宗教と啓蒙主義

モーゼス・メンデルスゾーンとユダヤ啓蒙主義の場合

抄録

The Enlightenment criticizes traditional religions and authorities under the light of reason. But this doesn’t mean that the Enlightenment is necessarily opposed to religion. In addition to the secular Enlightenment, we must notice the stream of the religious Enlightenment. The religious Enlightenment tries to harmonize traditional beliefs with modern philosophy and science. The Jewish Enlightenment, which is referred to as “Haskalah”, shares this tendency. Moses Mendelssohn is known to be a symbolic representative of this Jewish Enlightenment. For a better understanding of Mendelssohn’s Enlightenment, it is necessary to consider his view of Judaism and the context of the Jewish Enlightenment at that time. In this paper I emphasize the following two points. 1) In his later writings and articles Mendelssohn refuses to link the improvement of social conditions for the Jewish people with changing the content of Judaism. The eternal truth of religion is not subjected to temporal change. He wants to reject the view which puts Judaism into an inferior position in the successive development of history of religions. 2) In his final work, To the Friends of Lessing, Mendelssohn describes Judaism as a religion of reason. This reason is guided by common sense. Mendelssohn can’t accept the concept that religion is based on either unquestionable blind faith (Jacobi) or rational faith (Kant). For Mendelssohn, reason and faith belong to quite different categories. Here we see his criticism of Christian dogma from the viewpoint of Judaism.