"Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century.

"Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century.

The philosophy of Solomon Maimon is usually considered an important link between Kant’s transcendental philosophy and German idealism. Highly praised during his lifetime, over the past two centuries Maimon’s genius has been poorly understood and often ignored. Meir Buzaglo offers a reconstruction of Maimon’s philosophy, revealing that its true nature becomes apparent only when viewed in light of his philosophy of mathematics. This provides the key to understanding Maimon’s solution to Kant’s _quid juris_ question concerning (...) the connection between intuition and concept in mathematics. Maimon’s original approach avoids dispensing with intuition while reducing the reliance on intuition in its Kantian sense. As Buzaglo demonstrates, this led Maimon to question Kant’s ultimate rejection of the possibility of metaphysics and, simultaneously, to suggest a unique type of skepticism. (shrink)

Gideon Freudenthal - The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 661-663 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gideon Freudenthal Tel-Aviv University Abraham P. Socher. The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 248. Cloth $55.00. With few philosophers (...) are life and work so intimately connected as with Salomon Maimon. Born in 1753 in Lithuania and raised in an orthodox Jewish community, Maimon "pilgrimaged" at the age of twenty-five to Berlin, the capital of the Jewish Enlightenment. After some years of education in sciences and languages, Maimon produced, in less than ten years , a series of books and papers that today make up the seven volumes of his collected works. A.. (shrink)

With extraordinary chutzpa and deep philosophical seriousness, Solomon ben Joshua of Lithuania renamed himself after his medieval intellectual hero, Moses Maimonides. Maimon was perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most controversial figure of the late-eighteenth century Jewish Enlightenment. He scandalized rabbinic authorities, embarrassed Moses Mendelssohn, provoked Kant, charmed Goethe, and inspired Fichte, among others. This is the first study of Maimon to integrate his idiosyncratic philosophical idealism with his popular autobiography, and with his early unpublished exegetical, (...) mystical, and Maimonidean work in Hebrew. In doing so, it illuminates the intellectual and spiritual possibilities open to a European Jew at the turn of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how Maimon’s method of fic- tions deals with the specific problems raised by one of his skeptical arguments, namely the quid facti. This argument leads Maimon to adopt what is sometimes called a ‘system interpretation’ of the necessity of empirical laws. Since Maimon thinks that transcendental philosophy cannot prove the fact that the categories have objective validity, he infers that hence systematization, and not the catego- ries, is what constitutes the source of (...) necessity in empirical laws. Yet, systemat- ization can only ever yield high probability but never apodictic necessity. Conse- quently, Maimon proposes to understand theoretical philosophy as science that employs and indeed can only employ the method of fictions. Since neither phil- osophical, nor physical laws can claim objective validity, philosophical princi- ples must be understood as useful fictions. Thereby, philosophy engages in a form of modeling-practice that delivers descriptions of the conceptual conditions that would be required for our scientific judgments to be justified. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic: Critical AssessmentsDaniel BreazealeGideon Freudenthal, editor. Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic: Critical Assessments. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003. pp vii + 304. Cloth, $135.00.This collection of previously unpublished essays on one of the more idiosyncratic and complex figures in the history of philosophy begins with a splendid introductory essay by the editor, "A Philosopher between Two Cultures," emphasizing the "inter-cultural" character of (...) Maimon's achievement and his position as an outsider with respect to both the traditional Jewish community and that of modern German philosophy, a position reflected in Maimon's strategy of advancing his systematic philosophy by means of eccentric "commentaries" on such authors as Maimonides, Newton, and Kant.Maimon's "dual cultural project" is also the theme of a fine essay by Yossif Schwartz, "Causa materialis: Solomon Maimon, Moses ben Maimon and the Possibility of Philosophical Transmission," which compares Maimon's effort to introduce his Hebrew readers to Kantian philosophy (in his commentary on The Guide of the Perplexed) and his German-language readers to Maimonides (in his Autobiography), in an effort to legitimize modern philosophy to his fellow Jews and Maimonides and the tradition of Jewish thought to his fellow philosophers. Schwartz illustrates this point with reference to the specific issue of God as "material cause" of the world.Several of the essays deal with the difficult but important theme of predication and with Maimon's central notion of the "principle of determinability," understood as the highest principle of all (real) synthetic judgments. Oded Schechter's "The Logic of Speculative Philosophy and Skepticism in Maimon's Philosophy: Satz der Bestimmbarkeit and the Role of Synthesis" analyzes this theme in considerable technical detail and relates it to Maimon's philosophy as a whole, and indeed to the "speculative logic" of Hegel and others. This is certainly one of the richest (as well as one of the more challenging) essays in the collection, containing illuminating discussions not only of the principle of determinability, but also of Maimon's highly original notions of "synthesis" and "construction." More accessible is Elhanan Yakira's "From Kant to Leibniz? Salomon Maimon and the Question of Predication," which not only clearly explains the principle in question but convincingly disputes the widespread view that this represents a return to Leibnizian rationalism on the part of Maimon.Maimon's poorly understood theory of "the differential" is the theme of the contribution by Michael Roubach, "Salomon Maimon's Philosophy and its Place in the Enlightenment: Wandering in the Land of Difference," which interprets this notion in the context of the difference between the finite and the infinite intellect and stresses the difference between Maimon's position and that of pre-Kantian rationalism. Unfortunately, Roubach's effort to clarify Maimon's position by comparing it to that of Giles Deleuze is too brief and obscure to be helpful.Though Maimon's relationship to Kant is at least touched on in almost every essay in this collection, it is the explicit theme of four of them, three of which dwell on Maimon's [End Page 119] so-called "quid facti" challenge to Kant's deduction of the categories. Peter Thielke's "Intuition and Diversity: Kant and Maimon on Space and Time" is a very long and philosophically sophisticated examination of Maimon's direct challenge to Kant's "discursivity thesis" regarding the heterogeneity of the faculties of sensibility and understanding. Thielke focuses on Kant's account of space and time as pure forms of intuition and contrasts this with what he calls Maimon's "neglected alternative," viz.: that space and time are not forms of intuition at all, but rather "forms of diversity" and hence features of the function of thinking. In order to explicate this difficult theory, Thielke offers an impressive reconstruction of Maimon's fiendishly obscure idea of the "differentials of pereption" and hence of the fundamentally productive character of the understanding. This provides the theoretical foundation for Maimon's non-dualistic account of the cognitive faculties and his non-causal account of the mind's passivity. Thielke concludes that Maimon's objections, if not sufficient to overturn the discursivity thesis, still undermine the evidence for the same... (shrink)

