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JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1743-1819)

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Originally appearing in Volume V15, Page 116 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JACOBI, See also:FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1743-1819) , See also:German philosopher, was See also:born at See also:Dusseldorf on the 25th of See also:January 1743. The second son of a wealthy See also:sugar See also:merchant near Dusseldorf, he was educated for a commercial career. Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at See also:Geneva mainly with the See also:literary and scientific circle of which the most prominent member was Lesage. He studied closely the See also:works of See also:Charles See also:Bonnet, and the See also:political ideas of See also:Rousseau and See also:Voltaire. In 1763 he was called back to Dusseldorf, and in the following See also:year he married and took over the management of his See also:father's business. After a See also:short See also:period he gave up his commercial career, and in 1770 became a member of the See also:council for the duchies of Jiilich and See also:Berg, in which capacity he distinguished himself by his ability in See also:financial affairs, and his zeal in social reform. Jacobi kept up his See also:interest in literary and philosophic matters by an extensive See also:correspondence, and his See also:mansion at Pempelfort, near Dusseldorf, was the centre of a distinguished literary circle. With C. M. See also:Wieland he helped to found a new literary See also:journal. Der Teutsche Mercur, in which some of his earliest writings, mainly on See also:practical or economic subjects, were published. Here too appeared in See also:part the first of his philosophic works, See also:Edward Allwills Briefsammlung (1776), a See also:combination of See also:romance and See also:speculation.

This was followed in 1779 by Woldemar, a philosophic novel, of very imperfect structure, but full of genial ideas, and giving the most See also:

complete picture of Jacobi's method of philosophizing. In 1779 he visited See also:Munich as member of the privy council, but after a short stay there See also:differences with his colleagues and with the authorities of See also:Bavaria drove him back to Pempelfort. A few unimportant tracts on questions of theoretical politics were followed in 1785 by the See also:work which first brought Jacobi into prominence as a philosopher. A conversation which he had held with See also:Lessing in 178o, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no See also:philosophy, in the true sense of that word, See also:save Spinozism, led him to a protracted study of See also:Spinoza's works. The Briefe uber See also:die Lehre Spinozas (1785; 2nd ed., much enlarged and with important Appendices, 1789) expressed sharply and clearly Jacobi's strenuous objection to a dogmatic See also:system in philosophy, and See also:drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the See also:Berlin clique, led by See also:Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi was ridiculed as endeavouring to reintroduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief, was denounced as an enemy of See also:reason, as a pietist, and as in all See also:probability a Jesuit in disguise, and was especially attacked for his use of the ambiguous See also:term " belief." Jacobi's next important work, See also:David See also:Hume uber den Glauben, See also:oder Idealismus and Realismus (1787), was an See also:attempt to show not only that the term Glaube had been used by the most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in the Letters on Spinoza, but that the nature of the See also:cognition of facts as opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed. In this See also:writing, and especially in the Appendix, Jacobi came into contact with the See also:critical philosophy, and subjected the Kantian view of knowledge to searching examination. The outbreak of the See also:war with the See also:French See also:republic induced Jacobi in 1793 to leave his See also:home near Dusseldorf, and for nearly ten years he resided in See also:Holstein. While there he became intimately acquainted with See also:Reinhold (in whose Beitrage, pt. iii., 1801, his important work Uber das Unternehmen See also:des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen was first published), and with See also:Matthias See also:Claudius, the editor of the Wandsbecker Bote. During the same period the excitement caused by the See also:accusation of See also:atheism brought against See also:Fichte at See also:Jena led to the publication of Jacobi's See also:Letter to Fichte (1799), in which he made more precise the relation of his own philosophic principles to See also:theology. Soon after his return to See also:Germany, Jacobi received a See also:call to Munich in connexion with the new See also:academy of sciences just founded there. The loss of a considerable portion of his See also:fortune induced him to accept this offer; he settled in Munich in 1804, and in 1807 became See also:president of the academy.

In 1811 appeared his last philosophic work, directed against See also:

Schelling specially (Von den gottlichen Dingen and ihrer Offenbarung), the first part of which, a See also:review of the Wandsbecker Bote, had been written in 1798. A See also:bitter reply from Schelling was See also:left without See also:answer by Jacobi, but gave rise to an animated controversy in which See also:Fries and See also:Baader took prominent part. In 1812 Jacobi retired from the See also:office of president, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works. He died before this was completed, on the loth of See also:March 181g. The edition of his writings was continued by his friend F. Koppen, and was completed in 1825. The works fill six volumes, of which the See also:fourth is in three parts. To the second is prefixed an introduction by Jacobi, which is at the same See also:time an introduction to his philosophy. The fourth See also:volume has also an important See also:preface. The philosophy of Jacobi is essentially unsystematic. A certain fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to See also:bear in See also:succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand most sharply in See also:contradiction to it, and any See also:positive philosophic results are given only occasionally. The leading See also:idea of the whole is that of the complete separation between understanding and See also:apprehension of real fact.

