Essay on Transcendental Philosophy

Salomon Maimon was one of the most important and influential Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment. This is the first English translation of his principal work, first published in Berlin in 1790. “Essay on Transcendental Philosophy” presents the first English translation of Salomon Maimon’s principal work, originally published in Berlin in 1790. This book expresses his response to the revolution in philosophy wrought by Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”. Kant himself was full of praise for the book and it went on to exercise a decisive influence on the course of post-Kantian German idealism. Yet, despite his importance for the work of such key thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, Maimon never achieved the prominence he deserved. Today interest in Maimon’s work is increasing rapidly, thanks in large part to prominent acclaim by Gilles Deleuze. This long-overdue translation brings Maimon’s seminal text to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The text includes a comprehensive introduction, a glossary, translator’s notes and a full bibliography. It also includes translations of correspondence between Maimon and Kant and a letter Maimon wrote to a Berlin journal clarifying the philosophical position of the Essay, all of which bring alive the context of the book’s publication for the modern reader.

Author Biography

Salomon Maimon (1754-1800) was a German philosopher and one of the most important Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment. Nick Midgley is an independent scholar based in London, UK. He co-translated Habermas’s ‘Dialectical Idealism in Transition to Materialism’ in The New Schelling, ed. Judith Norman and Alistair Welchman (Continuum, 2004). Mergen Reglitz is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. Henry Somers-Hall teaches Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. He is on the editorial board for Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy. Alistair Welchman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA. He is the co-translator of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation (CUP, forthcoming).