Johann Bernhard Merian

{{Short description|Swiss philosopher (1723–1807)}}

Johann Bernhard Merian or Jean-Bernard Mérian (28 September 1723, Liestal – 12 February 1807, Berlin) was a Swiss philosopher active in the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

Merian studied at the University of Basle, gaining his doctorate in 1740. He became a member of the Class for Speculative Philosophy of the Berlin Academy in 1750, and director of the Class for Belles-Lettres in 1771. From 1797 he was permanent Secretary of the Academy.{{Citation | last=Thiel | first=Udo | year=2006 | contribution=Merian, Johann Bernhard | editor-last=Haakonssen | editor-first=Knud | title=The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy | publisher=Cambridge University Press | volume=2 | pages=1204}}

Merian translated the work of David Hume into French. He published widely in the Mémoires of the Academy. A series of essays on the Molyneux problem appeared in the 1770s.These have been edited and republished as Sur le problème de Molyneux, ed. F. Markovits, Paris, 1984