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Bidding Information
Lot #    25631
Auction End Date    1/12/2010 11:26:30 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Ma’amar al ha-Hashgahah
Title (Hebrew)    îàîø òì ääùâçä
Author    [Only Ed.] Moses Mendelssohn
City    Vilna
Publisher    S. Fuenn, A. T. Rosenkrantz & M. Shriftsetzer
Publication Date    1872
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    Only Hebrew edition. [4], 56 pp. octavo 158:94 mm., nice margins. A good copy bound in later boards, rubbed.
          
Detailed
Description		    Only Hebrew edition of Mendelssohn philosophical essay on theodicy. First written as Die Sache Gottes this translation was prepared by the scholar Samuel Fuenn. In Ma’amar al ha-Hashgaḥah, one of Mendelssohn’s later works, he reworks the Causa Dei, Leibniz's abridgment of his Theodicy. Mendelssohn spells out most clearly his principal difference with his philosophical mentor's conception of the afterlife. Unlike Leibniz, who had sought to show how most human souls were destined for eternal damnation even in the best of all possible worlds, Mendelssohn maintained that all posthumous punishments would be both corrective and temporary. Divine goodness guaranteed that every human being was destined ultimately to enjoy "the degree of happiness appropriate for him." Following Wolff, Mendelssohn affirmed that the fundamental moral imperative is a natural law obliging all rational beings to promote their own perfection and that of others. Unlike Wolff, he did not elaborate all the ramifications of this natural law. But he clearly saw perfection in much the same terms as Wolff, as an unending process of physical, moral, and intellectual development, leading naturally to the increase of human happiness. In sharp contrast to Wolff, Mendelssohn regarded liberty as an indispensable precondition of the pursuit of moral and intellectual perfection. Only a free person, he argued, can achieve moral perfection. For virtue is the result of struggle, self-overcoming, and sacrifice, and these must be freely chosen. Intellectual perfection, too, can be attained only by one who is free to err. So, in place of Wolff’s tutelary state, Mendelssohn developed a contractarian political philosophy that left individuals largely free to define their own goals. Insisting above all on the inalienable liberty of conscience, he decried any state attempt to impose specific religious behavior or to discriminate against members of any minority faith.
          
Paragraph 2    ìçëí... øáéðå îùä îòðãòìñàäï æö"ì. ðòú÷ îìùåï àùëðæéú òì éãé ùîåàì éåñó áøé"à [áï ø' éöç÷ àéæé÷] ôéï...

ùðé ùòøéí
Source: Sache Gottes, oder die gerettete Vorsehung. Als zweiter Teil der Morgenstunden geplant.
ôåøñí øàùåðä áúåê ÷åáõ ëúáéå:
Moses Mendelssohn's gesammelte Schriften, II, 411-451, Leipzig 1843.

          
Reference
Description		    BE mem 219; EJ; CD-EPI 0300681
        
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Listing Classification
Period
19th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Russia-Poland:    Checked
  
Subject
Other:    Haskalah
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica