Maimbourg, Theodore, a relative of the dis- tinguished Louis Maimbourg (q. v.), tlourished about the middle of the 17th century. He embraced the Re- formed doctrine, and in 1659 published a letter addressed to Louis justifying his course. In 1664 ha returned to the Romish Church, and subsequently left it again. He then retired to England, and died at London in 1693. — Herzog, Real-Encykl. viii, 390.
Mainion, Solomon, a Jewish rabbi and philosopher, one of the ablest expounders of the Kantian school, was born in Lithuania in 1753. He was of very humble par- entage, and in his youth was confined in his educational advantages to the study of Hebrew. Yet his talent for speculation manifested itself at a very early age, wlieu still contined to tlie expounding of Talmudic lore. In his very youth, Moses Maimonides's Moreh Nehuchini fell into his hands ; but while to Moses Mendelssohn it be- came the guide to truth, it became to Maimon a guide to a labyrinth of speculation from which no open-sesame gave liim an outlet until, in advanced life, he fell in with the writings of Kant, to become one of his most ardent students and ablest exi)ounders. In the despair which the Moreh Nebuchim prepared for him, he turned to the Cabala for relief, determined to become a Jewish Faust. Plagued by the disadvantages of Russo-Jewish society, he finally quitted his native land and went to Germany to study medicine and thus gain a livelihood. He was 25 years old when he arrived at Kiinigsberg, in West Prussia. His condition in this, the old capital of Prus- sia, the seat of a university at that time in the very ze- nith of her glory, was much like that of a man who, after having suftVTed starvation for days, is suddenly placed at a table filled with the daintiest food. Partaldng too greedily of the food set before him, he became a great sufferer mentally — i. e. he was lost in wild speculation. In 1779 he went to Berlin, and became an intimate asso- ciate of the German Jewish savant, Moses Mendelssohn. It was not, however, until years had been passed in a roving life that he finally, in 1788, on his return to Ber- lin, gave himself to the study of Kantian philosophy, was recommended to Kant, and soon made a great name for himself. Both Schiller and Goethe, it is said, sought his society ; the latter, we are told, desired :Maimon to take up his residence near his side {Muimoiiiantt, p. 197; Varnhagen's Nachlass, Briefwechsel zwischcn Rahel n. David Veif, i, 243 sq., 247 et al. ; ii, 23). In his last years count Kalkreuth gave Maimon a home on one of his es- tates in Silesia. He died in 1800. From an admirer of Kant,;Maimon finally changed to a decided opponent, and, to make good his claims, presented the world with a new system of philosophy, which was written in the interests of scepticism. According to :Maimoii, there is no knowledge strictly objective except pure mathemat-
ics, and all empirical knowledge is only an illusion. He traces all the forms of thought, categories, and judg- ments to a general and unique princijde, that of deter- minability, of reality, of substance ; but he contends that we have no right to suppose that our thought has for its object a thing without ourselves, existing inde- pendently of the thought, which determines it. "He admits, with Kant,"' saj-s Wilson {/list, of German Phi- losophy, ii, 186), "that there are conceptions and princi- ples a priori, a pure knowledge which applies itself to an object of thought in general, and to objects of knowl- eilge a priori ; but he denies that this very pure knowl- edge absolutely applies itself to experience. The phi- losophy of the Kritik admits this application as a fact of conscience. This fact, according to Maimon, is sim- ply an illusion, and he declares that the categories are destined only to apply to objects of pure mathemat- ics. Maimon's objections were not without influence on the ulterior development of general philosophy, and Fichte paid much regard to them; but the great ob- jection, the one which bears upon the application of category to reality, Fichte destroyed in one word when he said that the right of this application cannot be de- ducted until it is absolute" (compare Ueberweg, His- tory of Philosophy, vol. ii). Among his best works are, besides his numerous essays and treatises on various philosophical themes in the " Berliner Monatsschrift" and the " Magazin" from 1789 to 1800, in themselves a small library, and besides ten books on all departments of philosophy, published between 1790 and 1797, the Gilbath ha-Moreh, a Hebrew commentary and a remark- able introduction to the three volumes of Maimonides's Moreh Nebuchim (Berlin, 1791), in which he proved him- self master of the philosophical field ; also Versttch iiber die Transcendentalphilosophie (Berlin, 1790, 8vo) ; Ver- such einer neuen Logik, oder Theorie des Denkens, etc. (Berlin, 1794, 8vo) ; and Kritische Untersuchmifjen iiber den menschlichen Geist (1797), and a memoir of his own life entitled " Lebensf/eschichte" (2 vols. 1792-93). See Wolf, '^Rhapsodien zur Charactei-istik S. Maimons" (1813) ; Griitz, Gesch. d. Juden, xi, 142 sq. (Leipzig, 1870, 8vo); Tenwextiaxm, Manual of Philosophy ,'p.Al\. sq.; Hoe- fer, Nouv. Bioij. Generale, vol. xxxii, s. v. ; Dr. Wise in the Israelite (Cincinnati, Ohio), Jan. 1871. (.L H. W.)