Cont Philos Rev (2011) 44:247252 DOI 10.

1007/s11007-011-9179-4

Salomon Maimon: Essay on transcendental philosophy. Nick Midgley, Henry Somers-Hall, Alistair Welchman and Merten Reglitz (trans)
Continuum Press, New York, 2010 (orginally 1790), 352 pp., paperback, $24.95, ISBN: PB: 978-1-4411-1384-9
Daniela Voss
Published online: 30 April 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

The philosopher Salomon Maimon (17531800), who is widely known for his Autobiography (1792),1 has unfortunately been a rather marginalized gure in philosophy, and his extensive philosophical work, which comprises several books, commentaries and journal articles, unduly neglected. This is all the more surprising, since Maimon was a very active gure on the philosophical scene during his day. Apart from his numerous articles, he kept up correspondence with prominent scholars, such as Reinhold, Ben David and others, though he never held a chair of philosophy himself. Fichte, who can be seen as the main philosophical heir of Maimons thoughts, spoke of him with high esteem and confessed his limitless respect toward his talents.2 Yet, after his death, Maimons oeuvre fell almost completely into oblivion. As Samuel Atlas speculates, Maimons critico-skeptical investigations were simply overshadowed by the grandeur and splendor of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel and their metaphysical systems.3 A further reason might be Maimons rather unorthodox style of writing and lack of systematic structure. With German not being his mother tongue, Maimon was aware of the grammatical infelicity of his expression, and deciency in exposition and structure. Thus, he anticipated his fate: A writer who has a good style is read. One who has expository power is studied. One who has neither the one nor the other, supposing him,

1 2 3

Maimon (2001), originally published under the title Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte in 1792. Fichte, Letter to Reinhold, March or April 1795 (1970, p. 282). Atlas (1964, pp. 123).

D. Voss (&) New South Wales University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: vossdani@gmail.com Present Address: D. Voss Free University, Berlin, Germany

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however, to be in possession of weighty and new truths, is used. His mind, though not his name, is imperishable.4 Today, there exist only a handful of monographs on Maimon. In the Germanspeaking world, they date back to the rst quarter of the twentieth century (the most inuential being Kuntze 1912; also Wegener 1909; Katz 1914). A monograph by Samuel Bergman, written in Hebrew, appeared in 1921 (translated into English in 1967). Martial Gueroult published an excellent book on Maimon in 1929, which remains the only monograph available in French (Gueroult 1929). In the English language, the most pertinent book on Maimons philosophy was written by Samuel Atlas in 1964. Frederick Beiser devoted some sections to Maimon in his books on German idealism (1987, 2002). In recent secondary literature, there are only two monographs on Maimon (Engstler 1990; Bransen 1991), a collection of essays edited by Gideon Freudenthal (2003), and some articles written by Paul Franks (2000, 2003). The appearance of Maimons Essay on Transcendental Philosophy in March last year is the rst English translation of one of Maimons major philosophical books. All the more can one warmly congratulate the translators Nick Midgley, Henry Somers-Hall, Alistair Welchman, Merten Reglitz, and the publisher Continuum for this welcome contribution to the philosophical study of Maimon. Their excellent translation will hopefully lead many new readers in the English-speaking world to an appreciation of this highly original thinker, and provoke further research on some of Maimons controversial philosophical theses, which can still stir up discussion today. Maimons Essay on Transcendental Philosophy consists of ve parts. The rst part contains the actual Essay divided into ten chapters. In this text, Maimon presents his critical take on aspects of Kants Transcendental aesthetic and Transcendental analytic, and also introduces his own philosophical innovation: the prominent theory of differentials indicating a new type of ideas (ideas of understanding) which account for the material totality of the world. The rst part is followed by a Short Overview of the Whole Work which is kind of a commentary on the rst, intended to clarify the different standpoints of Kant and Maimon. It also includes a discussion of Kants Antinomies of Pure Reason which is not present in the actual Essay. Parts three and four (My Ontology and On Symbolic Cognition and Philosophical Language) are two short texts which basically add some further explanatory material to issues previously discussed, while the last part, Notes and Clarications on Some Passages of this Work, contains a signicant and substantial extension of Maimons thoughts presented in the Essay. The translators have also included a very helpful Appendix with letters from Maimon and Kant, a journal article on the Essay written by Maimon, and an extract from Isaac Newtons discussion of uxions (which are the equivalent of Leibnizs innitesimals within the differential calculus). This Appendix helps the reader to view the Essay in its wider contemporary context and discussion, and better to understand the inspirational source for Maimons theory of differentials. Of great value are also the editorial notes, the Glossary, Bibliography and indispensable Index.
4

Maimon (1970, p. 155).

