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This narrative has much to recommend itself in one respect but is mis-
leading in another. Concerning modern science and learning, Maimon
certainly suffered deficiencies in Lithuania. The very few scientific
books he could obtain with heroic efforts were, at least in part, semi-pop-
ular or outdated, and he was not even in a position to appreciate that such
books failed to capture modern science. But even more detrimental was
the fact that he did not enjoy systematic schooling. As a child, for exam-
ple, he read a treatise of astronomy which happened to be on his father's
bookshelf. In retrospect, Maimon observes that he read the book before
he ever studied elementary geometry, and that he therefore poorly under-
stood it. (Lebensgeschichte I, 37-41; Murray, 28-31; GW VII, 637) It is
also worth noting that this Hebrew book on astronomy (Nechmad
ve'naim by David Gans) was completed in 1609 but published for the
first time in 1743. By the time Maimon read it, it was more than 150
years old! When Maimon finally entered Berlin (1780) and encountered
1.
Lazarus Bendavid, "ber Salomon Maimon", in: National-Zeitschrift
fr Wissenschaft, Kunst und Gewerbe in den Preuischen Staaten,
Bd. 1 (1801), pp. 88-104, here: 93.
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 2
mentaries (i.e., commentaries on commentaries) on both, or commen-
taries on any other more or less canonical text. In philosophy, too, Mai-
monides' The Guide of the Perplexed or Halevy's Kuzari have usually
been printed together with renown commentaries. Maimon's first literary
products are three commentaries or supercommentaries on well-known
Jewish texts.2 It is not surprising, therefore, that writing commentaries
has been Maimons first and natural choice of medium for philosophical
work, and indeed most of his German writings, too, are commentaries of
sort on canonic books.
2.
All contained in the convolute Hesheq Shelomo, not yet published
and kept at the National Library in Jerusalem. Heb 8o 6426.
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 3
from which they all derive. He must develop hermeneutic hypotheses
and corroborate or refute them by other places. His role is much more
demanding than that of the reader of a systematic treatise; he has to re-
construct the system from scattered elements, whereas the latter finds
them already assembled. No wonder that many readers believed that
there is no systematic thought behind Maimon's "glosses and
elucidations".
In mathematics the problem does not arise in this form. Its objects are
not "given", but "constructed" in pure intuition in accordance with a con-
cept, then the "correspondence" (CpR, A713/B741) between concept and
In the published version of Tr, which was edited after receiving Kant's
response, Maimon further extended Kant's "quid juris" question and
maintained that it is
As many other terms in Kant's work, "quid juris" too is his own coinage,
and the question concerning it seems peculiar to his philosophy. Mai-
mon's understanding of it in a "wider sense" and the thesis that it "has oc-
cupied all previous philosophy" is a radical critique of Kant's claim to
have achieved a "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy. On Maimon's
reading, Kant is yet another philosopher who offers an answer to an age-
old question. Maimon is of course aware that no academic philosopher of
his time (or ours) would accept such reinterpretation, but in his view fol-
lowers of Kant are sectarians who tend to believe that "Kant knows
everything, and knows everything better than others and he alone knows
everything". (GW VII, 568 See also GW VII, 669; GW VII, 390)
Having established that the categories are inherent to the mind and inde-
pendent of experience, Kant ventures to argue that we can nevertheless
be assured that they apply to experience. The nature of Kant's argument
(or arguments) of these most enigmatic sections of the Critique has been
controversial for centuries and no consensus has been reached. For-
tunately, Kant's argument need not be elaborated here since Maimon not
only interpreted the question in a "wider sense" but also considered only
one element of Kant's answer: the so-called "schematism". The schema-
tism is intended to mediate between the heterogeneous a priori concepts
and a posteriori objects of experience in that it shares a property with
each. It is a method of the imagination (Einbidlungskraft) to produce an
image that corresponds to a concept. For example: the application of the
concept of causality to experience. Causality cannot be experienced with
our senses. In order to apply the category of causality to events in experi-
ence, we need "some third thing" (CpR A138/B177) which is homoge-
nous with both. In Kant, this is time. We subsume phenomena under the
category "causality" (a priori) if they follow upon one another in a rule-
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 8
governed succession in time (a posteriori). (A144/B187)
In his critique, Maimon points out that cause and effect are
correlative concepts. Such concepts define each other (See Tr, 37) and
that an effect has a cause is therefore necessarily true. But not so the ap-
plication of these concepts to experience! A cause must have an effect
and vice versa, because the concepts are so defined, but this does not en-
tail that the world is by causality, or that specifically fire warms stones
(Maimon turns an example of Kant against him). We know this fact only
from experience. If the assertion is true, it is contingent, not necessarily
true. In conclusion, there are no synthetic judgments a priori in experien-
tial knowledge. In spite of the admiration for Newton's physics, this the-
ory, too, is only probable, and as all knowledge it leaves "plenty of scope
for Hume's skepticism in its full force". (Lebensgeschichte II, 254
Murray, 279-280)
How can abstract "separate forms" lacking bodily form nevertheless "re-
semble" sensible substances? How can sensible substances be "images"
( )of abstract forms?! What are the signs by which they are coor-
dinated? In later years Maimon will criticize Kant and ask by what signs
(Merkmale) a concept is coordinated with a sensible appearance? (e.g.