In this paper, I show how Maimon’s method of fic- tions deals with the specific problems raised by one of his skeptical arguments, namely the quid facti. This argument leads Maimon to adopt what is sometimes called a ‘system interpretation’ of the necessity of empirical laws. Since Maimon thinks that transcendental philosophy cannot prove the fact that the categories have objective validity, he infers that hence systematization, and not the catego- ries, is what constitutes the source of (...) necessity in empirical laws. Yet, systemat- ization can only ever yield high probability but never apodictic necessity. Conse- quently, Maimon proposes to understand theoretical philosophy as science that employs and indeed can only employ the method of fictions. Since neither phil- osophical, nor physical laws can claim objective validity, philosophical princi- ples must be understood as useful fictions. Thereby, philosophy engages in a form of modeling-practice that delivers descriptions of the conceptual conditions that would be required for our scientific judgments to be justified. (shrink)

INTERWOVEN IN THE COMPLEX TEXTURE of Solomon Maimon's system are strands of thought originating in the theories of his avowed creditors. Maimon is one of the first modern philosophers who acknowledges his debt to diverse philosophical trends and traditions. Among his major creditors, Maimon includes Maimonides and Spinoza. The present analysis, however, will be restricted to an exploration of his debt to Leibniz, Hume, and Kant.

Solomon Maimon argues that while Kantianism does venture quite a way toward the establishment of an immanent critical project that more satisfyingly addresses real experience, it does not fulfill the aims of its own project. In order to negotiate Maimon’s claim, I utilize the primary metaphorics of the First Critique: homesickness. The Kantian longing for home is an insatiable yearning, a striving for the end of something that cannot end, namely, the end of the search for home (...) (Zuhause). According to Maimon, although home is unattainable, there is a different sense of home: home is the path itself, a sort of nomadism, a roving life of the path that never leads home. The Kant of the first Critique did not fully realize that the project could not reach an actual final resting place; in fact, this realization, that home is a transcendental ideal, might be the very motivation for the third Critique. Thus, in order not merely to justify the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, but also to allow the application of such knowledge to reach the facts themselves, actuality as such, the “well-groundedness” of the critical project requires some re-direction from Maimon. To do this, Maimon renders Kantian transcendental conditions truly genetic. (shrink)

