"Socher's new book on Salomon Maimon is one of the best intellectual biographies I have ever read. Unlike many books in this genre, its eloquent style does not come at the expense of depth or thoroughness. Socher exhibits an impressive command of distinct fields as well as scholarly methodologies and successfully synthesizes this array into a multilayered story of a single life. This achievement is particularly remarkable because the life in question is that of the most acute, difficult, and bizarre of modern Jewish philosophers."—Journal of Religion
"Socher writes that he has 'tried to show, at the level of the individual, how secularization and cultural conflict are expressed in pain and dislocation, as well as the comedy of hard-won blasphemy.' He has succeeded impressively."—Newsletter of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
"Socher's main thesis is that in spite of the contemporary ideal of the Bildung, Maimon remained faithful to the medieval and specifically Maimonidean ideal of exclusively intellectual self-perfection... What is new is the attempt to write Maimon's intellectual biography from this perspective."—Journal of the History of Philosophy
"This book is the first serious attempt in any language to combine the study of Solomon Maimon's philosophical writings with an analysis of his autobiography. Socher's innovative and exemplary work of intellectual history greatly enriches our understanding not only of a highly intriguing individual but also of a transitional period dividing the Jewish Middle Ages from the modern Jewish world."—Allan Arkush, Binghamton University
"I read Professor Socher's book on the iconoclastic philosopher Solomon Maimon in one sitting. Despite its erudition, it reads like a novel. With rare expository grace—rare at least in scholarly disquisitions—he unravels the multilayered enigma of this complex figure. . . . Few have examined both dimensions of Maimon's philosophical patrimony as a single skein. In a word, Socher's study of Maimon is a tour de force that will command wide scholarly attention and acclaim."—Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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