Mendelssohn

CHAPTER 26
Mendelssohn
Michael L.Morgan
LIFE AND TIMES
On Saturday 31 December 1785, Moses Mendelssohn walked to the home of his
publisher and friend Christian Friedrich Voss and delivered the manuscript of To
Lessing’s Friends. For two years, Mendelssohn and Friedrich Jacobi had publicly debated
the nature of Spinozism and Lessing’s alleged pantheism. The new book was to be
Mendelssohn’s final contribution to the controversy. He died five days later on 4 January
1786; the book was published posthumously on 24 January.1
In To Lessing’s Friends Mendelssohn makes it clear that in his view the controversy
had been a conflict about faith, reason, and religion. Jacobi, in league with
Mendelssohn’s old nemesis Johann Caspar Lavater, represented the forces of antirationalism, one wing of those fideists aligned against the Aufklärung.2 Mendelssohn was
“obsessed,” as Altmann puts it, “with the idea that Lavater was behind it all.”3 The
controversy was not simply over Lessing’s character; it was a full-scale battle between
the Aufklärung and its enemies, between reason and unreason, the forces of light and
those of darkness. Jacobi saw Lessing as hopelessly mired in sophistry and confusion; he
“magnanimously resolved to cure him of his ills” by luring him deeper and deeper into
the quagmire of Spinozism and then offering him the only way out, “to retreat to the
shelter of faith.”4 Failing with Lessing, Jacobi sought to make him a lesson with others,
an “edifying example” to others to make use of the palliative of faith before it is too late.5
In the course of his expose in To Lessing’s Friends, Mendelssohn stakes
out his own territory and lays out his own convictions. He points out that
Jacobi is not the first to try to redeem him from his errors, alluding to the
earlier affair with Lavater. But such attempts are “doomed to failure,”
given who he is and his version of natural religion. This is how he
describes his views:
in respect of doctrines and eternal truths, I recognized no conviction save
that grounded in reason. Judaism demands a faith in historical truths, in
facts upon which the authority of our prescribed ritual law is founded. The
existence and authority of the Supreme Law-giver, however, must be
recognized by reason, and there is no room here for revelation or faith,
neither according to the principles of Judaism nor my own. Further,
Judaism is not revealed religion but revealed law. As a Jew, I said, I had
even more reason to seek conviction through rational arguments.
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…My assertion that Judaism in no wise presumes belief in
eternal truths but simply historical belief, is clearly set forth
in a more appropriate place to which I refer the reader. The
Hebrew language has no proper word for what we class
religion. Neither is Judaism a revelation of doctrinal
statements and eternal truths, which demanded our belief. It
consists exclusively of revealed laws of worship and
presumes a natural and reasonable conviction as to religious
truth; without which no divine law can be established.6
Judaism, for Mendelssohn, is both a rational religion and a particular religious life. It is
grounded in a rational understanding of God and a historical relationship to that God.
That relationship is established by revelation, but it is a revelation of law and not of
doctrine. This is the kernel of Mendelssohn’s version of Aufklärung and the heart of his
conception of Judaism. Here, in his last work, he summarizes it; elsewhere, as he
indicates explicitly, he develops it more fully.
The text to which Mendelssohn refers is of course his most mature and most
systematic account of Judaism as a rational religion; that work, published in May 1783, is
Jerusalem, or, On Religious Power and Judaism. It is the capstone of his career as a
Jewish thinker and Jewish philosopher. No other work better exhibits his combined
commitments to philosophy and Judaism. If we want to understand the summary of his
Judaism and his rationalism that Mendelssohn gives in To Lessing’s Friends, we must
first understand its elaboration in his great earlier work.
The author of Jerusalem regularly referred to himself as Moshe mi-Dessau, Moses
from Dessau. Born in Dessau on 6 September 1729, Mendelssohn began at ten to study
with his brilliant young rabbi, David Fraenkel, and, when Fraenkel was called to Berlin in
1743, he followed him, remaining in Berlin for the remainder of his life. In 1759 he
became a tutor in the household of Isaac Bernhard, a wealthy silk manufacturer.
Eventually Mendelssohn became a book-keeper in Bernhard’s factory and its manager in
1761. But his first love was philosophy. In later years he never tired of bemoaning the
time and effort such work took away from philosophy.
Mendelssohn was self-taught.7 In philosophy, he first read Locke, then Leibniz and
Wolff, and he early became entranced with natural theology and the problem of
reconciling reason and the non-rational features of human character. While he was
impressed by the psychology of Locke and Shaftesbury, it was the systematic rationalism
of the Leibnizian-Wolffian school that ultimately captured his heart. From his
Philosophical Dialogues of 1755 to the Morgenstunden of 1785, Mendelssohn’s works
fall squarely in the tradition of this school and its inheritance, the Berlin Aufklärung.
Even his reading of Spinoza, a life-long enterprise, attempted to mitigate Spinoza’s
radicalism and to situate him in the world of Leibniz and Wolff, to reinterpret the
purported pantheism or atheism of this controversial philosopher into a domesticated
deism.8
Mendelssohn’s life had three venues. The one, his work in the silk factory, he endured
and resented. The second, his life as a Jew, a family man, and a Jewish spokesperson, he
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relished in some ways and accepted reluctantly, with a sense of dedication, in others. His
liberalism, philosophically grounded, led him to his own version of moral activism; he
was, however, both a liberal and a Jew, so that this activism was married to a defense of
Jewish dignity and efforts to enrich Jewish identity. He was eager to educate Jews in
Hebrew, to strengthen moral conduct among Jews, to defend the cause of tolerance, to
argue for the reasonableness and the worth of Judaism, and to support the cause of Jewish
citizenship. Moreover, these were not occasional interests for him; in a deep sense,
Mendelssohn devoted his entire adult life to these causes. In 1758, these interests led him
to edit a Hebrew monthly, Kohelet Musar, with the express hope of teaching Jewish
youth Hebrew and strengthening moral conduct. In the years after 1774, they nurtured his
project of a new German translation of the Pentateuch, and in 1772 they grounded his
statement on early burial.9 And again and again, it was his sense of responsibility and
devotion to a Judaism that was liberal, rational, and dignified that encouraged him to
intercede, when asked, on behalf of Jewish civil rights.10
The third venue for Mendelssohn’s life was intellectual, cultural, and
philosophical. It was a venue filled with salons, publishers, artists, writers,
correspondence, coffee houses, and especially with a circle of friends.
