St. John 1.1 or Luke 23.46? Fichte and Jacobi on the Truth of Christianity

Abstract

In his Letter to Fichte (1799), Jacobi welcomes Fichte as the «true Messiah of speculative reason». Fichte, in turn, celebrates Jacobi as the «clearest thinker of his era». Nevertheless, Jacobi constantly rejects any alleged affinity between his un-philosophy and Fichte’s transcendental philosophy. For Fichte, this rejection is due to Jacobi’s misconception of the transcendental presuppositions of his un- philosophical standpoint of life. Analyzing both Fichte’s and Jacobi’s diverging philosophies of religion, the paper shows that Fichte misconceived Jacobi’s main philosophical intentions and, subsequently, failed in his attempt to integrate Jacobi’s original philosophical concerns into his transcendental philosophy. To thus demonstrate both the incommensurability of Fichte’s and Jacobi’s respective philosophies of religion and the legitimacy of Jacobi’s point of view, the paper analyzes Jacobi’s and Fichte’s diverging remarks on the truth ofChristianity in their interdependent late philosophies.