Salomon Maimon

The first complete and annotated English translation of Maimon’s influential and delightfully entertaining memoir

Solomon Maimon's autobiography has delighted readers for more than two hundred years, from Goethe, Schiller, and George Eliot to Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. The American poet and critic Adam Kirsch has named it one of the most crucial Jewish books of modern times. Here is the first complete and annotated English edition of this enduring and lively work.

Born into a down-on-its-luck provincial Jewish family in 1753, Maimon quickly distinguished himself as a prodigy in learning. Even as a young child, he chafed at the constraints of his Talmudic education and rabbinical training. He recounts how he sought stimulation in the Hasidic community and among students of the Kabbalah—and offers rare and often wickedly funny accounts of both. After a series of picaresque misadventures, Maimon reached Berlin, where he became part of the city's famed Jewish Enlightenment and achieved the philosophical education he so desperately wanted, winning acclaim for being the "sharpest" of Kant's critics, as Kant himself described him.

This new edition restores text cut from the abridged 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, which has long been the only available English edition. Paul Reitter's translation is brilliantly sensitive to the subtleties of Maimon's prose while providing a fluid rendering that contemporary readers will enjoy, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes by Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher that give invaluable insights into Maimon and his extraordinary life. The book also features an afterword by Gideon Freudenthal that provides an authoritative overview of Maimon's contribution to modern philosophy.

Resumo: Em nossa pesquisa, estudaremos o conceito de determinação, tal como esse conceito é concebido por Hegel e utilizado por ele a fim de fornecer uma fundamentação lógica para a sua concepção da autodeterminação racional enquanto fundamento de nosso conhecimento. Acreditamos que o conceito de determinação, apesar de, por vezes, aparentar ser de importância secundária, é central para que se possa compreender o projeto de colocar a autodeterminação racional no fundamento de nosso conhecimento, projeto este que seria advogado por Hegel e, antes dele, pelos outros grandes proponentes do idealismo alemão. De fato, esperamos mostrar que, para colocar a autodeterminação racional como fundamento de nosso conhecimento, foi chave, para Hegel, reformular o conceito de determinação em relação ao modo com que ele havia sido usado e entendido pelos seus antecessores. Esperamos, assim, expor como uma certa concepção de determinação estaria no cerne do projeto filosófico de Hegel.

The issue of negation and the possibility of self-negation stand at the very center of the philosophical dialogue between the systems of Spinoza and Hegel, and in this paper I will attempt to provide a preliminary explication of this foundational debate between the two systems. In the first part of the paper I will argue that the “determination is negation” formula has been understood in at least three distinct senses among the German Idealists, and as a result many of the participants in the discussion of this formula were actually talking past each other. The clarification of the three distinct senses of the formula will lead, in the second part of the paper, to a more precise evaluation of the fundamental debate between Spinoza and Hegel (and the German Idealists in general) regarding the possibility (or even necessity) of self-negation. In this part I will evaluate the validity of each interpretation of the determination formula, and motivate the positions of the various participants in the debate.

The term ‘Political Theology’ was not coined in the twentieth century. I am not absolutely sure about who was the first to introduce the term. As we shall shortly see, Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) used the term as part of the title to one of the chapters of his 1792/3 Lebensgeschichte, and it is the primary aim of my chapter to explain his understanding of the term.
The idea that views about the divine (‘theology’) – true or false – could have an important role in establishing (or undermining) political order and authority, or even in the promotion of the ideal state, goes back to Maimonides, al-Farabi, and ultimately, Plato. We are likely to hear echoes of these writers in the current chapter. Still, in addressing the background of Maimon’s discussion of political theology, I will focus on the one text which exerted the most significant influence on Maimon’s discussion of the issue: Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise (1670).
In order to explain Maimon’s understanding of political theology, we will proceed in the following order. In the first part of the chapter we will have our first encounter with the term and the role of secrets in religious matters. The second part will study Maimon’s definitions of, and distinctions among, various forms of religion. In the third and final part we will explore Maimon’s views about “the greatest of all the mysteries of the Jewish religion”  and about the nature of that religion.

Inhalt

Lidia Gasperoni
Die irrationale Wurzel bei Salomon Maimon. Ein Problem zwischen
Mathematik und Philosophie
Lars Leeten
Vernunft am Abgrund. Motive der Endlichkeit bei Kant
Niklas Hebing
Die Bändigung des Irrationalen. Genie und Geschmack in Kants Ästhetik
Valentin Pluder
Kein Gedanke fasst das Ganze. Arationales und System in der klassischen
Deutschen Philosophie
Héctor Ferreiro
Hegels Theorie der Intelligenz als Grundlegung der Unmöglichkeit des
Unvernünftigen
Guillaume Lejeune
Irrationalität und Bildung nach Hegel
Max Winter
Ist die Geschichte irrational? Rückfragen an Hegel
Cristiana Senigaglia
Ist der Standpunkt der Moralität irrational?
Christoph Schmitt-Maaß
Die Dialektik der anakreontischen Aufklärung. Aspekte der
Rationalisierung bürgerlicher Sexualität um 1760
Andreas Woyke
Aporien einer rationalen Lebensorientierung in der neuzeitlichen
Philosophie und Potentiale ihrer Überwindung
Thijs Lijster
Adorno on Mimesis. Irrationality or a Different Rationality?
Henrike Lerch
Die Irrationalität des Lebens. Zu Diltheys Lebensphilosophie und dem
Irrationalismusvorwurf
Georg Neugebauer
Die Grenzen der Rationalität in Max Webers frühen Aufsätzen zur
Wissenschaftslehre
Matthias Wunsch
Lebensphilosophie und Irrationalismus. Dilthey – Bergson – Plessner
Astrid Wagner
Pluralität der Rationalitätsformen. Zur Irrationalität des interkulturellen
Dialoges
Christoph Binkelmann
i – oder warum das Imaginäre das eigentlich Irrationale ist . . . . . . . . . 239

