Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (January 25, 1743 - March 10, 1819), was a German philosopher who made his mark on philosophy by coining the term nihilism and promoting it as the prime fault of Enlightenment thought and Kantianism. Instead of speculative reason, he advocated faith (or "belief," Glaube) and revelation (though he took this be rational). On this basis he might be seen as the great-grandfather to present-day writers who criticize philosophy as relativistic and dangerous for religious faith. January 25 is the 25th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... // Events February 14 - Henry Pelham becomes British Prime Minister February 21 - - The premiere in London of George Frideric Handels oratorio, Samson. ... March 10 is the 69th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (70th in Leap years). ... 1819 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... The nonexistence of God is a quintessential nihilistic concern. ... The Age of Enlightenment refers to the 18th century in European philosophy, and is often thought of as part of a larger period which includes the Age of Reason. ... Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a Prussian philosopher, generally regarded as one of Europes most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. ... Speculative reason is theoretical (or logical, deductive) thought (sometimes called theoretical reason), as opposed to practical (active, willing) thought. ... This article discusses faith in a religious context. ... For information on the last book of the New Testament see the Book of Revelation. ...

He was born at Düsseldorf, the second son of a wealthy sugar merchant, and was educated for a commercial career. Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at Geneva mainly with the literary and scientific circle of which the most prominent member was Le Sage. He studied closely the works of Charles Bonnet, and the political ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1763 he was recalled to Düsseldorf, and in the following year he married and took over the management of his father's business. Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. ... Jet dEau in Geneva Geneva (French: Genève) is the second-most populous city in Switzerland, situated where Lake Geneva (known in French as Lac Léman) flows into the Rhône River. ... Bonnet Charles Bonnet (March 13, 1720 - May 20, 1793), Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva, of a French family driven into Switzerland by the religious persecution in the 16th century. ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Franco-Swiss philosopher, writer, political theorist, and self-taught composer of The Age of Enlightenment. ... The tone of this article is inappropriate for an encyclopedia. ...

After a short time, he gave up his commercial career, and in 1770 became a member of the council for the duchies of Jülich and Berg, in which capacity he distinguished himself by his ability in financial affairs, and his zeal in social reform. Jacobi kept up his interest in literary and philosophic matters by an extensive correspondence, and his mansion at Pempelfort, near Düsseldorf, was the centre of a distinguished literary circle. With Christoph Martin Wieland he helped to found a new literary journal. Der Teutsche Mercur, in which some of his earliest writings, mainly on practical or economic subjects, were published. 1770 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Christoph Martin Wieland (September 5, 1733 _ January 20, 1813), was a German poet and writer. ...

Here too appeared in part the first of his philosophic works, Edward Allwill's Briefsammlung (1776), a combination of romance and speculation. This was followed in 1779 by Woldemar, a philosophic novel, of very imperfect structure, but full of genial ideas, and giving the most complete picture of Jacobi's method of philosophizing. In 1779 he visited Munich as member of the privy council, but after a short stay there differences with his colleagues and with the authorities of Bavaria drove him back to Pempelfort. A few unimportant tracts on questions of theoretical politics were followed in 1785 by the work which first brought Jacobi into prominence as a philosopher. A conversation which he had held with Gotthold Lessing in 1780, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no philosophy, in the true sense of that word, save Spinozism, led him to a protracted study of Spinoza's works. The Briefe uber die Lehre Spinozas (1785; 2nd ed., much enlarged and with important Appendices, 1789) expressed sharply and clearly Jacobi's strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the Berlin clique, led by Moses Mendelssohn. 1779 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... 1779 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... For the 2005 Steven Spielberg film, see Munich (film). ... The Free State of Bavaria (German: Bayern or Freistaat Bayern), with an area of 70,553 km² (27,241 square miles) and 12. ... Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (January 22, 1729 - February 15, 1781), writer, philosopher, publicist, and art thinker, is the most outstanding German representative of the Enlightenment era. ... Benedictus de Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677), was named Baruch Spinoza by his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Espinosa or Bento dEspiñoza in his native Amsterdam. ... Moses Mendelssohn. ...

Jacobi was ridiculed for trying to reintroduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief, was denounced as an enemy of reason, as a pietist, and as a Jesuit in disguise, and was especially attacked for his use of the ambiguous term "belief". His next important work, David Hume Über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (1787), was an 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 cognition of facts as opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed. In this writing, and especially in the Appendix, Jacobi came into contact with the critical philosophy, and subjected the Kantian view of knowledge to searching examination. The Society of Jesus (Societas Iesu/Jesu (S.J.) in Latin) is a Christian religious order of the Roman Catholic Church in direct service to the Pope. ... David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776) (N.B. The birthdate is May 7 by the Gregorian reckoning of his time; this date being used by the International Humanist and Ethical Union when celebrating his birthday) was a Scottish philosopher and historian and, with Adam Smith and Thomas Reid...