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Maimons Essay on Transcendental Philosophy was originally not intended for publication. This explains to some extent the rather unsystematic patchwork structure. However, after a very favorable remark from Kant himself, who had read the manuscript, the publication went ahead. Kant acknowledges the excellence of Maimons Essay, admitting not only that none of my opponents has understood me and the principle in question as well as Mr. Maimon, but also that only a few people possess such an acute mind for such profound investigations [as he does].5 Yet, Kant realized that the Essay is in fact for the most part directed against me.6 The counterarguments Kant provides shed further light on the differences between himself and Maimon, but are not able to resolve the tensions. In fact, Kant fails to discuss the main point of attack issued by Maimon. Maimon raises the question quid juris?, asking for the legitimacy or right of relating pure concepts of the understanding to something given in intuition. Rather than doubting the objective validity of the pure concepts for possible experience in general, he calls their objective reality into question. Maimon pursues an external and an internal approach. The external approach simply consists in the skeptical challenge to the factual existence of synthetic a priori judgments (quid facti?). This approach, however, cannot undermine Kants proof of the objective reality of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason, since the fact of synthetic a priori judgments serves only illustrative purposes. The internal approach, though, questions the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments in principle. This objection affects Kants argument from within, inasmuch as it denies that pure concepts can be applied to intuition, even if this intuition is a priori. The crucial point of divergence between Kant and Maimon concerns the notion of pure intuition, that is, the subjacent theories of space and time. In Maimons view, pure intuition is impossible in the way that Kant conceives it and puts it to use in his argument. For Kant, formal intuition functions as a mediating representation which lls the gap between pure thought and empirical intuition. That is to say, pure concepts do not apply to empirical objects directly, but only through the mediation of a pure (i.e. universal and necessary) spatio-temporal representation of the object qua intuited. In agreement with Leibniz, Maimon contends that formal intuition is nothing but a ction of the faculty of imagination. Kant would have us believe that space and time are conceivable separately from any content as an indeterminate, continuous and homogeneous whole, the parts of which can be synthesized to determinate and measurable extensive magnitudes. But he leaves the question open as to how we can distinguish and identify parts of an indeterminate, continuous, and homogeneous whole. Kant models the pure synthesis of imagination on an empirical synthesis of already spatially or temporally differentiated representations (for instance, the synthesis of a particular triangle from three given lines). He misses the point that a synthesis of a pure spatial or temporal manifold in one (formal) intuition is indeed impossible. Maimons own solution to the problem quid juris? requires that everything which is intuited (extensive magnitude and matter alike) must be dissolvable into thought relations. Mapping the logic of differential calculus onto the realm of
5 6

Kant, in Maimon (2010, p. 231). Kant, in Maimon (2010, p. 236).

