Introduced by Lynne Malcolm

Alan Saunders: Hi, Alan Saunders here, and this week The Philosopher's Zone's special series on Jewish philosophy takes a big leap forward to the 18th century and to Moses Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn, who lived in Germany from 1729 to 1786, was a very significant figure in the European Enlightenment and a writer on a vast range of topics, including metaphysics and aesthetics, political theory and theology. He also founded a distinguished dynasty, that included the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn and the founders of the Mendelssohn's & company banking house.

Our guide to his philosophy is Michah Gottlieb, Associate Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, and the author of Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought.

Michah, welcome to The Philosopher's Zone.

Michah Gottlieb: Glad to be here.

Alan Saunders: Now, what for Mendelssohn was the aim of philosophy?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, for Mendelssohn, the aim of philosophy was not abstract theological or philosophical speculation, but the aim of philosophy was to improve people's lives. Mendelssohn was known as a popular philosopher, which later thinkers such as Hegel and other German idealists denigrated as not true philosophy, but in the context of the German Enlightenment popular philosophy was a title that was embraced, and the sense was that philosophy must be practical. It must improve people's lives. It calls to mind a statement by the professor of religion at Harvard University, George Foot Moore, who said that the difference between philosophy and religion is that religion does something about it. Well, in the context of the German Enlightenment, the sense was that philosophy is supposed to do something about it. And to that end, Moses Mendelssohn wrote not only about problems in metaphysics and in ethics and in politics, but he wrote in a way that attempted to communicate to the public, and he wrote in very popular ways that were aesthetically pleasing, enjoyable to read. His most famous book, The Phaedo, which is a defence of the immortality of the soul, was translated into five languages in his lifetime, and ran into three editions, a nd it became a best seller.

Alan Saunders: Talking about the German Enlightenment, along with Immanuel Kant, Mendelssohn took part in an essay competition to answer the question, 'What is enlightenment?' What was his answer?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, Mendelssohn and Kant offered very divergent answers to this question, and Kant's is a lot more famous, but Mendelssohn's is a very interesting alternative. So because Kant's is more well-known, it might be useful just to begin with Kant. Kant defines enlightenment as man's emergence from self-incurred immaturity, and he said that the slogan of enlightenment was 'think for yourself.' So for Kant, enlightenment is a certain disposition of mind. It's a certain frame of mind. There's something fundamentally almost rebellious about it, because it's saying that one cannot rely on tradition, but that one has to think for oneself and decide one convictions on the basis of what one deems to be correct, whether or not that conforms to traditional beliefs.

Mendelssohn's attitude was that enlightenment is a state. It involves what he would call 'perfection of one's rational faculties.' It involves the ability to reason correctly, and having correct ideas based on rational conviction. But Mendelssohn said that enlightenment is only one part of human development, and human development or perfection involves developing one's other capabilities as well. These include one's ethical side, one's ethical elements of one's personality, which he thinks is a crucial component of happiness and flourishing. It also includes developing one's sense of aesthetic appreciation: an appreciation for art, a disposition to perhaps produce art, or at least to be able to enjoy art. It also includes having a healthy body. So, for Mendelssohn enlightenment is one component of a total personality. And for Mendelssohn the aim of the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment period is to try to produce this integrated whole personality.

Alan Saunders: Although Kant had this idea that enlightenment was daring to know - he said, the motto of the Enlightenment was sapere aude; 'dare to know' - he thought that his age had not yet achieved enlightenment. You said that Mendelssohn said that enlightenment was a state. Did he believe that it was a state that his contemporaries had achieved?

Michah Gottlieb: No. He agreed with Kant in that respect. He still felt that there was a long way to go. But what Mendelssohn thought was that this was a process, and that one had to be very careful in this process. I mentioned before that there was a sort of fundamental rebelliousness underlying Kant's perspective on enlightenment. Mendelssohn much more tries to achieve a harmony between traditional religion and enlightenment. And he thought that, although it's absolutely proper to discard certain traditional beliefs, if one deems them to be immoral, or to be producing more harm than good, one has to be very careful in this respect. And he said that if there are traditional beliefs which people are upholding, which are not correct, but which are promoting morality, then he said it's incumbent on philosophers not to challenge those beliefs until it's possible to reaffirm those foundations of ethics on the basis of reason. So, although Mendelssohn thought that his age was not an enlightened age yet - he thought it was in a process of achieving that - he had a certain respect for traditional religious belief, and he was very concerned about what would happen if traditional religious beliefs, such as in the French context, were radically overthrown. He thought this would create a vacuum that could have terrible, moral consequences.

