Professor Paul Reitter, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures,
The Ohio State University
Abe Socher, Professor Emeritus, Oberlin College
Editor, Jewish Review of Books
Professors Reitter and Socher will discuss the life and philosophy of Solomon Ben Maimon. Professor Reitter recently translated Maimon's autobiography in the forthcoming publication, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation (Melamed, Yitzhak and Socher, Abraham eds., Princeton University Press, 2019). Professor Socher is the author of The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy (Stanford University Press, 2006).
Solomon Ben Maimon was an 18th century Jewish philosopher whose writings were influenced by Maimonides, Spinoza, and Kant. He was important figure in the development of the movement referred to today as German Idealism, which was a reaction against Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and was closely linked with both Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of The Enlightenment.