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transcendental metaphysics, Maimon states that objects and their relations are generated from so-called differentials or differential relations (which are intensive in so far as they cannot be divided into absolute unities). The differentials are limiting concepts or ideas of the understanding which must be laid down by the mind in order to be able (at least in principle) to think the given entirely, that is, to understand the rule by means of which the objects and their relations arise. This is the only way for Maimon to solve the problem quid juris? satisfactorily. The translator Nick Midgley provides an excellent introduction, which outlines the main points discussed in Maimons Essay in a very clear and comprehensible way. He succeeds in giving a structure to Maimons arguments which is not easy to determine in the work itself. Thanks to his explanations, the reader is able to obtain a good understanding of Maimons complex philosophical standpoint. But what is more, the reader can sense the importance of Maimons thought for contemporary philosophy; in particular, a philosophy of difference. Rather than contributing to a renaissance of critical idealism and a return to Kants critical method as Samuel Atlas has argued,7 Maimon can be interpreted to show that critical idealism is not radical enough. It models its transcendental account of how the mind works on subjective and psychological facts, that is, how things seem to our empirical consciousness. The transcendental, however, must not be understood in the image of the empirical. Moreover it must not be conceived as merely extrinsic conditions, which determine the given intuition from without (according to the traditional Aristotelian model of form and matter). Instead, Maimon suggests that we tentatively conceive the transcendental as a manifold of differential relations of distinct elements, which cannot be presented in intuition but whose ratio generates the objects and their relations. Indeed one of the most striking aspects of Maimons philosophy is the way it presents a thoroughgoing philosophy of difference in which relations and differences are prior to their objects.8 In recent French philosophy, Gilles Deleuze proted immensely from Maimon, notably in his books from the 1960s. Difference and Repetition (1968) in its entirety can be read as a project in transcendental philosophy, redening the transcendental as a genetic principle capable of giving an immanent account of how real experience and pure thought arise. Deleuze conceives the transcendental genetic element as pure difference or difference-in-itself. That is to say, difference is not considered as a relation between two things whose identity is given prior to their relations. Deleuze,9 as well as Maimon, thinks of a concept of intrinsic difference designating a positive, internal quality of distinct, differential elements which do not exist apart from their relations. While the differential calculus is the mathematical model which stands behind this conception of difference, the question arises if the philosophical differential differs from its mathematical progenitor and if so in what way. The mathematical differential or innitesimal is simply an imaginary thing, a ction, as Leibniz frankly admits (Letter to Varignon 1702). Even if
7 8 9

Atlas (1964, p. 19). Nick Midgley, in Maimon (2010, p. xliv).

Deleuze discusses the notion of internal difference at rst in relation to Bergson, see Deleuze (2003a, pp. 423).

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someone refuses to concede the existence of innitely small magnitudes as real entities, he can nonetheless make use of them as a device to shorten the reasoning and reach true results, in which any possible error owing to innitesimals can be ignored because the error would be innitely small. With respect to Maimons philosophical differential, there is an endless debate in secondary literature whether he conceives differentials, or ideas of understanding, as he also calls them, as real or ctitious.10 Deleuze injects a new thought into the debate by arguing that the alternative between the status of mere ctions (ideas) or actual reality is false.11 He characterizes differentials as real but not actual, and ideal but not abstract (which is Marcel Prousts formula for the virtual). This characterization goes along well with Maimons account who denes differentials as ideas (though not abstract ideas of formal totality, but ideas of material completeness12) and as real things (Ens reale13), declaring at the same time that the real is opposed to the actual given to our empirical consciousness. For Maimon, the differentials present an unconscious reality, an unconscious thought originating in an innite understanding which is conceived as essentially the same, as continuous with our understanding. The understanding only grasps objects as owing, by thinking the way or the rule by which they arise.14 Intuition, which is subject to determined spatio-temporal parameters, does not play any fundamental role in cognition. And on the most radical interpretation of what Maimon is saying, consciousness plays no role either: consciousness requires some extension in time but thought, differentials, concepts, are all differential, relational, intensive.15 Deleuze advocates a transcendental which is precisely that: differential, relational, intensive. Rather than being a constitutive consciousness, the transcendental is a differential unconscious swarming with differential and problematic Ideas. These differential Ideas give rise to physical objects, qualitative diversity, and empirical spacetime on the one hand, and to pure thought or concepts as events, which subsist not within a historical or developmental timeframe, but within a virtual realm eluding time and consciousness, on the other hand. Although Deleuze does not dwell extensively on Maimonin Difference and Repetition, he only devotes a few pages to himMaimons name is mentioned explicitly in many of Deleuzes books, essays, and seminars,16 and traces of Maimons thought can be found throughout Deleuzes work.
10

The list of scholars who argue for the ontological status of differentials as ctions or ideas is long: Schrader (1983, p. 704); Baumanns (1974, p. 55); Cassirer (1920, p. 102, 104, 123); Vaihinger (1911, pp. 1102, 269, 2734, 282); Atlas (1964, p. 118). Others argue that differentials have to be dened as real relations or laws of the understanding: Bergman (1967, p. 60, 67); Engstler (1990, p. 23, 143). Deleuze (1994, p. 193).