Gotthold Lessing, whom he first met in 1754, was a lifelong and intimate
friend; the Philosophical Dialogues of 1755 reflected conversations
between the two about Shaftesbury and the role of the sentiments in
human character. And it was Thomas Abbt, whom Mend-elssohn met in
1761, who stimulated his defense of reason and especially his treatment of
the. role of morality in arguing for the soul’s immortality in the third
dialogue of the Phaedon of 1767.11 In 1755 Mendelssohn first met
Friedrich Nicolai, publisher, editor, and writer, who remained his friend
for thirty years. And then there were his disciples and younger friends,
from Marcus Herz, Kant’s student, to Herz Homberg, August Hennings,
and David Friedländer. These are only the central figures in a wide circle
of colleagues and friends that provided Mendelssohn with continuous
opportunities for discussion and debate; there was nothing abstract about
his conviction that rationality was intimately associated with intellectual
conversation.
WORKS
Mendelssohn wrote on a variety of subjects and in a variety of modes. By subject, they
can be divided into philosophical essays, monographs, and dialogues, the most important
being the Philosophical Dialogues (1755), the prize essay for the Royal Academy
(1763),12 the Phaedon (1767), and the Morgenstunden (1785); biblical commentary and
translation; and writings on Judaism and Jewish issues, especially Jerusalem (1783).
Mendelssohn also wrote on literature, art, and culture, including important essays in
aesthetics and the philosophy of art. By period, his authorship has a break in 1771, when
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a neurological illness led him away from philosophy for several years. Although he had
begun biblical translation and commentary prior to 1771, he became preoccupied with the
Pentateuch translation and commentary only thereafter. Indeed, Jerusalem and his last
works, contributions to the Lessing controversy, were in the order of reactions to external
stimuli and not premeditated projects.
None the less, Jerusalem remains the single work most emblematic of Mendelssohn’s
life and thought. It contains his most articulated political philosophy and his fullest
account of Judaism as a religion of reason, and it capitalizes on his philosophical views as
these are developed in Phaedon, the prize essay, the later Morgenstunden, and elsewhere.
If Mendelssohn’s blending of Judaism and rationalism, liberalism, and the Aufklärung
succeeds, it does so in Jerusalem. And if that work fails, so does his great project.
That project Mendelssohn inherited from the seventeenth century. It was the challenge
to integrate the universality of reason, science, and morality with the particularity of
positive religion, in his case with the historical and traditional distinctiveness of Judaism.
The issue was an historical one. In the end, once history had been culminated, no
religious particularity would remain. But during the historical process, religions were
distinct. What, Mendelssohn was bound to ask, justified this distinctiveness? What
obligated Jews to their special way? Why not expect the enlightened Jew, who
recognized Judaism’s rationality, to assimilate to a universal religion, to become, in
Spinoza’s words, a member of the universal faith of all humankind?13 Why not abandon
all those beliefs and practices that segregate Jews and that prevent their blending into the
society around them?
To Mendelssohn, there were religious, moral, political, and even metaphysical issues
at work here. Some were general and concerned natural theology, human perfection,
tolerance, and human obligations. Others were particular, for they were intimately
connected to the liberalism of the Berlin Aufklärer and to the special interests of Jews, as
they aspired to citizenship and sought recognition of their civil rights. At the center of
Mendelssohn’s rationalism was morality, the primacy of the human aspiration, infinite
though it is, to virtue and perfection, public and private, to happiness or eudaimonia as
human well-being. No special revelation and hence no particular tradition was required to
understand that goal and the means to attain it. This insight was given to all, through
reason.14 About these matters Mendelssohn was always convinced, as much when he
wrote chapter 4 of his Royal Academy essay (1763) and the third dialogue of the
Phaedon (1767) as he was when he wrote Jerusalem (1783).15 Still, the revelation to the
Jewish people and hence its historical and functional particularity were undeniable,
grounded in divine will and shaped by a historical purpose. They too were rational, or at
least Mendelssohn believed they were, so that in Judaism, the universality of morality
and the particularity of Jewish life were married by reason. It is the task of Jerusalem to
show why and how this marriage occurs.
If the roots of Mendelssohn’s rational religion—his commitment to God’s existence,
his providence, the centrality of the desire for moral perfection, the soul’s immortality,
and much else—go back at least to the 1760s and the work that led to the prize essay and
the Phaedon, his conception of Judaism as a religion of reason and revealed legislation
goes back at least to the Lavater affair of 1769–70. Johann Caspar Lavater was an antirationalist and a Calvinist millenarian. In Mendelssohn’s mind, he would later become
the paradigmatic fideist and critic of Aufklärung. In 1769, when he published a
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translation of parts of Charles Bonnet’s Palingenesis, a defense of Christianity, with a
dedication challenging Mendelssohn to refute it or to do as Socrates would have done and
accept its results, Mendelssohn saw him as brash but not inherently evil. His challenge to
convert was misguided but perhaps not malicious; tolerance forbad such a challenge and
the rational character of genuine religion made it unnecessary. The challenge elicited a
flurry of letters, a brisk correspondence often marked by miscom-munication and
confusion. In addition, Mendelssohn responded by preparing a forty-page set of
comments on Bonnet’s arguments, “Counter-reflections on Bonnet’s Palingenesis,”
which were never published but which served, a dozen years later, as a primary source
for Mendelssohn’s writing of the second part of Jerusalem and for his argument that
Judaism, as a rational faith, none the less is bound to a revealed ceremonial law.16
In the spring of 1771, when the fury over the Lavater challenge had abated,
Mendelssohn suffered a paralytic episode and was put on a restricted regimen, with
reduced reading and no sustained philosophical work. Slowly he recovered, but only by
1778 did he feel healthy again. It was during this period that he decided to embark upon
the Bible translation project, a new German translation of the Pentateuch with
commentary as a vehicle for education and for teaching Hebrew to the younger
generation. It was in the years when the project was nearing completion that events
occurred that led to the return to these old notes on Bonnet, to new work on natural law,
and to the writing of a monograph on the nature of Judaism and the relation between
religion and politics.
