German Enlightenment: From Kant and Mendelssohn to Habermas

At the time of the 18th- century Enlightenment movement in Europe, the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, movement developed around Moses Mendelssohn, a philosopher and immigrant to Berlin. He was a celebrity and was even more famous than Immanuel Kant in his day and age.

Today, Immanuel Kant stands for the philosophy of the Enlightenment in Germany like no other. Every student will have heard his famous categorical imperative quote: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." His 1781 book "The Critique of Pure Reason" laid the foundations of modern philosophy.

Johann Gottfried Herder, a student of Kant's, is also considered one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment period in Germany. In his main work, "Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity," he identified the purpose of man's existence as being purely "directed toward the formation of humanity," meant to serve all the "lowly needs of the earth and itself lead to them."

Leibniz was a philosopher of the early Enlightenment and one of its most important pioneers. Even before Kant, he formulated an important maxim of Enlightenment thought, namely that every human being has the ability to lead a sensible life.

Tolerance, freedom and the new self-confidence of the middle classes — these ideas were at the heart of Lessing's plays and writings. Above all, he criticized religious dogmatism and advocated equal rights for different religions. In his play "Nathan the Wise," the titular charcater is largely modeled after his lifelong friend, the Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

The ideas advocated in the Enlightenment have survived for centuries. Nevertheless, fascist and destructive ideologies were able to emerge in Germany and Europe. How did that happen? This question was the focus of Theodor Adorno's work. In the 1940s, Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) created a critical theory entitled "Dialectic of Enlightenment."

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, known for taking a stand on social and ethical issues. In his view, communicative action is the basis of society. This, in turn, are based on understanding — and that is what his philosophy has in common with Enlightenment thought.