By: Moses Mendelssohn, Bruce Rosenstock

Hardcover

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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.ÿLast 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.ÿAt 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.ÿLessing'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 Schw„rmer, the religious fanatic who rejects reason in favor of belief in suprarational revelation.

"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, co-editor of The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History

Abbreviations	p. vii
Introduction to the Translation	p. ix
Notes on the Translation	p. xxxvii
For Further Reading	p. xxxix
Morning Hours or, Lectures on the Existence of God	p. 1
Preliminary Remarks	p. 3
Epistemic Groundwork, Concerning Truth, Appearance, and Error	p. 7
What Is Truth?	p. 9
Cause. Effect. Ground. Power	p. 16
Self-Evidence-Immediate Knowledge. Rational Knowledge-Natural Knowledge	p. 25
Truth and Illusion	p. 31
Existence. Waking. Dreams. Delusion	p. 38
The Connection of Our Ideas. Idealism	p. 44
Continuation. Quarrel of Idealists with the Dualists. Truth Drive and Approbation Drive	p. 51
Systematic Exposition of the Concepts Related to the Existence of God	p. 59
Introduction. Importance of the Investigation. On the Principle of Basedow's Principle of the Duty to Believe. Axioms	p. 61
Certainty of the Pure and Applied Doctrine of Magnitudes. Comparison with the Certainty of the Proof of the Existence of God. Various Methods for Such a Proof	p. 68
Allegorical Dream. Reason and Common Sense. Proofs of the Existence of God, According to the System of the Idealists, Based on Our Own Existence. Also Possibly Based on the Ideal Existence of an Objective Sense-World	p. 72
Epicureanism. Luck. Coincidence. Number of Causes and Effects, without End, with No Beginning. Progress to Infinity, Forward and Backward. Timelessness, without Beginning, without End, and without Forward Progress	p. 79
Sufficient Reason Grounding the Contingent in the Necessary. The Former Is Somewhere and Sometime, the Latter Is Everywhere and Always. The Former Is Only in Relation to Space and Time, the Latter Is Absolutely the Best and Most Perfect. Everything That Exists Is the Best. All Thoughts Belonging to God, insofar as They Have the Best as Their Goal, Achieve Actuality	p. 84
Spinozism. Pantheism. All Is One and One Is All. Refutation	p. 92
Continued Quarrel with the Pantheists. Convergence, Point of Union with Them. Innocuousness of Purified Pantheism, Compatibility with Religion and Morality, insofar as They Are Practical	p. 101
Lessing. His Service to the Religion of Reason. His Thoughts Concerning Purified Pantheism	p. 110
Explanation of the Concepts of Necessity, Randomness, Independence, and Dependence. Attempt at a New Proof for the Existence of God from the Incompleteness of Self-Knowledge	p. 120
A priori Grounds of Proof of the Existence of a Most Perfect, Necessary, Independent Being	p. 129
To the Friends of Lessing	p. 139
Notes	p. 177
References	p. 215
Index	p. 221
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ISBN: 9780252036873
ISBN-10: 0252036875
Audience: Professional
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 272
Published: 29th May 2012
Dimensions (cm): 23.6 x 15.2  x 2.3
Weight (kg): 0.499