The philosophy of F. H. Jacobi ...

Chapter I. Life And Writings

Jacobi lived in one of the most stirring political and literary periods of German history, and in the most important period of modern philosophy. He lived through the era of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic Wars, and was a contemporary of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing in literature, and of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in philosophy. In addition to the contemporary influences which these names represent, the effects of earlier movements were still manifest in many ways. The religious influence of the Reformation was continued in Pietism, under the shadow of which he passed his earlier years. This early training gave a decidedly religious tone to his life, and to all his philosophical work.

It is probable, too, that this movement had much to do with the general reaction against the rigid rationalism of the Aufklarung, which set in when Jacobi was a young man. This tendency found its clearest expression in Hamann's Gefiihlsphilosophie. It was undoubtedly this movement which led Jacobi to extend sympathy and help to the new Romanticism, with its simpler and healthier views of the world and of human life. Never before had literary and historical criticism assumed such importance ; for it was largely through these, in the first instance, that the strength of Romanticism was expressed. Mysticism, too, was still alive and an active force in society, and especially in religion. Jacob Boehme, indeed, had given it some standing in philosophy, and it was now destined to have a much larger place. This was due to the fact that it had passed beyond the stage of physical excitation, and of a mere rule of life, such as it was in Eckhart and Tauler and to some extent in Boehme, and had adopted a rationalistic procedure. An intellectuelle Anschauung had taken the place of the earlier emotional intuition ; and this had raised mysticism from the position of a mere individualistic rule of life to that of a philosophical doctrine or universal principle. This Jacobi eventually developed further than any of his predecessors.

His Life. 1 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Diisseldorf on

1 The account of Jacobi's life is taken chiefly from Zirngiebl, Jacobi' s Leben, Dichten und Denken (Vienna, 1867), from Adamson's article "Jacobi" in the I I the 25th of January, 1743. He was the second son of a wealthy merchant, who was engaged in the sugar industry. His father was a strong Protestant, and the boy was brought up in that faith. Jacobi seems to have possessed from early youth a deep religious sense and a certain mystical tendency. Referring to himself as the author of Allwill, he says : " Therefore, already as a youth, the man was a visionary, a phantast, a mystic." 1 In a similar connection, he refers to Pietism, and acknowledges its influence upon him. 2 It is related of him that, as a boy, instead of playing with other boys, he would often stay in the house and converse with a pious old maid-servant of the family. As a mere child he thus showed an interest in religion, and even in the solution of certain religious problems. At the age of eight or nine he had intuitive views of immortality which ever remained with him. 3 In Allwill he tells of an experience of rapture, a sort of mystical experience, which he had in early life. 4 His faculty of intuition was thus very strong. He says that in early life he could not realize the existence of anything he could not intuit, or place before his senses in imagination. This reminds one of Berkeley, who could not realize the actuality of anything which he could not individualize. 5

Jacobi's father intended him to follow a commercial career, and with this end in view sent him, at the age of sixteen, to Geneva, to complete his studies. Here he remained four years. He had spent his early life under the influence of religion (Pietism), but at Geneva he first came in contact with philosophy. Sensationalism was the dominant philosophy there at that time, and he first approached the subject from that side. This led him to see an opposition between philosophy (or science) and faith, which he never afterward could reconcile. It became the business of his whole later life to try to adjust, though not to reconcile, their respective spheres. 6 The influence of the empirical school was, however, negative. He grasped the enthusiasm rather than the theories of its adherents, and was most moved by that which was illogical in them, but which he felt was most true to the realities of life. His teachers here were Bonnet and Le Sage ; and he also read Rousseau, Voltaire, and others. But neither the scepticism of Voltaire nor the sentimental deism of

Encyclopedia Britannica, and from Hedge, Prose Writers of Germany (Philadelphia, 1870).

1 Jacobi, Werke, I, p. xii.

5 Cf. Fraser, Selections from Berkeley, p. 3.

6 Piinjer, History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion, Eng. trans., p. 621.

Rousseau appealed much to him. He was driven rather to seek a philosophy which should not only acknowledge God and things divine — supersensible truth — but one which should also have a place for a God and a faith, as living, ever-present, realities in life.

After finishing his course at Geneva, he married, in 1764, Betty von Clermont, a lady of Aix-la-Chapelle, who was very beautiful and accomplished. In addition to " her great personal and mental attractions," she brought him considerable wealth. She seems to have been an excellent woman, highly esteemed by all who knew her. Goethe, in his Memoirs, speaks of her in terms of praise.

