Work · German Idealism & Its Heirs
On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Mr. Moses Mendelssohn
Lessing confessed to being a Spinozist – and Spinozism is the consequence of all rational philosophy.
Introduction
Jacobi published the book in Breslau in 1785. Its core is his report of conversations with Lessing in Wolfenbüttel in 1780, in which Lessing, who had died in 1781, reportedly said that there is no philosophy other than Spinoza’s; the book also prints letters exchanged with Moses Mendelssohn on the subject. Jacobi then argues that every philosophy based on demonstration leads to Spinozism and so to fatalism. Mendelssohn responded with “Morning Hours” (1785) and “To the Friends of Lessing”, and died in January 1786. The “pantheism controversy” that followed drew in Herder, Goethe and Kant, and made Spinoza a central figure for German idealism.
Connections
Criticizes
- Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order1677 · Baruch de Spinoza
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