ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the ambivalence inherent in the religious and cultural agendas that redefine Mendelssohn into an icon. It describes and underscores Mendelssohn's authoritative and unusual position among his peers, as a colleague, as an anomaly, as a small Jewish hunchback who pushed into confined and exclusive intellectual and social spaces. It shows Mendelssohn's image and work must be understood in the context of his attempt to defend both Enlightenment ideals and the legitimacy of Judaism as a religious system, which tactically shifted as new themes were introduced into German philosophical culture. It focuses on aesthetic ugliness paying particular attention to Mendelssohn's theory of ugliness and the intersection of his discovery of the use of ambivalence in his perfectionist aesthetics and his defense of Judaism as a legitimate, Enlightened religion.
