author
1754–1800
A restless self-taught thinker of the Enlightenment, he rose from poverty in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to become one of the sharpest critics and interpreters of Kant. His memoirs are also prized for their vivid, often surprisingly modern account of intellectual life on the margins.
by Solomon Maimon
Born in 1753 or 1754 near Mir in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Salomon Maimon was a Jewish philosopher and autobiographer who later worked mainly in Germany. He is best known for engaging deeply with Immanuel Kant's philosophy and for developing a skeptical, probing style that influenced later German thought.
Maimon had a difficult early life and was largely self-educated. Despite poverty and repeated setbacks, he won attention in Berlin for the originality of his ideas. His best-known philosophical work, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, is closely tied to the debates that followed Kant, while his autobiography became famous for its lively picture of Jewish education, travel, and intellectual ambition in eighteenth-century Europe.
He died in 1800. Today he is remembered both as a serious philosopher in the Kantian era and as the author of a remarkable life story that still feels immediate and personal.