When, in 1780, the Jews of Alsace invited Mendelssohn to write a memorial to the
French government in support of their petition for lifting restrictions, he was hard at work
on the commentary on Exodus. Mendelssohn sought the help of a young Berlin
Aufklärer, a teacher, diplomat, and writer, Christian Wilhelm Dohm (1751–1820). Along
with Mendelssohn and Christian Garve, Dohm was a premier Berlin Aufklärer and a
staunch liberal. Mendelssohn’s request provided him with an ideal opportunity to
publicize his views on a major social issue, the emancipation of the Jews. In September
1781, Dohm published his treatise, “On the Civil Improvement of the Jews,” in which he
admitted the criticisms of Jews and their negative qualities but ascribed them to the
hostility and oppression of the environment in which they lived. Hence his
recommendation, that the Jews be made into better citizens by a policy that would
improve their situation. Such a policy would involve giving Jews equal rights and
obligations, encouraging their entrance into agriculture and craft production, eliminating
housing restrictions, and recommending that Jewish schools include a general
curriculum.17 Broadly, Dohm advocated a tolerant, benevolent policy that assumed that
the social and human development of the Jews, their “betterment,” was possible.
Mendelssohn could agree with much of Dohm’s argument, but on one point he was
adamantly opposed. Dohm endorsed the integrity of the Jewish community as an
ecclesiastical, quasi-political entity. In order to function, it would have to utilize coercive
power, especially by sanctioning behavior through the use of the ban (cherem).
Mendelssohn disagreed; Jews should have jurisdiction even over property rights but
without coercive power. Religion should be open to all; it should operate by reason and
persuasion, not by force. Hence, Mendelssohn needed an opportunity to clarify his
relation to Dohm and his treatise. In order to achieve this goal, to stimulate further
discussion about tolerance and the issue of emancipation, and to explore his conception
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of religion, Mendelssohn invited his friend Dr Marcus Herz to translate the 1656 treatise
of the Dutch rabbi Manasseh ben Israel, Vindiciae Judaeorum, for which he prepared a
preface that contained his views on these matters.18 The book, which appeared in April
1782, caused quite a stir. Many readers saw Mendelssohn as moving toward a form of
Judaism that seemed alienated from Jewish law and very close to Christianity; to some,
Mendelssohn already was a Christian.19 And indeed, was this not correct? Did full
citizenship not require abandoning one’s distinctiveness and becoming an unqualified
participant in the state? What was a Judaism without law but Christianity?
In September 1782, there was published in Berlin an anonymous tract of
forty-seven pages entitled “The Search for Light and Right in a Letter to
Herr Moses Mendelssohn occasioned by his remarkable Preface to
Manasseh Ben Israel.”20 It was signed “S***—Vienna, June 12, 1782.”
Then and for some time Mendelssohn believed that this stark critique was
the work of Josef von Sonnenfels, a convert to Catholicism from Judaism,
a statesman, and a leader of the Viennese Aufklärung.21 Had
Mendelssohn, the Searcher argued, by rejecting force and compulsion for
the Jewish community, dealt a “decisive blow” to the statutory system of
Mosaic law?22 Did Judaism not prevent full participation in the state? If
citizenship required the renunciation of distinctiveness and exclusiveness,
then how could it be achieved without abrogating the ceremonial law?
And if ban or cherem can be cancelled, why not all the law, so that the
goal of emancipation can be achieved?
JERUSALEM AND THE RATIONALITY OF RELIGION
By the summer of 1782 the manuscript of this tract was in Mendelssohn’s hands, and by
September he was at work on a response. It was completed by April 1783, and published
in May, the same month as his translation of the book of Psalms. The book was called
Jerusalem, or, On Religious Power and Judaism.
Jerusalem originally was to have three parts; it came to have two. In the first,
Mendelssohn develops his version of a natural law theory, of a social contract doctrine, of
religious and civil institutions, and of tolerance. In short, Part 1 contains the rudiments of
a moral and political philosophy. Part 2 contains Mendelssohn’s conception of Judaism.
It is, he argues, a religion of reason but a distinct religion none the less. Jews are bound to
a precise form of life, a legally defined round of conduct binding only upon them. This
too is reasonable, as he tries to show. So, in the end, Judaism can take its place within the
liberal state as a legitimate, wholly rational mode of life; it is authorized by reason, and at
the same time it contributes to the state’s ultimate goals, public and private moral
perfection and well-being.
Part 1 of Jerusalem is indebted to Mendelssohn’s work on natural law and the little
tract of 1781 called “On Perfect and Imperfect Duties.” It also derives from his reading of
John Locke’s A Letter on Toleration, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Baruch Spinoza’s
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and his appreciation of the collegianist view of Church
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organization that goes back to Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf.23 Mendelssohn sets
out the problem of how religious and political institutions are to be related and gives his
own solution to that problem. Part 1 then summarizes Mendelssohn’s results and their
implications. Let us begin with the problem.
The problem is the theoretical one of how to balance state and religion, secular and
churchly authority, so that they enhance and do not burden social life.24 Sometimes one,
sometimes the other is thought to have dominance. Sometimes there is support for
political despotism, sometimes for unqualified religious authority. And for some, liberty
invades both, so that there is popular political sovereignty or widespread religious
autonomy.
Hobbes and Locke offer two different solutions to the problem. To
Hobbes, the English Revolution and the execution of Charles I were the
result of too much freedom and religious diversity.25 He was willing to
sacrifice all to “tranquillity and safety…as the greatest felicity.”26 These
required investing unconditional power and authority in a unified,
indivisible sovereign. Still, Hobbes allowed the fear of God to ground
obligations of belief and worship, which was the philosopher’s sole
concern, what he called “inward religion.” Furthermore, Hobbes’ original
contract could not be binding, Mendelssohn argued, without the moral
obligation to obey one’s contracts even in the state of nature. And the fear
of God, which required the sovereign to act on behalf of their subjects’
welfare, can also be seen as the ground of a natural law for all individuals
in the state. Hence, Mendelssohn argues, Hobbes appears to subordinate
religious to political authority but in the end shows us why the moral and
religious must themselves be superior to the political. None the less,
Hobbes was aware of the need for the state to be concerned with the
individual’s well-being and welfare.
Locke took a different approach in order to protect liberty of conscience. The state is
concerned with people’s “temporal welfare” and not with their eternal well-being. Hence,
it must protect people against harm and injury, while tolerating religious differences. But
if we allow this distinction between temporal and eternal welfare and if the former is
subordinate in worth to the latter, then at points of conflict, the secular authority must
give way to the religious. Mendelssohn points to the arguments of Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine in his De Romano Pontifice along these lines; it is not surprising that the
longest chapter of Hobbes’ Leviathan is devoted to a critique of Bellarmine.27 But, as
Mendelssohn claims, the distinction between temporal and eternal welfare is faulty.