Jacobi now took his place at the head of the mercantile house which was handed over to him by his father. But this did not prove congenial to him, as he had no taste for business. He therefore soon betook himself to literary and philosophical work, which was better suited to his meditative disposition. He accepted, however, an election to membership in the Council of Juliers and Berg, in which connection he became famous for his financial ability and his zeal in social reform. His interest in social and political questions is shown by his writings on these subjects, which constitute the sixth volume of his collected works.

Jacobi and Wieland founded a new literary journal, Der Merkur, in which were published some of his earliest writings, including, among other things, his Allwills Brief sammlung in 1774. In 1779 he published Woldemar, a philosophical novel of no great merit, though interesting as a statement of his earliest views, and as an illustration of his philosophical method. His temperament, as seen in these early works, is literary rather than philosophical ; he is satisfied with reaching truth by a sort of intuition, and does not seem to demand a complete rationalization of principles. He was familiar, however, with philosophy, past and present, and saw as well as anyone the short-comings of the current speculations, though at this time he could offer no deep philosophical contribution. He saw that life was larger than the current philosophy could provide for, and that theory had not attained to the fulness of faith. 1 Without critical examination, then, he took the principle of faith, which he saw had so large a place in religion and in life, and tried to give it the dignity of a philosophical principle ; though in his later years he examined it more carefully, and substituted an intellectual element for the feeling element which characterized his first presentation of the subject.

In the same year (1779) in which he published Woldemar, he became a member of the privy council at Munich. He proved

1 Cf. Lotze, who said that life was larger than logic.

energetic ; " but the exposure of the abuses of the Bavarian system of customs was attended with consequences which rendered that post uncomfortable." 1 He therefore returned to Pempelfort, where he applied himself with exclusive devotion to literature. The death of his wife broke in upon the peacefulness of his labors, and threw a gloom over his remaining years. He kept up his home at Pempelfort, however, and during the next few years produced some of his most important writings, among which was his Brief e ilber die Lehre Spinozas, 1785, in letters to Moses Mendelssohn. This first brought him into relation with contemporary philosophy, as it was his first truly philosophical work. It was called forth by a conversation with Lessing, in which the latter declared that he knew of no philosophy which could properly be called such, except Spinoza's. This led Jacobi to make an extended and careful study of Spinoza, which resulted in the work above mentioned. This celebrated conversation has been preserved for us by Jacobi. 2

In 1789 Jacobi published a second edition of his work on Spinoza, greatly enlarged, and with added appendixes. In this we find the first clear statement of his opposition to a philosophy of demonstration, as distinguished from a philosophy of faith, which he avowed. He thus identified himself with the Gefiihlsphilosophie of Hamann and Herder. This put him at once in opposition to the leading philosophers of the time, including Mendelssohn, who was looked up to as chief. These all misunderstood him, and thought he was trying to reintroduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief. They called him an enemy of reason, a Pietist, and even a Jesuit in disguise. So careless was their examination of his writings that they thought he advocated a doctrine of unreasoning faith and dogmatic authority.

In reply to this charge he published a dialogue entitled David Hume ilber den Glanben, oder Idealismiis und Realismus. In the preface he protested against being regarded as an advocate of a blind faith, and as an enemy of science and philosophy. 3 He endeavored also to vindicate his use of the words ' faith ' and ' belief/ by showing that these terms had been used by eminent writers, especially by David Hume, in the sense in which he himself was now using them, and that there were no other words to express the immediate cognition of facts, as opposed to the construction of inferences. In an appendix to the second edition of this work, he first expressed himself on

1 Hedge, Prose Writers of Germany, p. 206.

2 IV, a, pp. 53 ff. For an English translation of the conversation, see Sime, Lessing, Vol. II, pp. 300 ff. 3 II, P. 4-

Kantianism, and showed his intense keenness of criticism. He here set forth his realism in opposition to the Kantian philosophy, which he interpreted as subjective idealism.

At the outbreak of the war with France, which followed close upon the French Revolution, Jacobi left Dtisseldorf, and lived for nearly two years in Holstein, the native province of his father. While there he made the acquaintance of Reinhold ; and from there he published, in 1801, his first important work on Kantianism, Ueber das Untemehmen des Kriticismus die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen. In this he developed more fully than in the appendix to David Hume his position with reference to what he thought to be the subjective idealism of the Kantian system.

It was while living here that he was accused of atheism at Jena, probably on account of his partial acceptance of Kant's Dialectic. In order, then, to set himself and his philosophy in the proper light with reference to theology, he published an apologetic letter, Jacobi an Fichte, in which he tried to define his position with precision. Nothing was further from him than atheism. Instead of being its supporter and defender, he was its most determined opponent. All his efforts were directed to establish theism ; and the principal charge he made against Spinozism was that it was atheistic and fatalistic.

