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By the Lutheran minister Gottfried Joachim Wichmann (a.k.a. Heman) as a reponse to Mendelssohn's Phaedon. Phaedon, the work which made Mendelssohn famous throughout Europe as the "German Socrates," was a novel effort at translation and commentary on the Phaedo of Plato. The work begins as a strict translation of the Platonic dialogue, but rapidly diverges into its own independent work, as Mendelssohn supplies arguments of his own and others more convincing, he believed, than those supplied by Plato's Socrates. He seeks to demonstrate the rationality of the belief in the existence of G-d. He treats the subject as a principle of general metaphysics and man's universal religion of reason.
Mendelssohn's favorite proof for G-d's existence is a modification of the ontological argument: Man finds the idea of a Supreme Being in his consciousness. Since this idea cannot have arisen out of man's limited and fragmented experiences - we have no direct knowledge of anything remotely resembling the idea of divine perfection - it is a priori and belongs to the category of concepts that precede all experience and enable us to comprehend the universe, including space, time, and causality. Although these concepts do not arise from experience, they are not subjective because they determine the character of universal experience. Further, there is a necessary connection between the concept of an absolutely perfect being and his existence, a being which is absolutely real, or perfect, must have existence among its attributes; otherwise, it would be lacking the full complement of its unconditioned possibility. |
