Fede e conoscenza intuitiva in Jacobi e Spinoza

This article investigates the ambivalent kinship between Jacobi’s notion of faith (Glaube), and Spinoza’s idea of intuitive knowledge. I argue that, while Jacobi presents his personalistic philosophy of faith as opposed to Spinoza’s monistic rationalism, his idea of Glaube as an intuitive access to reality is directly inspired by Spinoza’s third form of cognition. Jacobi’s reception of Spinoza’s doctrines of truth, of universality, of common notions and of God as the first certainty is of the utmost importance for the development of his own philosophy; yet, in the end, Jacobi refutes Spinoza’s attempt at uniting deduction and intuition: he affirms the content of the scientia intuitiva while rejecting its form. In conclusion, I imagine a possible Spinozistic reply to Jacobi’s critique.