For Jacobi understanding, or the logical See also:

faculty, is purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience or See also:perception thought proceeds by comparison and See also:abstraction, establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature mediate and finite. The principle of reason and consequent, the See also:necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned, impels understanding towards an endless See also:series of identical propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions. The See also:province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of the conditioned; to it the See also:world must See also:present itself as a mechanism. If, then, there is See also:objective truth at all, the existence of real facts must be made known to us otherwise than through the logical faculty of thought; and, as the regress from conclusion to premises must depend upon something not itself capable of logical grounding, mediate thought implies the consciousness of immediate truth. Philosophy therefore must resign the hopeless ideal of a systematic (i.e. intelligible) explanation of things, and must content itself with the examination of the facts of consciousness. It is a See also:mere See also:prejudice of philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from See also:Aristotle, that mediate or demonstrated cognition is See also:superior in cogency and value to the immediate perception of truths or facts. As Jacobi starts with the See also:doctrine that thought is partial and limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explaining their existence, it is evident that for him any See also:demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in See also:modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of 'See also:meta-physic is that of Spinoza, and it See also:lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza's system Jacobi should first See also:direct his See also:criticism. A See also:summary of the results of his examination is thus presented (Werke, i. 216–223): (I) Spinozism is atheism; (2) the Kabbalistic philosophy, in so far as it is philosophy, is nothing but undeveloped or confused Spinozism: (3) the philosophy of See also:Leibnitz and See also:Wolff is not less fatalistic than that of Spinoza, and carries a resolute thinker to the very principles of Spinoza; (4) every demonstrative method ends in See also:fatalism; (5) we can demonstrate only similarities (agreements, truths conditionally necessary), proceeding always in identical propositions; every See also:proof presupposes something already proved, the principle of which is immediately given (Offenbarung, See also:revelation, is the term here employed by Jacobi, as by many later writers, e.g. See also:Lotze, to denote the See also:peculiar See also:character of an immediate, unproved truth) ; (6) the See also:keystone (See also:Element) of all human knowledge and activity is belief (Glaube).

Of these propositions only the first and fourth require further See also:

notice. Jacobi, accepting the See also:law of reason and consequent as the fundamental See also:rule of demonstrative reasoning, and as the rule explicitly followed by Spinoza, points out that, if we proceed by applying this principle so as to recede from particular and qualified facts to the more See also:general and abstract conditions, we See also:land ourselves, not in the notion of an active, intelligent creator of the system of things, but in the notion of an all-comprehensive, indeterminate Nature, devoid of will or intelligence. Our unconditioned is either a pure abstraction, or else the impossible notion of a completed system of conditions. In either See also:case the result is atheism, and this result is necessary if the demonstrative method, the method of understanding, is regarded as the only possible means of knowledge. Moreover, the same method inevitably lands in fatalism. For, if the See also:action of the human will is to be made intelligible to understanding, it must be thought as a conditioned phenomenon, having its sufficient ground in preceding circumstances, and, in ultimate abstraction, as the outflow from nature which is the sum of conditions. But this is the fatalist conception, and any philosophy which accepts the law of reason and consequent as the essence of understanding is fatalistic. Thus for the scientific understanding there can be no See also:God and no See also:liberty. It is impossible that there should be a God, for if so he would of necessity be finite. But a finite God, a God that is known, is no God. It is impossible that there should be liberty, for if so the See also:mechanical See also:order of phenomena, by means of which they are comprehensible, would be disturbed, and we should have an unintelligible world, coupled with the requirement that it shall be understood. Cognition, then, in the strict sense, occupies the See also:middle See also:place between sense perception, which is belief in matters of sense, and reason, which is belief in supersensuous fact.

The best introduction to Jacobi's philosophy is the preface to the second volume of the Works, and Appendix 7 to the Letters on Spinoza's Theory. See also J. See also:

Kuhn, Jacobi and die Philosophie seiner Zeit (1834); F. Deycks, F. H. Jacobi See also:im Verhdltnis zu seinen Zeitgenossen (1848) ; H. Diintzer, Freundesbilder aus Goethes Leben (1853); E. Zirngiebl, F. II. Jacobis Leben, Dichten, and Denken, 1867; F. See also:Harms, Ober die Lehre von F- H. Jacobi ,(1876).

Jacobi's Auserlesener Briefwechsel has been edited by F. See also:

Roth in 2 vols. (1825–1827).

End of Article: JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1743-1819)

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