Moses Mendelssohn: Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe / Band 5,4: Kommentar zu Band 5,2

This volume provides an introduction, commentary and notes on 37 multidisciplinary reviews (1769–1784) in Nicolai›s ›German General Library‹ as well as an epigram and five literary fragments (1761–1784). The previous history of the original texts dealt with is concerned, among other things, with Lambert, Iselin, Beccaria, the historicity of Homer‹s ›Iliad‹, Klopstock’s anti-intellectual republic of scholars, six of Hamann’s monologues, the problems in translating classical and modern texts, the merits of Abbt and Iselin, the unsolved problem of the origin of language, the utilization of infatuation and Mendelssohn’s planned desideratum of a history of morality. The literary fragments referring to Shaftesbury, the ›Estimate‹ Brown, two controversial reviews by Herder, show clearly how Mendelssohn was fascinated by synonyms and acknowledge Fanny von Arnstein in the epigram.