«Gefühl»

Our reconstruction discerns five different meanings of ‘Gefühl’ in Jacobi’s work: feeling as the expression of individual authenticity (1.1); as an epistemic function of immediate knowledge (1.2); as ‘feeling of honor’ qua impulse that points man to his transcendent origin (1.3); as the basis of ethical life (1.4); and as the subjective side of the rational intuition of goodness, beauty and truth (1.5). This specification has also a diachronic bearing, since it roughly corresponds to important shifts and developments in Jacobi’s own thought: from the first versions of the novels (1.1) to the Spinozabriefe and the David Hume (1.2), from the critique to Kant and Fichte and the 1790s versions of the novels (1.3, 1.4) to the last writings (1.5). For each of these moments, reference to the correspondence and to the Denkbücher will help clarifying the background of interests and the most important philosophical sources of Jacobi’s idea of ‘Gefühl’.