Kant, Hegel and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: Salto mortale and the noble tone in philosophy

Abstract

In his writings, Hegel positioned himself clearly on Jacobi’s philosophizing, revealing the weight and limits of a philosophy of direct knowledge. The complaint of the idea of immediacy also occurs with Jacobi with “exclusion of mediation”. Immediate knowledge is given a totally exclusive position and this exclusively immediate knowledge is merely asserted or asserted as a fact of consciousness. Since this “feeling”, this fact of consciousness, is considered the criterion of truth, the merely subjective knowledge and the assurance of finding a content in my consciousness, pure subjectivity without any objectivity, becomes the foundation. In the philosophies of the immediate, according to Kant and Hegel, legitimation is shifted to the gates of thinking, comprehensible thinking only provides second-hand knowledge, first-hand is only belief or belief. Only immediate certainty is not the same as knowledge. Hegel’s phenomenology attempts to satisfy Kant’s demand for testing in the form of a gradual progression from certainty to knowledge in the form of a self-fulfilling skepticism. The encyclopedia chapter on immediate knowledge, of which Jacobi is one of the more recent representatives, then also consistently concludes with the reference to skepticism as a negative science carried out through all forms of knowledge without exception, which proves the nullity of all these mere assurances. This passage follows directly after the exposition of the claims of exclusive-immediate knowledge. Although Kant warned against dilapidated hypotheses as forbidden goods, assurances are given today and speak of facts of consciousness, of the “immediate revelation of the subject”. Jacobi formulates weighty objections to the reflective mind. Against understanding thinking, against reason, they have no power.