The author specifies the origin of the terms “Copernican Upheaval” and “Copernican Revolution” considering the spatial interpretations of this philosophical metaphor, which was evoked by the Kantian analogy between his model of knowledge process and the model of the solar system by Copernicus. On the base of Solomon Maimon’s criticism and subsequent scientific discussion, the author studies the analogy between a rotation of celestial bodies and the conformity of objects to knowing reason. As the result, the author offers (...) two approaches to the interpretation of the spatial analogy of the Copernican Revolution. 1) As the analogy of mobility (plasticity) and immobility (immutability) of celestial bodies / reason in relation to knowable objects. 2) As the analogy of relativity and absoluteness of movement / cognition, leads to the question of the starting point and direction of predication in cognitive trajectories. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze tells us that philosophical problems ‘compelled’ him to look to the cinema for answers, but he doesn’t tell us what those problems are. In this thesis I argue that the problems in question turn on the foundational role that Henri Bergson’s critique of the cinematographic illusion plays in the development of Deleuze’s ontological conception of difference – specifically in his 1956 essay “Bergson’s Conception of Difference.” The consequence of Bergson’s characterisation of human thought, perception and language as cinematographic (...) in their orientation is that any philosophy that seeks to grasp being in its own terms must overcome or surpass the human to do so. This necessity plays itself out across the Deleuzian oeuvre in diverse formulations in relation to the Nietzschean themes therein. In doing so, however, the human is ‘left behind,’ such that Peter Hallward is able to contend that the human and properly human concerns have no place in Deleuzian philosophy. My argument is that Deleuze turns to the cinema to think through the question of the human relation to being, on the basis of difference as such. Deleuze argues that the essence of the cinema is to be free of the cinematographic illusion - it ‘thinks’ in terms of real difference first of all. On that basis, it is able deduce the genesis of that illusion, and of the cinematographic orientation of human being and thought. The classical cinema dramatises the history of philosophy insofar as it remains subject to the cinematographic illusion and subordinates time to movement, but the modern cinema reverses this subordination in terms that do not ‘overcome’ or ‘surpass’ the human, but rather constitute its exposure to being as real difference. The modern cinema dramatises in turn the experience of what Kant calls the “fractured I,” which experiences its own thought not as spontaneity or power, but as time as the form of change. Deleuze’s Cinema books can thus be read as a response to the demands laid out in Solomon Maimon’s critique of Kant, locating the Cinema books and their treatment of the history of philosophy firmly in the context of Deleuze’s post-Kantian project. At the same time, the Cinema books thereby map out the relation of the human and properly human concerns to the difference of being as a creative and productive force that bears on those concerns without being reduced to them – the thought of being as the event of thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Versuch über die TranszendentalphilosophieYitzhak Y. MelamedSalomon Maimon. Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie. Edited by Florian Ehrensperger. Hamburg: Meiner, 2004. Pp. lii + 324. € 19,80."I had now resolved to study Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, of which I had often heard but which I had never seen. The method, in which I studied this work, was quite peculiar. On the first perusal I obtained a vague idea of (...) each section. This I endeavored afterwards to make distinct by my own reflection, and thus to penetrate into the author's meaning. Such is properly the process which is called thinking oneself into a system [sich in ein System hineindenken]. But as I had already mastered in this way the systems of Spinoza, Hume and Leibniz, I was naturally led to think of a coalition-system [Koalitionssystem]. This in fact I found, and put it gradually in writing in the form of explanatory observations on the Critique of Pure Reason, just as this system unfolded itself to my mind. Such was the origin of my Transcendental Philosophy." The peculiar method of "thinking oneself into a system" might remind the reader of the works of the great French historian of philosophy, Martial Gueroult. However, these lines are taken from the autobiography of Salomon Maimon (1753–1800), one of the most brilliant as well as eccentric figures of modern philosophy (Solomon Maimon – An Autobiography, trans. J. Clark Murray (Urbana, 2001 [1792–93]), 279–80). The reader who still wonders about the similarity between Gueroult's and Maimon's methods is invited to consult the former's mostly neglected dissertation (1929).Maimon's life story is as fascinating as it is hard to believe. Having grown up in traditional Jewish surroundings in Lithuania, Maimon developed a deep interest in medieval Jewish philosophy in his early teens. Presumably, the uncompromising and iconoclastic spirit of this corpus struck a deep chord in his psyche and launched a life-long obsessive search after the truth. Upon hearing about the supposed appearance of "Lady Truth" in the emerging Hassidic movement, Maimon rushed to the house of the leader of the movement, but was disappointed to find out that the Lady had just left the place (or at least so the rumor said). Then, came the idea that perhaps Berlin, the city of the Aufklärer, was the new place of residence of the Lady (alas, had he only known...), and in 1777 Maimon packed a small bag of food and some manuscripts, said goodbye to his wife and young children and departed for Berlin. Then, began an odyssey of ten or twelve years in which he succeeded, among other things, in being kicked out from the shelter of Jewish community in Berlin due to his suspected heresy, learning and pursuing the delicate art of beggary, returning to Berlin and becoming a protégé of Mendelssohn, getting into a quarrel with Mendelssohn (on account of Maimon's unhidden Spinozism, and his frequent visits to certain not-so-respected houses), leaving Berlin to go to Amsterdam (for it was said that Lady T. was fond of a certain local Benedict), being stoned in the open street by the children of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, attending a Gymnasium at Altona at the age of thirty, and finally landing back in Berlin shortly after Mendelssohn's death. Then, the Lady was glimpsed again between the lines of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Well, the story just begins, and the reader should consult other books—such as the aforementioned Autobiography—if she wishes to find out the end of this obsessive affair.Published in 1790, Maimon's Essay on Transcendental Philosophy was originally conceived as a commentary on Kant's first critique. The main part of the book consists of ten chapters [End Page 366] in which Maimon presents his criticism of Kant, and suggests several crucial improvements of Kant's system. To this Maimon added a (rather lengthy) "Brief Survey of the Book," a commentary on Baumgarten's Metaphysica (entitled: "My Ontology"), and an appendix "On Symbolic Cognition and Philosophical Language." Presumably, Maimon circulated the book's manuscript and in response to criticisms he added another section... (shrink)