This paper takes its motivation from investigations on the influence Kant’s reflections on meta-philosophy, more precisely, his discussions of the possibility  of developing a scientific method for philosophy. My broad claim is that Kant thereby sets the ground for specific conception of philosophical science, which can be traced throughout much of Post-Kantian philosophy. At the heart of this programme stands the idea that philosophy can only become a science by virtue of adopting a scientific method. In this paper, I argue that Solomon Maimon’s method of philosophical fictions presents one implementation of this research programme. Ensuing from his criticism of Kant’s First Critique, Maimon proposes an understanding of philosophy that treats its theoretical principles and concepts as scientific fictions and is science by virtue of employing this method of fictions. Only by virtue of producing what I call 'fictions of systematicity', that is, only by virtue of providing models to treat A as if it instantiated feature F (e.g. nature as if it were systematically ordered), does philosophy proceed in scientific manner. Philosophical fictions, so Maimon, should function as model-systems that are manipulated and investigated to get clear about the possibilities and limits of genuine scientific explanation to then instruct actual scientific practice from a normative standpoint.

The main ambition of this study is to show that, on a meta-level, history and philosophy in the modern era actually deal with the same fundamental problematic, namely that of the status of the transcendental and the empirical and their interrelation. What it calls metacritique, or ‘critique of critique,’ is this tradition in modern philosophical and historical thought which problematizes the relation between the transcendental and the empirical and consequently seeks to determine a certain distribution of these domains. The thoughts and events whose emergence and development are traced in this study are divided into two main parts. The first of these parts relates the rise of Kantian critique and its creation of the concept pair transcendental-empirical, followed by the response to this problematic in Kant’s contemporaries. The effects of this initial period—1780-1800—are then pursued throughout nineteenth and twentieth century discourses limited to the disciplines of history and philosophy, dominated by key figures such as Ranke, Droysen, Nietzsche and Dilthey. In the second part of the study, the work of Deleuze, Foucault, and Koselleck, three relatively recent examples in which this modern tradition continues, will be explored, in order to bring to light the same tension between the transcendental and the empirical as motivating their respective projects and operating within their writings; a tension, moreover, to which each responded in his own manner. For all these influential scholars, too, Kant is to be considered as both an important historical figure as well as a significant influence upon their own thought and methodologies. Moreover, ‘post-structuralists’ Foucault and Deleuze are typically viewed (by proponents and opponents alike) as eager to move away from all that can be remotely considered ‘transcendental.’ It will be the somewhat polemical task of this study to show that their approaches are in fact far more engaging, nuanced and instructive than has been assumed—by historians in particular. Accordingly, the study will conclude by proposing a new ground for the human sciences through a revitalization of the concept of the transcendental (vis-à-vis the empirical) on the basis of these twentieth century scholars.

Hassidism hardly took root in Germany or anywhere else in Western Europe until the late twentieth century.  Still, the main ideas of Hasidism were presented lucidly to the German public – both Jewish and Gentile – already in 1792, through Salomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte. Maimon dedicates a chapter and a half of his autobiography to the description and analysis of the new Hassidic movement.  The report of his visit to the court of R.  Dov Ber of Mezerich, the prominent leader of the emerging movement at the time, is probably the most important external testimony we have about the emergence of Hasidism. Maimon’s closeness to the events and his first-hand encounter with central figures of the movement make his testimony highly valuable; at the same time, this very closeness precluded Maimon’s capturing the wider historical significance of the events he witnessed.
True to the ideals of his philosophical heroes, Maimonides and Spinoza, Maimon considered knowledge to be man’s summum bonum.  Yet, through a historical irony, Maimon was hardly aware of his role in the formation of two almost contemporaneous movements: Hassidism, on the one hand, and German Idealism, on the other. The two intellectual movements were worlds apart, and if not for Maimon’s participation in both, we would probably say that they had nothing in common. But Maimon’s co-presence in both movements yielded a crucial commonality: the notion of acosmism. That all particularity was truly a manifestation of the infinity of God—and thus the distinct reality of particularity an illusion—was one of the most striking teachings of Hasidism. As I will soon show, Maimon was already fascinated by this teaching when he visited the court of the Maggid around 1770. Twenty years later, he would coin the term ‘acosmism’ to describe the philosophy of Spinoza.  The young Hegel, who was an avid reader of K.P. Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelekunde,  where various chapters of Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte first appeared, would adopt from Maimon the view of Spinozism as a system diametrically opposed to atheism, or as a philosophy of “acosmism,” the view that only God, but not the world of finite things, truly exists.
In the first part of this paper I will study Maimon’s description of the emerging Hassidic movement. For the most part, Maimon’s observations are typically penetrating and precise. Indeed, recent scholarly research on the teachings of the Maggid has been very successful in documenting various teachings quoted by Maimon in the writings of the Maggid and his immediate disciples.  But even Maimon’s errors - such as his announcement (in 1792) that the opposition to Hassidism by the old Rabbinic establishment was able to eradicate the movement – are highly informative and significant. Our study of Maimon’s testimony will focus mostly on his reconstruction of the Hassidic teaching of the annihilation of the ‘I’ and its complete submersion in the infinity of God. In the second part of my paper, I will focus on Maimon’s critique of Hassidism and his claim that while the doctrine of self-submersion in God is essentially right, the Hassidic masters and their disciples failed to pursue their deep insight in the proper manner due to their lack of knowledge of nature and philosophy. I will then point out the commonalities Maimon alludes to between the early teachings of Hassidism and the philosophy of Spinoza.

