On Faith and Knowledge - Classic Text | Alexandria
On Faith and Knowledge (German: Über Glaube und Wissen), published in 1787 by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819), stands as a pivotal philosophical work that ignited one of the most significant controversies in German intellectual history - the Pantheism Controversy. This text emerged as Jacobi's response to the rationalistic tendencies of the Enlightenment, particularly challenging Spinoza's philosophy and what Jacobi perceived as its inherent determinism and atheism.
The work originated during a period of intense philosophical debate in late 18th-century Germany, when questions about reason, faith, and the limits of human knowledge dominated intellectual discourse. Through a series of letters with Moses Mendelssohn concerning Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's alleged Spinozism, Jacobi developed his critique of rational knowledge and his defense of immediate faith (Glaube) as the foundation of all knowledge and certainty.
Jacobi's text introduces the revolutionary concept of the "salto mortale" (deadly leap) - a philosophical metaphor suggesting that reason must ultimately surrender to faith to avoid nihilism. His argument that all demonstrative knowledge presupposes something that cannot itself be demonstrated challenged the foundations of Enlightenment rationalism and influenced subsequent philosophical developments, particularly German Idealism and Romanticism. The work's impact reverberated through the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who were forced to respond to Jacobi's critique of reason.
The legacy of "On Faith and Knowledge" continues to resonate in contemporary discussions about the relationship between reason and faith, scientific knowledge and religious belief. Jacobi's insight that pure reason, when pursued to its logical conclusion, leads to nihilism anticipated many themes in existentialist philosophy and postmodern critiques of rationality. Modern scholars continue to debate whether Jacobi's solution to the problems he identified - immediate faith in a personal God - remains philosophically satisfying, even as his diagnosis of reason's limitations remains compelling. How do we navigate between the demands of rational inquiry and the apparent necessity of non-rational commitments in human life and knowledge?