A Radical 18th-Century Jewish Philosopher and His Misbegotten Quest for Total Truth

Solomon Maimon abandoned his wife and children in search of intellectual perfection, thereby entirely missing the point.


Observation
Michah Gottlieb
Oct. 11 2019
About the author

Michah Gottlieb is associate professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at New York University. His new book, The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise, is forthcoming from
Oxford University Press.

Some philosophers have led ethically unimpeachable, near-saintly lives. Socrates, Spinoza, and Moses Mendelssohn were celebrated for their generosity and personal virtue.

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More about: Haskalah, History & Ideas, Kant, Maimonides, Philosophy, Solomon Maimon

 
 
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