Leo Strauss On Moses Mendelssohn
by Leo Strauss /
2012 / English / PDF
1.2 MB Download
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) was the leading Jewish thinker of
the German Enlightenment and the founder of modern Jewish
philosophy. His writings, especially his attempt during the
Pantheism Controversy to defend the philosophical legacies of
Spinoza and Leibniz against F. H. Jacobi’s philosophy of faith,
captured the attention of a young Leo Strauss and played a
critical role in the development of his thought on one of the
fundamental themes of his life’s work: the conflicting demands
of reason and revelation.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) was the leading Jewish thinker of
the German Enlightenment and the founder of modern Jewish
philosophy. His writings, especially his attempt during the
Pantheism Controversy to defend the philosophical legacies of
Spinoza and Leibniz against F. H. Jacobi’s philosophy of faith,
captured the attention of a young Leo Strauss and played a
critical role in the development of his thought on one of the
fundamental themes of his life’s work: the conflicting demands
of reason and revelation.
Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn
Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn is a superbly annotated
translation of ten introductions written by Strauss to a
multi-volume critical edition of Mendelssohn’s work.
Commissioned in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, the project was
suppressed and nearly destroyed during Nazi rule and was not
revived until the 1960s. In addition to Strauss’s
introductions, Martin D. Yaffe has translated Strauss’s
editorial remarks on each of the passages he annotates in
Mendelssohn’s texts and brings those together with the
introductions themselves. Yaffe has also contributed an
extensive interpretive essay that both analyzes the
introductions on their own terms and discusses what Strauss
writes elsewhere about the broader themes broached in his
Mendelssohn studies.
is a superbly annotated
translation of ten introductions written by Strauss to a
multi-volume critical edition of Mendelssohn’s work.
Commissioned in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, the project was
suppressed and nearly destroyed during Nazi rule and was not
revived until the 1960s. In addition to Strauss’s
introductions, Martin D. Yaffe has translated Strauss’s
editorial remarks on each of the passages he annotates in
Mendelssohn’s texts and brings those together with the
introductions themselves. Yaffe has also contributed an
extensive interpretive essay that both analyzes the
introductions on their own terms and discusses what Strauss
writes elsewhere about the broader themes broached in his
Mendelssohn studies.
Strauss’s critique of Mendelssohn represents one of the largest
bodies of work by the young Strauss on a single thinker to be
made available in English. It illuminates not only a formerly
obscure phase in the emergence of his thought but also a
critical moment in the history of the German Enlightenment.
Strauss’s critique of Mendelssohn represents one of the largest
bodies of work by the young Strauss on a single thinker to be
made available in English. It illuminates not only a formerly
obscure phase in the emergence of his thought but also a
critical moment in the history of the German Enlightenment.