There is continuity between this life and the soul’s endless future; if the state is
concerned with one, he implies, it must also be concerned with the other.28 Politics is a
part of religion and ethics; it is not exclusive of them.
Hence, Mendelssohn implies that the state cannot dominate nor be dominated by
religion. Nor can the state ignore human well-being and simply protect people from each
other. Like other conservatives of his day, Mendelssohn advocates the paternalistic state,
like that of Frederick the Great, the purpose of which is to enhance human wellbeing. But
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it must do so cooperatively, together with religious institutions, and not by ruling them or
being ruled by them. Mendelssohn, that is, believed that religion, morality, and politics
were deeply continuous and not exclusive; in this regard he shared more with Hobbes
than he did with Locke.
According to Mendelssohn, then, state and religion have the same goal, human wellbeing in this life and in the future life, a life of striving for human perfection.29 This is the
goal of human life formulated in terms that go back to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Epicurus, the Stoics, and others; it is the goal of eudaimonia, happiness, or well-being.30
Both civil and religious institutions are means to this goal, which is an individual and a
collective one. To attain human well-being, we must perform certain obligations,
prohibitions, and positive prescriptions. That is, we must perform certain actions from
pure motives, whereby we become more and more perfect as human beings. Human
perfection involves both, doing the right things for the right reasons. The common good
is a society of agents with the kind of perfection or character sufficient to act in this way
regularly. Bildung is the process of cultivating this human character, of educating and
shaping people in the direction of such perfection. “By the Bildung of man,”
Mendelssohn says, “I understand the effort to arrange both actions and convictions in
such a way that they will be in accord with his felicity [viz. eudaimonial]; that they will
educate and govern men.”31 Church and state are the “public institutions for the Bildung
of man.”32 Both are concerned with action and with conviction, that which accomplishes
duties and that which leads to such accomplishment, that is, the causes or motives of
actions. Religion and the state, that is, “should direct the actions of its members toward
the common good, and cause convictions which lead to these actions,”33 by developing
reasons that motivate the will and persuade the mind. One concerns reasons regarding
humans and humans, the other reasons regarding humans and God.
Ideally the state should govern by Bildung alone, that is, simply by
educating people’s convictions. The best state, in other words, is one in
which people act out of a deep and abiding commitment to justice and
benevolence, without the need for laws or sanctions.34 To persuade,
reason, and to convince about moral principles—these are the primary
functions of religion. Bildung is the Church’s chief responsibility, and in
an ideal world, such perfection would be sufficient.
But if the character of a nation, the level of culture to which it has
ascended, the increase of population which has accompanied the nation’s
prosperity, the greater complexity of relations and connections, excessive
luxury, and other causes make it impossible to govern the nation by
convictions alone, the state will have to resort to public measures,
coercive laws, punishments of crime, and rewards of merit.35
If necessary, that is, coercion can be used to ensure “outward peace and security.”36
Mendelssohn calls these “mechanical deeds” or “works without spirit,” and he ascribes
them to the state but not to religion, whose domain is not power and coercion but rather
teaching, persuasion, love, and beneficence.37
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One might be tempted to think that for Mendelssohn the ideal is a stateless religiousmoral society and that religion is solely concerned with convictions, the state with
actions. Such conclusions, however, would be false. Both religious and civil institutions
are necessary. The ideal state is still a state; it still governs its citizens, but it does so by
Bildung alone, without coercion, internally, as it were, and not externally. With respect to
convictions or moral beliefs, the state, like the Church, seeks to teach, exhort, persuade,
and preach ideals that “will of themselves tend to produce actions conducive to the
common weal.”38 With regard to actions, on the other hand, only the state can, when it is
necessary, establish coercive mechanisms to shape conduct.39 Religion, to be sure, is
interested in action in so far as action is an important constituent of human well-being,
but its only means of affecting action is through the agent’s own reasons and motives.40
So, for Mendelssohn, state and religion are complementary aspects of a social life aimed
at human welfare and happiness.41
Mendelssohn draws a number of conclusions from this portrait
of Church, state, and the moral life. One is that ministers and teachers of religion
should not be paid by religious organizations but at most might be compensated by the
state for their time.42 Another is that both religious organizations and the state should
tolerate differences of belief and principle, even public debate, and should decline any
favors, bribes, or sanctions concerning commitment and allegiance.43 The state must
censor atheism, however, and fanaticism, for, like Locke, Mendelssohn fears their effects
on society.44 Furthermore, he argues against oaths of allegiance as prerequisites for office
or vocation, and here he was speaking to an issue of contemporary interest and not in the
abstract.45
Finally, Mendelssohn concludes that religious actions are less like public, civil actions
than they are like convictions and beliefs. They “lead to convictions” and hence must be
“performed voluntarily and with proper intent.”46 For religion, some acts lead to
convictions, while others are “tokens of convictions,” and in both cases coercion is ruled
out. Religion can use only reason and persuasion to affect conduct, and it must eschew all
sanctions. “Excommunication and the right to banish, which the state may occasionally
permit itself to exercise, are diametrically opposed to the spirit of religion.”47 Here we
arrive at the difference with Dohm and the core of the Searcher’s challenge to
Mendelssohn.48 Coercion is incompatible with genuine religion, as it is conceived
alongside the state. There is no such thing as authentic religious power, and this is a result
secured by reason, by a theory of natural law, and by a political philosophy. Whether it is
also a result that destroys Judaism, we shall have to see.
In Part 2 of Jerusalem Mendelssohn confronts several tasks. First, he must meet the
Searcher’s challenge by showing that a Judaism without coercive power is possible.
Second, he must show that Judaism can exist in the state as a partner in the task of
Bildung and the achievement of human well-being. Finally, Mendelssohn needs to show
how Judaism is a religion of reason, and that means clarifying what makes Judaism
rational and what makes it a distinctive way of life. By the end of Jerusalem,
Mendelssohn has, in his own mind, achieved all of these goals.
Mendelssohn already hints at his solution in Part 1. There are three clues. First, in Part
1, Mendelssohn distinguishes actions that are political when coerced or moral when done
from pure motives from religious actions, which must, he says, be “performed
voluntarily” and hence cannot be coerced and which “lead to convictions.”49 Clearly,
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these latter are not moral or political actions; rather they are ritual ones, and it is
Mendelssohn’s view that they must be voluntary and that they play some role akin to
persuasion. They in some way help to bring about conviction, the holding of moral
principles that will lead to morally correct actions. In Part 2, Mendelssohn will say a
good deal more about these religious or ceremonial actions and how they function.
