The Miracle in F.H. Jacobi’s Thought

Somersault, Perception, Freedom

Abstract

In my article, I analyse the topic of the miracle in the philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819). In Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn (Spinoza Letters - 1785), Jacobi used the metaphor of the somersault (salto mortale) to represent faith. In my article, I start with the question of whether this movement, due to its acrobatic difficulty, can be interpreted as something miraculous or as something that arouses wonder. Furthermore, I show the meaning of each stage of the somersault in the Spinoza Letters. Finally, I analyse the expressions “miracle of perception” (in Jacobi to Fichte - 1799) and “miracle of freedom” (in the Introduction to the Author’s Collected Philosophical Works - 1815), which Jacobi explicitly combines with the somersault.