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Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment

Name: Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment
Author: David Sorkin
ISBN: 9781905559510

by David Sorkin, Arthur Hertzberg (Editor)

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Overview

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was the premier Jewish thinker of his day and one of the best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, earning the sobriquet ‘the Socrates of Berlin’. He was thoroughly involved in the central issue of Enlightenment religious thinking: the inevitable conflict between reason and revelation in an age contending with individual rights and religious toleration. He did not aspire to a comprehensive philosophy of Judaism, since he thought human reason was limited, but he did see Judaism as compatible with toleration and rights. David Sorkin offers a close study of Mendelssohn’s complete writings, treating the German, and the often-neglected Hebrew writings, as a single corpus and arguing that Mendelssohn’s two spheres of endeavour were entirely consistent.

Synopsis

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the premier Jewish thinker of his day and one of the best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, earning the sobriquet 'the Socrates of Berlin'. He was thoroughly involved in the central issue of Enlightenment religious thinking: the inevitable conflict between reason and revelation in an age contending with individual rights and religious toleration. He did not aspire to a comprehensive philosophy of Judaism, since he thought human reason was limited, but he did see Judaism as compatible with toleration and rights. David Sorkin offers a close study of Mendelssohn's complete writings, treating the German, and the often-neglected Hebrew writings, as a single corpus and arguing that Mendelssohn's two spheres of endeavour were entirely consistent.

About the Author, David Sorkin

David Sorkin is the Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840 (1987), winner of the Present Tense/Joel Cavior award for best book in History, 1988.