Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

In the paragraphs of the Encyclopedia (1830) dedicated to the «Third position of thought towards objectivity» Hegel critically examines Jacobi’s ‘immediate knowing’. My aim is to reconstruct the main arguments of these paragraphs, still little studied today, while trying to shed light on three issues: (a) the relevance given here to Jacobi’s philosophy; (b) the problems that arise within the epistemological models of immediacy; (c) the passage from the analysis of immediate knowing to the speculative thinking of the Logic.

This is the third chapter of my book Transformation of the self, which covers Schleiermacher's reception of Kant on the problem of personal identity.

This is the second chapter of my book Transformation of the Self. It concerns Schleiermacher's understanding of the principle of individuation, in dialogue with Kant, Jacobi, Leibniz and Spinoza.

In this paper, I study one aspect of the philosophical encounter between Spinoza and Hegel: the question of the reality of time. The precise reconstruction of the debate will require a close examination of Spinoza's concept of tempus (time) and duratio (duration), and Hegel's understanding of these notions. Following a presentation of Hegel's perception of Spinoza as a modern Eleatic, who denies the reality of time, change and plurality, I turn, in the second part, to look closely at Spinoza's text (...) and show that Hegel was wrong in reading Spinoza as denying the reality of duration and change. Ironically, Hegel's misreading of Spinoza as denying the reality of duration and change has been compensated for by a reading of Hegel as denying the reality of time by one of Hegel's most prominent followers, John Ellis McTaggart. I discuss McTaggart's reading of Hegel's Logic in the final part of the paper. (shrink)

In this chapter we explore the importance of the Pantheism Controversy for the evolution of Kant’s so-called “Moral Argument” for the Highest Good and its postulates. After an initial discussion of the Canon of the Critique of Pure Reason, we move on to the relationship between faith and reason in the Pantheism Controversy, Kant’s response to the Controversy in his 1786 “Orientation” Essay, Thomas Wizenmann’s criticisms of that essay, and finally to the Critique of Practical Reason. We argue that while (...) Kant used the Pantheism Controversy to reset his account of the Highest Good, its treatment in the Orientation Essay was susceptible to the objections raised by Thomas Wizenmann, and thus in need of the further advances found in the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit has attracted much attention recently from philosophers, but none of the existing English-language books on the text addresses one of the most difficult questions the book raises: Why does the Phenomenology make such rich and provocative use of literary works and genres? Allen Speight's bold contribution to the debate on the work of Hegel argues that behind Hegel's extraordinary appeal to literature in the Phenomenology lies a philosophical project concerned with understanding human agency in the modern (...) world. It shows that Hegel looked to three literary genres - tragedy, comedy, and the Romantic novel - as offering privileged access to three moments of human agency: retrospectivity, theatricality, and forgiveness. Taking full account of the authors whom Hegel himself refers to, Allen Speight has written a book with a broad appeal to both philosophers and literary theorists. (shrink)

There can be little doubt that without Spinoza, German Idealism would have been just as impossible as it would have been without Kant. Yet the precise nature of Spinoza's influence on the German Idealists has hardly been studied in detail. This volume of essays by leading scholars sheds light on how the appropriation of Spinoza by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel grew out of the reception of his philosophy by, among others, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Maimon and, of course, (...) Kant. The volume thus not only illuminates the history of Spinoza's thought, but also initiates a genuine philosophical dialogue between the ideas of Spinoza and those of the German Idealists. The issues at stake - the value of humanity; the possibility and importance of self-negation; the nature and value of reason and imagination; human freedom; teleology; intuitive knowledge; the nature of God - remain of the highest philosophical importance today. (shrink)

An interpretation of Jacobi's philosophical realism.

“Toujours, dans toute proposition affirmative véritable, nécessaire ou contingente, universelle ou singulière, la notion du prédicat est comprise en quelque façon dans celle du sujet, praedicatum inest subjecto, ou bien je ne sais ce que c’est que la vétité.”Parce qu’elles mettaient principalement l’accent sur les liaisons conceptuelles, les précisions de ce genre ont été interprétées comme autant d’indices permettant de reconstituer le contenu du prédicat de vérité à partir de présupposés cohérentistes. Dans le concensus qui s’est établi sur ce point, (...) le rôle herméneutique très excessif accordé à la notion de système a eu une portée aussi considérable que le contenu des quelques textes généralement allégués. Si on admet, au contraire, qu’il y a bien une “doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité”, alors on est amené à inscrire la position de Leibniz dans le contexte du débat relatif à l’adaequatio rei et à souligner davantage ce qui l’apparente à une théorie de la vérité-correspondance.Cet argument principal est soutenu par des analyses de détail dans la logique. Un attention particulière est apportée aux valeurs des variables du nouveau calcul, à la fonction du prédicat de possibilité, au problème relatif à la constantia subjecti et au statut des entités intensionnelles. L’image de l’ontologie leibnizienne s’en trouve modifiée et précisée : à la fois possibiliste et factualiste, elle est traversée de tensions importantes et occupe une place tout à fait singulière dans cette partie de la philosophie qui connaît aujourd’hui un si profond renouveau. (shrink)

