Moses Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn (September 6, 1729–January 4, 1786) was a German Jewish philosopher. He was an important Jewish figure of the 18th century, and to him is attributable the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment. To some he was the third Moses (the other two being the Biblical lawgiver and Moses Maimonides) with whom a new era opens in the history of the Jewish people. To others, he was a step into the beginning of assimilation and loss of identity for Jews and the dilution of traditional Judaism.

Youth

He was born in Dessau. His father's name was Mendel and he later took the surname Mendelssohn ("son of Mendel"). Mendel Dessau was a poor scribe—a writer of scrolls—and his son Moses in his boyhood developed curvature of the spine. His early education was cared for by his father and by the local rabbi, David Fränkel. The latter, besides teaching him the Bible and Talmud, introduced to him the philosophy of Maimonides. Fränkel received a call to Berlin in 1743. A few months later Moses followed him.

Related Topics:
Dessau - Bible - Talmud - Maimonides - 1743

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His life was a struggle against crushing poverty, but his scholarly ambition was never relaxed. A refugee Pole, Zamosz, taught him mathematics, and a young Jewish physician was his tutor in Latin. He was, however, mainly self-taught. He learned to spell and to philosophize at the same time (Graetz). With his scanty earnings he bought a Latin copy of John Locke's "Essay concerning the Human Understanding," and mastered it with the aid of a Latin dictionary. He then made the acquaintance of Aaron Solomon Gumperz, who taught him basic French and English. In 1750 he was appointed by a wealthy silk-merchant, Isaac Bernhard, as teacher to his children. Mendelssohn soon won the confidence of Bernhard, who made the young student successively his book-keeper and his partner.

Related Topics:
Pole - Mathematics - Physician - Latin - John Locke - Essay concerning the Human Understanding - 1750

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Gumperz or Hess rendered a conspicuous service to Mendelssohn and to the cause of enlightenment in 1754 by introducing him to Lessing. Just as the latter afterwards makes Nathan the Wise and Saladin meet over the chess-hoard, so did Gotthold Lessing and Mendelssohn actually come together as lovers of the game. The Berlin of the day—the day of Frederick the Great—was in a moral and intellectual ferment. Lessing was the great liberator of the German mind. He had already begun his work of toleration, for he had recently produced a drama (Die Juden, 1749), the motive of which was to prove that a Jew can be possessed of nobility of character. This notion was being generally ridiculed as untrue, then. Lessing found in Mendelssohn the realization of his dream. Within a few months of the same age, the two became brothers in intellectual and artistic camaraderie. Mendelssohn owed his first introduction to the public to Lessing's admiration. The former had written in lucid German an attack on the national neglect of native philosophers (principally Gottfried Leibniz), and lent the manuscript to Lessing. Without consulting the author, Lessing published Mendelssohn's Philosophical Conversations (Philosophische Gespräche) anonymously in 1755. In the same year there appeared in Gda?sk an anonymous satire, Pope a Metaphysician (Pope ein Metaphysiker), which turned out to be the joint work of Lessing and Mendelssohn.

Related Topics:
1754 - Gotthold Lessing - Frederick the Great - 1749 - Gottfried Leibniz - 1755

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