WE ARE GRATEFUL to the many friends of ours and of Solomon Maimon’s who have insisted that a complete annotated translation of his great autobiography should exist and have helped us to bring it into existence. Among them, we should particularly like to acknowledge the members of a wonderful seminar on a draft of this text at the Skeptical Atelier of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Hamburg: Leora Batnitzky, Daniel Dragicevic, Florian Ehrensperger, Warren Zev Harvey, Moshe Idel, who also delivered a remarkable public address on Maimon’s relationship to Kabbala, Patrick Koch, Ada Rapaport-Albert, Oded Schechter, Shaul Stampfer, Josef Stern, Mate Veres, Dirk Westerkamp, and Professor Stephan Schmid, co-director of the Institute. We are also grateful to Giusepe Veltri for graciously hosting us at the remarkable institution he has done so much to build. Damion Searls, a remarkably skilled translator, read the manuscript and offered many incisive suggestions for improvement. This galaxy of linguistic, philosophical, and historical talent notwithstanding, this book would not exist without the patient support of our editor Fred Appel and the rest of the editorial team at Princeton University Press, especially Karen Carter and Thalia Leaf. The same can be said of our editorial assistant Jason Yonover, who is already a significant scholar of German Idealism in his own right. We are also very grateful to Brittany Micka-Foos, who gave us much good counsel in copyediting the manuscript and was a pleasure to work with. We are delighted to acknowledge the generous support of the Stulman Jewish Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.
A number of scholars generously responded to our queries and requests for advice, and we want to thank them, too: Frederick Beiser, Moishi Chechik, Jonathan Garb, Matt Goldish, Gershon Hundert, Elhanan Reiner, Moshe Rosman, Abraham Abish Shor, Scott Spector, and Liliane Weissberg. Finally, we are especially grateful to Gideon Freudenthal for contributing a concise, brilliant afterword on Maimon’s philosophical oeuvre.
Our debts to our spouses, who have had to live with this project for so long, is incalculable. The autobiography of a wayward husband may not be an entirely appropriate gift, nonetheless we dedicate this book to Maria, Neta, and Shoshana.
Paul Reitter
Yitzhak Y. Melamed
Abraham Socher