The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill (McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas)

This scholarly edition is the first extensive English translation of Jacobi's major literary and philosophical classics. A key but somewhat eclipsed figure in the German Enlightenment, Jacobi had an enormous impact on philosophical thought in the later part of the eighteenth century, notably the way Kant was received and the early development of post-Kantian idealism. Jacobi's polemical tract concerning the "Doctrine of Spinoza" in letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn propelled him to notoriety in 1785. This work, as well as David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, Jacobi to Fichte, and the novel "Allwill", is included in George di Giovanni's translation. In a comprehensive introductory essay, di Giovanni situates Jacobi in the historical and philosophical context of his time, and shows how Jacobi's life and work reflect the tensions inherent in the late Enlightenment.