Tag Archives: German Museum

Zöllner on Prejudices and Superstitions: An Article from the German Museum

Posted on June 8, 2014 by James Schmidt

Introduction to Zöllner, “On Prejudices and Superstitions” While Johann Friedrich Zöllner (1753-1804) is hardly a major thinker he deserves a bit more attention than he’s gotten in the Anglophone world. He was, after all, the person who asked the question … Continue reading →

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Culture & Civilization: The First English Translation of Mendelssohn’s Answer to the Question “What is Enlightenment?” (Part II)

Posted on April 20, 2014 by James Schmidt

As should be apparent by now, my collection of hobby horses includes an interest in old translations of now-familiar texts.1  The interest is not entirely idiosyncratic, nor is it entirely irrelevant to my labors in that open-ended field known as the … Continue reading →

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Moses Mendelssohn, “On Enlightening the Mind”

Posted on March 18, 2014 by James Schmidt

The text that follows is the first English translation of Moses Mendelssohn’s 1784 response to the question “What is enlightenment?” The anonymous translation appeared in 1800 in the second volume of The German Museum, a short-lived journal edited by the … Continue reading →

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The First English Translation of Moses Mendelssohn’s Answer to the Question “What is Enlightenment?”: Part I

Posted on March 17, 2014 by James Schmidt

Last summer I wrote a series of posts on the choices involved in translating Kant’s answer to the question “What is Enlightenment?” into English. Attempting something similar for Moses Mendelssohn’s answer to the same question, which appeared three months before … Continue reading →

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