Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi - Biography

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (January 25, 1743 – March 10, 1819) was German philosopher, literary critic, socialite and polemicist at a very tenuous time in European history. Born in Dusseldorf in 1743, Jacobi was privy to the development of the Enlightenment in Germany as well as the destructive French Revolution. Instead of becoming a proponent of Enlightenment ideals, Jacobi spoke against the burgeoning focus on individualism and instead held onto firm ideals of social obligation. Instead of speculative reason, Jacobi favored faith or Glaube, and this marks him as quite the unique thinker during this time. He is credited with coining the term nihilism to describe the fault of the Enlightenment for secularizing society and to accuse philosophers who were proponents of this philosophical discourse. As a polemic he specifically spoke against the rationalism of late Enlightenment philosophy in Germany, Kant's transcendental idealism (especially as seen through Fichte), and the Romantic idealism of Schelling.

Jacobi was a piteous man from the start, joining a society of pietists upon his confirmation. Born of a wealthy sugar merchant, Jacobi also began in the family business attending a merchant house in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1759 but soon when to Geneva for generals where he most studied literary and scientific studies. He read Bonnet, Rousseau and Voltaire and when he returned to Germany in 1762 he continued his philosophic endeavors and read the submissions to the Berlin Academy which included Mendelssohn and Kant on "Concerning Evidence in the Metaphysical Sciences." Jacobi preferred Kant's essay, but it was Mendelssohn's which won. In 1764, however, Jacobi took over his father's business for a time and got married to the rich Betty von Clermont (after having a son by a housemaid). In 1772 he accepted admission into the Duchy of Julich and Berg, relinquishing the affairs of his business to his brother-in-law to become a part of the governing body. Jacobi held a liberal position in regards to economics and while he maintained his commission to oversee the rationalization of manufacturing and taxation, when he was sent to Munich in 1779 to accomplish the same task, he encountered controversies partly due to an essay he was working on in regards to his favorable opinion of Adam Smith's theories. He left Munich for his hometown of Dusseldorf and wrote another essay outlining again his agreement in regards to Adam Smith.

While he was pursuing his career in the Duchy and in reformation of of local government policies, Jacobi didn't stray far from his literary interests. In conjunction with his brother Georg's friend Wieland he sought to produce a German journal similar to the French journal, Mecure de France. In 1772 in conjunction with Wieland, The Deutcher Merkur was produced with Wieland as editor. Jacobi was able to publish the writings that he wrote in the time period that he was still committed to commercial endeavors. The collaboration came to a bitter end in 1777 when Wieland and Jacobi suffered a political disagreement. Jacobi would come to see many friendships that took a similar turn as his with Wieland. It was upon his return to Dusseldorf that Jacobi resided at his huge residence at Pempelfort, a site which became an important intersection of the great minds of the generation through Jacobi's hosting of salons. As Otto Manthey-Zorn wrote in an article for Modern Philology in 1907:

Jacobi's home at Pempelfort can best be compared with Gleim's 'Tempel der Freundschaft' at Halberstadt. Jacobi had a similar longing to gather about him all masters of literature and philosophy. He did not, like Gleim, however, as a protector of younger talents, earn for himself the title of "Father of Literature," nor did he try to inspire all his proteges in a certain unhealthy direction, like Gleim, who forever harped upon his Anacreon and tried to influence his followers toward falsely sentimental and absurd lyrics. While aiding his friends as much as he could, Jacobi mainly sought inspiration for himself from his associations. [. . .] he characterizes his choice of friends thus: " Who then has not what I need, nor needs what I have, is and remains a stranger to me. Surreptitious, feigned, theatrical friendship-I know nothing more despicable.

Manthey-Zorn continues:
His letters show that he always knew how to profit from each new acquaintance, and that he was anxious to teach and help wherever he could. His friends were a necessary factor in his life. Though he showed himself capable of earnest research, yet to be at all productive, direct incitation from one interested in his work was absolutely necessary. His first work was not commenced until Goethe had repeatedly urged him to produce some original writing, and all his other essays are written directly to friends, mostly as personal letters.

It was during this time that Jacobi engaged wholeheartedly with the intellectual community at the time and published two novels, Edward Allwill's Briefsammlung (1776) and Woldemar (1779). It was Goethe had encourage Jacobi to write these novels by saying that Jacobi should write all that is close to his heart on a visit to Pempelfort with Basedow and Lavater. Goethe and Jacobi's contentious relationship what birthed, however, when Goethe, in a turn for the cruel, nailed a freshly published copy of Woldemar to a tree to the amusement of those gathered to witness the event. Quite a few relationships of Jacobi's took a rough course as Manthey-Zorn notes, Jacobi's writing and criticism was intently personal. In 1780, Jacobi visited Wolfenbuttel and met Lessing who hosted him at a dinner. Later, Jacobi reported that Lessing admitted to being a Spinozist (Lessing account is not available since he died a few months later. This exchange became the topic of letters exchanged between Mendelssohn and Jacobi beginning in 1783. The personal tone and attacks in the letter led to the questioning of both thinker's integrity which led Jacobi to publish the letter in 1785 with his commentary entitled Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn. It was also at this point that Jacobi lost his wife to illness.

The debate between Jacobi and Herr Moses Mendelssohn created such an intense controversy that Goethe was to say of it that it touched everyone in their deepest convictions. Herr Moses Mendelssohn died soon after but not after writing a response to Jacobi of which he didn't live to read Jacobi's reply. The result of the public upset in intellectual circles about this embittered correspondence was to bring not only Jacobi to the center of attention but also Spinoza who until that point had been only influential to the Strum and Drang movement. In an attempt to clear his charges of irrationalism, Jacobi published David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, a Dialogue in 1787-88. It also included an appendix which greatly criticized the recent publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and became the go-to text for anti-Kantianism. In this, Jacobi tore apart Kant's thing-in-itself, suggesting that this concept was based on faith - that the way we can know the external world is based on belief in the thing and that is how it becomes the thing-in-itself. Jacobi continued to rail against the Berlin Aufklarer participating even in a defamation lawsuit That J. A. Starck brought against the leaders of Berlin Enlightenment. Jacobi's concern revolved around the Enlightenment principle of explanation which he felt confused conceptualization with existence and therefore disallowed individual freedom and a personal God. By subverting the "I" in abstraction its original value is lost. Jacobi felt that there was no "I" without "Thou," a concept that would eventually be taken up by Martin Buber. Other thinkers that fell in the line of Jacobi's discontent were Herder, Fichte and Schelling.

Things changed drastically in 1794 with the beheading of Louis XIV and the French Revolution crossed the Rhine and began to bombard Dusseldorf. Jacobi left for the North settling for a time in Eutin. The Revolution bothered him as much as the Enlightenment, perhaps because these large movements of though threatened the the system of values that upheld his wealth and social status. In 1804 his wealth had subsided and he accepted a job in Munich to reorganize the academy of Arts and Sciences. He remained there until his death in 1819.