Soon after returning to his home at Diisseldorf, he received a call in 1804 to the new Academy of Science just founded at Munich ; and as he had lost part of his paternal fortune through a brotherin-law, he was induced to accept the position. In 1807 he was made president of the Academy, and remained in that position for four years. While there he published his last philosophical work, Von gottlichen Dingen, which he directed chiefly against Schelling. The latter made a bitter reply, which Jacobi never noticed, though the controversy was carried on by others, chiefly Fries and Baader.

In 1 81 2 he retired from the presidency, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works, but died, March 10, 1819, before he had completed the task. The work was continued, however, by Koppen, and was completed in 1825. It was published in six volumes, the fourth volume containing three parts. The second volume contains an Introduction by Jacobi which is at the same time the best introduction to his philosophy, and the most succinct and lucid statement he ever made of his general position. It is to this edition of his works that all references are made in this monograph. 1

Jacobi was not a philosopher of set purpose. His first writings

1 The paging of the Vorrede of the 1812 edition varies in different copies, though the body of the works is the same.

contained merely an implicit philosophy of life, and it was only later that he was driven to an endeavor to render that philosophy explicit. He was a busy man of affairs for many years, and his writings were but occasional treatises, — " written rhapsodically and at grasshopper gait," as he says, and, for the most part, in the form of letters, dialogues, and romances. " It was never my object," he says, " to construct a system for the schools ; my writings sprang from my innermost life, they followed an historical course; in a certain way I was not the author of them, not with my own will so, but under compulsion of a higher and irresistible power." 1 His philosophy, more than that of almost any other philosopher, was primarily his personal view of life, and only secondarily did it become a system of principles.

Jacobi seems to have been a man of most admirable personal qualities. He had very deep social feelings, as is evidenced by the fact that he made his mansion at Pempelfort a resort for literary men. He was also intensely religious, though there seems to be no evidence that he interested himself very greatly in any contemporary ecclesiastical affairs. Love for God and man went together in him, and were the united cause of all his philosophical thought.

We shall endeavor to trace very briefly the influences which met in him, and which went to shape his character, and to give content and form to his philosophy.

Pietism. The deep religious movements of Germany have nearly all been associated with, or have been the outcome of, some form of mysticism. There were mystics such as Tauler and Eckhart before the Reformation, from whom the chief inspiration of that movement came. Luther himself was a mystic, and drew much inspiration from Staupitz. Then came Boehme, one of the most profound thinkers ever found in the ranks of the common people. His mysticism was broad and deep, and he was sufficiently philosophical to give some real character to his thought. The movement of which the Pietism of Jacobi's day was the product was begun by Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705), and was at first a movement within the Lutheran Church. It took the form of a protest against the formalism which had been developed within the Church, and which threatened to destroy its real spirit. Its chief characteristics, therefore, were deep spirituality, an emphasis upon experience rather than knowledge, upon immediate intuition rather than mediate thought, and upon the importance of the individual.

1 Quoted by Schwegler, History of Philosophy, Eng. trans, by Stirling, p. 249.

2 Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 41-2.

It was therefore " rather a religious mood than a form of thought." 1

Spener also placed much emphasis upon conversion, or the renewal of the natural man by the spiritual. 2 This naturally meant an antagonism between the natural and the spiritual, — an antagonism which Jacobi inherited and which always remained a very marked feature of his view of the world. In the same way, the other features of Pietism, and of mysticism generally, entered deeply into his thought. To the end he remained strongly individualistic or empirical, valuing direct and immediate intuitions above the richest content of mediated thought, and was never able to overcome the opposition between the natural and the spiritual man, or between nature and mind. This will be seen in his permanent dualism between knowledge of mechanical nature (or science) and knowledge of the supersensible or spiritual world, which he chose to call philosophy.

Such a view of the world of nature and man undoubtedly complicates the philosophical problem, but it is nevertheless the basis of all true spiritual or religious life. It was the source of the truest and deepest life of the church, and furnished the only true experiential basis of the doctrinal aspect of Christianity. This cannot precede, but must follow upon true religious life, and it was from this sort of life that the doctrines of the Reformation historically sprang, — those doctrines which mark the spiritual emancipation of our modern world. Under these influences Jacobi spent the earlier years of his life, and it was from these that he drew his conception of the world and of life.