Tr, 6070). But in the early Hebrew manuscripts no further explanation
of the nature of the "signs" and "similarity" is attempted. However, the
heterogeneity of "separate forms" and sensible appearances is clearly ar-
ticulated and also the presupposition that they must somehow "resemble"
each other.
In the quotation above, the asterisk refers to a note. In this note, Maimon
mentions Locke and Leibniz, whom he read in Berlin, making this note a
later, critical reflection on his previous views:
The position Maimon adopts in the note is evidently the basis of his later
critique of Kant. The only way to answer the quid juris question in a sat-
isfactory way is to dissolve it, i.e. to conceive of the human mind and of
God as substantially the same as the sensible world. Note that Maimon
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 11
ascribes here to "some of the early philosophers" the view that gives rise
to the question how the mind and sensible objects are coordinated. In his
German period he believes to encounter the same position in Kant and
therefore says that the quid juris question is "one and the same as the im-
portant question that has occupied all previous philosophy" (Tr, 61-63).
The problem has changed, though. In Kant it addressed the distinction
between concepts and intuitions (!) a priori on the one hand, and experi-
ence a posteriori, on the other. In Maimon, it addressed the distinction
between an immaterial intellect and intuitions as such, whether a priori
or a posteriori. What seemed to be the same problem in a "wider sense",
has in fact been modified, such that its resolution "leads either to Spin-
ozistic or to Leibnizian dogmatism". (Lebensgeschichte II, 253; Murray,
279-280) It seems safe to say that Maimon assimilated the Kantian prob-
lem to his own philosophy, formed on the basis of traditional Aristotelian
and Neo-Platonic metaphysics.
The second difference between Leibniz and Spinoza is that the first cause
is transcendent according to Leibniz, immanent according to Spinoza.
Maimon's first addition to the quid juris question arises here: How can an
transcendent (immaterial) intelligence create its opposite, a material
world (or how can an object in intuition be constructed from a concept)?
In Spinoza, this problem does not arise, as there is no creation, and God
and the World are one and the same.
Another way to demonstrate that concept and intuition are not heteroge-
neous is to construct a straight line from its concept. Such construction
has ramifications for the quid juris question "in the wider sense". It
demonstrates that an "intelligence" (a power of concepts) may create a
material world (objects in intuition):
We may think that God creates a material world in the same way as we
construct geometrical objects in intuition. However, do we really con-
struct from concepts objects in intuition? Initially, this seems evident and
easily comprehensible:
Maimon repeats here Kant, who said that we draw a line by the motion
of a point in pure intuition. But Kant did not say by what rule we guaran-
tee that this line is "straight". And in fact, there was no such rule. Anoth-
er problem concerns continuity. To construct a continuous line we must
construct infinitely many points, and this is impossible. To imagine that a
moving point traces a continuous line in space means simply to hide the
problem of continuity behind "motion" and, moreover, to acknowledge
the authority of the imagination over the understanding. Thus, whereas
the construction of objects in intuition allows us to discover properties
not contained in the concepts, it also demonstrates the subjection of the
understanding to the alien rule of the imagination:
The reason why these ideas are attractive is obvious. The solution of the
quid juris question (in the wide sense) is here continuous with the most
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 19
advanced mathematical and physical theories of the time: with the
infinitesimal calculus and with analytic mechanics and its concept of the
"point mass" of zero extension but non-zero mass. The challenge is also
obvious: can something be both a concept and an element of a sensible
body?