This book brings together several directions of work in model theory between the late 1950s and early 1980s.

Part of the ambiguity lies in the various points of view from which this question might be considered. The crudest di erence lies between the point of view of the working mathematician and that of the logician concerned with the foundations of mathematics. Now some of my fellow mathematical logicians might protest this distinction, since they consider themselves to be just more of those \working mathematicians". Certainly, modern logic has established itself as a very respectable branch of mathematics, and there (...) are quite a few highly technical journals in logic, such as The Journal of Sym-. (shrink)

The paper starts with an examination and critique of Tarski’s wellknown proposed explication of the notion of logical operation in the type structure over a given domain of individuals as one which is invariant with respect to arbitrary permutations of the domain. The class of such operations has been characterized by McGee as exactly those definable in the language L∞,∞. Also characterized similarly is a natural generalization of Tarski’s thesis, due to Sher, in terms of bijections between domains. My main (...) objections are that on the one hand, the Tarski-Sher thesis thus assimilates logic to mathematics, and on the other hand fails to explain the notion of same logical operation across domains of different sizes. A new notion of homomorphism invariant operation over functional type structures (with domains M0 of individuals and {T, F} at their base) is introduced to accomplish the latter. The main result is that an operation is definable from.. (shrink)

This paper presents examples of infinite diagrams (as well as infinite limits of finite diagrams) whose use is more or less essential for understanding and accepting various proofs in higher mathematics. The significance of these is discussed with respect to the thesis that every proof can be formalized, and a "pre" form of this thesis that every proof can be presented in everyday statements-only form.

This paper presents examples of infinite diagrams whose use is more or less essential for understanding and accepting various proofs in higher mathematics. The significance of these is discussed with respect to the thesis that every proof can be formalized, and a “pre” form of this thesis that every proof can be presented in everyday statements-only form.

elaboration of the last part of my Tarski Lecture, “Truth unbound”, UC Berkeley, 3 April 2006, and of the lecture, “A nicer formal theory of non-hierarchical truth”, Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Philosophy, Banff , 18-23 Feb. 2007.

Geometrical and physical intuition, both untutored andcultivated, is ubiquitous in the research, teaching,and development of mathematics. A number ofmathematical ``monsters'', or pathological objects, havebeen produced which – according to somemathematicians – seriously challenge the reliability ofintuition. We examine several famous geometrical,topological and set-theoretical examples of suchmonsters in order to see to what extent, if at all,intuition is undermined in its everyday roles.