This study shows that despite the fact that Leo Strauss published little about Jacobi, the misunderstood thinker about whom he wrote his doctoral dissertation exercised a crucial influence on what is often thought to be Strauss's most enduring achievement: his rediscovery of exotericism. A consideration of several of Strauss's writings that do mention Jacobi but remained unpublished at the time of his death—in particular his studies on Moses Mendelssohn, who was Jacobi's principal target in the Pantheismusstreit —reveal that Strauss considered (...) Jacobi to be an exoteric writer. Appropriately enough, it is only a Straussian-style reading of Strauss's claims that exotericism lapsed after Lessing's death that reveals Jacobi's influence between the lines. Some consideration is given to the question of why Strauss wrote about Jacobi in this secretive way. (shrink)

"monumental work" - The North American Spinoza Society Newsletter , February 1999 "The sheer volume of this anthology makes it an indispensable asset to any serious scholar of Spinozism. Certainly no academic library can do without it. The quality of the material gathered here is extremely impressive. To the professional scholar of early modern philosophy many of the criticisms it contains may well look superficial and outworn, but even the best-informed experts will find much in it that will surprise and (...) delight." - Wipe van Bunge Benedict Spinoza (1632-77), Dutch metaphysician, psychologist, moral philosopher and philosopher of religion, is one of the most important figures of seventeenth-century rationalism. He is among the illustrious group of hugely influential thinkers of that time who were mathematicians and scientists as well as philosophers, a group that included Descartes, Leibniz and Hobbes. His thought has been continually reinterpreted and he influenced such people as Goethe, Lessing, Nietzsche, Shelley, George Eliot, Wordsworth, Bertrand Russell, Freud and Einstein. This unprecedented collection brings together some 150 historically and philosophically important discussions of Spinoza published in English in the two centuries following his death. The authoritative bibliography - Boucher's Spinoza in English: A Bibliography from the Seventeenth Century to the Present - cites a total of only about 300 publications from this period. Thus this collection gathers half of all materials so far identified and represents by far the most significant and interesting contributions. Internally cross-referenced, with an introduction, notes and full subject and name index, this essential collection also features an index of citations to the Ethics, by the editor. This will be an extremely useful resource for Spinoza specialists, research libraries, intellectual historians, and graduate students in philosophy. --a compilation of c.150 important pamphlets, papers and book chapters discussing Spinoza --the first collection of its kind - none of this material has previously been collected --6 reset volumes in royal size --extremely comprehensive, including many rare items --internally cross-referenced and fully indexed for easy use. (shrink)

Lessing's Spinozism looms up out of the numerous intellectual riddles of the past. Almost everything has been tried in an effort to sound and weigh the exact amount of Spinozism Lessing betrayed in his conversations with Jacobi.

This is a complicated and ingenious study of one of the famous friendships of German intellectual history. Miss Knoll's aim is not so much to analyze philosophical ideas as to find the major structural elements of this highly emotional literary friendship between Hamann and Jacobi. The book begins with a short review of Hegel's and Dilthey's treatment of the "subject," Hamann-Jacobi. The author objects to these treatments which, like practically all other students of the question viewed the letters from an (...) exclusively philosophical and speculative viewpoint, and never tackled the deeply personal structure of this metaphysical-religious correspondence. This is exactly what the present author attempts to do. The analysis of Hamann's highly complex reactions to Jacobi's famous book on Lessing's Spinozism reveals to us how strongly and on how many levels the "magician of the North" criticized Jacobi—and through him any attempt to combat the Enlightenment which does not reject it in integro. On the other hand Hamann continuously sent his manuscripts to Jacobi to be read and criticized, and, in this way, he sought to help the latter to grow by making him contribute to works of a dimension and depth completely alien to his own thought But the destiny of Hamann was to be misunderstood by Jacobi, and this misunderstanding was recognized and corrected only by Schelling. Though H. Fuhrmans has already forcefully pointed out what Schelling owed to Hamann, the present book is the first to do justice to Schelling's Hamann-interpretation, until now entirely overshadowed by that of Hegel.—M. J. V. (shrink)

What was the source of this great flowering? Much of the credit for it has tended to go to Jacobi and Mendelssohn, who in 1785 began a famous public dispute concerning the question whether or not Lessing had been a Spinozist, as Jacobi alleged Lessing had admitted to him shortly before his death in 1781. But Jacobi and Mendelssohn were both negatively disposed towards Spinoza. In On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Mr.

