Moses Mendelssohn
German-Jewish philosopher and theologian (1729-1786) · Germany · Academics · Died at 56
Moses Mendelssohn is read about 419 times a day, in 48 languages.
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Something wrong?He taught himself into the German Enlightenment from a poor Jewish household in Dessau, then wrote the philosophy that cracked open a path for Jewish intellectual life in Europe - building the Haskalah from the inside out.
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, The state gives orders and coerces, religion teaches and persuades. The state prescribes laws, religion commandments.
Divine religion ... does not prod men with an iron rod; it guides them with bands of love.
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Born 6 September 1729 to a poor family in Dessau and set for the rabbinate, Mendelssohn instead educated himself in German thought and literature, a self-made scholar outside the traditional track. His writings on philosophy and religion made him a leading cultural figure among Christians and Jews across German-speaking Europe, a rare position for a Jewish thinker in the eighteenth century. His ideas on Jewish religion and identity became central to the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment that reshaped Jewish life through the nineteenth century. He also worked in Berlin's textile industry, the source of his family's wealth. He died 4 January 1786, leaving descendants that included composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, chemist Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and the founders of Mendelssohn & Co. bank.
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