Last Works

E-bok

Engelska, 2012

358 kr

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Beskrivning

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2012-06-15
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:272
Kopieringsskydd:LCP
ISBN:9780252093999
Förlag:University of Illinois Press
Översättare:Bruce Rosenstock

Utforska kategorier

Filosofiska discipliner inom Filosofi och religion
Judendom inom Filosofi och religion

Mer om författaren

Bruce Rosenstock is an associate professor of religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His other books include New Men: Conversos, Christian Theology, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Castile and Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond.

Recensioner i media

"An expertly produced volume that will contribute to a vibrant conversation on the fate of the Enlightenment, the beginning of modern liberal Judaism, and the origins of German idealism. Students of eighteenth-century German thought will henceforth refer to this work."--Peter Fenves, author of The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time"This volume will surely be a widely welcomed contribution to the study of modern Jewish thought and European intellectual history. Bruce Rosenstock's elegant translation and scholarly introduction render Mendelssohn's Last Works accessible to beginning and advanced students of general and Jewish intellectual history."--Paul Mendes-Flohr, coeditor of The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History

Innehållsförteckning

CoverTitle PageCopyrightContentsAbbreviationsIntroduction to the TranslationNotes on the TranslationFor Further ReadingMorning Hours or, Lectures on the Existence of GodPreliminary RemarksPart One. Epistemic Groundwork, Concerning Truth, Appearance, and ErrorLecture 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 ApprobatioPart Two. Systematic Exposition of the Concepts Related to the Existence of GodLecture VIII. Introduction. Importance of the Investigation. On the Principle of Basedow's PriLecture IX. Certainty of the Pure and Applied Doctrine of Magnitudes. Comparison with the CerLecture X. Allegorical Dream. Reason and Common Sense. Proofs of the Existence of God, AccordLecture XI. Epicureanism. Luck. Coincidence. Number of Causes and Effects, without End, withLecture XII. Sufficient Reason Grounding the Contingent in the Necessary. The Former Is SomewhLecture XIII. Spinozism. Pantheism. All Is One and One Is All. Refutation.Lecture XIV. Continued Quarrel with the Pantheists. Convergence, Point of Union with Them. InnLecture XV. Lessing. His Service to the Religion of Reason. His Thoughts Concerning PurifiedLecture XVI. Explanation of the Concepts of Necessity, Randomness, Independence, and DependenLecture XVII. A priori Grounds for Proof of the Existence of a Most Perfect, Necessary, IndepTo the Friends of LessingNotesReferencesIndex