Fabius Mieses

Fabius Mieses (31 October 1824 - 10 October 1898) was a Galician litterateur and philosopher.

Mieses was born at Brody on October 31, 1824. Till the age of 15, he studied Hebrew literature exclusively. At an early age he showed signs of great intellectual power, and was hailed as a genius. In the house of his father-in-law, I. Mieses, a scholar living in Dresden, he met, besides Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport and other Maskilim, his future teacher, M. Sehongut, who initiated him into the study of philosophy, and with whom he used to converse in Hebrew during their regular daily walks. At the same time, he assiduously applied himself to the study of German, French, Italian, Latin, mathematics, and astronomy. In 1846, his German essay "Gegenwart und Vergangeuheit im Judenthume" appeared in Julius Fürst's Der Orient; and from that time, he became assistant editor of and a regular contributor to that paper. In 1878, he published (at Lyck) a didactic poem entitled "HaEmunah weha-Tebunah," treating of Darwinism and its opponents. By this production, he gained for himself a prominent and lasting place among Hebrew poets. Mieses was a prolific writer. Besides frequently contributing to various Hebrew and German periodicals, he wrote the following independent works: "Ha-Kabbalah weha-Hasidut" (Breslau, 1866; Odessa, 1871); "Korot ha-Filusufiyah ha-Hadashah" (Leipsic, 1887), a history of modern philosophy from Kant to Mieses' own time; "Shirim" (Cracow, 1891), a collection of miscellaneous poems; "Die Bibel der Vernunft" (Leipsic, 1895). Upon this last work rests his chief notability, as it is the first and only one of its kind which was written in the Hebrew language. Mieses was opposed to all religious reforms. He died at Leipzig on 10 October 1898.[1]