Jahrhunderts. Der Sammelband bietet ausgewählte Beispiele ihrer Rezeption. Näher in Betracht kommen F.H. Jacobi, C. Daub, A. Schopenhauer, J. Müller, S. Kierkegaard, P. Tillich und M. Heidegger."--Publisher's website.

Auch wenn Prof. Hammachers Interesse an einer inhaltlichen Auseinandersetzung über Jacobis problematische antijudaistische Polemik gegen Fichte und den Rationalismus nur begrenzt ist - sein Hauptanliegen besteht, wie er sagt, darin, Dokumente, die in der Jacobi-Ausgabe nicht untergebracht werden konnten, an dieser Stelle zu publizieren –, so können doch einige seiner sachlichen Einlassung und Missverständnisse nicht unwidersprochen bleiben. Anderes dagegen möchte ich als Bestätigung, ja sogar als Verstärkung meiner These zu den antijüdischen Tendenzen in Jacobis Kritik an Fichte und dem Rationalismus (...) ausdrücklich unterstreichen. Und schließlich möchte ich Hammachers Hinweis auf Jacobis »religiöse Haltung« aufgreifen und ihr religionsgeschichtlich ein wenig genauer nachgehen. Dabei wird sich zeigen, dass hier ein wichtiges Forschungsdesiderat liegt, das verdient - gerade was die Kontroverse Fichte-Jacobi betrifft –, gründlich aufgearbeitet zu werden. Ich meine, den je spezifisch protestantischen »Sozialisationshintergrund« von Fichte und Jacobi und dessen Einfluss auf ihr Denken. (shrink)

In presenting the key theoretical notions in Jacobi’s philosophical work, this paper shows how these notions are operative in Schellings late philosophy and in Kierkegaard. It is argued that Jacobi’s criticism of Spinozist rationalism is echoed in Schelling’s and Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegelian speculation as it is shown that Jacobi’s distinction between two different kinds of knowledge, i.e. demonstration and illumination, is also at the very heart of Schelling’s and Kierkegaard’s philosophy. On this background the article finally discusses some important (...) similarities between Schelling and Kierkegaard, stressing the importance of the concept of the will as well as the relation between negativity and positivity. (shrink)

M. Merleau-Ponty and F. H. Jacobi’s Revelation against Kantian IntellectualismThe goal of this article is to shed light on the neglected connection between Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). It will be shown through certain themes –I) being in the world, II) description, III) reflexion, IV) revelation and the V) primacy of perception – how Merleau-Ponty echoes Jacobi’s criticism of German Idealism during the Pantheist Quarrel, particularly towards Immanuel Kant’s intellectualist stance, two centuries prior to the Phénoménologie de (...) la perception. Through a historical and philological lens, this article aims to specifically demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty and Jacobi share a common ontology against Kantian intellectualism.La rivelazione di M. Merleau-Ponty e F. H. Jacobi contro l’intellettualismo kantianoL’obiettivo di questo articolo è chiarire la trascurata relazione tra Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) e Maurice Merlau-Ponty (1908-1961). Attraverso l’analisi di alcune tematiche – l’essere nel mondo, la descrizione, la riflessione, la rivelazione –, mostreremo come nella filosofia di Merleau-Ponty riecheggi la critica all’idealismo tedesco formulata da Jacobi all’epoca della disputa sul panteismo e diretta, in particolar modo e con due secoli di anticipo rispetto alla Fenomenologia della Percezione, alle posizioni intellettualiste di Kant. Grazie ad una lettura storica e filologica, questo articolo tenta di dimostrare come Merleau-Ponty e Jacobi condividano un’ontologia comune in opposizione all’intellettualismo kantiano. (shrink)

This paper considers whether Hegel's master/slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit should be considered as a refutation of solipsism. It focuses on a recent and detailed attempt to argue for this sort of reading that has been proposed by Frederick Beiser ? but it argues that this reading is unconvincing, both in the historical motivations given for it in the work of Jacobi and Fichte, and as an interpretation of the text itself. An alternative reading of the dialectic is (...) proposed, where it is argued that the central problem Hegel is concerned with is not solipsism, but the sociality of freedom. (shrink)

Die gegenwärtige Auseinandersetzung dokumentieren zwei von den Herausgebern in Jena (2002) und Düsseldorf (2003) veranstaltete Tagungen, die unter dem Titel "Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi und die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie" erstmals die ...