Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich (1743–1819)

Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich(1743–1819)

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was a leading representative, with Johann Georg Hamann, of the philosophy of feeling and a major critic of Immanuel Kant. He was born in Düsseldorf on the Rhine. Jacobi received an education preparing him for a business career, but an inner urge drove him to the pursuit of philosophical studies. He studied the works of Claude-Adrien Helvétius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ferguson, and Benedict de Spinoza, the last of which had a negative influence on him, provoking opposition and criticism; he was also influenced by the English philosophers of feeling—the earl of Shaftesbury and others. His friend Hamann, a kindred spirit, lived in his home for a long period, and his influence on Jacobi cannot be overestimated. In 1804, Jacobi was appointed president of the Academy of Sciences in Munich. He was in literary contact with the prominent thinkers of his time—Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Jakob Friedrich Fries, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His discussions with his contemporaries are as important for the understanding of his philosophy as are his original works.

Jacobi developed a philosophy of feeling and faith. He was critical of speculations leading to the concept of the prevalence of necessary laws above freedom, hence Jacobi's rejection of Spinoza's pantheism and of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich von Schelling, and G.

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