ON BELIEF AND FAITH: HUME AND JACOBI

Abstract

In German Modern Philosophy at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the prevailing view was that Kant, with his critical idealism, both fulfilled and overcame Hume’s skeptical philosophy. This paper begins by exploring Jacobi’s motivation to revisit the meaning and value of Hume’s philosophy—particularly Hume’s concept of belief—at a time when Kantian thought was emerging as the dominant philosophical paradigm. The central part of the paper examines Hume’s understanding of belief. The author considers how Hume’s problematization of the causal relation, which underpins knowledge about matters of fact, leads to a broader inquiry into the basis of belief. For Jacobi, however, the recognition that knowledge is founded on Glaube (a term encompassing both faith and belief) does not merely expose its uncertainty as rooted in the subject’s habitual tendencies. Drawing on recent interpretative perspectives, the author argues that Jacobi’s concept of faith seeks to disclose an attitude of mind that transcends the fixed dichotomy between subject and object, as well as their abstract unity. Instead, Jacobi envisions their unity in difference, emphasizing an immediate actuality of this dynamic, living relationship. This notion of faith, as developed by Jacobi, emerges as one of the most significant inspirations for post-Kantian philosophy.