Second, virtue and happiness cannot be achieved only by right actions performed for
the right reasons; these are necessary but not sufficient for human well-being. More is
needed, specifically belief in “fundamental principles on which all religions agree,”
namely “God, providence, and a future life.”50 That is, the three dogmas of natural or
rational religion are necessary for the attainment of virtue and happiness. In Part 2,
Mendelssohn will capitalize on this relationship; indeed, the way in which ritual conduct
“leads to conviction” will be through this connection between these truths and moral
perfection.
Third and finally, in Part 1 Mendelssohn makes empirical judgments about the state of
society and culture in the eighteenth century, and these become relevant to the function of
the Jewish ceremonial law in his own day. There was, he claims, decline in culture,
population increase, and excessive luxury, all of which, he says, make it impossible for
the nation to be grounded in education and governed by convictions alone. In this way
Mendelssohn justifies the “public measures, coercive laws,” rewards and punishments
that come with a full-scale political apparatus. In a society in which morality has a
weakened grip on people’s souls, more than preaching and persuasion is needed to
facilitate virtue and even to keep the peace. But these conditions might very well have
other effects too that give rise to this need for political control. They might include, that
is, the erosion of beliefs that would lead to moral conduct, among them the beliefs in
God, providence, and immortality. In Part 2, Mendelssohn will utilize this further insight,
as he seeks to identify the special function that Jewish ceremonial conduct is intended to
perform in his own day.
In Part 2, Mendelssohn restates the Searcher’s objection this way:51 by Mendelssohn’s
own arguments, worship and ritual conduct cannot be coerced. But the whole system of
Mosaic law is based on sanctions, fear of punishment and curses; it was a law “armed
with power.” How can Mendelssohn destroy the edifice and still choose to dwell in it?
Moreover, the Searcher suggests, perhaps Mendelssohn’s act of destruction is “a step
toward the fulfillment of the wishes which Lavater formerly addressed” to him.52
Perhaps, that is, Mendelssohn had thereby accepted the falsity of Judaism and the truth of
Christianity.
No, Mendelssohn responds. His Judaism is a religion of reason and a moral faith. It
serves the purposes of virtue and human perfection, and it can take its rightful place in a
liberal state. Ritual conduct is not coerced, although it is revealed. Hence, Judaism is both
distinctive and liberal, with a particular role in a universal project, the achievement of the
well-being of all. “Judaism knows of no revealed religion…. The Israelites possess a
divine legislation—laws, commandments, ordinances, rules of life, instruction in the will
of God as to how they should conduct themselves in order to attain temporal and eternal
felicity.”53 Judaism involves no supernatural revelation of truths or rational principles;
rather it involves a revelation of law or legislation. Metaphysical truths and moral
principles are given to reason and hence to all; the particular shape of Jewish life, given
through its laws and rules of conduct, must be grounded in an historical act of legislation,
History of Jewish philosophy
598
and that means in an act of revelation. Herein lies the solution to all Mendelssohn’s
problems. Judaism is distinctive as a revealed legislation and the way of life grounded in
that legislation; it is also universal as a rational faith. The crucial point is to understand
the connection between these two dimensions. What does Judaism share with all rational,
moral religions? What is binding only upon Jews? And how are these two components of
Judaism related to each other?
Mendelssohn repeats this solution seveal times in Jerusalem. Judaism is not a revealed
religion, he says; it contains no eternal truths not comprehensible to reason and
demonstrable by reason. But what makes Judaism distinctive is its divine, revealed
legislation.54 Later he puts it this way: “Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of
eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation…. Revealed religion is one thing,
revealed legislation, another.”55 Finally, in summarizing his conception of pristine,
Mosaic Judaism, Mendelssohn includes “eternal truths about God and his government
and providence without which man cannot be enlightened and happy” which are, he says,
not revealed supernaturally but are given to “rational acknowledgment” through “things
and concepts.”56 Headdsto these truths “laws, precepts, commandments, and rules of life,
which were to be peculiar to this nation,” revealed by God and imposed “as an
unalterable duty and obligation.”57
Nor was this conception new in Jerusalem. In the manuscript reflections on Bonnet’s
Palingenesis, Mendelssohn had claimed that “all truths that are indispensable to
mankind’s salvation can be based upon rational insights” but that God revealed special
laws to this particular people for quite specific reasons.58 And in a letter of 1770, written
during the Lavater controversy, Mendelssohn distinguishes between the internal worship
of the Jew, based on the principles of natural religion, and the external worship, which
consists of specific rules and prescriptions and is binding only on Jews.59 Here, in these
texts, the same conception is present as Mendelssohn later employs in Jersualem. Judaism
is a combination of rational principles and revealed, particularly binding laws. The
former are true and obligatory because rational, and hence they are given to all people.
The latter are binding only upon the Jews.
But in order to make his case for this conception of Judaism, Mendelssohn
must show why and how it contains these laws and especially why they
are still, in 1783, millennia after the demise of the original Mosaic
constitution, still binding. This argument is the core of Part 2 of
Jerusalem.60
JUDAISM AS REVEALED LEGISLATION
Once again, however, Mendelssohn’s account is not new. The gist is already present in
the notes on Bonnet. There Mendelssohn claimed that Judaism contains three central
principles: God, providence, and legislation. All can be grasped rationally and verified by
reason. “The laws of Moses are strictly binding upon us,” he argued, “as long as God
does not revoke them explicitly and with the same public solemnity with which He has
given them.”61 They are binding whether or not we know their purpose62 and “only upon
the Jewish people.”
