19 Facts About Salomon Maimon

Salomon Maimon's work was written in German and in Hebrew.

Salomon Maimon was taught Torah and Talmud, first by his father, and later by instructors in Mir.

Salomon Maimon was recognized as a prodigy in Talmudic studies.

Salomon Maimon's parents fell on hard times, and betrothed him to two separate girls in order to take advantage of their dowries, leading to a bitter rivalry.

Salomon Maimon borrowed German books on physics, optics and medicine from him.

Salomon Maimon ridiculed the Maggid's adherents for their enthusiasm, and charged the Maggid with manipulating his followers.

Salomon Maimon wrote that the Maggid's ideas are "closer to correct ideas of religion and morals" than those he was taught in cheder.

Salomon Maimon was expelled for possession of a draft of a commentary on the Moreh Nebukhim of Maimonides.

Mendelssohn introduced him to some wealthy Jews in Berlin, upon whom Salomon Maimon relied for patronage while he pursued his studies.

Salomon Maimon devoted himself to the study of philosophy along the lines of Leibniz, Wolff and Mendelssohn.

In 1783, Mendelssohn asked Salomon Maimon to leave Berlin due to Salomon Maimon's open Spinozism.

In 1785, Salomon Maimon left for Berlin, then moved to Dessau, and then settled in Breslau, where he attempted to study medicine but eventually took up the position of a tutor.

Salomon Maimon demanded that he either return to their home in Lithuania or give her a divorce.

In 1795, Salomon Maimon found a peaceful residence in the house of Count von Kalckreuth, a young Silesian nobleman, and moved to the latter's estate in Siegersdorf, near Freistadt in Niederschlesien.

Salomon Maimon died there at the age of 48 from apparent alcoholism.

Salomon Maimon seizes upon the fundamental incompatibility of a consciousness which can apprehend, and yet is separated from, the thing-in-itself.

Whereas Kant posed a dualism between understanding and sensibility, or between concepts and the given, Salomon Maimon refers both these faculties back to a single source of cognition.

Sensibility, in Salomon Maimon's view, is therefore not completely without conceptual content, but is generated according to rules that Salomon Maimon calls differentials.

In calling them this, Salomon 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.