Salomon Maimon (1753–1800) stands as one of the most acute, original, and complicated philosophers — and certainly one of the most fascinating personalities — of the eighteenth century. By granting the principle of sufficient reason unlimited validity Maimon embraces a radical form of rationalism. His robust criteria for the validity of knowledge suggests that even Kant’s attempt to limit epistemological claims to the realm of possible experience cannot be secured without a substantial ontological commitment. Kant faces a severe choice: either adopt elements from the dogmatic, rationalist, metaphysics he set out to challenge, or accept that his system is undermined by skepticism. In revealing what he sees as the skeptical implications of rationalism, Maimon raises important objections to Kant’s critical idealism, as well as develops deep insights into the problems of experience and givenness. His ‘skeptically rationalist’ claims about the nature and limits of human cognition present a distinctive perspective on the Kantian project of transcendental idealism, as well as on central epistemological issues concerning the relation between thought and the world. The eminent German scholar, Manfred Frank recently suggested that Maimon is the “last great philosopher” about to be discovered.

Hegel define famosamente o Absoluto – embora, como ele mesmo note, essa seja uma definição abstrata do mesmo3 - como a identidade da identidade e da diferença. Essa definição, como a própria articulação dos termos dá a entender, coloca o acento na identidade, e não na diferença, por mais que a diferença esteja contida nela – pois, afinal, trata-se da identidade da identidade e da diferença, e não, por exemplo, da diferença da identidade e da diferença. Essa definição do Absoluto, por sua vez, não pode ser separada do idealismo de Hegel – da sua concepção, em outras palavras, do real como sendo o automovimento do do pensamento ou do conceito, do idealismo, em outras palavras, como a posição filosófica segundo a qual a estrutura e o processo do pensamento é a estrutura e o processo do real. Segundo esse idealismo, portanto, aquilo que explicaria por que a realidade é determinada do modo que ela é – por que as coisas são determinadas do modo que elas são – seria o pensamento, entendido não como o pensamento de um indivíduo ou de uma consciência particular, mas sim como o modo com que as coisas são organizadas no pensamento, ou de maneira mais simples, simplesmente o modo com que as coisassão no pensamento.
Essa compreensão do idealismo, porém, talvez ainda não nos leve muito adiante – pois, afinal, que seria o modo como que as coisas são no pensamento? Para responder a essa pergunta, precisamos voltar novamente à definição de Absoluto dada por Hegel: identidade da identidade e da diferença. É a identidade, portanto, que define o modo com que as coisas são no pensamento – embora essa identidade, para ser a identidade absoluta, tenha de conter em si, necessariamente, a diferença.
Contudo, é preciso ainda dar um passo adiante e se perguntar: em que consiste a identidade, tal como concebida nesse contexto, isto é, concebida como um modo das coisas serem no pensamento? Pensar que algo é idêntico, significa, em outras palavras, estabelecer uma relação entre dois termos – um sujeito e um predicado. Quando dizemos que algo é idêntico, dizemos que ele é idêntico a alguma coisa
– mesmo que essa alguma coisa seja ele mesmo. Assim, a identidade consiste em uma relação entre dois termos, relação por meio da qual eles são unidos, ligados um ao outro e se tornam, assim, parte de uma mesma unidade, de um mesmo todo. A identidade é uma relação pela qual se une sujeito e predicado – mesmo quando sujeito e predicado são, fundamentalmente, o mesmo.
Se a identidade, porém, é uma relação, isso já nos leva, porém, um passo adiante na nossa definição do que seja o idealismo avançado por Hegel. A identidade é uma relação, isto é, um determinado modo de ligar termos, mais especificamente os termos do sujeito e do predicado de um juízo. A relação, portanto, não apresenta os termos de maneira independente, por si mesmos e isolados, mas sim sob umadeterminada ligação, sob a forma de sua ligação um com o outro. A relação, entre outras palavras, é a forma do pensamento, a forma do juízo, não o seu conteúdo. Ou, colocado de outro modo: a relação entre sujeito e predicado é forma, porque modo de apresentação dos termos do juízo em sua unidade, diferentemente do conteúdo, da matéria, que é aquilo que é apresentado por meio dessa forma. Deve-se associar a relação à forma, porque a forma, justamente, é aquilo que o conteúdo é não
isoladamente, mas sim em sua relação a algo. Assim, estamos em condição de oferecer uma explicação mais profunda do que seja o idealismo de Hegel – idealismo que descrevermos primeiramente, justamente, pela definição do Absoluto como identidade da identidade e da diferença. Uma vez que, conforme vimos, a identidade é a relação que une sujeito e predicado e que, portanto, é a forma da sua unidade, a diferença, por sua vez, faz, justamente, as vezes do conteúdo – de modo que a
identidade da identidade e da diferença poderia ser compreendida, igualmente, como a forma da forma e do conteúdo. O idealismo, portanto, segundo esses termos – ao menos como gostaríamos de propor aqui – é, fundamentalmente, segundo a proposição da identidade da identidade e da diferença, onde a identidade teria o
papel determinante, a ideia de que a forma é determinante do conteúdo. De fato, gostaríamos de defender aqui que, essa ideia é a ideia fundamental daquilo que caracteriza o idealismo alemão, justamente, em seu idealismo. Mais, pretendemos mostrar em que sentido com Hegel, e em particular no início de sua Ciência da
Lógica, essa ideia é levada a seus limites – para tanto, porém, precisamos, antes, dar um passo atrás e observar como essa ideia tem sua origem primeiramente em Kant e, a partir dele, se desenvolve até chegar à sua culminação em Hegel – o que, como veremos, implicará, ao mesmo tempo, uma inversão quase que completa da maneira como se concebe o modo com que as coisas são determinadas ou, em outras palavras, aquilo em que consiste a sua determinação.

