Problematic Spinozism as a Significant Mediation Towards German Idealism: The Case of Salomon Maimon

It has often been argued that the rise of German idealism owes to Spinoza no less than it owes to Kant. Starting from a general adhesion to this reading, the present paper analyzes the premises of this crucial Spinoza’s renaissance in Germany between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the 19th century. In this sense, the well-known Spinozastreit and, more generally, the theological issues involved therein remain in the background of the proposed approach. We intend indeed to analyze above all those methodological features of Spinoza’s thought, which since the mid-1780s proved particularly suitable to deepen the most problematic points of Kant’s gnoseological perspective. A good example is the socalled quid iuris issue, which, among others, Salomon Maimon systematically addresses on the basis of what he defines as a Koalitionssystem encompassing Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume. We aim to illustrate the way Maimon confronts the Spinozian side of this triangle with Kant’s thought paving the way for German idealism.