MAIMON, SALOMON German philosopher, was born of Jewish parentage in Polish Lithuania, and died at Nieder-Siegersdorf on Nov. 2 2, i800. He married at the age of 12, and studied medicine in Berlin. In 177o he severed his con nection with his orthodox co-religionists by his critical com mentary on the Moreh Nebuliim of Maimonides, and devoted himself to the study of philosophy on the lines of Wolff and Moses Mendelssohn. After many vicissitudes he found a quiet home with Count Kalkreuth at Nieder-Siegersdorf in 179o, and began to publish the works which have made his reputation as a critical philosopher. In 1788 he made the acquaintance of the Kantian philosophy, which was to form the basis of his lifework, and in 1790 he published the Versuch fiber die Transcendental-philoso phie, in which he formulates his objections to the system. Maimon takes a view intermediate between Kant and Hume. Hume's attitude to the empirical is entirely supported by Maimon. The casual concept, as given by experience, expresses not a neces sary objective order of things, but an ordered scheme of percep tion; it is subjective and cannot be postulated as a concrete law apart from consciousness. The main argument of the Trans
cendentalphilosophie not only drew from Kant, who saw it in ms., the remark that Maimon alone of all his critics had mastered the true meaning of his philosophy, but also directed the path of most subsequent criticism.