La percezione sensibile in F.H. Jacobi

The core of Jacobi’s philosophy lies in the primacy of immediate perception over discursive understanding, and at the same time in the identification of perception with the heart, i.e. with practical consciousness. The being disclosed by perception is the existence of acting individualities. This article argues that practical consciousness also implies a sensible disclosure of reality, and that this must be understood as a symbolic interpretation of sensibility. Acting and interpreting are two inseparable, mutually presupposing capacities. Both action and perceptual interpretation precede and ground the theoretical or discursive understanding of nature. This thesis is compared with the idea of moral symbolism and natural purposiveness in Kant’s third Critique. In Jacobi too, in a partially related sense, sensible perception makes it possible to conceive the unity and agreement between freedom and nature.