Maimon, SOLOMON, philosopher, was born of Jewish parents about 1754 in a village on the Niemen, near Mir, in the west of what is now the Russian government of Minsk. His mind was trained in the study of the Talmud, and he qualified for a rabbi. But possessing a burning desire for truth, and having become acquainted with the philosophy of Maimonides, he made his way to Berlin, and studied modern philosophy, languages, and some science. A child of nature, with the strong, subtle intellect of the born philosopher; shy, eccentric, dirty, and unmethodical; improvident, intemperate, and wholly irregular in his habits, Maimon led a vagabond life, battling against chronic poverty, and always dependent upon his friends for the bare necessities of existence. Besides cultivating his own mind, and teaching a little, he never did any work, except write some philosophical treatises and literary hack-work, done anywhere and at any time, mostly in poor taverns. Yet this ragged philosopher had Mendelssohn, the philosopher, among his friends, was admired by Kant, and attracted the attention of Goethe. This good fortune he owed to his Versuch einer Transcendentalphilosophie (1790), an eclectic system, in which he attempted to supplement Kant's by truths gleaned for the most part from Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hume, Locke, and others. He died in the house of Count Kalkreuth, his last patron, at Siegersdorf, in Lower Silesia, on 22d November 1800.
See his very interesting Autobiography (1792; Eng. trans. by J. Clark Murray, 1888); S. J. Wolff's Maimoniana (1813); and the Life by Witte (Berlin, 1876).