Yitzhak Melamed works at the intersection of philosophy (primarily metaphysics), Jewish and religious studies, the history of science, and the humanities in general. He focuses on foundational questions, which he aspires to approach with both philosophical and historical rigor. In particular, he is interested in well-argued views that are commonly treated as “counter-intuitive”; such views, he thinks, may help us challenge our own well-fortified beliefs, force us to motivate what we deem to be obvious, and reveal our conceptual blind spots. Here he discusses Spinoza’s overall project, monism and how to understand Spinoza’s version of it, infinite modes, metaphysics, God, Thought, Thought-Being dualism, Spinoza’s relationship with German Idealism, German Idealism as a combination of Spinoza and Kant, his rationalism and German Idealism, Herder and Spinoza, determinatio est negatio and Hegel, and what Spinoza might have thought about German Idealism.

On where the Cutting Edge of the Western Tradition might be found with respect to the development of Fundamental Ontology within Continental Philosophy

-- Key Words:  Continental Philosophy, Ways of Being, Fragmentation of Being, Time, Cutting Edge

Maimon once described the philosophical project underlying his Essay on Transcendental Philosophy as an attempt “to unify Kantian philosophy with Spinozism”. But in the only reference to Spinoza in the Essay, he stresses that Spinoza was not the source of his argument. In this paper I will argue that, notwithstanding the disclaimer, Maimon’s solution for the problems that in his view haunted Kant’s theory of knowledge was indeed significantly
influenced by Spinoza, as well as by the medieval Jewish Aristotelian Maimonides. Since the key concept in the solution proposed by Maimon is the metaphysical doctrine of the “infinite
intellect”, my focus will be on clarifying how this doctrine is related to Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine intellect and to Spinoza’s doctrine of Deus sive Natura. My main contention is that important aspects of Maimon’s doctrine of the “infinite intellect” are based on a Spinozistic interpretation of Maimonides’ doctrine of the divine intellect.

