Jacobi, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH

Jacobi, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH, a German philosopher, born at Düsseldorf, 25th January 1743. The son of a merchant, he was trained at Frankfurt and Geneva for a mercantile career. But, abandoning business, he was in 1770 appointed councillor of finance for the joint duchies of Jülich and Berg, and thenceforward devoted himself principally to literary and philosophical pursuits. He maintained an active correspondence with Goethe, Hamann, Bouwerwek, and was acquainted with Wieland, Herder, Lessing, Hemsterhuis, and others. In 1804 he was summoned to Munich in connection with the newly-founded Academy of Sciences, of which he became president in 1807. He died at Munich, 10th March 1819. Jacobi was not a systematic thinker; he elaborated no system of philosophy. He had become convinced of the truth of one or two leading ideas; and from the standpoint they gave him he examined the chief modern philosophies that were known in his day. His distinguishing doctrines are these: philosophy as elaborated by the understanding cannot transcend the sphere of sense-given materials, and consequently can never get conviction of the existence of such things as God, immortality, &c.; but man has yet another faculty whereby he has immediate conviction of the real existence of things—viz. reason; by this faculty we have immediate conviction or belief not only of the reality of objects perceived by the senses, but also of the reality of the highest verities that lie beyond the apprehension of sense. Taking these views for his guidance he successively examined Spinozism, in Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza, in Briefen an Mendelssohn (1785); Hume's teachings and Kant's, in David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (1787); and Schelling's philosophy, in Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung (1811). He also expounded his teaching in philosophical romances—Woldemar (1779) and Allwill's Briefsammlung (1781)—in an Open Letter to Fichte (1799), and other occasional writings. His works appeared at Leipzig in 6 vols. in 1812-24. See monographs on him by Kuhn (1834) and Zingiehl (1867).