Akademik

(1729–1786)

The most influential German Jewish philosopher of the 18th century. Born in Dessau, Mendelssohn received a rabbinic education. He is mainly remembered for his work on aesthetics, which had some influence on Kant, although his proof of the immortality of the soul (the soul is simple, therefore indestructible) is one of Kant's most famous targets. Mendelssohn was a friend of Lessing and in his later years became involved in the Pantheismusstreit or pantheism controversy, whose ostensible point was whether Lessing was a closet Spinozist, but which drew all the central German philosophers of the time into the muddy waters of teleology and theology.