نبذة عن الكتاب
كان لابن رشد أثر بالغ وعميق في الفكر الأوروبي في أواخر العصور الوسطى وعصر  النهضة، وقد انتشرت الدراسات المتخصصة التي ترصد الحضور الرشدي في أوروبا بين القرنين الثالث عشر والسادس عشر؛ وبات مستقراً لدى الباحثين وجود تيارات رشدية ثلاثة في هذه الفترة: الرشدية اللاتينية والرشدية النهضوية والرشدية اليهودية. وكانت الرشدية بكل تياراتها محل اهتمام السلطات الكنسية التي ظلت تلاحق الرشديين وأفكارهم بالحظر والإدانة طوال أربعة قرون. وفي مقابل هذا الحضور الطاغي للفكر الرشدي في تلك القرون، فإن فلاسفة أوروبا المحدثين، ابتداءً من القرن السابع عشر، كانوا صامتين تماماً إزاء ابن رشد، وكأنه اختفى فجأة من الأفق الفكري الأوروبي. فهل كفت الفلسفة الرشدية عن الحضور والتأثير في أوروبا ابتداءً من القرن السابع عشر؟ تثبت هذه الدراسة أن ابن رشد ظل مؤثراً وبصورة عميقة في فلاسفة أوروبا المحدثين، سواء كان هذا الأثر بالإيجاب عن طريق اتخاذ الأفكار الرشدية صوراً جديدة لدى بعض الفلاسفة، أهمهم سبينوزا وسليمان ميمون وفويرباخ، أو بالسلب عن طريق مقاومة البعض الآخر للأفكار الرشدية وإن على نحو غير صريح يسكت عن ذكر ابن رشد نفسه، كما في حالة ديكارت، أو بمحاولة تجاوز الأفكار الرشدية وإشكالياتها دون التصريح بمصدرها الرشدي كما في حالة كانط. تدخل هذه الدراسة في مقارنات بين ابن رشد من جهة وفلاسفة أوروبا من جهة أخرى، لتوضح أن الفلسفة الأوروبية الحديثة لم تتجاوز أفق الرشدية، بل ظلت تتعامل مع هذا الأفق وإن لم تصرح به.

The genius of Gershom Scholem is largely beyond dispute. Even his fiercest critics admire his integrity and dedication, among other qualities. 1 Yet one of Scholem's greatest accomplishments has gone mostly unnoticed. Scholem portrayed his Zionism and his attraction to the kabbalah as a response to the largely assimilated modern Jewish environment in which he grew up. The young Scholem, it seems, joined the Zionist movement because it offered a tangible solution to the contemporary problems of Jewish life in exile. It appears that this was the context in which he dedicated himself to the study of the kabbalah. Against the background of spiritual confusion and social apathy endemic to the modern Jewish environment of his childhood, Scholem set out to rediscover the veiled sources of Jewish mythology and make them relevant again. The image that Scholem thus created is suggested by the title of his autobiography, From Berlin to Jerusalem. With this book Scholem implied that he had extracted himself from the confusion of exile and found clarity in

Despite extant correspondence and mutual admiration, the relationship between Goethe and Salomon Maimon has only been touched upon once in the literature, and further clarification of the link between them remains a desideratum. Here I propose that the way to understand their seeing eye to eye is through Spinoza, and specifically their apparently shared interest in Spinoza’s notion of scientia intuitiva. Initially I provide some context so as to make clear what is so extraordinary about Maimon’s role here. Then I give a sketch of the relation Maimon and Goethe had both to Spinoza and each other while clarifying what is at stake. I conclude with various new findings.

The infinite judgement has long been forgotten and yet, as I am about to demonstrate, it may be urgent to revive it for its critical and productive potential. An infinite judgement is neither analytic nor synthetic; it does not produce logical truths, nor true representations, but it establishes the genetic conditions of real objects and the concepts appropriate to them. It is through infinite judgements that we reach the principle of transcendental logic, in the depths of which all reality can emerge in its material and sensible singularity, making possible all generalization and formal abstraction.

Inicialmente, a hipótese que seguimos é a de que o problema da gênese precede e condiciona o olhar de Deleuze sobre Kant ao longo de sua obra, expressamente o formulado por Maïmon. Defendemos, então, que a aliança entre os dois se justifica por duas razões principais. Em primeiro lugar, ela cumpre uma função estratégica: Deleuze retorna para as problemáticas maïmonianas que geraram a tradição pós-kantiana em seu início, mas para formular soluções alternativas ao idealismo alemão através de um conjunto de aliados próprio. Em segundo lugar, procuramos demonstrar como a opção de Deleuze inscreve sua leitura de Kant na cultura de seu tempo, principalmente por conta da influência dos escritos de Gueroult sobre ele. Em seguida, com base em Diferença e repetição (1968) e a partir das exigências genéticas, abordamos as ambiguidades do kantismo, apontando como a crítica contra Kant cumpre uma função programática, pois na ambiguidade atribuída às teses do Cogito, Tempo e Ideia, ao mesmo tempo Deleuze estabelece as coordenadas do problema que orientará sua retomada da filosofia transcendental. Por fim, introduzimos a ruptura de Deleuze com a filosofia de Kant. A partir da tripla camada de questões desenvolvidas nos momentos anteriores (o problema da gênese, o debate francês em torno dele e as ambiguidades do kantismo), trata-se de destacar o papel de Maïmon na busca por um novo regime de fundamentação, especialmente no que diz respeito à gênese diferencial da sensação. Com o conceito de empirismo transcendental, Deleuze reconduz as Ideias do entendimento infinito de Maïmon ao domínio empirista da experiência real.