Mendelssohn
599
However, most peoples have deviated from the simplicity of this first
religion and, to the detriment of truth, have evolved false notions of God
and His sovereignty. Therefore, it seems that the ceremonial laws of the
Jews have, among other unfathomable reasons, the additional purpose of
making this people stand out from among all the nations and reminding it,
through a variety of religious acts, perpetually of the sacred truths that
none of us should forget. This is undoubtedly the purpose of most
religious customs… These customs are to remind us that God is one; that
He has created the world and reigns over it in wisdom; that He is the
absolute Lord over all of nature; that He has liberated this people by
extraordinary deeds from Egyptian oppression; that He has given them
laws, etc. This is the purpose of all the customs that we observe.63 [italics
mine]
These are precisely the views that Mendelssohn will later, in Jersualem, repeat, elaborate,
clarify, and defend. Originally, in the Mosaic constitution, the laws were binding,
whatever their purposes. As time passed, beliefs and convictions eroded, giving rise to
false notions of God and much else. These false notions, to which he refers, surely
included, by Mendelssohn’s own day, atheism and materialism, unwelcome by-products
of industrial culture, naturalism, scientific advances, and much else.64 In Part 1 of
Jerusalem, he had, as we have seen, already alluded to these developments and to the
eternal truths about God and divine providence, necessary for virtue and human
perfection. In Part 2, the hints are taken up explicitly in order to develop this account of
Judaism and the nature of the ceremonial law and especially to clarify how Jewish
ceremonial practice serves to remind people of these eternal truths, thus serving the
purposes of salvation, that is, human well-being.
The standard interpretation of Mendelssohn’s argument in Part 2 that the ceremonial
law is still obligatory in 1783 is this:65 all rational agents understand the principles of
morality; all desire human perfection and seek it. The eternal truths of God, providence,
and the future life are necessary for the achievement of virtue and the attainment of
happiness. But cultural and social conditions have eroded people’s belief in these
principles. The ceremonial practices of Judaism remind Jews and others of these truths,
hence promoting and indeed facilitating the ultimate human and moral goal.
As it stands, however, this account, widely endorsed, has obvious flaws, three of
which are particularly telling. The first concerns the obligation or duty associated with
the ritual law. Where, indeed, does that obligation come from? Surely the obligation to
seek a goal does not, under all circumstances, transfer to any means that might usefully
facilitate its attainment. Second, why, if the ceremonial law is so useful, should only the
Jews be obligated to it? Why should there not be a universal ceremonial law?66 And
finally, even if this function were to justify Jewish religious practice in 1783, it does not
do so for pristine, Mosaic Judaism. For in his comments on Bonnet and in Jerusalem
Mendelssohn is clear that false notions and corrupt conviction are manifest only once
there has been decline, after the passing of that original Mosaic constitution.67
While the standard interpretation may be able to accommodate this last objection, it
has little to say to the first two. We must look harder at the text and especially at
Mendelssohn’s precise formulation, which is the key to a correct account. Judaism, he
History of Jewish philosophy
600
says, is not a revealed religion, but it is a revealed legislation. Sometimes purposes for the
ritual life will be manifest, sometimes not. Still the law is obligatory, for it is revealed
and binding until the lawgiver revokes it. Jews may never, and probably will never,
understand fully what God intended by the ceremonial law. What they will know,
however, is that, through revelation, God established certain laws as binding. These laws
are imperative, each with different content, yet each with a certain form, the form of a
divine command, supernaturally revealed and grounded in divine status and divine
power. Mendelssohn says this again and again: the legislation is revealed. If we
distinguish, as I suggest, the law’s form from its content and purpose, clearly its form—
as an imperative based on authoritative command—derives from the fact that it was
revealed. Mendelssohn’s natural law theory here extends itself into a divine command
theory of ritual obligation.68 The content of a particular law depends on the law’s
function or purpose, and this latter is historically determined by changing circumstances
and context. But the form is independent of purpose and of history, given by its character
as a divine command, as revealed legislation. Only if that form and status were rescinded,
would the law cease to be law and thereby cease to be binding.
If read carefully, Jerusalem says just this, and it is what Mendelssohn says elsewhere,
earlier in the comments on Bonnet, also in his commentary on the Pentateuch, and in an
important letter to his disciple Herz Homberg, written on 22 September 1783, only a few
months after Jerusalem was published. In any given instance, Mendelssohn was willing to
debate how the law should be understood; what he rejected consistently was denying its
authority altogether.69
In Jerusalem, Mendelssohn elaborates and extends an idea already present in the
Bonnet notes, that the ritual law today has a purpose connected with but not identical to
its purpose in the original Mosaic constitution. Here, I think, Mendelssohn is responding
to Spinoza’s famous conception of the ceremonial law in the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus.70 Similar to Spinoza’s view in some ways, Mendelssohn’s account is
fundamentally different in another. Like Spinoza, Mendelssohn argues that the content
and purpose of the ceremonial law may change historically; the law does have an
historical dimension. But unlike Spinoza, Mendelssohn denies that the law is wholly
historical and political. In fact, it is fundamentally not political at all, since the law and
ceremonial practice are tied not to political loyalty but rather to grasping and
understanding fundamental truths and moral principles. Moreover, and most importantly,
the law is grounded, as obligations, not in the sovereign’s will but rather in the divine
will. It is the immortal God and not Hobbes’ mortal God, the sovereign, that grounds
Mendelssohn’s ceremonial laws of Judaism and makes them imperatives.
Mendelssohn’s understanding of Judaism’s ritual law, then, has two sides. It is law
grounded in divine command, and its content and purpose vary with historical
circumstance. In Mendelssohn’s day it served the purposes of maintaining the unity and
distinctiveness of the Jewish people and of reminding people of the eternal truths
necessary for human perfection. Mendelssohn discusses both of these dimensions in
Jerusalem. He tells us that the ceremonial laws “refer to, or are based upon, eternal truths
of reason, or remind us of them, and rouse us to ponder them.”71 He says that “the
ceremonial law itself is a kind of living script, rousing the mind and heart, full of
meaning, never ceasing to inspire contemplation and to provide the occasion and
opportunity for oral instruction.”72 In original Judaism, that is, one learned the central
Mendelssohn
601
doctrines of rational religion naturally, through a “living, spiritual instruction,” the
opportunity for which was given in the book of the law “and in the ceremonial acts which
the adherent of Judaism had to observe incessantly.”73 Ritual, then, was the context for
that kind of rational reflection and discussion aimed at teaching and understanding the
truths and principles of universal moral faith. However, once that original state was in
decline and conditions eroded the knowledge of those truths and recognition of those
principles, the ceremonial law served to remind people of them.74 Originally a vehicle for
instruction, ritual became a vehicle for recollection, and, in Mendelssohn’s day, a means
for unifying monotheists against their opponents.75 The purpose changed, but, as
Mendelssohn firmly notes, the status as law remained, even after the original state no
longer existed.
