PHILOSOPHER

Moses Mendelssohn

1729 - 1786

Photo of Moses Mendelssohn

Icon of person Moses Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn (6 September 1729 – 4 January 1786) was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian. His writings and ideas on Jews and the Jewish religion and identity were a central element in the development of the Haskalah, or 'Jewish Enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau, Principality of Anhalt, and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature. Through his writings on philosophy and religion he came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Christian and Jewish inhabitants of German-speaking Europe and beyond. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Moses Mendelssohn is the 208th most popular philosopher (down from 185th in 2019), the 383rd most popular biography from Germany (down from 304th in 2019) and the 33rd most popular German Philosopher.

Moses Mendelssohn is most famous for his scholarly work on the translation of the Bible into German. He was also an influential philosopher and a leading figure in the Jewish Enlightenment.

Memorability Metrics

Loading...

Page views of Moses Mendelssohn by language

Loading...

Among PHILOSOPHERS

Among philosophers, Moses Mendelssohn ranks 208 out of 1,267Before him are Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Diogenes of Apollonia, Jean-François Lyotard, Rudolf Carnap, Hasan al-Basri, and Alcmaeon of Croton. After him are Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Georgi Plekhanov, Vasishtha, Julia Kristeva, Miguel de Unamuno, and Orosius.

Most Popular Philosophers in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1729, Moses Mendelssohn ranks 5Before him are Catherine the Great, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Louis, Dauphin of France, and Edmund Burke. After him are Lazzaro Spallanzani, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain, Antonio Soler, Countess Maria Louise Albertine of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Falkenburg, and Johann Daniel Titius. Among people deceased in 1786, Moses Mendelssohn ranks 3Before him are Frederick the Great, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele. After him are Peter III of Portugal, Maurice Benyovszky, Franz Benda, Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, John Goodricke, Eva Ekeblad, Gaspar de Portolá, Tokugawa Ieharu, and Princess Ernestine of Saxe-Weimar.

Others Born in 1729

Go to all Rankings

Others Deceased in 1786

Go to all Rankings

In Germany

Among people born in Germany, Moses Mendelssohn ranks 383 out of 7,253Before him are George Paget Thomson (1892), Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744), Pope Victor II (1018), Regiomontanus (1436), Joseph Beuys (1921), and Thomas à Kempis (1380). After him are Harald zur Hausen (1936), Heinrich Otto Wieland (1877), Valdemar I of Denmark (1131), Hugo Boss (1885), Johann Gottfried Galle (1812), and Fritz Sauckel (1894).

Among PHILOSOPHERS In Germany

Among philosophers born in Germany, Moses Mendelssohn ranks 33Before him are Herbert Marcuse (1898), Athanasius Kircher (1602), Ferdinand Tönnies (1855), Carl Schmitt (1888), Max Horkheimer (1895), and Rudolf Carnap (1891). After him are Ernst Bloch (1885), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743), Franz Brentano (1838), Adam Weishaupt (1748), Johann Reuchlin (1455), and Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (1842).