MAIMON, SALOMON. - Philosopher, born at Neschwitz (Lithuania) in 1754, died at Nieder-Siegersdorf (Liegnitz, Lower Silesia) on 22 Nov. 1800. His original name was S. ben Ychōshunā (he adopted the name M. in homage to MAIMONIDES [q.v.], whom he held in the highest veneration). The son of a rabbi, he devoted himself from early childhood—spent in straitened circumstances—to the study of the Talmud. He lived in Berlin, Hamburg, Königsberg, Amsterdam, Hanover, Breslau, and spent his final years in the company of Count Kalckreuth in Silesia.
His *Lebensgeschichte* (Berlin 1793; Italian trans., Milan 1920), the most vivid document of his wandering and turbulent life, contains, among other things, a grim portrayal of the social conditions of Poland at that time. Among his other works are: *Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie* (Berlin 1790); *Philosophisches Wörterbuch*, etc. (ibid. 1791); *Bacons von Verulam neues Organon* (ibid. 1793); *Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens* (ibid. 1794); *Die Kategorien des Aristoteles* (ibid. 1794); *Kritische Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Geist*, etc. (Leipzig 1797).
M.’s philosophy developed fully within Kantianism. His *Transzendentalphilosophie* reflects the diverse influences that shaped his philosophical culture, particularly the Kantian, the humanistic, and the Spinozist-Leibnizian. Kant’s dualism of sensibility and intellect led, on the one hand, to the admission of a thing-in-itself as the cause of representations, and, on the other, to the necessity of a unifying power capable of integrating the manifold. M.’s solution consisted in eliminating the presupposition of the thing-in-itself as the cause of representations and in reducing knowledge to the synthesis of data produced by the imagination. The origin of these data remains unknown because it unfolds in a remote sphere of consciousness. “The given is what consciousness cannot produce at will, but what is produced in it without its penetrating the cause or the manner of production—i.e., an imperfect consciousness. This imperfection of consciousness can be noted through a gradation that descends from clearly determined consciousness to the nothingness of consciousness. Consequently, the given is merely the idea of the limit of this series, an irrational magnitude to which one may approach but never comprehend” (*Phil. Wort.*, p. 169). This limit, which eludes all intuition, is the “differential of consciousness.” Regarding the a priori forms, M., following Kant in rejecting the naturalistic thesis of space and time as properties of things-in-themselves, denies the possibility of regarding them as transcendental forms of the object. In his *Logik* (1794), M. substantially modifies his epistemology, leaving the impression of an eclecticism that he himself did not hesitate to call a *Koalitionsystem*.
M.’s philosophy, considered as a chapter of Kantianism—though operating on a plane different from the *Critique*, as Kant himself acknowledged (to M. Herz, 26 May 1789, in *Briefwechsel*, ed. Meiner, I, Leipzig 1924, pp. 395–402)—nevertheless shares the demand for a reform of principles for a future metaphysics. Yet the insufficient analysis of the given, to which the property of the immediately known is not granted, and the maintained constructive character of consciousness, confine this philosophy within the narrow confines of phenomenism.