Jacobi leaves a strong impression of a man wanting above all to be in the center
of intellectual action, at whatever cost to personal consistency.
Spinoza’s fame as a philosopher dates from this moment. He had been an
underground figure throughout the century, known through the caricature in
Bayle’s Dictionary, and increasingly as a heretical name bandied about in the
quarrel between Deists and orthodox Christians. After Jacobi’s intervention,
Spinoza’s became the main rival doctrine on Idealist terrain, used by many
Idealists as the dogmatic foil for their doctrine of freedom. Spinoza and Kant,
the “dogmatic” determinist metaphysical system versus the “critical” subjec-
tivism, became the two poles of German philosophy. Formerly regarded as an
atheist, Spinoza was resurrected in the liberal religious context of the 1780s
as a possible compromise between rationalist materialism and religion. By this
stroke Jacobi became Kant’s major rival for the attention of the philosophical
public.
Jacobi’s move also upped the ante in the philosophical contest. He was
simultaneously making Spinoza intellectually respectable, no mere fringe figure
but the epitome of systematic rational metaphysics, while using Spinoza’s
heretical reputation to discredit the entire project of mainstream philosophy.
Jacobi’s was a heavy counterstroke against Kant’s new philosophy. Since intel-
lectual conflicts create attention, by connecting Kant’s philosophy to the popu-
lar religious-antireligious issue of the day, he also helped to make Kant famous.
The controversy guaranteed that Kant’s critical position, limiting philosophy
to the negative task of destroying the pretensions of metaphysics, would not
remain stable. Spinoza was now the counter-position that Kant’s followers
would have to deal with, ambiguously appealing to political interests in lib-
eration from religious dogmatism while simultaneously satisfying the desire for
a romantic merging with nature.^5
If Kant is one hinge of the emergence of Idealism, Jacobi is the counter-
hinge. Opposition to the Kantians and Idealists unfolds simultaneously with
them, as an integral part of the field of conflictual forces. Jacobi produced the
first anti-Kantian critique in 1787, almost simultaneously with its first wide-
spread recognition. Using as his vehicle David Hume on Belief, Jacobi now
extolled Hume’s critique of causality and declared that Kant had failed to show
how causality could apply to the thing-in-itself. Hume was by no means
regarded as a famous philosopher until this time, but now both Kant and his
self-styled rival were declaring that all philosophy must answer Hume’s puzzle.
One sees here a reason why Jacobi ultimately failed in his battle with Kant.
Jacobi’s tactic was to revive old, underutilized philosophical ammunition. He
was responsible for creating the reputations of two intellectual giants, Spinoza
and Hume, by moving them into the center of intellectual oppositions. The
price Jacobi paid was his own independent reputation, while he played the part
Intellectuals Take Control: The University Revolution^ •^629