The unfolding of schematic formal systems is a novel concept which was initiated in Feferman , Gödel ’96, Lecture Notes in Logic, Springer, Berlin, 1996, pp. 3–22). This paper is mainly concerned with the proof-theoretic analysis of various unfolding systems for non-finitist arithmetic . In particular, we examine two restricted unfoldings and , as well as a full unfolding, . The principal results then state: is equivalent to ; is equivalent to ; is equivalent to . Thus is proof-theoretically equivalent (...) to predicative analysis. (shrink)

The goals of reduction andreductionism in the natural sciences are mainly explanatoryin character, while those inmathematics are primarily foundational.In contrast to global reductionistprograms which aim to reduce all ofmathematics to one supposedly ``universal'' system or foundational scheme, reductive proof theory pursues local reductions of one formal system to another which is more justified in some sense. In this direction, two specific rationales have been proposed as aims for reductive proof theory, the constructive consistency-proof rationale and the foundational reduction rationale. However, (...) recent advances in proof theory force one to consider the viability of these rationales. Despite the genuine problems of foundational significance raised by that work, the paper concludes with a defense of reductive proof theory at a minimum as one of the principal means to lay out what rests on what in mathematics. In an extensive appendix to the paper,various reduction relations betweensystems are explained and compared, and arguments against proof-theoretic reduction as a ``good'' reducibilityrelation are taken up and rebutted. (shrink)

Questions of definedness are ubiquitous in mathematics. Informally, these involve reasoning about expressions which may or may not have a value. This paper surveys work on logics in which such reasoning can be carried out directly, especially in computational contexts. It begins with a general logic of partial terms, continues with partial combinatory and lambda calculi, and concludes with an expressively rich theory of partial functions and polymorphic types, where termination of functional programs can be established in a natural way.

Following a discussion of various forms of set-theoretical foundations of category theory and the controversial question of whether category theory does or can provide an autonomous foundation of mathematics, this article concentrates on the question whether there is a foundation for “unlimited” or “naive” category theory. The author proposed four criteria for such some years ago. The article describes how much had previously been accomplished on one approach to meeting those criteria, then takes care of one important obstacle that had (...) been met in that approach, and finally explains what remains to be done if one is to have a fully satisfactory solution. (shrink)

Civic education that prepares students for principled civic participation is vital to democracy. Schools face significant challenges, however, as they attempt to educate for democracy in a democracy in crisis. Parents, educators, and policy‐makers disagree about what America's civic future should look like, and hence about what schools should teach. Likewise, hyperpartisanship, mutual mistrust, and the breakdown of democratic norms are perverting the kinds of civic relationships and values that schools want to model and achieve. Nonetheless, there is strong evidence (...) that young people want to be civically engaged and are hungry for more and better civic learning opportunities. Reviving the civic mission of schools is thus a win‐win‐win. Adults want it, youth want it, and democracy needs it. We propose three means by which educators and the public can reconstruct our common purpose and achieve civic innovation to help democracy in crisis: support action civics, strengthen youth leadership outside the classroom, and engage both students and adults with “hard history” and contemporary controversies. (shrink)

I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with Per Lindström at the meeting of the Seventh Scandinavian Logic Symposium, held in Uppsala in August 1996. There at lunch one day, Per said he had long been curious about the development of some of the ideas in my paper [1960] on the arithmetization of metamathematics. In particular, I had used the construction of a non-standard definition !* of the set of axioms of P (Peano Arithmetic) to show that P + (...) {¬ Con!} is interpretable in P, where ! is a standard definition of the axioms of P and Con! expresses the consistency of P via that presentation. Per pointed out that there is a simple “two-line” proof of this interpretability result which does not require the use of such formulas as !*, and he wondered whether I had been aware of that. In fact, his proof had never occurred to me, and if it had at the time, it is possible I would never have been led to the use of non-natural definitions. Per regarded this as a happy accident, since subsequent work by him and others on interpretability made essential use of such definitions. In our conversation, I enlarged a bit on the background to my work on arithmetization, and when I was invited to contribute to this special issue of Theoria dedicated to Lindström, it seemed a natural choice to use the occasion to fill out the story. One caveat, though: the following is drawn largely from memory, not always reliable, supplemented by consultation of the 1960 paper and the 1957 dissertation from which it was drawn. (shrink)