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“What Is the Bond?” The Discussion of Mendelssohn and Kant 1785–1787

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Moses Mendelssohn's Metaphysics and Aesthetics

Part of the book series: Studies in German Idealism ((SIGI,volume 13))

Abstract

Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant were involved in a discussion that covered several fields of study, including the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and religion.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    References to the works of Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant are based on the following editions: Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1929–, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1971–), hereafter cited as JubA. Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften. Akademie Ausgabe (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900–; Berlin/Leizpig: De Gruyter, 1968–), hereafter cited as AA. JubA and AA are followed by the volume number, a colon and the page number. I would like to thank Fred Beiser, Daniel Dahlstrom, Robert Gibbs, Paul Guyer, Detlev Pätzold, Andrea Poma, Edith Sylla and Francesco Tomasoni for their comments on an earlier draft of the present text.

    Kant to Mendelssohn, February 7, 1766, AA 10:64.

  2. 2.

    Kant to Mendelssohn, April 8, 1766, AA 10:67. Apart from calling him a genius, Kant lauded Mendelssohn as being one of “our great analysts” just as well. See Kant’s letter to Marcus Herz, November 24, 1776, AA 10:184.

  3. 3.

    Mendelssohn to Kant, December 25, 1770, JubA 12.1:241–45, esp. 241–42. Mendelssohn to Kant, April 10, 1783, JubA 13:99–100.

  4. 4.

    See Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 673; see also 266–68; and 675, Schütz’s remark ad rem.

  5. 5.

    Kant to Herz, May 1, 1781, AA 10:249–50.

  6. 6.

    Mendelssohn to Kant, April 10, 1783, JubA 13:99–100: “Ihre Kritik der reinen Vernunft ist für mich auch ein Kriterium der Gesundheit. So oft ich mich schmeichele, an Kräften zugenommen zu haben, wage ich mich an dieses nervensaftverzehrende Werk, und ich bin nicht ganz ohne Hoffnung, es in diesem Leben noch ganz durchdenken zu können,” 100.

  7. 7.

    Kant to Schultz, March 4, 1784, AA 10:346.

  8. 8.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:3. Note the difference in the year that is indicated by Mendelssohn, if compared with that in his letter to Kant of December 25, 1770, referred to above.

  9. 9.

    “... so weiss ich doch, dass wir in Grundsätzen nicht übereinkommen,” Mendelssohn to Kant, October 16, 1785, JubA 13:312–13, esp. 312.

  10. 10.

    Kant to Herz, May 11, 1781, AA 10:252–53 (my translation). The date of this letter indicates that it was already 10 days after Kant asked Herz to bring a copy of the book to Mendelssohn that Herz informed Kant, saying, Mendelssohn had put the book aside: “Dass Herr Mendelssohn mein Buch zur Seite gelegt habe, ist mir sehr unangenehm, aber ich hoffe, dass es nicht auf immer geschehen seyn werde. Er ist unter Allen, die die Welt in diesem Punkte aufklären könnten, der wichtigste Mann, und auf Ihn, Herrn Tetens und Sie, mein Werthester, habe ich unter allen am meisten gerechnet.” In retrospect, Herz’s response to Kant about Mendelssohn putting the book aside may be evaluated as a somewhat premature remark. Even for Kant’s contemporaries, it does not seem too far-fetched to say that they might need a little more than 10 days to read and understand the Critique, their familiarity with the current debates in metaphysics notwithstanding.

  11. 11.

    See his letter of April 10, 1783, quoted above.

  12. 12.

    AA 10:322–26.

  13. 13.

    Kant to Schütz, end of November 1785, AA 10:405–6 (my translation).

  14. 14.

    “Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?” AA 8:131–47. “Einige Bemerkungen zu Ludwig Heinrich Jakob’s Prüfung der Mendelssohn’schen Morgenstunden,” AA 8:49–55.

  15. 15.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:77. Translations of the Morgenstunden are taken (with changes) from Morning Hours: Lectures on God’s Existence, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom and Corey Dyck (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011). References to the page number(s) of the JubA-edition of the Morgenstunden are included between brackets, e.g., (10), in the main text, unless indicated otherwise.

