Maimon's 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking' (original) (raw)

2024, Maimon's 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking'

The Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking was Salomon Maimon’s hard-won success after a lifetime’s pursuit of philosophical wisdom, originally published in Berlin in 1794. Timothy Franz presents its first English translation, with the goal of allowing the New Logic to be an object of further study, accessible to the philosophical tradition. Maimon’s work is the product of philosophical genius, and at its heart it is a serene account of reflection on thought that determines the principles of logic, on the one hand, and the principles of scientific cognition of the world, on the other, culminating in a thought-provoking metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Maimon also intended the work to be the foundation of his ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. However, as a Jewish philosopher from Lithuania, he had learned his subject as a wanderer, and he struggled to be understood by his fellow Jews, by Germans, and by the philosophical community. Consequently, there is considerable tension between Maimon’s philosophical vision and his persona and presentation. Franz translates the New Logic, the Letters of Philalethes to Aenesidemus, in which Maimon defends his views against the thinkers closest to him, two hostile reviews he vigorously annotated, and the letter to Kant introducing his idea for a critical philosophy of logic. Franz prefaces the work with a brief history of Maimon’s philosophical development and an introduction that attempts to reconcile Maimon’s presentation with his argument and to understand both of them together.