Alan Saunders: What about his contributions to the life of the Jewish community in Germany? He campaigned for Jews' civil rights, didn't he?

Michah Gottlieb: Absolutely. Mendelssohn was a very active member of the Jewish community. One must remember that Mendelssohn was born not in Berlin, where he lived most of his life, but in a rural hamlet in Dessau. And he received a traditional Jewish education which consisted primarily of studying the Talmud. He didn't know German. His first, his mother tongue was Yiddish. And he only taught himself German when he went to Berlin at age 14 to study with his rabbi there, who had received an appointment there. Mendelssohn was completely self-taught; he never attended a university lecture. He taught himself in his teens, languages, five languages, including Latin, Greek, English and French. But Mendelssohn continued to identify with the Jewish community even after he began to be a famous philosopher. He was good friends with many rabbis, he corresponded with them on Jewish legal matters, he used to give sermons in the main synagogue of the Jewish community. He wrote works in Hebrew that aimed to promote the education of his fellow Jews using traditional tropes, using traditional forms of literature, such as biblical commentaries, and he campaigned actively for Jewish civil rights. Communities used to come to Mendelssohn to ask him for help when there was an anti-Jewish decree, and Mendelssohn would write to the authorities, because he was so well-known, and so famous, and had such a reputation for probity in ethics. And he very often was able to help them.

Alan Saunders: Were there a lot of anti-Jewish decrees?

Michah Gottlieb: Absolutely. The monarch of Prussia, where Mendelssohn lived, Berlin, was an enlightened monarch, he's Frederick The Great, but he was also what we would now call anti-Semitic. There were many specific regulations that were aimed against Jews. Mendelssohn himself is a good example. He was not a citizen. He was not able to be a citizen of Prussia, and he wasn't, he didn't even have the right to settle his children in Prussia. When Mendelssohn was appointed, he was appointed to be a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Frederick The Great essentially vetoed it. Outside of Prussia there were scores of anti-Jewish decrees, in Alsace, in other German towns, and this was a time of, on the one hand enlightenment, but also the perpetuation of medieval anti-Jewish decrees.

Alan Saunders: On ABC Radio National you're with The Philosopher's Zone, and I'm talking to Michah Gottlieb from New York University about the great 18th-century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Let's look at his response to earlier philosophy. He had a somewhat ambivalent relationship, didn't he, with the thought of his great 17th century Jewish predecessor Spinoza?

Michah Gottlieb: Absolutely. His first philosophical writing, The Philosophical Dialogues, which he published in 1754, is actually a defence of Spinoza. Now, Spinoza in the German context needed defence, because not only was Spinoza a heretic within the Jewish community and thrown out of the Jewish community, but Christian theologians recognised that his work of philosophy and his work on theology undermined Christian faith as well. So Spinoza was quite regularly characterised as a heretic, and it was thought that it was inappropriate for a serious philosopher or a serious theologian to engage with Spinoza.