11 12

Maimon (2010, p. 75, 80). References to passages from the Essay are to the page numbers of the German original edition, marked at the top of each page of the translation.
13 14 15 16

Maimon (2010, p. 103). Maimon (2010, p. 33). Nick Midgley, in Maimon (2010, p. xlvi).

See for instance, Deleuze (1983), p. 52n); (1994, p. 170, 1734, 1923, 310, 324, 326); (1993, p. 89); (2003b, p. 61); Seminar on Kant of 14 March 1978 (transcripts of Deleuzes seminars are available online at http://www.webdeleuze.com/sommaire.html).

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References
Atlas, Samuel. 1964. From critical to speculative idealism. The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon. The Hague: Nijhoff. Baumanns, Peter. 1974. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre. Probleme ihres Anfangs. Bonn. Beiser, Frederick C. 1987. The fate of reasonGerman philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Beiser, Frederick C. 2002. German idealism: The struggle against subjectivism, 17811801. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bergman, Samuel Hugo. 1967. The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon (trans: Jacobs, N.J.). Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Bransen, Jan. 1991. The Antinomy of thought: Maimonian skepticism and the relation between thoughts and objects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cassirer, Ernst. 1920. Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, vol. 3. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and philosophy (trans: Tomlinson, H.). London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1993. The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (trans: Conley, T.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and repetition (trans: Patton, P.). New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2003a. Bergsons Conception of Difference. In Desert Islands and other texts (195374), ed. David Lapoujade. New York: Semiotext(e). Deleuze, Gilles (2003b) The Idea of Genesis in Kants Esthetics. In Desert Islands and Other Texts (195374), New York: Semiotext(e). Engstler, Achim. 1990. Untersuchungen zum Idealismus Salomon Maimons. Stuttgart: FrommannHolzboog. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 1970. Letter to Reinhold, (March or April) 1795. In Gesamtausgabe; Briefwechsel 17935, vol. 3, ed. Reinhard Lauth and Hans Jacob. Frommann-Holzboog. Franks, Paul. 2000. All or nothing: Systematicity and nihilism in Jacobi, Reinhold, and Maimon. In The Cambridge companion to German idealism, ed. K. Ameriks, 95116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Franks, Paul. 2003. Does post-Kantian skepticism exist? In Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism: Konzepte der Rationalita t/Concepts of Rationality, ed. K. Ameriks, 141163. New York: de Gruyter. Freudenthal, Gideon (ed.). 2003. Salomon Maimon: Rational dogmatist, empirical skeptic. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Gueroult, Martial. (1929) La Philosophie transcendantale de Salomon Maimon. Paris. Katz, Benzion. (1914) Die Erkenntnistheorie Salomon Maimons in ihrem Verha ltnis zu Kant. Berlin. Kuntze, Friedrich. 1912. Die Philosophie Salomon Maimons. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Maimon, Salomon. 1970. Philosophisches Worterbuch (1791). In Collected Works, vol. 3, ed. Valerio Verra. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Maimon, Salomon. 2001. The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon (trans: Murray, J.C.). Chicaco: University of Illinois Press. Maimon, Salomon. 2010. Essay on transcendental philosophy (trans: Midgley, N. et al.). New York: Continuum. Schrader, Wolfgang H. 1983. Leibniz versus KantDie Leibniz-Rezeption Salomon Maimons. In: Leibniz. Werk und Wirkung. IV. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress. ed. Gottfried-Wilhelm-LeibnizGesellschaft, Hannover. Vaihinger, Hans. 1911. Die Philosophie des Als Ob. System der theoretischen, praktischen und religio sen Fiktionen der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Positivismus. Berlin. Wegener, Richard. 1909. Die Transcendentalphilosophie S. Maimons. Diss. Rostock.

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