Here are two links to some old texts on F. H. Jacobi. The first text is one of the few studies on Jacobi in English and serves as an introduction to his thought: Jacobi Norman Wilde, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: A Study in the Origin of German Realism. I'm not familiar with the second; it looks to be a thesis: Alexander W. Crawford, The Philosophy of F. H. Jacobi. These are old texts, so here is also George di Giovanni's SEP article on Jacobi.
Why is there not more literature on Jacobi in English? The most recent works I know of that handle Jacobi in some detail are Paul Frank's All or Nothing (Harvard, 2005) and Giovanni's Freedom and Religion in Kant and His Immediate Successors (Cambridge, 2005).
Why is there not more literature on Jacobi in English? The most recent works I know of that handle Jacobi in some detail are Paul Frank's All or Nothing (Harvard, 2005) and Giovanni's Freedom and Religion in Kant and His Immediate Successors (Cambridge, 2005).
2 comments:
Hi Gabe,
You are quite right to suggest that the literature on Jacobi in English is meager. However, as I am sure you know, there are some other important works to mention in this context. I wonder why you haven't mentioned Fred Beiser's two detailed chapters on Jacobi in "Fate of Reason," and his chapter on Jacobi's political philosophy in "Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism." There are also some shorter pieces, for example, Paul Franks' "All or Nothing," in the "CC to German Idealism," and Dale Snow's articles in the Journal of the History of Philosophy 25, and in the anthology "What is Enlightenment" (ed. J. Schmidt).
Thanks again for a great blog!
Keren Gorodeisky
Hi Keren,
Thanks for mentioning these other works. These are all good pieces on Jacobi too, though a bit older than the two I mentioned. I only meant to suggest there are few detailed, book length works. Even the two I mentioned fail in that respect. Someone needs to write the book on Jacobi. I think the difficulty, and perhaps why it hasn't been done yet in English, is that in addition to requiring mastery of such a wide philosophical and religious literature, it also requires an audience. I imagine the audience is there now with the growing interest in Idealism.
-gabe
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