An Autobiography (Paperback)

Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century. Now the definitive English version of Maimon's remarkable Autobiography, the 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, is available for the first time in paperback, enhanced with a new introduction by Jewish studies scholar Michael Shapiro. Wry and spirited, shrewd and unrepentant, Maimon alternated between nomadic destitution and intellectual swordplay among the Jewish elite of Berlin. The son of a petty merchant in Polish Lithuania, Maimon was a child Talmud prodigy who became increasingly antagonistic toward the Jewish establishment and receptive toward the secular philosophies of Spinoza, Hume, Leibnitz, and Kant. A perpetual outsider, Maimon observed with an equally sharp eye the excesses of his time and the vicissitudes of his own life. Parallel to his own development as a thinker in the company of Moses Mendelssohn and others, Maimon conveys the physically wretched but spiritually vibrant Polish ghetto, the beginnings of Hasidism (which he denounces as antirationalist), and the world of the wealthy Berlin Jewry who enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment. Combining philosophical discourse with personal anecdotes that shift abruptly from the tragic to the hilarious and back, Maimon's Autobiography indelibly portrays one man's devotion to truth on his own terms regardless of the cost to himself or others.

General

Imprint:	University of Illinois Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	April 2001
First published:	April 2001
Authors:	Solomon Maimon • J. Clark Murray
Dimensions:	191 x 127 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	324
ISBN-13:	978-0-252-06977-2
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > General Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > Jewish studies Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Philosophy of religion > General Books > Biography > General Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General Books > Religion & Spirituality > General > Philosophy of religion > General
LSN:	0-252-06977-3
Barcode:	9780252069772

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