What made the law obligatory, originally, and what still does so is its
divine status. In the original, Mosaic constitution, “the laws, precepts,
commandments, and rules of life” were “peculiar to this nation” and given
by God the lawgiver as “King and Head of the people.” Moroever, they
were given in a public, solemn ceremony and were thereby “imposed upon
the nation and all their descendants as an unalterable duty and
obligation.”76 But, as he immediately makes clear, it is not their content or
interpretation that is “unalterable.” Rather it is their obligatory status. As
he puts it, the law may change in reason and content but not as law:
We are permitted to reflect on the law, to inquire into its spirit, and here
and there, where the lawgiver gave no reason, to surmise a reason which,
perhaps, depended upon time, place, and circumstances, and which,
perhaps, may be liable to change in accordance with time, place, and
circumstances—if it pleases the Supreme Lawgiver to make known to us
His will on this matter, to make it known in as clear a voice, in as public a
manner, and as far beyond all doubt and ambiguity as He did when He
gave the law itself. As long as this has not happened, as long as we can
point to no such authentic exception from the law, no sophistry of ours
can free us from the strict obedience we owe to the law.77
Mendelssohn calls this a “rabbinic principle;” “He who is not born into the law need not
bind himself to the law; but he who is born into the law must live according to the law,
and die according to the law.”78 The point is not merely one of scope; it is about the
obligatory status of the law, its form as a divinely revealed imperative. This latter is what
is “unalterable” about the law—until publicly, explicitly, and authoritatively revoked by
the divine commander.
Mendelssohn’s conception of Judaism as revealed legislation is part of his conception
of Judaism, as a religion of reason. Pristine Judaism as a theocracy was a unity of rational
truths and laws, ordinances, rules of life. Also, state and religion were one; God was king,
and the community was a community of God. But this constitution exists no longer; there
exists no such unity of interests.79 In what sense, then, is it rational to remain a Jew? Why
not become a citizen but eschew one’s particular allegiance to Judaism? Is the ceremonial
History of Jewish philosophy
602
law a law of reason? The answer to these questions must lie with Mendelssohn’s
conception of providence. God’s revelation to the Jewish people at Sinai was an act of
divine providence; historically, it occurred, and reason shows that God exists and cares
for His creation. However, we can only speculate about why God revealed Himself at
Sinai and what the law is intended to accomplish. We can know that the law was
revealed; we cannot know why.
This conclusion is precisely what Mendelssohn said it was when, in the course of
writing To Lessing’s Friends, he referred to the argument of Jerusalem. For there he
summarizes his conception of Judaism in these terms: eternal truths and fundamental
moral principles are rational, grasped by rational thought and verified by reason. Reason
also proves the existence of God and his authority. In addition to these beliefs, however,
Judaism admits “historical truths,…facts upon which the authority of our prescribed ritual
law is founded.”80 The crucial one of these facts is the revelation at Sinai; the law is
authoritative, that is, obligatory, because it was revealed by God and hence is divinely
commanded. In Judaism, therefore, reason takes us so far and then history takes over.
In the end, then, there is a gap in human understanding between the possibility of
revelation, proved by reason, and the actuality of Sinai, given to us by the authority of
witnesses and texts. But there is no gap in Mendelssohn’s rationalism. In the case of
revelation, reason can defend both it and the conception of God and divine providence
that grounds its reality. The gap between possibility and actuality may mark the limit of
Mendelssohn’s confidence in human understanding, but it is no obstacle to his
rationalism.81
Mendelssohn’s commitment to reason is comprehensive and deep. But it is
not without problems. Already in the winter of 1785, when he personally
delivered his last manuscript to his publisher, there were signs that
Mendelssohn’s confidence in reason might be unwarranted. But the signs
were yet to explode into the most severe warfare over the fate of reason.
These were battles Mendelssohn died too soon to wage.82
NOTES
1 For an account of Mendelssohn’s final days, see Altmann 1973, pp.
729–41.
2 On the outlines of the general debate over reason and faith and for
Lessing’s and Mendelssohn’s roles in it, see Beiser 1987, Vallée
1988, and Bell 1984.
3 Altmann 1973, p. 732.
4 Mendelssohn’s To Lessing’s Friends, in Vallée 1988, p. 135.
5 Ibid., p. 136.
6 Ibid., p. 137.
7 See the autobiographical letter to Johann Jacob Spiess of 1 March
1774: Gesammelte Schriften 5:524–7, esp. 526–7 (translated by Eva
Jospe in Mendelssohn 1975, pp. 52–3).
Mendelssohn
603
8 See Altmann 1973, pp. 50–5; also Morgenstunden, sections 13–15
(partially translated in Vallée 1988, pp. 65–77).
9 See the response to the Jewish community, Schwerin, translated in
Mendelssohn 1975, pp. 102–4; Altmann 1973, pp. 288–93.
10 See Altmann 1973, passim; Mendelssohn 1975, pp. 79–106.
11 Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, 3.1:1–
159.
12 Ibid., 2:267–330.
13 Spinoza describes this universal faith in chapter 14 of the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
14 This theme, as Altmann points out, was central to Mendelssohn’s
position during the Lavater affair. See Altmann 1973, p. 200.
15 Altmann, 1973, pp. 118–30, 156.
16 See Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, 7:65–
107, esp. 73ff. (translated by Eva Jospe in Mendelssohn 1975, pp.
112–14) and 7: pp. 95–9 (translated by Alfred Jospe 1969, pp. 154–
6), and compare with Jerusalem, translated Arkush 1983, pp. 128–9.
17 Epstein 1966, pp. 221–3.
18 For an English translation of Vindiciae Judaeorum with
Mendelssohn’s preface, see Mendelssohn 1838, 1:3–116.
19 Altmann 1973, pp. 490ff., especially the letters from August
Hennings and Baron Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow.
20 For an English translation of this pamphlet, see Mendelssohn
1838, 1:119–45.
21 It was not, as Mendelssohn eventually discovered. As Jacob Katz
showed (Zion 1971, 36:116–17), it was August Friedrich Cranz, a
Berlin journalist.
22 Altmann 1973, p. 507.
23 See Altmann’s notes in Jerusalem, esp. pp. 146–8, and his articles
in Die trostvolle Aufklärung.
24 Mendelssohn states this problem in the first sentence of Jerusalem,
p. 33: “State and religion—civil and ecclesiastical constitution—
secular and churchly authority—how to oppose these pillars of social
life to one another so that they are in balance and do not, instead,
become burdens on social life, or weigh down its foundations more
than they help to uphold it—this is one of the most difficult tasks of
politics.”
