Morning Hours

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

   PDF

2. Preliminary Knowledge of Truth, Semblance, and Error

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. What is truth?

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 3-7

   3. Cause – Effect – Ground – Power.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 9-15

   4. Evidence – Of immediate Knowledge: Rational Knowledge – Knowledge of Nature.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 17-21

   5. Truth and Illusion.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 23-28

   6. Existence – Being Awake – Dreams – Rapture.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 29-33

   7. Combination of Ideas – Idealism.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 35-40

   8. Continuation. The Idealist’s Dispute with the Dualist. Truth-Drive and Approval-Drive.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 41-46

3. Scientific Doctrinal Concepts of God’s Existence

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 47-47

      PDF

   2. Importance of the Investigation. On Basedow’s Principle of the Duty to Believe. Axiomata.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 49-54

   3. The evidence of the pure and the applied doctrine of magnitudes. Comparison with the evidence for the proofs of God’s existence. Different methods of those proofs.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 55-57

   4. Allegorical Dream. – Reason and Common Sense. Grounds for the Proof of God’s Existence, according to the System of the Idealists, on the basis of our own Existence. – Also, in any case, on the basis of the ideal Existence of an objective world of the senses.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 59-63

   5. Epicureanism. – Accident. – Chance. A Series of Causes and Effects, without End, – without Beginning. Progression into Infinity, Forwards and Backwards. – The Timeless, without Beginning, without End and without Progression.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 65-68

   6. Sufficient Reason for the Contingent in the Necessary. – The former is somewhere and sometimes, the latter is everywhere and all times. – The former is only in relation to space and time; the latter is unqualifiedly the best and most perfect. Everything that is, is best. – All God’s thoughts, insofar as they have the best as their subject, attain actuality.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 69-74

   7. Spinozism. – Pantheism. – All is One and One is All. – Refutation.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 75-81

   8. Continued dispute with the pantheists. – Approximation. – Point of unison with them. – Innocuousness of the purified patheism. – Compatibility with religion and ethics insofar as they are practical.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 83-90

   9. Lessing. – His Contribution to the Religion of Reason. – His Thoughts on Purified Pantheism.

      • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

      Pages 91-99

   10. Elucidation of the concepts of necessity, contingency, independence, and dependence. – Attempt at a new proof for the existence of God on the basis of the incompleteness of self-knowledge.

       • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

       Pages 101-107

   11. The a priori Grounds of Proof of the Existence of a supremely perfect, necessary, independent Being.

       • Moses Mendelssohn, Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Corey Dyck

       Pages 109-115

The last work published by Moses Mendelssohn during his lifetime, Morning Hours (1785) is also the most sustained presentation of his mature epistemological and metaphysical views, all elaborated in the service of presenting proofs for the existence of God. But Morning Hours is much more than a theoretical treatise. It also plays a central role in the drama of the Pantheismusstreit, Mendelssohn's "dispute" with F. H. Jacobi over the nature and scope of Lessing's attitude toward Spinoza and "pantheism". As the latest salvo in a war of texts with Jacobi, Morning Hours is also Mendelssohn's attempt to set the record straight regarding his beloved Lessing in this connection, not least by demonstrating the absence of any practical (i.e., religious or moral) difference between theism and a "purified pantheism".

• idealism
• proofs of God's existence
• reason
• refined pantheism
• skepticism

• Dept. Philosophy, Boston University, Boston, USA

  Corey Dyck

• Berlin, Germany

  Moses Mendelssohn

Policies and ethics