Work, translated by H. Somers-Hall and M. Reglitz, in Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 19 (2008), pp. 127–165.
- Maimon, Salomon. The Philosophical Language-Confusion in: Jere Paul Surber, Metacritique. The Linguistic Assault on German Idealism, Amherst:Humanity Books, 2001, pp. 71–84
Notes
- ^ Bransen, Jan. The Antinomy of Thought: Maimonian Skepticism and the Relation between Thoughts and Objects. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991.
- ^ a b c d e Kelley, Andrew. "Solomon Maimon (1753–1800)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ The Principle of Determinability is the thesis that we can distinguish between the subject and the predicate of a given synthesis.
- ^ a b c Thielke, Peter (2023). Salomon Maimon. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ ISBN 0804751366.
- ^ Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography, trans. J. Clark Murray, University of Illinois Press, 2001.
- ^ Variant spellings: (1) Count von Calckreuth (2) Count von Kalkreuth (12 December 1766 – 27 March 1830). His full name is usually given as Heinrich Wilhelm Adolf (or Adolph), Graf (Count) von Kalckreuth, but he was also known as Hans Wilhelm Adolf (or Adolph), Graf von Kalckreuth. He was a Prussian diplomat and author. He wrote books on taxation, law, and on various philosophical topics, including the philosophy of law. For a list of some of his writings see: https://www.worldcat.org/wcidentities/viaf-269163381
- ^ Elon, Amos. The pity of it all. A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743–1933. Picador, A metropolitan book. NY, Henry Holt and Company, 2002, p. 59.
- ^ Maimon, Solomon. Solomon Maimon: An autobiography, Introduction by Michael Shapiro, Translated by J. Clark Murray, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
- ^ * Kant, Immanuel. Correspondence. Translated and edited by A. Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 311-311.
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Maimon, Salomon". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Atlas, Samuel. From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965.
- Bergmann, Samuel, Hugo. The Philosophy of Salomon Maimon. Translated from the Hebrew by Noah J. Jacobs. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1967.
- Herrera, Hugo Eduardo. Salomon Maimon's Commentary on the Subject of the Given in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, in: The Review of Metaphysics 63.3, 2010. pp. 593–613.
- Elon, Amos. The pity of it all. A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743–1933. Picador, A metropolitanan book. NY, Henry Holt and Company, 2002. pp. 54–59.
External links
Media related to Salomon Maimon at Wikimedia Commons
- Thielke, Peter; Melamed, Yitzhak Y. "Salomon Maimon". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Salomon Maimon Society
- Works by Solomon Maimon at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Salomon Maimon at Internet Archive
- “Spinozism, Acosmism and Hasidism”. Session with prof. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Dr. José María Sánchez de León at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem