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F. H. Jacobi on faith, or what it takes to be an irrationalist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

BENJAMIN D. CROWE
BENJAMIN D. CROWE
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building, 4th Floor, 215 S. Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 e-mail: bcrowe@philosophy.utah.edu
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Abstract

F. H. Jacobi (1743–1819), a key figure in the philosophical debates at the close of the eighteenth century in Germany, has long been regarded as an irrationalist for allegedly advocating a blind ‘leap of faith’. The central claim of this essay is that this venerable charge is misplaced. Following a reconstruction of what a charge of irrationalism might amount to, two of Jacobi's most important works, the Spinoza Letters (1785) and David Hume (1787), are scrutinized for traces of irrationalism. Far from being an irrationalist, Jacobi is best read as questioning the analytical-geometrical model of rationality popular among his contemporaries, and of proposing a more naturalistic theory of rationality that situates it more firmly in human psychology, the ultimate import of which lies in a reconceptualization of the relation between faith and reason.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 309 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Heinrich Heine On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings, Terry Pinkard (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 59.

2. I have in mind his comments, explicitly directed against the educational theorist Basedow, but generally thought to be aimed at Jacobi, in Lecture 8 of Morgenstunden. See Moses Mendelssohn Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, III: Schriften zur Philosophie und Ästhetik, Leo Strauss (ed.) (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1974), 71–72.

3. This diagnosis of Jacobi's position is found in Kant's famous essay ‘What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?’. See Allen W. Wood and George di Giovannni (eds) Religion and Rational Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 15.

4. See ‘Jacobis Woldemar’, in Hans Eichner (ed.) Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, II: Charakteristiken und Kritiken I (1796–1801) (Munich: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1967), 71.

5. Anthony La Volpa summarizes many of the contemporary criticisms of Jacobi as an irrational fideist, while doing little to correct this venerable reading. See ‘The philosopher and the “Schwärmer”: on the career of a German epithet from Luther to Kant’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 60 (1997), 85–115.

6. Frederick C. Beiser The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 46, 78–79.

7. Ibid., 81. Emphasis added.

8. Terry Pinkard German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 91.

9. See George di Giovanni ‘Introduction: the unfinished philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’, in idem (ed.) The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994), 49.

10. I rely here throughout on George di Giovanni's excellent translations of these two works in Main Philosophical Writings. I have cited Jacobi's works parenthetically in the body of the text, using the abbreviation MPW, followed by the pagination of the reference. On occasion, I have consulted the modern edition of Jacobi's works, Klaus Hammacher and Walter Jaeschke (eds) Werke, 7 vols (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998–2006).

11. This misquotation was exposed some time ago by Moffat, James in ‘Aristotle and Tertullian’, Journal of Theological Studies, 17 (1915–1916), 170–171.Google Scholar

12. Jacobi's position here has some parallels to more recent criticisms of abstract moral theories from Bernard Williams. See, for example, his Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).

13. Here, too, Jacobi's view anticipates some more recent responses to scepticism. For example, some social epistemologists attempt to break out of the theoretical feed-back loop that generates scepticism by appealing to the function of epistemic concepts in social life. See Edward Craig Knowledge and the State of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Another example can be found in debates about epistemic closure, where some have denied the principle, ‘If, while knowing p, S believes q because S knows that p entails q, then S knows q’. See Fred Dretske ‘Skepticism: what perception teaches’, in Steven Luper (ed.) The Skeptics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 105–118.

14. Jacobi makes a similar point in his open letter to Fichte of 1799: ‘Whoever knows how really to elevate himself with his spirit above nature, with his heart about every degrading desire, such a one sees God face to face, and it is not enough to say of him that he only believes in God’ (MPW, 520).

15. See John Henry Newman An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1979), 95–109.

16. See Gilbert Harman Thought (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 157.

17. Jacobi's move towards this more naturalistic account is already present in the 1782 essay ‘Something Lessing said: a commentary on Journeys of the Popes’. For an excellent English translation of this text, see James Schmidt (ed.) What is Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1996), 191–211. It also appears in the preface to the 1792 version of Jacobi's philosophical novel, Eduard Allwill's Collection of Letters.

18. John Henry Newman Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between AD 1826 and 1843 (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), 203 (emphasis added).