Moses Mendelssohn Flashcards
Who was Moses Mendelssohn?
Mendelssohn was a leading philosopher of the enlightenment in Germany and became a spiritual leader of the Jews.
Where was he born?
He was born in Dessau, Germany, and as a chil suffered from a disease that left him with a curvature of the spine and lifelong damage to his nervous system.
Where and by whom was he educated?
Mendelssohn was educated by the Rabbi of Dessau, David Fraenkel. Mendelssohn followed him to Berlin in 17453, where he struggled to find employment whilst still studying. As well as German and Hebrew, he studied Latin, Greek, English, French and Italian. In 1750, he found employment as a teacher in the home of a silk merchant, Isaac Bernhard. In 1754, he took over the accounting for the silk factory and soon became a partner. He remained a merchant for the rest of his life.
What was it like for him as a Jew in Berlin?
As a Jew, it was not until 1763 that he was granted right of residence in Berlin. In 1762, he married Fromet Guggenheim from Hamburg and had six children with her.
What happened to him in 1771?
In 1771, he had a nervous breakdown and in 1783, he wrote Jersulalem. In this, he argued that excommunication was opposite to the nature of religion and that anyone should be free to pray to God in their own way and that right should be guaranteed by the Church and state.
Immortality of the soul
- Developed concept in Phaedon in 1767 modelled on Plato’s Phaedo.
- There is an infinite number of souls that form the inner part of the universe. The soul is an element that imposes a form on the body.
- It does not change with death and is imperishable.
- The goodness of God guarantees that the soul will retain its consciousness.
Freewill.
- If every act of will has a cause, then human freedom cannot exist.
- Divine retribution is not an end in itself but simply a means of preparing the person for life in the world to come.
- Justice is superseded by goodness and no one is permanently excluded from divine goodness.
Existence of God
- He used a modification of the ontological argument.
- Humanity has an idea from God; because this idea cannot have come from experience; it is a priori.
- There must be a connection between the idea of an absolutely perfect being and its existence, because existence must be one of its attributes.
Beliefs about Judaism.
- All human beings have innate capacity to discover the existence of God, providence and the hereafter but Judaism is different - it contains a revealed law. ]
- Divine commandments were revealed to God’s chosen people, not dogmas - purpose was to make Israel into a priestly people.
- Jewish law does not give power to the authorities to persecute individuals for holding false doctrines.
- But Jews should still follow God’s laws.
- Advocated the distinctive features of the Jewish faith. #
- He combined philosophical theism and Jewish traditionalism to transcend the constrictions of ghetto life and enter mainstream Western European culture as an observant law.
Mendelssohn
- He drew 3 distinctions between natural religion and Jewish faith.
- Logically neccessary truth.
- Contingent truths.
- Temporal truths.
