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Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the central figure in the emancipation of European Jewry. His intellect, judgment, and tact won the admiration and friendship of illustrious contemporaries. Last Works includes, for the first time complete in and in a single volume, the English translation of Morning Hours: Lectures on the Existence of God (1785) and To the Friends of Lessing (1786). _x000B_Mendelssohn wrote these last two works to commemorate the death of his friend the dramatist Johann Gottfried Lessing and to carry on the work to which they had dedicated much of their lives. Morning Hours treats a range of major philosophical topics, including the foundations of human knowledge, the basis of our moral and aesthetic powers of judgment, and the grounds for a rational faith in a providential deity. In To the Friends of Lessing Mendelssohn attempts to unmask the individual whom he believes to be the real enemy of the enlightened state: the Schwärmer.

""Cover""; ""Title Page""; ""Copyright""; ""Contents""; ""Abbreviations""; ""Introduction to the Translation""; ""Notes on the Translation""; ""For Further Reading""; ""Morning Hours or, Lectures on the Existence of God""; ""Preliminary Remarks""; ""Part One Epistemic Groundwork, Concerning Truth, Appearance, and Error""; ""Lecture I What Is Truth?""; ""Lecture II Cause. Effect. Ground. Power.""; ""Lecture III Self-Evidence�Immediate Knowledge. Rational Knowledge�Natural Knowledge.""; ""Lecture IV Truth and Illusion.""; ""Lecture V Existence. Waking. Dreams. Delusion

Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, published in 1761, bring the metaphysical tradition to bear on the topic of 'sentiments' (defined as knowledge or awareness by way of the senses). Mendelssohn offers a nuanced defence of Leibniz's theodicy and conception of freedom, an examination of the ethics of suicide, an account of the 'mixed sentiments' so central to the tragic genre, a hypothesis about weakness of will, an elaboration of the main principles and types of art, a definition of sublimity and analysis of its basic forms, and, lastly, a brief tract on probability theory, aimed at rebutting Hume's scepticism. This volume also includes the essay 'On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences', selected in 1763 by the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences over all other submitted essays, including one by Kant, as the best answer to the question of whether metaphysical sciences are capable of the same sort and degree of evidence as mathematics

The last work published by Moses Mendelssohn during his lifetime, Morning Hours is also the most sustained presentation of his mature epistemological and metaphysical views, all elaborated in the service of presenting proofs for the existence of God..