Moses Mendelssohn: Sage of Modernity – By Shmuel Feiner

Feiner does a fine job illuminating the challenges faced by Mendelssohn as a public Jewish intellectual. Mendelssohn's philosophical acumen was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, he became wildly famous, and indeed, members of the Prussian Royal Academy of the Sciences elected him to become a member, although the King, Friedrich II, refused to grant approval to this appointment, ostensibly because Mendelssohn was a Jew. Mendelssohn was also widely sought out as a conversation partner by many philosophers, literary figures, and theologians. However, these conversations were not always innocent. In the case of Johann Caspar Lavater, a Swiss theologian, who, taking liberties with comments from a private conversation with Mendelssohn, publicly challenged the famous Jew to refute Christianity or convert. As a result, Mendelssohn found himself caught in the center of controversy in matters of religious tolerance. Though Mendelssohn desired to devote himself to abstract matters of philosophy, the later years of his life were primarily involved with interceding on behalf of threatened Jewish communities, attempts to persuade Christians to reconsider and relinquish their anti-Jewish prejudices, and conflicts with the entrenched rabbinic authorities who saw Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment as a threat.

While Feiner's biography presents Mendelssohn as a complex individual, both traditionalist and modern, beloved and reviled, influential culturally and yet powerless practically, his philosophy is subordinated to the dramatic events of his life. Feiner, while bringing Mendelssohn and his concerns to life, pays relatively scant attention to the philosophy that made him so famous. One cannot avoid the feeling of there being a certain biographical reductionism at play here, where Mendelssohn's philosophical works are but mere responses to events in his life. For example, Phaedon, Mendelssohn's work on the immortality of the soul, is depicted as the attempt of a