Maimonides presents some of the paradoxes that follow from the as-
sumption that reality is composed of discrete atoms while space is con-
tinuous, especially the propositions referring to rational and irrational
In his commentary on the Guide Maimon sides with the Kalam against
Maimonides, but also introduces some new ideas to "further improve"
Kalam philosophy: He first introduces the distinction between extensive
and intensive magnitudes. The elements have no extensive magnitude
but possess intensive magnitude, namely varying degrees of the force of
representation (as Leibniz's monads). He adds the distinction between
aggregation and chemical synthesis, and, finally, the notion of the "infin-
itesimal" (GM 126-127). In short: Maimon interprets the atoms of Kalam
as his own differentials. Maimon's construal is not substituting one phi-
losophy for another. It is rather a benevolent interpretation and improve-
ment of Kalam-Ontology.
4. Skepticism
Kant's world is split into two realms: The realm of experience and that of
"things-in-themselves". In Maimon there is no such duality: things-in-
themselves are the "limits" of our knowledge of sensible objects. Howev-
er, the properties predicated of them at the limit are sometimes contrary
to each other, as the paradoxes of the infinite show. Since they are para-
doxical, such properties cannot be real. If their concepts are indispens-
able, we use them with the caveat that they are "fictitious".
Discrete differentials and continuous matter and space are related to each
other as true reality and appearance, but also opposed to each other as
"reality" and "fiction". This is so because there are two major ways of
proceedings from appearance to reality, the way of the understanding and
the way of the imagination. The first formulates a rule of progression, the
second imagines an existent last member of the series. We can follow a
rule of the understanding towards the "differential" as a limit of ratios
(dy/dx) or follow the imagination and assert the existence of a least ele-
ment "differential" or "infinitesimal" (dy, dx). We can conceive a number
as a ratio determined by its place in a series or imagine it as a collection
of units. Similarly, we can proceed towards an ever more general concept
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 23
or assert that an all encompassing origin exists. The similarity to Kant's
notions of "antinomies" and "ideas" is obvious. However, what in Kant is
a conflict within reason, is in Maimon a conflict between reason and the
imagination.
5. Conclusion
We have seen some of Maimon's "glosses and elucidations" on Kant. They
amount to a radical critique that denies Kant's revolution in philosophy
and claims to further improve on him on the basis of his predecessors,
Leibniz and Hume. We have also seen that Maimon's "misunderstanding"
of Kant's quid juris question closely followed his juvenile metaphysical-
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 24
kabbalistic manuscripts which also include a clear formulation of his lat-
er "Spinozism". Finally, Maimon's interpretation of Kant's "Schematism"
is understandable on the basis of the search for "signs" (Merkmale) and
"resemblance" that coordinate the intellectual and the sensible realms in
his juvenile manuscripts.
Abbreviations:
TR
GW
Salomon Maimon, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1-7 (1970). (herausgegeben
von Valerio Verra.) Hildesheim: G. Olms.
GM
Salomon Maimon, Giv'at Hammore (Commentary on the Guide of the
01/03/2017 Maimon's Philosophical Itinerary 25
Perplexed) (1791), New Edition with Notes and Indexes by S.H.
Bergman and N. Rotenstreich, Publications of the Israel Academy of Sci-
ence and Humanities, Jerusalem 1965.
Logik
Salomon Maimon, Versuch einer neuen logik, oder, Theorie des denkens
: Nebst angehngten briefen des Philaletes an Aenesidemus.
1794, E. Felisch, Berlin
CpR
Immanuel Kant, Critique of pure reason.
2009, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge [u.a.]
Prolegmena
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to
come forward as science (1783). Translated by Gary Hatfield, in: Im-
manuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. Edited by Henry Alli-
son and Peter Heath, Cambridge University Press, 2001
TTP
Guide
Moses Maimonides, The guide of the perplexed. Translated by Shlomo
Pines, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
AA