Initially, the hypothesis we followed is that the problem of genesis precedes and conditions Deleuze's gaze on Kant, expressly that formulated by Maïmon. We argue, then, that the alliance between the two is justified for two main reasons. Firstly, it fulfills a strategic function: Deleuze returns to Maïmon´s problems that generated the post-Kantian tradition at the beginning, but to formulate alternative solutions to German idealism through a set of its own allies. Second, we try to demonstrate how Deleuze's option inscribes his reading of Kant in the culture of his time, mainly because of the influence of Gueroult's writings on him. Based on Difference and repetition (1968) and from the genetic requirements, we approach the ambiguities of Kantism, pointing out how the criticism of Kant fulfills a programmatic function, because in the ambiguity attributed to the Kantian theses of Cogito, Time and Idea, at the same time Deleuze establishes the coordinates of the problem that will guide his return to transcendental philosophy. Finally, we introduce Deleuze's break with Kant's philosophy. Based on the triple layer of questions developed in previous moments (the problem of genesis, the French debate around it and the ambiguities of Kantism), it is necessary to highlight the role of Maïmon in the search for a new regime of foundation, especially in that concerns the differential genesis of sensation. With the concept of transcendental empiricism, Deleuze brings the Ideas of Maïmon's infinite understanding back to the realm empiricist of the real experience.

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, je vous remercie de siéger parmi les membres du jury pour la soutenance de ma thèse de doctorat en philosophie. Je vais tenter d'exposer mes quatre années de recherche sur la figure littéraire du diable, en une série de 8 point, cette présentation incluse, et il faudrait commencer à mon sens par le statut hybride de ces 521 pages. En effet s'est-il agit pour moi de parvenir à esquisser la ligne des horizons du diable, et c'est précisément le sens de mon titre. J'ai parlé des horizons du diable au nom du paysage dans lequel le diable s'inscrit, et du caractère mobile de ce paysage. Mais également au nom de son horizon comme perspective interne, à l'intérieur de la galerie des masques diaboliques, c'est-à-dire au nom de ce qui en est donné à voir dans les imaginaires et ce qui en est donné à penser dans l'histoire des concepts. Ma démarche est partie de la discipline de la littérature comparée en tant que le matériau littéraire a immédiatement constitué, dès les premiers mois de cette recherche, le nuage phénoménal par lequel le diable s'est rendu saisissable au fil des cinq siècles étudiés. De ce fait m'a-t-il fallu penser certaines lignes de crêtes de cette figure, lignes de crêtes que je dirais autonomes, mais aussi l'un des fleuves majeurs par lesquels s'exprime la littérarité du diable : le mythe de Faust. Au cadre disciplinaire de la littérature comparée s'ajouta donc immédiatement la question des conditions formelles et des implications de la matérialité qui sont celles du mythe, partant, il m'a paru judicieux de me tourner du côté de la philosophie du mythe. Cependant la littérature comparée n'était pas épuisée par cette inclusion de la philosophie du mythe dans ses prérogatives, et la plupart des études herméneutiques qui portent sur le mythe, notamment le mythe de Prométhée, s'inscrivent d'ailleurs dans une relative pluridisciplinarité mêlant littérature comparée et philologie. sur 1 11

Das ursprüngliche Projekt der kantischen Philosophie besteht nach der Monadologia Physica von 1756 darin, eine metaphysica cum geometria iuncta zu etablieren, um die Erkenntnis der Natur zu begründen. Später, in seiner Kritik der reinen Vernunft (KrV), entwickelt Kant seine transzendentale Begründung der Erkenntnis als Theorie der Selbstsetzung (KrV, B XIV). Aber die KrV macht eher eine methodologische Abhandlung als ein Werk von metaphysischem Inhalt aus. In diesem Sinne erreicht die KrV effektiv eine Erkenntnismethode, die auf der Unterscheidung zwischen Erscheinungen und Dingen an sich beruht. In Bezug auf den inneren Mechanismus der Subjektivität bietet die KrV auch ein epigenetisches Modell (KrV, B 167) an, mit dem sich das Subjekt als Erkenntnisobjekt in die Bewegung der Selbstaffektion setzt. Diese Selbstsetzung beruht jedoch nur auf der Erkenntnisform (Mathematik) und nicht auf der Erkenntnismaterie (Physik). Um die materielle Sebstsetzung zu festigen, muss Kant das metaphysische Postulat einer transzendentalen Materie (KrV, A 143) festlegen, das in der Lage ist, den Raum zu erfüllen und die kategorialen Bestimmungen der empirischen Materie zu erklären. Dieses Postulat wird nur im Opus postumum unter der Benennung Äther angeboten. In diesem Sinne gelingt es dem Äther, zusammen mit seinem Beitrag zur Lösung schwerwiegender methodologischer Probleme der KrV (Affektionsproblem), das Projekt einer Erkenntnistheorie als Selbstsetzung zu vollenden, indem er den epigenetischen Mechanismus der Subjektivität auf die Materie projiziert. Erst im Opus postumum wird also das ursprüngliche Projekt der Kantischen Philosophie als metaphysica cum geometria iuncta erreicht, was mit der vorliegenden Arbeit aufgezeigt wird und ein Derivat in der Kantforschung darstellt.

