Causa materialis

Solomon Maimon, moses ben Maimon and the possibility of philosophical transmission

Yossef Schwartz

pp. 125-143

in: Gideon Freudenthal (ed), Salomon Maimon: rational dogmatist, empirical skeptic, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

In an article published in 1980, Warren Zev Harvey suggests an analytical and historical description of modern Jewish confrontation with the philosophy and personality of Moses Maimonides.¹ Harvey separates the historical figure of the great teacher as model and symbol from his philosophical and theological doctrines. In so doing he discovers a profound devotion on the part of modern Jewish philosophers to the values they find in the figure of their great medieval predecessor. Above all, Maimonides offers those philosophers a Jewish form of medieval enlightenment.² On the other hand, analyzing the philosophical content of those modern Jewish writings, Harvey reaches the conclusion that those thinkers share very little of philosophy in common with Maimonides. This paradoxical attitude is understood by Harvey as one that defines modern Jewish thought in general but that is at the same time one even more typical of those thinkers who belong to German rationalist and idealist traditions. Among these he mentions Solomon Maimon, about whom he claims that "his brilliant Transcendentalphilosophie is a contribution to Kantian theory, not Maimonideanism."³

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Maimon Salomon