Jewish Philosophy - Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century Jewish Philosophy

Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century Jewish Philosophy

A new era began in the 18th century with the thought of Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn has been described as the "'third Moses,' with whom begins a new era in Judaism," just as new eras began with Moses the prophet and with Moses Maimonides. Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) is indebted. He has been referred to as the father of Reform Judaism, though Reform spokesmen have been "resistant to claim him as their spiritual father". Mendelssohn came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Germans and Jews. His most significant book was Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (Jerusalem), first published in 1783.

Alongside Mendelssohn, other important Jewish philosophers of the eighteenth century included:

• Menachem Mendel Lefin, anti-Hasidic Haskalah philosopher
• Solomon Maimon, Enlightenment philosopher
• Isaac Satanow, a Haskalah philosopher
• Naphtali Ullman, Haskalah philosopher

Important Jewish philosophers of the nineteenth century included:

• Elijah Benamozegh, a Sephardic rabbi and philosopher
• Hermann Cohen, a neo-Kantian Jewish philosopher
• Moses Hess, a secular Jewish philosopher and one of the founders of socialism
• Samson Raphael Hirsch, leader of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of 19th century neo-Orthodoxy
• Samuel Hirsch, a leader of Reform Judaism
• Nachman Krochmal, Haskalah philosopher in Galicia
• Samuel David Luzzatto a Sephardic rabbi and philosopher
• Karl Marx, German economist and Jewish philosopher.