Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) is often considered the founder of modern Jewish philosophy or even of modern Judaism. For many, Mendelssohn's commitment to enlightened values appeared to be irreconcilable with his life-long adherence to Judaism. This book approaches this problem by placing Mendelssohn's moderate enlightenment in three contexts: Maimonides' medieval enlightenment, Spinoza's radical enlightenment, and F.H. Jacobi's Christian counter-Enlightenment. This books argues that Mendelssohn breaks from Maimonides because he faces problems never encountered by Maimonides—namely how to rema ... More

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) is often considered the founder of modern Jewish philosophy or even of modern Judaism. For many, Mendelssohn's commitment to enlightened values appeared to be irreconcilable with his life-long adherence to Judaism. This book approaches this problem by placing Mendelssohn's moderate enlightenment in three contexts: Maimonides' medieval enlightenment, Spinoza's radical enlightenment, and F.H. Jacobi's Christian counter-Enlightenment. This books argues that Mendelssohn breaks from Maimonides because he faces problems never encountered by Maimonides—namely how to remain an observant Jew in a modern state where Jews could be citizens with their Christian neighbors. Through an original, selective reading of Jewish tradition, Mendelssohn is able to achieve remarkable harmony between Judaism and enlightenment. But at the end of his life Mendelssohn confronts a profound challenge to his religious principles in the “Pantheism Controversy” that he wages with Jacobi over Lessing's alleged Spinozism. To defend his enlightened religious position, Mendelssohn develops a pragmatic religious idealism that inaugurates an anthropocentric turn in religious thought later developed by thinkers such as Hermann Cohen and Mordecai Kaplan.