  16. 16.

    See Edith Dudley Sylla, “Mendelssohn, Wolff, and Bernoulli on Probability,” in the present volume.

  17. 17.

    Here we find Mendelssohn articulating an initial impetus towards an ontology of ideas that reminds us of Descartes, as well as earlier sources. Cf Theo Kobusch, Sein und Sprache (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 135–36, 214–34.

  18. 18.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:14–15, cf. 44–45, 57–60.

  19. 19.

    KrV, B 422–23.

  20. 20.

    KrV B xxxix-xli, and B 274–79. Cf. Benno Erdmann, Kant’s Kriticismus in der ersten und in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Eine historische Untersuchung (Leipzig, 1878). Erdmann (118) is among the first (if not the first) who made the observation that Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism” in the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft is or can be taken as a reply to the refutation of idealism in the Morgenstunden - just as the Morgenstunden is a response to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Dietman H. Heidemann, Kant und das Problem des metaphysischen Idealismus (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), 46n78, likewise relates Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism” to the Morgenstunden, even though, so Heidemann, Kant’s line of argumentation in the “Refutation” bears no explicit information about an influence of the Morgenstunden. For an analysis of Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s refutations of idealism, and a critique of Heidemann’s views ad rem see the contribution by Corey Dyck in the present volume. Dyck and I concluded to the relevance of the Morgenstunden for Kant’s Refutation of Idealism independent of one another. The articles were written independent of one another just as well.

  21. 21.

    Cf. Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:13.

  22. 22.

    JubA 3.2:152–53.

  23. 23.

    Mendelssohn, “Beilage” zum Schreiben an J.D. Schumann, J.B. Basedow und M. Herz, Anfang (?) Mai, 1778, JubA 12.2:117–19. See also Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 323–27; Altmann, “Moses Mendelssohn’s Proofs for the Existence of God” (1975), in Alexander Altmann, Die trostvolle Aufklärung (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1981), 135–51, esp. 146–51.

  24. 24.

    JubA 12.2:117 as paraphrased by Altmann in Die trostvolle Aufklärung, 147.

  25. 25.

    JubA 12.2:117–18 in the translation of Altmann, Die trostvolle Aufklärung, 147.

  26. 26.

    JubA 12.2:118 in the translation of Altmann, Die trostvolle Aufklärung, 148, with changes.

  27. 27.

    Wolff, Philosophia prima sive ontologia, § 174. See Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Jean École et al. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1962–), Volume II.3, ad loc., henceforth cited as GW, followed by volume number.

  28. 28.

    Wolff, Deutsche Metaphysik GW I.2.1, § 14; according to § 572 to become actual is equivalent to being grounded in the connections of things, which amounts to the present world.

  29. 29.

    JubA 12.2:119 in the translation of Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 326–27.

  30. 30.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:101–2.

  31. 31.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:44. The existence of the Highest Being could subsequently be defined as reine Würklichkeit, pure act, or actuality proper.

  32. 32.

    Christian Wolff, Deutsche Metaphysik, 11th ed. (1751), GW I.2.1, §§ 104–05 (Leiden), §120 (Würken). See also Wolff, Philosophia prima sive ontologia (1736), GW II.3, § 174: Dicitur existentia etiam Actualitas; § 175: Ens quod existit, dicitur ens actuale, vel etiam ens actu; § 713 (actio), § 714 (passio). Furthermore, see Alexander Baumgarten, Metaphysica, 4th ed. (1757), § 210 (actio & passio). Georg B. Bilfinger, Dilucidationes philosophicae, editio nova (1768), § 270, 387 (actio & passio).

  33. 33.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:44; cf. Wolff, Deutsche Metaphysik, GW I.2.1, §§ 5–8.

  34. 34.

