Introduction
The works of Moses Mendelssohn exhibit the key principles and respond to the central questions of the Enlightenment period. The predominant intellectual movement of the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, was a new worldview based on understanding of the primacy of reason over faith and application of humanistic, empirical attitudes to the social and economic realities. Moses Mendelssohn lived and worked in the period between 1729 and 1786, which was the time of thriving Enlightenment both in Germany and in other parts of Europe. Similarly to other philosophers of the period, he applied reason to his views on religion, aesthetics, and other areas of human thought. Some of his ideas, however, differed from the views of other, non-Jewish Enlightenment thinkers.
Similarities and Differences
As for similarities, Moses Mendelssohn wrote against religious fanaticism and superstition, placing reason and humanism above faith. His prized essay “On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences” and his other works such as “Morning Hours” present the quest of finding logical proofs of God’s existence. With regard to this, the author names two major methods based on reason: first, via applying the principle of sufficient reason to contingent things existence, which is certain; second, via considering the idea of God along with non-existence ideas. In the first case, he posits that the inner testimony of an individual’s cogito is the one that attests to a contingent thing’s existence. Because the sufficient reason for contingent things’ existence must be a necessary thing, this means that a necessary being does exist. Thus, the author says: “I am, therefore there is a God.” Secondly, Mendelssohn based his idea on the premise that if something is non-existent, it is not possible or it is just merely possible. If someone says that something that does not exist is not possible equals saying that it has contradictory intrinsic properties, like a circle that is square. If God would have been non-existent, hence, then it would be because the idea of God is not possible. In brief, Mendelssohn bases his logic of God’s existence on consideration that the idea of God, essentially, cannot be the idea of something that does not exist. Another reason of God’s existence is based on recognition of “the imperfection of our self-knowledge.” It is articulated towards the end of Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours.
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Apart from this, Mendelssohn expressed other views and ideas that were typical for the period. Specifically, he spoke in favour of the church separation from the state. In Jerusalem, for instance, he wrote that church should be separated from the state because it does not have the right of coercion while the civil society (or the state) does. Also, he placed emphasis on education but saw education as a way for the Jews to integrate into the larger society. This is evidenced by his attempts to initiate studying of the Jewish religious texts in Jewish schools across Germany in the German rather than Yiddish language.
As for some differences from other Enlightenment thinkers, the philosopher was a believer unlike some of the thinkers of the period. The examples of atheists of that time were Diderot and D’Holbach, who openly advocated rigorous materialism. Diderot, for instance, sought for the proofs of how a universe could have come to exist without God and how it could have formed from inorganic matter.
Conclusion
Overall, while the philosopher believed in the primacy of reason, he was not an atheist. His religious views are full of tolerance and logical explanations of religion. Whereas he separated the church from state, Moses Mendelssohn did not separate it from life and education. He simply wanted to make the attitude to religion among the Jewish people less fanatic but closer to real life and the rest of the society.
