The Philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: On the Contradiction between System and Freedom

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The contemporaries of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) openly acknowledged his towering importance. Both Fichte and Hegel praised him in the same breath with Kant as having launched the philosophical revolution they sought to complete. Yet for more than a century, misrepresentations of Jacobi’s thought have stood in the way of a proper appreciation of his insights. In her study of this long-neglected German philosopher, Birgit Sandkaulen interprets his philosophical writings in their intellectual context. Originally published in German and translated into English for the first time, this is a major contribution to reading the life, work, and legacy of Jacobi. Offering new perspectives on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Sandkaulen focuses on Jacobi’s specific conception of practical realism. This conception, the source of Jacobi’s famous defense of faith and human freedom, matches his critique of the German Idealists: the post-Kantian systems of German Idealism were bound to fail. Sandkaulen shows us that long before 20th-century philosophers took up this line of thought, indeed at the very origin of the epoch-making developments of classical German philosophy, Jacobi articulated a practical, ethical, personal realism that is as philosophically appealing and relevant today as it was in its time. Cover Contents Preface Note on Translation List of Abbreviations Part One Leitmotifs 1 Life and Work 2 Jacobi’s “Spinoza and Antispinoza” 3 Groundless Belief: A Philosophical Provocation 4 Does Spirit Have Esprit? On the Figures of Soul, Spirit, and Reason in Jacobi’s Philosophy 5 Between Spinoza and Kant: Jacobi on Freedom and Persons 6 That, What, or Who? Jacobi and the Discourse on Persons 7 Brother Henriette? Deconstructions of Friendship in Derrida and Jacobi 8 “I am and there are things outside me”: Overcoming the Consciousness Paradigm with Jacobi’s Realism 9 The “Tiresome Thing in Itself”: Kant – Jacobi – Fichte Part Two Critical Relations 10 I-hood and Person: The Fichtean Aporia and the Debate with Jacobi 11 Fichte’s Vocation of Man—A Convincing Response to Jacobi? 12 This Individual and No Other? On the Individuality of the Person in Schelling’s Freedom Essay 13 System and Temporality: Jacobi Contra Hegel and Schelling 14 Third Position of Thought toward Objectivity: Immediate Knowing 15 Metaphysics or Logic? The Importance of Spinoza in Hegel’s Science of Logic Bibliography Proof of First Publication Index