Moses Mendelssohn on the other hand was coming from a different perspective. He was a Jew living in an enlightened society, or a society in the processed of being enlightened, and he didn't have many fellow Jewish philosophers. And he looked to Spinoza as a model for a person who was a Jew who could also be a philosopher. This in the context of a Protestant country like Prussia was considered to be a very surprising thing, because Protestants and Lutherans routinely characterised Jews as irrational for failing to recognise Jesus as the culmination, of the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, they deemed Jews as irrational because of stories in the Talmud that they thought were very, very strange. So, Mendelssohn in some ways had to prove that a Jew could be a rational person, which was a very... it was a real task to prove that. And one of the ways he did that in 1754 was to look back to Spinoza. Because although Spinoza had been a heretic and Mendelssohn didn't subscribe to his religious or philosophical views, he was one of the most important 17th-century philosophers, and Mendelssohn pointed to the contributions that he made to the development of the enlightened theism of Leibniz and Wolff. So, his first work, the 1754 Philosophical Dialogues contains a defence of Spinoza. Now, because of Mendelssohn's efforts, Spinoza came to be reconsidered. And he was more successful than his wildest dreams. And there came to be a Spinoza, eventually a Spinoza renaissance, where Spinoza was seen to be the most important philosopher along with Kant. This was taken up by, especially by the romantics, and then later by the German idealists.

Alan Saunders: You said that Mendelssohn was an adherent of the natural philosophy of two somewhat earlier German philosophers, Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff. What was his relationship to their thought?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, Leibniz and Wolff were the two most important German philosophers of the first half of the 18th century. They really represent the high point in many ways of German Enlightenment philosophy, and they were some of the first figures that Mendelssohn encountered when he began to study philosophy, and he thought very highly of their work for many reasons. One reason, that he was deeply impressed with Leibniz and Wolff , was because he thought that they had solved problems that the medieval philosophers had been unable to solve.

In medieval philosophy, the most important trend within Jewish philosophy, certainly, and also within the Christian world, was Aristotelianism. And Aristotelianism was taken up by thinkers like Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and they sought to reconcile Aristotelianism, which was seen to be the best philosophy, the most accurate philosophy, with traditional religion, with scripture. For Jews, with the Talmud. The problem was that there were many ideas in Aristotle that didn't fit very well with traditional Jewish and Christian ideas. For example, Aristotle has the notion of a god, but it's a god who does not care about the universe. The idea of an individual immortal soul in Aristotle is extremely problematic. It's doubtful that he believes in this. So Maimonides and Thomas all try to figure out how to fit this together with sacred scripture. Leibniz and Wolff, on the other hand, they were great philosophers, but they thought that they could prove the existence of a good god who cared about each individual. They thought that philosophy proved the existence of an immortal soul, an individual immortal soul. So when Mendelssohn encountered this, he said, at one point, that he thanked God for his having been born at this time, when religion and science can be reconciled with one another.

At the same time, Mendelssohn criticised Leibniz for being too attached to Christian beliefs that Mendelssohn saw as irrational. For example, Leibniz famously defended the idea of the Trinity on philosophical grounds. Or he defended the idea that people who don't believe in Christ will suffer eternal punishment. Mendelssohn thought that these ideas were irrational, that an all good God could not condemn people to suffer eternally just because they didn't confess belief in Christ, and he thought that Judaism also upheld that belief, that this was irrational, so he rejected certain of their Christian beliefs, but he accepted their philosophical defence of religion.

Alan Saunders: In 1783, Mendelssohn published a book called Jerusalem or On Religious Power and Judaism. This is in many respects about the relationship between church and state, isn't it?

Michah Gottlieb: Yes, absolutely.

Alan Saunders: And what is his view of the relationship?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, some people have ascribed to Mendelssohn the view that he believed in a separation between religion and state. I don't think that this is 100-per cent accurate. Mendelssohn thought that in fact religion and state both have the same aim, and that is the happiness and perfection and freedom of the citizens of the state. But he thought that the church and state used different means to achieve this end. So he thought that the state had the ability and the right to coerce people not to harm one another. Since the state was also concerned with people's bodies, not just with their inner souls or their minds. But he thought that the church was only concerned with people's intentions. And because intentions had to be based on rational conviction, and rational conviction could not be coerced - if I hold a gun, someone holds a gun to my head and says, 'Tell me that 2 plus 2 is equal to 5,' I can say 2 plus 2 is equal to 5, but I can't actually believe it - so, because of the fact that inner convictions, he says, must be based on rational conviction and not be coerced, the church has no coercive power to enforce his doctrines.

What Mendelssohn was against was the idea of a state religion. He completely rejected the idea that there should be one religion that was granted favour, and that people who were members of that religion had certain social or civic benefits attached to that. But he did believe that state and religion should work in tandem towards promoting the happiness and freedom of the citizens of the state.