This article represents an analysis of the Jewish philosophy of the Modern and Contemporary as the holistic phenomenon. In contrast to antiquity and the Middle Ages, when philosophy was a rather marginal part of Jewish thought, in Modern Times Jewish philosophy is formed as a distinct part of the World philosophy. Despite the fact that representatives of Jewish philosophy wrote in different languages and actively participated in the different national schools of philosophy, their work has internal continuity and integrity. The article formulates the following five criteria for belonging to Jewish philosophy: belonging to philosophy itself; reliance on Jewish sources; the addressee of Jewish philosophy is an educated European; intellectual continuity (representatives of the Jewish philosophy of Modern and Contemporary Periods support each other, argue with each other and protect each other from possible attacks from other schools); working with a set of specific topics, such as monis...

Apart from his critique of Kant, Maimon’s significance for the history of philosophy lies in his crucial role in the rediscovery of Spinoza by the German Idealists.  Specifically, Maimon initiated a change from the common eighteenth-century view of Spinoza as the great ‘atheist’ to the view of Spinoza as an ‘acosmist’, i.e., a thinker who propounded a deep, though unorthodox, religious view denying the reality of the world and taking God to be the only real being. I have discussed this aspect of Maimon’s philosophy in other places,  and though the topic of the current paper has an interesting relation to certain doctrines of Spinoza,  I will not develop this issue here.
Neither of these two issues -- Maimon’s criticism of Kant or his original interpretation of Spinoza -- was considered by Maimon as his main contribution to philosophy. There is little doubt that if Maimon were asked to point out his single most important innovation he would have picked his doctrine of the Principle of Determinability [Satz der Bestimmbarkeit]. Regarding this doctrine Maimon writes:
... [T]he principle of determinability laid down in this work is a principle of all objectively real thought, and consequently of philosophy as a whole too. All the propositions of philosophy can be derived from, and be determined by it [woraus sich alle Sätze herleiten und wodurch sie sich bestimmen lassen].
… I have made available a supreme principle of all objectively real thought, viz., the principle of determinability... and have established as the ground of the whole of pure philosophy -- a principle which, if it is ever grasped, will, I hope, withstand every scrutiny. 
These claims may strike the reader as somewhat presumptuous, to say the least. But, if we pay attention to the last sentence of the passage, we can see that Maimon doubts whether his great finding will ever be understood. It is not unlikely that in this phrase (“wenn er nur einmal eingesehen werden wird”) Maimon was reacting to his own repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to explain the principle. The fate of Maimon’s principle has not been much better in the few works written on Maimon’s philosophy, and though almost all commentators agree that the principle of determinability is the linchpin of the positive philosophy Maimon was trying to develop,  we do not yet have a clear explanation of this principle, or of the reason why Maimon assigns such importance to it. Recently, Oded Schechter developed an excellent reading of this principle,  and in most aspects my view agrees with his (primarily, in its rejecting the attempt to explain the principle as a version of Leibniz’s predicate-in-subject [Praedicatum inest subjecto] containment thesis).
My paper consists of two parts. The first is expository in nature. In this part, I spell out briefly the main aspects of Maimon’s principle of determinability and its aims. In the second part, I examine Maimon’s surprising claim that once we accept the principle of determinability, we have to deny the possibility of two subjects sharing the same predicate. Maimon provides several proofs for this highly counterintuitive claim, and I will try to clarify and evaluate these proofs.

Salomon Maimon develops a new theory of reason (ground) and cause in the principle of determinability. Fichte uses Maimon’s concept in his Wissenschaftslehre and influences the philosophy of German idealism. Johann Baptist Schad, an almost unknown philosopher at the beginning of the 19th century, is an example of the development of this concept. Hegel’s Logic of Essence deals with this theory of reason in the transition from reflection to appearance.

Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will mainly targets Kant’s “Anticipations of Perception”, in which the Kantian distinction between matter and form is lowered. Bergson praises precisely this distinction for safeguarding sensation as something extra-intellectual. As the concept of intensity is the main tool of neo-Kantian intellectualism, in which the whole of reality is determined by the intellect, younger Bergson forcefully rejects intensive magnitude. However, his relation towards Kant changes. In Creative Evolution, Bergson proposes a genetic correction to Kantianism in which the distinction between matter and form is weakened. By comparing Bergson’s theory with the genetic Kantianism of Salomon Maïmon, who heavily relies on the concept of intensity, I argue that the concept fits his later project of renewing the Kantian theory. I thus demonstrate how the critique of intensive magnitude merely belongs to a provisional stage of Bergson’s relation to Kant.

Resumo: Neste trabalho, desenvolvemos uma discussão sobre a relação entre ceticismo e filosofia no idealismo alemão, notadamente em Hegel. Em particular, no interessa o papel que essa relação desempenha no problema da autodeterminação racional, problema que, a nosso ver, é central para o projeto de filosofia moderna adotado pelos autores do idealismo alemão, e de grande importância para a sua compreensão. Pretendemos mostrar como a confrontação dos autores deste período com os céticos, em particular com Hume, Schulze, Maimon e Sexto Empírico, desempenha um papel central na formação de suas concepções sobre a filosofia, sobre tarefa desta e sobre como ela poderia realizar essa tarefa apenas pela incorporação do ceticismo. Mais do que isso, visamos a mostrar como a confrontação com o ceticismo será fundamental para o desdobramento da concepção que os idealistas alemães têm da autodeterminação racional já que seria como resposta ao ceticismo que eles veriam a necessidade de desenvolver mais profundamente essa concepção do que os seus predecessores haviam o feito – o que ajudaria a explicar porque, de um projeto crítico baseado na determinação dos limites do entendimento humano, passamos para filosofias segundo as quais toda filosofia tem que e só pode começar pelo absoluto. Esperamos contribuir para a compreensão desses importantes filósofos do idealismo alemão, bem como para a compreensão do ceticismo, mostrando como essas duas formas de filosofia podem se enriquecer mutuamente por meio do debate em torno do problema da autodeterminação racional.
Palavras-chave: Hegel, Ceticismo, Autodeterminação, Razão, Absoluto