25 This was Hobbes’ diagnosis in Behemoth. For discussion, see
Martinich et al. His solution was Erastian.
History of Jewish philosophy
604
26 Jerusalem, p. 35.
27 See Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 45.
28 See Phaedon and the little tract “On the Soul,” in Gesammelte
Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, 3.1:201–33.
29 Jerusalem, p. 70.
30 For an excellent discussion of the Hellenistic dimension of this
conception of ethics and human life, see Annas 1993 and Nussbaum
1994.
31 Jerusalem, p. 41.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., p. 40.
34 Ibid., pp. 41–3.
35 Ibid., p. 43.
36 Ibid., p. 44.
37 Ibid., p. 45; see also pp. 70–5.
38 Ibid., p. 41; see also p. 61: “Both must teach, instruct, encourage,
and motivate.”
39 Ibid., p. 72.
40 See also ibid., p. 57.
41 For Mendelssohn’s sketch of a natural law theory of perfect and
imperfect rights and duties that supports this portrait of the roles of
state and religion and their interrelationship, see ibid., pp. 45–63. I
have discussed this theory in some detail in Morgan 1992, chapter 3.
42 Jerusalem, pp. 60–1.
43 Ibid., pp. 61–2.
44 Ibid., p. 63.
45 Ibid., pp. 63–70.
46 Ibid., p. 72.
47 Ibid., p. 73.
48 Ibid., pp. 77–8.
49 Ibid., p. 72.
50 Ibid., p. 63; see also Altmann’s commentary, 1973, pp. 191–2.
Also, the letter to Thomas Abbt in Mendelssohn 1975, pp. 163–4.
51 Jerusalem, pp. 84–5.
52 Ibid., p. 86.
53 Ibid., pp. 89–90. Note the implicit criticism of Locke: like the
state, Judaism is concerned with both temporal and eternal happiness,
that is, human perfection as an infinite task.
54 Ibid., pp. 89–90.
Mendelssohn
605
55 Ibid., p. 97.
56 Ibid., p. 126.
57 Ibid., p. 127.
58 Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe 7:65–107 (translated in
Mendelssohn 1969, p. 128). See ibid., p. 156, also from the Counterreflections.
59 Gesammelte Schriften 8:500–4, esp. 503–4 (translated in
Mendelssohn 1969, p. 134). See also Gesammelte Schriften
Jubiläumsausgabe 7:7–17 (partially translated in Mendelssohn 1969,
p. 116 and Mendelssohn 1975, p. 135) and a letter to Elkan Herz of
22 July 1771 (partially translated in Mendelssohn 1969, p. 137 and
Mendelssohn 1975, p. 121).
60 Jerusalem, pp. 90–135.
61 Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe 7:97; this sentence is
repeated almost verbatim in Jerusalem, pp. 133–4.
62 See Mendelssohn’s commentary on Exodus 32:19 in Biur,
translated in Mendelssohn 1969, p. 149: “God has given us many
commandments without revealing their purpose to us. However, it
should be sufficient for us to know that they were commanded by
Him. Inasmuch as we have to take the yoke of His dominion upon us,
we are obligated to do His will. Their value lies in their practice, not
in the understanding of their origin or purpose.”
63 From the Counter-reflections, in Gesammelte Schriften
Jubiläumsausgabe 7:95–9, esp. 98 (translated in Mendelssohn 1969,
pp. 155–6 and Mendelssohn 1975, pp. 125–6).
64 See Buckley 1987 on the rise of modern atheism and Beiser 1987,
on the role of Spinoza in Enlightenment debates in England over
reason and atheism.
65 The interpretation is essentially Altmann’s in Altmann 1973, pp.
546–7. It is also Meyer’s in Meyer 1967 and my own in Morgan
1992, chapters 2–3. The following account is meant to supersede my
own in these earlier essays.
66 Altmann 1973, p. 547. See also Morgan 1992.
67 This difference is clearest in the passage from the notes on
Bonnet, quoted above.
68 In his interpretation of Hobbes’ theory of obligation and the laws
of nature in Leviathan, Martinich uses a similar strategy,
distinguishing the form from the content of the laws of nature; see
Martinich 1992.
History of Jewish philosophy
606
69 A clear case of this is his role in the early burial case; see Altmann
1973, pp. 288–93.
70 See Altmann’s notes in Mendelssohn 1983, pp. 236–7; Guttmann
1981; Morgan 1992, chapter 1.
71 Jerusalem, p. 99 (italics mine).
72 Ibid., pp. 102–3.
73 Ibid., p. 102; see also esp. pp. 117–20 and 127–8.
74 Ibid, pp. 132–3.
75 See Gesammelte Schriften 5:668–70, esp. 669, a letter to Herz
Homberg, 22 September 1783 (translated in Mendelssohn 1969, p.
148).
76 Jerusalem, p. 127.
77 Ibid., p. 133.
78 Ibid., p. 134.
79 Ibid., pp. 99, 128ff., 131.
80 Vallée 1988, p. 137.
81 This account is meant to supersede my earlier account of the limits
of reason in Jerusalem; see Morgan 1992.
82 For an excellent account, see Beiser 1987.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Texts
Mendelssohn, M. (1789) Phaedon; or, the Death of Socrates (London:
Cooper; (reprinted New York: Arno, 1973).
——(1838) Jerusalem: A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Authority and
Judaism, translated by M.Samuels, 2 vols (London: Longman, Orme,
Brown & Longmans).
——(1843–4) Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols (Leipzig: Brodhaus).
——(1929–30) Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe (Berlin:
Akademie).
——(1969) Jerusalem and Other Jewish Writings, translated and edited by
A.Jospe (New York: Schocken).
——(1975) Moses Mendelssohn: Selections from His Writings, edited and
translated by E.Jospe (New York: Viking).
——(1983) [1783] Jerusalem, or, On Religious Power and Judaism,
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Mendelssohn
607
Vallée, G. (1988) The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi
(Lantham: University Press of America).
Studies
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——(1982) Die trostvolle Aufklärung (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt:
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Annas, J. (1993) The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University
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Arkush, A. (1994) Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (Albany:
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Beiser, F. (1987) The Fate of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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Eisen, A. (1990) “Divine Legislation as ‘Ceremonial Script’: Mendelssohn
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Epstein, K. (1966) The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton:
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Guttmann, J. (1981) “Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem and Spinoza’s
Theologico-Political Treatise,” in Studies in Jewish Thought, edited by
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