The outbreak of the war with the French republic induced Jacobi in 1793 to leave Düsseldorf, and for nearly ten years he lived in Holstein. There he became intimately acquainted with Reinhold (in whose Beitrage his important work, Uber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen, was first published), and with Matthias Claudius, the editor of the Wandsbecker Bole. During the same period the excitement caused by the accusation of atheism brought against Gottlieb Fichte at Jena led to the publication of Jacobi's Letter to Fichte (1799), in which he made more precise the relation of his own philosophic principles to theology. Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. ... Matthias Claudius (August 15, 1740 - January 21, 1815) was a German poet. ... Atheism, in its broadest sense, is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of god(s), thus contrasting with theism. ... Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (May 19, 1762 - January 27, 1814) has significance in the history of Western philosophy as one of the progenitors of German idealism and as a follower of Kant. ... Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (FSU) is located in Jena, Thuringia in Germany and was named for the German writer Friedrich Schiller. ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It also refers to the study of other religious topics. ...

Soon after his return to Germany, Jacobi received a call to Munich in connection with the new academy of sciences just founded there. The loss of a considerable portion of his fortune induced him to accept this offer; he settled in Munich in 1804, and in 1807 became president of the academy. In 1811 appeared his last philosophic work, directed against Friedrich Schelling specially (Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung), the first part of which, a review of the Wandsbecker Bote, had been written in 1798. A bitter reply from Schelling was left without answer by Jacobi, but gave rise to an animated controversy in which Fries and Baader took prominent part. In 1812 Jacobi retired from the office of president, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works. He died before this was completed. 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 fourth is in three parts. To the second is prefixed an introduction by Jacobi, which is at the same time an introduction to his philosophy. The fourth volume has also an important preface. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (January 27, 1775 - August 20, 1854) was a German philosopher. ... Jakob Friedrich Fries (August 23, 1773 - August 10, 1843), was a German philosopher. ... Franz Xaver von Baader (March 27, 1765 – May 23, 1841), was a German philosopher and theologian. ...

Jacobi's philosophy is essentially unsystematic. A fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to bear in succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand most sharply in contradiction to it, and any positive philosophic results are given only occasionally. The leading idea of the whole is that of the complete separation between understanding and apprehension of real fact. For Jacobi understanding, or the logical faculty, is purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience or perception thought proceeds by comparison and abstraction, establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature mediate and finite. The principle of reason and consequent, the necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned, impels understanding towards an endless series of identical propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions. The province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of the conditioned; to it the world must present itself as a mechanism. If, then, there is 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 mere prejudice of philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from Aristotle, that mediate or demonstrated cognition is superior in cogency and value to the immediate perception of truths or facts. Mechanism is the following: In general, a mechanism is part of a chain of causes leading to some object or process. ... Aristotle, marble copy of bronze by Lysippos. ...

As Jacobi starts with the 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 demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza's system Jacobi should first direct his criticism. A summary of the results of his examination is thus presented (Werke, i. 216-223):

1. 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 Leibniz and 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 fatalism (nihilism);
5. we can demonstrate only similarities (agreements, truths conditionally necessary), proceeding always in identical propositions; every proof presupposes something already proved, the principle of which is immediately given (Offenbarung, revelation, is the term here employed by Jacobi, as by many later writers, e.g. Lotze, to denote the peculiar character of an immediate, unproved truth);
6. the keystone (Element) of all human knowledge and activity is belief (Glaube, or "faith"). Of these propositions only the first and fourth require further notice.

Jacobi, accepting the law of reason and consequent as the fundamental 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 general and abstract conditions, we 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 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/nihilism. For, if the 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/nihilistic. Thus for the scientific understanding there can be no God and no 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 mechanical 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 middle place between sense perception, which is belief in matters of sense, and reason, which is belief in supersensuous fact Spinozism is the pantheism of Spinoza, which regards God as the one self-subsistent substance, and both matter and thought attributes of him. ... Atheism, in its broadest sense, is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of god(s), thus contrasting with theism. ... This article needs copyediting (checking for proper English spelling, grammar, usage, etc. ... Christian Wolff (less correctly Wolf) ( January 24, 1679 - April 9, 1754), German philosopher. ... Fatalism is the view that human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, because whatever will be will be. ... Fatalism is the view that human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, because whatever will be will be. ... The nonexistence of God is a quintessential nihilistic concern. ... For information on the last book of the New Testament see the Book of Revelation. ... Rudolf Herman Lotze (May 21, 1817 - July 1, 1881), was a German philosopher. ... This article discusses faith in a religious context. ... Atheism, in its broadest sense, is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of god(s), thus contrasting with theism. ... Fatalism is the view that human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, because whatever will be will be. ... The nonexistence of God is a quintessential nihilistic concern. ... The term God is capitalized in the English language as a proper noun when used to refer to a specific monotheistic concept of a supernatural Supreme Being in accordance with Christianity. ... Liberty is generally thought of in English as a condition in which an individual has immunity from the arbitrary exercise of authority; it often also implies the right to exercise political rights such as standing for office. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.

Further information Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Supporters contend that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910-1911) represents the sum of human knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century; indeed, it was advertised as such. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...