JACOBI (Friedrich Heinrich).
David Hume über den Glauben oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gespräch.
The rare first edition of ‘David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism’ by the influential German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819), written as an elaboration and defence of Jacobi’s views on the concept of faith (‘Glaube’) expounded two years earlier at the outset of the so-called controversy pantheism controversy (‘Pantheismusstreit’) that gripped German philosophy during the 1780s.
‘This work includes three distinct sections, although only two are named in the title. The first section is dedicated to the need to clarify the controversial term Glaube. An intermission between the first and the second sections introduces an interesting account of Jacobi’s own philosophical education. The second section criticises the principle of the ground (Der Satz des Grundes) in contraposition to the principle of reason (das Principium der Vernunft), which is intended as part of the principle of life (das Principium des Lebens) and ushers in the topic that dominates the third and final section: the living being. Hence, the third section revolves around the rationality of life, providing an analysis of Leibniz’s philosophy’ (Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy).
