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Book Cover
E-book
Author Feiner, Shmuel, author

Title Moses Mendelssohn : sage of modernity / Shmuel Feiner ; translated from the Hebrew by Anthony Berris
Published New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, [2010]
©2010

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Description 1 online resource (237 pages) : illustrations
Series Jewish lives
Jewish lives (New Haven, Conn.)
Contents A stroll down Unter den Linden -- From Dessau to Berlin: an unpredicted career -- Cultural conversion: the three formative years -- War and peace, love and family, fame and frustration -- Affront and sickness: the Lavater Affair -- Dreams, nightmares, and struggles for religious tolerance -- Jerusalem: the road to civic happiness -- Specters: the last two years
Summary The "German Socrates," Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the most influential Jewish thinker of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A Berlin celebrity and a major figure in the Enlightenment, revered by Immanuel Kant, Mendelssohn suffered the indignities common to Jews of his time while formulating the philosophical foundations of a modern Judaism suited for a new age. His most influential books included the groundbreaking Jerusalem and a translation of the Bible into German that paved the way for generations of Jews to master the language of the larger culture.Feiner's book is the first that offers a full, human portrait of this fascinating man-uncommonly modest, acutely aware of his task as an intellectual pioneer, shrewd, traditionally Jewish, yet thoroughly conversant with the world around him-providing a vivid sense of Mendelssohn's daily life as well as of his philosophical endeavors. Feiner, a leading scholar of Jewish intellectual history, examines Mendelssohn as father and husband, as a friend (Mendelssohn's long-standing friendship with the German dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was seen as a model for Jews and non-Jews worldwide), as a tireless advocate for his people, and as an equally indefatigable spokesman for the paramount importance of intellectual independence
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Subject Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729-1786.
Mendelssohn, Moses, 1729-1786.
Philosophers -- Germany -- Berlin -- Biography
Jews -- Germany -- Berlin -- Biography
RELIGION -- Judaism -- History.
Jews.
Philosophers.
Germany -- Berlin.
Genre/Form Biographies.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2010020778
ISBN 9780300167528
0300167520
9780300167528
Other Titles Mosheh Mendelson. English