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critic philosopher enlightener
Salomon Maimon (original name Shloma Heimon) was born about 1753 [1754] in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in the village of Zhukau Barok near the town of Mir (now in the Karelichi district of the Hrodna Region, Belarus). His grandfather and father were lessees at an estate of Prince Radziwill.
He graduated from the Talmudist school in Mir. He continued his education in Ivyanets (now in the Valozhin district of the Minsk Region) where mastered all «the wisdom of Talmud learning». He started to read books on history and astronomy very early. He studied German, as well as physics, optics, and medicine on his own. At the age of 30, he entered a gymnasium in Altona, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, Latin and English.
Salomon Maimon made his living by teaching Talmud. At the end of the 1770s the young man, thirsty for learning, went to Germany in search of jobs and knowledge. He lived in Konigsberg, Szczecin, and Berlin. The authorities of the Jewish community in Berlin considered his intention to study secular philosophy and sciences to be heretical and expelled him from the city. He settled in Poznan, where he was a tutor at a wealthy Jewish family for two years. But under the pressure of religious fanatics, he was forced to leave this city as well. In 1780 he returned to Berlin, where he met a famous philosopher and writer Mendelssohn. S.Maimon mastered French. His second visit to Berlin became a new stage of his life and activities, characterized by hard work for mastering the sciences, creative research, and fruitful enlightenment activities. Salomon’s desire to extend his knowledge of sciences was regarded by pious Jews as a threat to their religion and customs. Having no means of existence, S.Maimon went to Holland, but, disillusioned returned to Hamburg.
To get some material support, he was even tempted to adopt Christianity, though he considered the Jewish religion to be dogmatically purer and more corresponding to his own outlook. An evangelical priest talked him out of that intention. S.Maimon lived in poverty, he was seriously ill, but at the age of 30, he entered a gymnasium in Altona. From Hamburg, he moved to Berlin and then to Breslau. After several years of traveling and his family’s breakup, he returned to Berlin and continued to study the philosophical systems of Kant, Spinoza, Locke.
In 1790 S.Maimon published in Berlin one of his major works «Versuch uber die Transcendentalphilosophie» («Search for the Transcendental Philosophy») devoted to his comments of Kant’s philosophy. Having read the manuscript, Immanuel Kant admitted that none of his opponents had been able to understand his theory better than Maimon. During the last ten years of his life, Salomon published a number of other works on philosophy in German and Hebrew. At that time his relations with well-known philosophers, scholars, writers were extending. His works were read and highly appreciated by Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Humboldt, Fichte, and others. S.Maimon contributed to the elaboration of transcendental dialectics, problems of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Skepticism and rationalism were the characteristic features of his philosophy. Maimon wrote about 30 scientific works, but the most popular were his two-volume memoirs Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte» («Salomon Maimon: an autobiography») published in 1792. The philosopher spent the last years of life (1795-1800) near Poznan, on the estate of count Kalckreuth exiled from Berlin for his free-thinking ideas. S.Maimon died at the age of 46 and was buried in Glogow.
–Thing-in-itself:
He seizes upon the fundamental incompatibility of a consciousness which can apprehend, and yet is separated from, the thing-in-itself. That which is the 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 endeavors 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.
–Application of the categories:
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.
–Doctrine of differentials:
Whereas Kant posed a dualism between understanding and sensibility, or between concepts and the given, Maimon refers both these faculties back to a single source of cognition. Sensibility, in Maimon's view, is therefore not completely without conceptual content but is generated according to rules that Maimon calls differentials. In calling them this, Maimon is referring to the differentials from the calculus, which are entities that despite being neither qualitative nor quantitative, can nevertheless give rise to a determinate quantity and quality when related to other differentials. The operations of the faculty of sensibility are for Maimon therefore not principally different from those of mathematical intuition: seeing the color red is the same procedure as drawing a geometrical figure such as a line in a circle in thought. The reason that qualities are nevertheless 'given' is that it is only an infinite understanding that can grasp the rules for the generation of qualities in the way that a human understanding can grasp the rules for drawing a circle.
He took the surname as an expression of respect for the philosophy of the famous Jewish theologist and doctor of the 12th century Moses Maimonides. Mastering his doctrine became a turning point in S.Maimon’s evolution as a thinker, served a strong impulse for his capabilities development.
Quotes from others about the person
I had half decided to send the manuscript back in its immediately... But one glance at the work made me realize its excellence and that not only had none of my critics understood me and the main questions as well as Herr Maimon does but also very few men possess so much acumen for such deep investigations as he...
Salomon Maimon was married at the age of 12 to one of the two prospects, a girl from Nesvizh, Sarah, and at 14 he became a father. The couple had a son, David.
