Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819)

JacobiGerman philosopher; born at Dusseldorf January. 25,1743; died at
Munich March. 10, 1819. He studied at Frankfort and Geneva, and in
1764 became the head of his father's business in Dusseldorf. After his
appointment to the council for the duchies of Julich and Berg in 1772
he devoted himself entirely to literature and philosophy. His house at
Pempelfort, near Dusseldorf, became the meeting-place of distinguished
literary men. Among his more intimate friends were Wieland, Hamann,
Herder, Lessing, and Goethe. On account of the political agitation of
the time he went to Holstein in 1794. During the next ten years he
resided chiefly at Wandsbeek, Hamburg, and Eutin. In 1804 he accepted
a call to Munich in connection with the proposed Academy of Sciences
there. He was president of the academy from its opening in 1807 till
1812. His writings are characterized by poetic fancy and religious
sentiment rather than by logical necessity. He held that the
understanding can only join and disjoin given facts, without
explaining them, and that knowledge deduced in this way is conditioned
and relatively unimportant, being always related to a background of
existence which forever remains beyond abstract thinking. All
demonstrable knowledge, therefore, is relative and conditioned; it
does not touch the ultimate nature of things. The faculty by which we
grasp ultimate facts is not the understanding, but faith, which Jacobi
identified with reason. It was Jacobi who first pointed out the fatal
contradiction involved in Kant's application of the category of
causality to the Ding an Sich. His doctrine of the relativity of
knowledge was later exploited by Sir William Hamilton. Jacobi's
principal works are the two philosophical novels, Woldmwr (2 vols.,
Flensburg, 1779) and Eduard Allwills Briefsamlung (Breslau, 1781);
Ueber die Lehre der Spinoza (1785; enlarged ed., 1789); Dazid Hunw
fiber den Glauben, oder Ide-alis;nus und Realismus (1787), containing
his criticism of Kant; Ueber das Unternehmen des Kritizismus, die
Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen (Hamburg, 1801); and Von den
gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung (Leipsic, 1811), which was
directed against Schelling. During his last years Jacobi was employed
in collecting and editing his Werke (6 vols., Leipsic, 1812-24). His
Auserlesener Briefwechsel was edited by F. Roth (2 vols., 1825-27).