Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 to 1819) was a German philosopher, writer and socialite, best known for bringing the concept of nihilism into philosophical debate. Born in Düsseldorf, the second son of a wealthy sugar merchant, he was first trained for commerce and later held office in Bavaria and became president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He argued that the systems of Spinoza, Kant, Fichte and Schelling lead by their own logic to nihilism, and he set faith (Glaube) and revelation against speculative reason. His Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza (1785) set off the pantheism controversy with Moses Mendelssohn, and his work David Hume on Faith (1787) defended his use of the word faith. His brief friendship with Goethe rested on his distance from Sturm und Drang.