Alan Saunders: There was something called haskalah, which was really a Jewish version of the Enlightenment. What was Moses Mendelssohn's relationship to that?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, the scholar Shmuel Feiner has argued that Mendelssohn was not actually active, or the founder, of Hascalah. But there is no doubt that the Hascalah, or as you say, the Jewish Enlightenment, grew up around Mendelssohn, and Mendelssohn was the figure that the Maskilim,, who were the promoters of the Jewish Enlightenment, looked to as their symbol and as their godfather. And Mendelssohn and this movement aimed to affect reforms in Jewish education, and in certain elements of Jewish belief, and Mendelssohn was certainly supportive of efforts, for instance, to modernise Jewish education, to eliminate what he saw as fanatical or intolerant elements from Judaism, and to make Judaism a means by which Jews could both be loyal to their tradition, but also regard their fellow citizens as their brothers, and participate fully in society.

Alan Saunders: So, should we see Mendelssohn as really one of the founders of Reform Judaism?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, I would make a distinction between reform with a small r and a capital R. I think that Mendelssohn certainly advocated reforms with a small r, within the Jewish community. The Reform movement was a movement that grew up well after Mendelssohn's death in 1786. The movement began in the 19th century. Now, there's no question that the Reform movement, the early Reform Jews, looked back to Mendelssohn as a model. And there was a way in which he was a model for them, and they had a legitimate right to claim him, because Mendelssohn said that one must base one's religious practice on conviction. And that if one didn't have the conviction behind the practice of rituals, then the rituals were of no value. So the later Reform Jews saw that as a basis for changing or abandoning religious rituals. At the same time, Mendelssohn still had a very strong sense that these rituals were valuable, were necessary and were even in a powerful sense binding. Of course, one had to convince people that they were binding, but he believed that they were binding. So, in that sense, later Reform Jews strayed pretty far from him, and he can actually be seen both as a founder of Reform Judaism as well as of modern Orthodox Judaism, both which came into being in the 19th century.

Alan Saunders: Finally, Michah Gottlieb, how did Mendelssohn seek to reconcile religion with tolerance and individual freedom?

Michah Gottlieb: Well, there's at least two different dimensions to this. I think this is a very important question, especially given our state of politics and religion in our world today. On the one hand as I've mentioned, he defined religion as primarily concerned with convictions which he thought had to be based on reason. So therefore he thought that there was no basis for religious coercion. People had to accept whatever religious beliefs or practices that they adhered to on the basis of their own convictions. That was one dimension, a kind of more philosophical argument for religious tolerance and religious freedom and individual freedom.

On the other hand, he also tried to base it in an interesting way theologically. And he reasoned that God... he asked, why would God create the world? If God was all-powerful, he's so powerful, if God is so mighty, why would he need to create the world? His answer is that the only reason that God created the world was for human benefit, to promote human flourishing. Now, Mendelssohn reasoned that one very important component of human flourishing was freedom. He famously wrote that a life without liberty is not worth living. So therefore, he thought that there was a religious or theological basis for individual freedom and for tolerance that's grounded in the very nature of God and God's relationship to the universe.

Alan Saunders: Michah, Moses Mendelssohn is a singularly engaging philosopher. Thank you for being our guide to his thought.

Michah Gottlieb: Thank you.

Alan Saunders: Michah Gottlieb is Assistant Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and the author of Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought. Details of that and more about Mendelssohn on our website, abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone. That's also the place where you can check out our Jewish philosophy page and listen to our entire series on Jewish philosophy.

Incidentally the music this week was by Mendelssohn's contemporary, Christian Joseph Lidarti, who, despite being called Christian, composed music in Hebrew for the Jewish community of Amsterdam. The Philosopher's Zone is produced by Kyla Slaven and the sound engineer is Charlie McCune. I'm Alan Saunders and next week we're giving way to a special forum on the world population reaching 7 billion. We'll be back in two weeks' time with the last in our series on Jewish philosophy.