    “Das Wort würklich seyn, wodurch man das Daseyn andeutet, giebt nicht ohne Grund zu verstehen, dass alles, was da ist, auch würklich seyn, d.i. etwas thun müsse,” Anhang zur 3. Auflage des Phädon (1769), JubA 3.1:144 (my translation).

  35. 35.

    Cf “Abhandlung über die Evidenz in metaphysischen Wissenschaften” (1764), JubA 2:267–330, esp. 310–11.

  36. 36.

    “Über die Evidenz,” JubA 2:311; cf. Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:97, 112.

  37. 37.

    KrV B 797–810. “Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?” AA 8:141. See also Kant’s “Vorlesungen über Metaphysik, Metaphysik L1, ” AA 28: 311–12.

  38. 38.

    Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:33–34; cf. 50. See also Mendelssohn’s letter to Winkopp of March 24, 1780, JubA 12.2:184–85. For Mendelssohn’s use of bon sens, see, e.g., JubA 2:325; JubA 3.2:202–3; JubA 5.1:77. I take Mendelssohn’s bon sens as a hint to the opening line of the first chapter of Descartes’ Discours de la Methode. Mendelssohn’s views of the relation between Gemeinsinn, bon sens, and reason show differences in nuances and details if compared with those of Johann Nicolaus Tetens, in the latter’s Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung, Bd. 1 (Leipzig 1777), 571–72, passim. Leo Strauss’ interpretation (in his introduction of 1937 to the Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2, especially lxviii-lxix) of the relation between sound human understanding and reason in the Morgenstunden and Tetens’ Versuche – “die insuffiziente Vernunft hat sich dem gesunden Menschenverstand zu unterwerfen, ohne dessen Leitung sie notwendig irrt; der gesunde Menschenverstand der Einfältigen ist die Autorität für die Vernunft” – reflects elements of Mendelssohn’s Allegory of the Swiss Alps, and his letter to Winkopp. However, it cannot be considered an adequate and reliable presentation of Mendelssohn’s and Tetens’ views under discussion, as a comparison with, e.g., Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:33–34, 81–82, and Versuche, 573–74, 583, 584, easily demonstrates. Furthermore, Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 103–40, 238–49, points to the link of Tetens’ (and Johann August Eberhard’s, among others) views on the relation between sound human understanding and reason with Reid’s. In that context Kuehn mentions Mendelssohn in passing (103–5). In response to Kuehn’s remarks on Mendelssohn, the observation can be made that Mendelssohn’s positive evaluation of Reid’s arguments against Berkeley (as articulated in his “Die Bildsäule” [1784], JubA 6.1, esp. 84), that is quoted by Kuehn, is not to be taken as an indication that Mendelssohn shared Reid’s views of common sense, for that would be a fallacy. The meaning and the function of sound human understanding in Mendelssohn is rather different from the meaning and function of common sense in Reid, instead. Fritz Pinkuss articulated this observation already, in his “Moses Mendelssohns Verhältnis zur englishen Philosophie,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 42 (1929): 449–89, esp. 453–56.

  39. 39.

    “Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?” AA 8:136, Anmerkung: “sich bei der Unzulänglichkeit der objektiven Principien der Vernunft im Fürwahrhalten nach einem subjektiven Princip derselben bestimmen.”

  40. 40.

    KrV, A 797–819, esp. 818–19.

  41. 41.

    “Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?” AA 8:138.

  42. 42.

    “Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?” AA 8:138, in the translation of: Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11.

  43. 43.

    Kant, “Einige Bemerkungen zu Ludwig Heinrich Jakob’s Prüfung der Mendelssohn’schen Morgenstunden”, AA 8:149–55.

  44. 44.

    For an analysis of this topos in Mendelssohn, see the contribution of Daniel Dahlstrom in the present volume.

  45. 45.

    Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, JubA 3.2:60, as cited by Kant, AA 8:153.

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    Reinier Munk

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Munk, R. (2011). “What Is the Bond?” The Discussion of Mendelssohn and Kant 1785–1787. In: Munk, R. (eds) Moses Mendelssohn's Metaphysics and Aesthetics. Studies in German Idealism, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2451-8_9

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