Sensationalism. This was the first philosophy which Jacobi read at all carefully. Previous to his term at Geneva he had read but little, — only what the ordinary school-boy reads. But at Geneva he came in touch with French Sensationalism, through the Encyclopedia, which at that time had its stronghold there. 3 Then began his serious study of philosophy. Le Sage was his teacher, and Jacobi says that his acquaintance with him marks an epoch in his life, and that his year with him was the most fruitful he ever spent. 4

It was a strange contrast, — a Pietist in the midst of the materialistic movement of the time, 5 and one of the most thoroughgoing materialistic movements in the entire history of philosophy. Jacobi was thus led into very serious mental and spiritual struggles, and it

1 Wilde, F. H. Jacobi: A Study in the Origin of German Realism, p. n.

3 Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 5-6. * II, pp. 182-3.

is probably due to the fact of being thrown on his own spiritual resources that he had his " fruitful year." He was forced to a more careful and positive study of the spirit than ever before, 1 or than was at all usual with young men of his years. He studied Le Sage, Bonnet, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and Durand; though he seems to have been most in sympathy with Rousseau. 2 The others furnished him little positive material for his own thought. He seems to have been satisfied with their general philosophical method ; for it is only their results which he criticises, and this only when they come into the sphere of the supersensible. He seems never to have called in question the validity of their method in the sphere of what we now call the science of nature. In this field, however, he never showed any interest, — the things of the spirit were his only attraction. The method of this school he accepted as the only method for exact science; and as the whole procedure was to him very barren, he opposed it only when it was carried over into the region of spirit. It was thought by some that he opposed science as such; but it was only the scientific method in philosophy which encountered his opposition. A science of nature he thought quite possible, though he left it for others to pursue; but a science of spirit he considered in the nature of things forever impossible.

The science of the sensationalists daily taught him that all things were idle and empty, 3 and that there was nothing substantial but matter. But this could not satisfy his soul; for his faith in God, and love, and virtue, which he had held from his youth up, was more to him than this, and could not be explained away. In the field of the sensible, however, the science of the sensationalists seemed to him to be indisputable, while faith in God seemed equally indisputable in the field of the spiritual. This left him forever with a discord between head and heart, though to him " the stirrings of the pious soul were of far more importance than the cognitions of the understanding." 4

Jacobi may have found reason for such a dualism even among the sensationalists themselves. For instance, Bonnet did not accept the coarse materialism of the Encyclopaedia, though he was a Sensationalist. He did not say, as others did, that thought was motion, but that motion in the body was the occasion of thought in the immaterial soul. Moreover, he regarded the mind as substantial, and

2 Falckenberg, History of Modem Philosophy, Eng. trans., p. 310.

3 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 43. 4 Punjer, op. cit., p. 621.

proved it from the unity of consciousness. 1 So that even within the school itself there were indications which might point Jacobi to the view which he developed, — a dualism between head and heart, between science of the sensible and faith in the supersensible world. Instead of offering any thorough-going criticism of their method in general, the only way he saw was to endeavor to limit it to the field of the science of nature. How this affected his own view of nature, and of the value of natural science, we shall see later. We shall also see that it constitutes his own greatest philosophical limitation.

Aufklarung. After his return from Geneva to his native land, Jacobi found himself under the influence of the Enlightenment, both as a form of culture, and as a philosophy of life and of reality. The earlier dogmatism of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff did not influence him until a later time; but the dogmatic rationalism of the Aufklarung, though an outcome of the earlier dogmatism, was a factor in the life of his time, and was, indeed, the prevailing type of thought. Although looking for its speculative support to Leibniz and Wolff, this was its least important side; it concerned itself more with the practical affairs of life. " The basis of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was given in the general features of a secular view of life, as they had been worked out during the Renaissance by the fresh movements in art, religion, politics, and natural research." 2 Its theology was deism, and its religion was rationalism, — it " made a negative reduction of what was positive in religion to a so-called Religion of Reason." 3 It "enthroned ' sound common sense ' as the supreme arbiter, flouted all mysteries, discredited the deeper experiences, ignored the graver questions of the soul, and bounded its views by the narrow horizon of every-day life." 4 It thus exalted the knowing reason of the individual, and set -itself up as the supreme arbiter of all things. It thought it found within itself all that was necessary for knowledge or for life. Its God played no real part in life, but was merely the speculative principle from which all things proceed, and was accordingly completely transcendent.

