Maimon’s intellect unfolded from day to day, until, some time afterwards, he astonished the philosophic world by his great work, Die Transcendentale Philosophie (Berlin, 1790), in reference to which Kant wrote to his beloved disciple Marcus Herz:  “A mere glance at it enabled me to recognize its merits, and showed me, that not only had none of my opponents understood me and the main problem so well, but very few could claim so much penetration as Herr Maimon in profound inquiries of this sort.”  He demolished the prevalent Leibnitzo-Wolffian system in it, and proved that even the Kantian theory, though irrefutable from a dogmatic point of view, is exposed to severe attacks from the skeptic’s point of view.

Thenceforth he became a leading figure in philosophic controversy.  In 1793 he published Ueber die Progresse der Philosophie; in 1794, Versuch einer neuen Logik, and Die Kategorien des Aristoteles, and, three years later, Kritische Untersuchungen ueber den menschlichen Geist (Berlin, 1797), wherein he originated a speculative, monistic idealism, which pervaded not only philosophy, but all sciences during the first half of the nineteenth century, the system by which Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were influenced.  According to Bernfeld, he was the greatest Jewish philosopher since the time of Spinoza, with whose depth of reasoning he combined an ease and straightforwardness of illustration characteristic of Benjamin Franklin.[25]

With all this he remained an ardent lover of the Talmud to the last.  In fact, his philosophy is distinctively Jewish.  Like Spinoza, he exhibited the effects of the Cabbala and of rabbinic speculation, with which he had been familiar from childhood.  The honor of the Talmudic sages was always dear to him, and he never mentioned them without expressing profound respect.  Persecuted though he was by his German coreligionists, he never bore them a grudge.  As a man he loved them as brothers, but as a philosopher he could not subscribe to their views implicitly.  But for friends and benefactors his affection was unusually strong.  With what love he talks of Mendelssohn in the chapter dedicated to him in his autobiography, even though “he could not explain the persistency of Mendelssohn and the Wolffians generally in adhering to their system, except as a political dodge, and a piece of hypocrisy, by which they studiously endeavored to descend to the mode of thinking common to the popular mind!” His devotion to his wife was not diminished even after he had been compelled to divorce her because of his supposed heretical proclivities.  “When the subject [of his divorce] came up in conversation, it was easy,” says his biographer,[26] “to read in his face the deep sorrow he felt:  his liveliness then faded away sensibly.  By and by he would become perfectly silent, was incapable of further entertainment, and went home earlier than usual.”  Of his Russo-Polish brethren he