Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (25 January 1743 – 10 March 1819) was a German philosopher notable for coining the term nihilism and promoting it as the prime fault of Enlightenment thought and Kantianism. Instead of speculative reason, he advocated Glaube (variously translated as faith or "belief") and revelation. In this sense, Jacobi anticipated present-day writers who criticize secular philosophy as relativistic and dangerous for religious faith. H...
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Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (25 January 1743 – 10 March 1819) was a German philosopher notable for coining the term nihilism and promoting it as the prime fault of Enlightenment thought and Kantianism. Instead of speculative reason, he advocated Glaube (variously translated as faith or "belief") and revelation. In this sense, Jacobi anticipated present-day writers who criticize secular philosophy as relativistic and dangerous for religious faith. He was the younger brother of poet Johann Georg Jacobi.
He was born at Düsseldorf, the second son of a wealthy Jewish sugar merchant, and was educated for a commercial career. Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at Geneva mainly with the literary and scientific circle of which the most prominent member was Le Sage. He studied closely the works of Charles Bonnet, and the political ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1763 he was recalled to Düsseldorf, and in the following year he married and took over the...
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