Author : David Sorkin
Release : 2012-08-27
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 518/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment by : David Sorkin
Download or read book Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment written by David Sorkin. This book was released on 2012-08-27. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the premier Jewish thinker of his day and one of the best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, earning the sobriquet 'the Socrates of Berlin'. He was thoroughly involved in the central issue of Enlightenment religious thinking: the inevitable conflict between reason and revelation in an age contending with individual rights and religious toleration. He did not aspire to a comprehensive philosophy of Judaism, since he thought human reason was limited, but he did see Judaism as compatible with toleration and rights. David Sorkin offers a close study of Mendelssohn's complete writings, treating the German, and the often-neglected Hebrew writings, as a single corpus and arguing that Mendelssohn's two spheres of endeavour were entirely consistent.