Abstract: In this work, we attempt to discuss the relationship between skepticism and philosophy in german idealism, specially in Hegel. We are particularly interested in the role this relationship plays in the problem of rational self-determination, which, as we see it, lies at the core of the project of modern philosophy adopted by the authors of german idealism, and is of great importance for their comprehension. We aim to show how the confrontation of authors of this period with the skeptics, in particular with Hume, Schulze, Maimon and Sextus Empiricus, has an important role in the constitution of their conceptions of philosophy, its task and how it could accomplish said task. Moreover, we will attempt to show that the confrontation with skepticism is fundamental for the development of the conception of rational self-determination held by the german idealists, since it is as an answer to skepticism that they find it necessary to develop this conception further than it had been done by their predecessors – which would help explain why, from a critical project of determining the limits of human understanding, we go to philosophies to which all philosophies must start with the absolute. We hope to contribute to the comprehension of these important philosophers of german idealism, as well as to the comprehension of skepticism, by showing how these two forms of philosophy can mutually enrich each other through the debate around the rational self-determination problem.
Key-words: Hegel, Skepticism, Self-determination, Reason, Absolute

In this paper, I will outline a rather bold claim: that Salomon Maimon is the only modern Jewish philosopher worth of the title. Unlike many others, I do not take a Jewish philosopher to be someone who is (a) Jewish and (b) a philosopher, but rather suggest that Jewish philosophy is the attempt to provide a well-argued and informed account of Jewish religious and cultural beliefs and practices. The demand for an informed account will play a central role in this paper. It would seem that just as a philosopher of mathematics needs to have a good grasp of mathematics, a scholar of Jewish philosophy needs to have a good grasp of the Jewish literary world. To the best of my knowledge, this has not been the case with the majority of modern Jewish philosophers; arguably, the majority of modern authors who wrote about the Wesen des Judentums were largely ignorant of this literary tradition. But before we can address this radical and combative claim, we will need to discuss two other characteristics of modern Jewish philosophy: (1) its internalization of the anti-Semitic view of Jewish culture as a particularism that is opposed to Christian universalism, and (2) its biblicalism, i.e., the attempt to construct a Protestant version of Judaism that imitates German Lutheranism, and hence justify the inclusion of the Jew into noble German society.

This book argues that Fichte’s philosophy is an investigation of the concept of philosophy leading to the replacement of the name φιλοσοφία by the name Wissenschaftslehre. Such a replacement is the result of his reception of Kant's transcendental approach as a revolution leading to a new conception of philosophy, not as much as the love of wisdom, but rather as the knowledge of knowledge. When conceived in those terms, philosophical knowledge is the grasping of the activities grounding the possibility of the distinction between subject and object. Now, this approach requires a new conception of the function of philosophical language, insofar as it should not represent objects, but rather manifest the operation of cognizing activities on which objectivity is to be grounded. As a result, the exposition of philosophy acquires a performative dimension, since it should not as much define its concepts, but rather show their operation. In face of this challenge, Fichte operates a variation of the conceptual languages within which philosophy is presented (one philosophy, multiple presentations - one spirit, multiple letters). The constant revitalization of this praxis depends on its turn on a pedagogical work aiming at: (i) bringing the scholarly language closer to the everyday language; (ii) building a historical consciousness among those that philosophize; and (iii) developing a collective space for the educational praxis. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre can thus be understood as an exploration and reevaluation of what philosophy is.

The great Kant was confronted with the amazing theory of Newton, which imposed time as the supreme ruler of the world. To save ethics from this mechanical weltanschauung (world view), Kant divided our knowledge of the world in two domains: the domain of phenomena, composed of the concepts of understanding and of the percepts of sensibility and the domain of noumena, the things in themselves, He left the domain of phenomena to Newton, but saved the domain of noumena for freedom and the moral law. In fact, Kant says that we know only the world of objects of consciousness, that is to say the phenomena.  Since we are conscious of ourselves, we know ourselves also only as phenomena although we are noumena. Our ignorance of the noumena leaves us with the option of believing in the idea of freedom, one of Kant’s ideas of reason, and adopt the practical standpoint.  This allows us the choice of acting in conformity with the moral law, thereby giving a concrete embodiment to the concept of freedom. A formal theoretical physics model is proposed, which treats the noumenal domain as an additional degree of freedom.