Reason, Negation, and the Vocation of Philosophy

Abstract

The following essay discusses a distinct kind of negation, the negation of philosophy, as it appears in F.H. Jacobi’s writings. Following a brief account of the topic and a concise review of the history of the scholarship on Jacobi’s thought (sections I and II), I will briefly chart the polemical targets of non-philosophy (section III) and eventually present an analysis of three recent publications on Jacobi’s notion of non-philosophy (by O. Koch, K. Sommer, and E. Pistilli in section IV, V, and VI respectively). I will finally assess the value of a further negation, which hints at the origin of the thought about being.