Salomon Maimon and the rise of Spinozism in German idealism

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 67-96

  Melamed, Yitzhak Y ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 35748947310     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2004.0010     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. Pierre-François Moreau, "Spinoza's Reception and Influence," in the Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Don Garrett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 413.
2. Fredrick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 248-59;
3. and Alexis Philonenko, La liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte (Paris: Vrin, 1966).
4. Sabattia Joseph Wolff, Maimoniana oder Rhapsodien zur Charakteristik Salomon Maimons (Berlin, 1813), 178. Wolff was a Jewish physician and a friend of Maimon.
5. Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften-Jubiläumsausgabe (MJA) (Stuttgart: Friedrich Fromann Verlag, 1929), 18-19;
6. Cf. Alexander Altmann, "Moses Mendelssohn on Leibniz and Spinoza" in his Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism (London: Routledge, 1969), 249.
7. For a thorough discussion of the conceptual barrier between the attributes see Michael Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9-17.
8. The association of Spinoza with Eleatism seems to begin with Bayle's influential writings on Spinoza. See for example Bayle's entry on Xenophanes in Pierre Bayle, The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr. Pierre Bayle (Chippenham: Routledge/Thocmmcs Press, 1997), vol. 5, 574.
9. Cf. Erdmann Vermischte Aufsätze (Leipzig: 1846), 141,
10. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, E.S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, trans. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), vol. 3, 257-58.
11. For a discussion of Kant's view of Spinoza, see Henry Allison, "Kant's Critique of Spinoza," in Richard Kennington, ed. The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (Washington D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 199-227.
12. Note that in this text (as in most other places) Maimon views Leibnizianism as a form of mild, or compromised, Spinozism. Both Spinoza and Leibniz are supposed to view particular things as merely " limitations'" of God. Cf. Samuel Atlas, "Solomon Maimon and Spinoza," Hebrew Union College Annual 30 (1959): 233-85. Atlas's account of the Maimon-Spinoza connection seems to me to be the best and most, comprehensive study of the topic. However, Atlas fails to address Maimon's crucial claim that God is the material cause of the world.
13. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Shelomo Pines, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)VoI. 1, 167, my emphasis.
14. For a discussion of the substance-mode relation in Spinoza, see John Carriero, "On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza's Metaphysics, "Journal of the History of Philosophy 35:2 (1995): 245-73. Carriero comes very close to the claim that Spinoza's understanding of the substance-mode relation is grounded in the notion of material causation.
15. For a recent discussion of the relation of Spinoza's pantheism to Kabbalistic pantheism, see Moshe Idel, "Deus sive Natura: Les Métamorphoses d'une formule de Maïmonide àSpinoza" in Moshe Idel, Maïmonide et la mystique Juive (Paris: Cerf, 1991), 105-34.
16. Cf. R. Avenarius, Über die beiden ersten Phasen des spinozistisch.en, Pantheismus (Leipzig, 1868).
17. and Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, Robert de Luca, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 75.
18. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, Peter Heath and John Lachs, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 102, my emphasis.
19. Cf. Sylvain Zac, Salomon Maimon-Critique de Kant (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 15-16.
20. Indeed, Maimon argues that "in mathematics we are like God" insofar as we can create new objects by mere thought. For a discussion of this claim, see David Lachterman's excellent article, "Mathematical Construction, Symbolic Cognition and the Infinite Intellect: Reflections on Maimon and Maimonides, "Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1992): 497-522.
21. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of the ramification of the law for the rest of Maimon's philosophy. For a further discussion of the law, see Samuel Hugo Bergman, The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, Noah J. Jacobs, trans. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967), 93-115;
22. Samuel Adas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism-The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 146-67;
23. and Jan Bransen, The Antinomy of Thought-Maimonian. Skepticism and the Relation between Thoughts and Objects (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 107-33.
24. Richard Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1921), vol. I, 360.
25. Spinoza fails to consider the possibility of substances sharing only .some of their attributes. For an attempt to fill this gap see Michael Delia Rocca, "Spinoza's Substance Monism," in Olli Koistinen and John Biro, eds., Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 17-22.
26. The most important of which is the doctrine of the differentials. See Bergman, The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon, 59-68.
27. A few years earlier, in 1799, Fichte responded to the charge of atheism by claiming that his own philosophy should be called acosmism radier than atheism. See J. G. Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Reinhard Lauth, Hans Jacobs, Hans Gliwitzky, and Erich Fuchs, eds. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1964), vol. 1/6, 54.
28. Hegel, Vorlesungen, über die Geschichte der Philosophie III, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), 162-63.
29. Following Hegel, Heine marks: "No one spoke more sublimely about the Deity than Spinoza. Instead of saying that he denied God, one must say that he denied man" ("Religion and Philosophy in Germany," in Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School and Other Essays, Jost Hermand & Robert C Holub, eds. [New York: Continuum, 1985], 175).