Such a movement could have only a negative influence upon the very positive spirit of Jacobi; for he was opposed to it from the very outset. Its view of God, its denial of mysteries, its quite unpoetic and rationalistic view of life, were repulsive to him, and

1 Windelband, History of Philosophy, Eng. trans, by Tufts, p. 458.

3 Piinjer, op. cit., p. 650.

4 Hedge, Hours with German Classics, p. 194.

entirely unsatisfactory. It left man no mystery to himself ; it really cut off as illusions all his deeper spiritual experiences and yearnings, and left him with only an ideal which was ' of the earth, earthy.' And though at one with this movement in its belief in a personal God, he could not, however, accept the artificial and mechanical schism which it made between God and the world. He held that God and the world were organic to one another, and that a vital relation must subsist between the two. This relation he conceived it the chief business of his philosophy to show. No positive contribution to Jacobi's thought can therefore be attributed to the Aufklarung; but it stirred him up to opposition, and to a more explicit formulation of his own peculiar philosophy.

Spinozism. Shortly after Jacobi's return from Geneva he first came in contact with Spinozism. In 1763 the Berlin Academy prize for an essay " On Evidence in Metaphysical Knowledge " was awarded to Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi greeted the essay with great pleasure, but was disappointed to find that it was little more than a restatement of the old dogmatic arguments for the existence of God. He regarded this type of method as looking back to Leibniz and Spinoza, — to their mathematical method of demonstration. But Jacobi had learned to look on things with the eye of the Empiricist, and distrusted all demonstrative methods. His conception of philosophy as faith, or belief, or intuition, had begun to take form in his thought.

But it was not till after his famous conversation with Lessing in 1780 that he gave any very careful consideration to Spinoza. Then for some years he carefully studied that philosopher, and in 1785 gave the results of his study to the world in the form of the Brief e iiber die Lehre Spinozas, addressed to Mendelssohn. He found himself completely opposed to Spinoza, and to all philosophy of that type. The method of demonstration appeared to him to be its chief characteristic, — an attempt to deduce the fullness of the universe from one primary principle, in Spinoza's case the principle of substance.

The science of mathematics was in Spinoza's day developing rapidly. Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton had made wonderful discoveries, and the atmosphere of the whole educated world was largely mathematical. Mathematics appeared to be the true type of science, and it was thought that all true science must conform to this model, as the only way in which results could be exact, or could be proved. Modern inductive methods had not yet come into vogue, though Bacon had some time previously called attention to induction, and had to some extent outlined its methods. It was but nat-

LIFE AND WRITINGS. II

ural, then, that the philosophical sciences should endeavor to adopt the mathematical method. It was not thought that the difference in subject-matter called for any difference in method of treatment. Accordingly, Spinoza proposed to himself the task of demonstrating Ethics in geometrical order. Starting out with the concept of Substance, with its attributes and modes, as the geometer does with the concept of the triangle with its sides and angles, he endeavored to deduce, or demonstrate the entire universe, including right and duty.

This method determined by opposition that which Jacobi should adopt. The mathematical method he thought proper enough for the sciences of nature; for, to him, nature was mechanical. Moreover, he always associated demonstration with a mechanical method ; for, to him, demonstration was mathematical, not logical. But, since he viewed man as a free personality, and spirit as something radically different from nature, he could not see that in this sphere mathematics could be applicable in any way. And since spirit did not admit of exact measurements, therefore a philosophy, of spirit could not be a mathematical, or an exact, or a demonstrative science. An attempt to apply the exact method to supersensible objects, he thought, would inevitably lead to a denial of the very objects with which it started. This was shown clearly in the case of Spinoza and others, who started with God as substance, but came at last to such a view of God as denied any conscious personality, and was, indeed, nothing but atheism and fatalism. This led Jacobi to the opinion that a demonstrative system of philosophy was impossible; and in consequence he was driven to seek the opposite method of direct intuition. So that his study of Spinozism did not make a positive, but only a negative contribution to his thought. It led him to feel confidence in faith, and to formulate his views of mind and supersensible things upon an intuitive and non-mathematical basis."

Criticism. When in 1781 Kant published his Kritik der reinen Vemunft, Jacobi had already reached most of his philosophical conceptions. But his study of Kant's great work gave form, if not much content, to his thought. The ^Esthetic, in which Kant endeavored to show the subjectivity of the forms of space and time, Jacobi conceived to be complete subjective idealism. For if space and time are but subjective determinations of our thought, then the objects which we conceive to be in space and time are equally subjective. The fact that we conceive them to be truly external does not in any way make them such, but only proves that along with the ideas of space and time and objects, we have the idea of the externality of those objects. This does not give real externality, but only the ' idea ' of externality. Jacobi was in search of some real objectivity, and was thereby led to formulate more completely than ever his doctrine of realism. For he conceived that the problem of philosophy was to find a real objectivity, not only for the objects of our sense perception, but also for the objects of our supersensible perception. This latter was the problem of an objective theism, which Jacobi conceived to be the most fundamental and the most far-reaching of all problems.