Salomon Maimon

Infobox Philosopher
region = Western Philosophy
era = 18th-century philosophy
color = #B0C4DE


caption = Salomon Maimon
name = Salomon Maimon
birth = 1754
death = 22 November, 1800
school_tradition = German Idealism
main_interests = Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics
influences = Kant, Reinhold, Leibniz, Hume
influenced = Fichte, Deleuze
notable_ideas = Critique of Kant's Quid Juris and Quid Factis, the Doctrine of Differentials, the Principle of Determinability

Salomon ben Josua Maimon (1754, Sukowiborg/Niasviž, near Mirz, Polish Lithuania - 22 November 1800, Nieder-Siegersdorf_*, Niederschlesien) was a German philosopher born of Jewish parentage in Belorussia.

Early years

Salomon Maimon (real name Cheiman) was born and grew up in Mir in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (now in Belarus). He finished Jewish school in Mir, and learned the Talmud by age 9. He was only twelve when he was married to a girl from Nesvizh. At the age 14 he was already a father and was making money by teaching Talmud. Later he learned some German from books and walked all the way to Slutsk, where he met a rabbi who had studied in Germany. He borrowed German books on physics, optics and medicine from him. After that he became determined to study further.

In Germany

At the age of 25 he left for Germany and studied medicine in Berlin. In 1770 he severed his connection with his orthodox co-religionists by his critical commentary on the Moreh Nebukhim of Maimonides, and devoted himself to the study of philosophy on the lines of Wolff and Moses Mendelssohn. After many vicissitudes he found a peaceful residence in the house of Count Kalkreuth at Nieder-Siegersdorf in 1790. During the ensuing ten years he published the works which have made his reputation as a critical philosopher. Hitherto his life had been a long struggle against difficulties of all kinds. From his autobiography, it is clear that his keen critical faculty was developed in great measure by the slender means of culture at his disposal. It was not until 1788 that he made the acquaintance of the Kantian philosophy, which was to form the basis of his lifework, and as early as 1790 he published the "Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie", in which he formulates his objections to the system.

Thinking

He seizes upon the fundamental incompatibility of a consciousness which can apprehend, and yet is separated from, the thing-in-itself. That which is object of thought cannot be outside consciousness; just as in mathematics - 1 is an unreal quantity, so things-in-themselves are "ex hypothesi" outside consciousness, i.e. are unthinkable. The Kantian paradox he explains as the result of an attempt to explain the origin of the given in consciousness. The form of things is admittedly subjective; the mind endeavours to explain the material of the given in the same terms, an attempt which is not only impossible but involves a denial of the elementary laws of thought. Knowledge of the given is, therefore, essentially incomplete. Complete or perfect knowledge is confined to the domain of pure thought, to logic and mathematics. Thus the problem of the thing-in-itself is dismissed from the inquiry, and philosophy is limited to the sphere of pure thought. The Kantian categories are demonstrable and true, but their application to the given is meaningless and unthinkable. By this critical scepticism Maimon takes up a position intermediate between Kant and Hume. Hume's attitude to the empirical is entirely supported by Maimon. The causal concept, as given by experience, expresses not a necessary objective order of things, but an ordered scheme of perception; it is subjective and cannot be postulated as a concrete law apart from consciousness. The main argument of the "Transcendentalphilosophie" not only drew from Kant, who saw it in MS. and remarked that Maimon alone of his all critics had mastered the true meaning of his philosophy, but also directed the path of most subsequent criticism.

References

*Atlas, Samuel. "From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon". The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965.
*Bansen, Jan. "The Antinomy of Thought: Maimonian Skepticism and the Relation between Thoughts and Objects". Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991.
*Bergmann, Samuel Hugo. "The Autobiography of Salomon Maimon with an Essay on Maimon's Philosophy". London: The East and West Library, 1954.
*Bergmann, Samuel , Hugo. "The Philosophy of Salomon Maimon". Translated from the Hebrew by Noah J. Jacobs. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1967.
*Maimon, Solomon. "Gesammelte Werke". Volumes 1-7. Edited by V. Verra. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970.

External links

* [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimon/ Entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
* [http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/maimon.htm Entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]