The pantheism controversy (german: Pantheismusstreit), also known as ''Spinozismusstreit'' or ''Spinozastreit'', refers to the 1780s debates in German
intellectual life that discussed the merits of
Spinoza's "pantheistic" conception of God. What became a wider cultural debate in German society started as a personal disagreement between
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and
Moses Mendelssohn over their understanding of
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Spinozist beliefs. The difference of opinion became a wider public controversy when, in 1785, Jacobi published his correspondence with Mendelssohn. This started a series of public discussions on the matter.
Benjamin Crowe of
Boston University stated in a 2008 paper that: "The leading luminaries of late eighteenth and early-nineteenth German letters, people such as
Herder,
Goethe,
Hegel,
Schelling and
Schleiermacher, all, in one way or another, were shaped by the ‘Pantheism Controversy’." And in
Michael Forster's own words (2010), "During the last quarter or so of the eighteenth century and then well into the nineteenth century a wave of neo-
Spinozism swept through German philosophy and literature: in addition to Lessing and Herder, further neo-Spinozists included Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher,
Hölderlin,
Novalis, and
Friedrich Schlegel. This wave was largely a result of Herder's embrace of neo-Spinozism in ''God: Some Conversations'' (and in Goethe's case, Herder's sympathy with Spinozism even before that work)."
History
A conversation between the German philosopher
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and the German dramatist
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1780 led Jacobi to a protracted study of
Baruch Spinoza's works. Lessing had avowed that he knew no philosophy, in the true sense of that word, save
Spinozism.
Jacobi's ''Über die Lehre des Spinozas'' (1st ed. 1785, 2nd ed. 1789) expressed sharply and clearly his strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the
Berlin group, led by
Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure
materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended
substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of
Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute
atheism. Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between
theism and
pantheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time, which
Immanuel Kant rejected, as he thought that attempts to conceive of transcendent reality would lead to
antinomies
Antinomy (Greek ἀντί, ''antí'', "against, in opposition to", and νόμος, ''nómos'', "law") refers to a real or apparent mutual incompatibility of two laws. It is a term used in logic and epistemology, particularly in the philosophy of I ...
in thought.
Legacy
Jacobi was ridiculed for trying to reintroduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief, was denounced as an enemy of reason, as a
pietist, and as a
Jesuit in disguise, and was especially attacked for his use of the ambiguous term ''Glaube'' (
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
: "belief, faith").
Willi Goetschel argues that Jacobi's publication significantly shaped the reception of Spinoza's doctrine for centuries following its publication, obscuring the nuance of Spinoza's philosophic work.
The Pantheism controversy is also notable for its development of and influence upon prominent philosophical terms in German culture, including the idea of
nihilism and claims that
God is dead.
Jacobi's next important work, ''
David Hume Über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus'' (1787), was an attempt to show not only that the term ''Glaube'' had been used by the most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in the ''Letters on Spinoza'', but that the nature of the cognition of facts as opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed. In this writing, and especially in the appendix, Jacobi came into contact with the
critical philosophy
The critical philosophy (german: kritische Philosophie) movement, attributed to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), sees the primary task of philosophy as criticism rather than justification of knowledge. Criticism, for Kant, meant judging as to the po ...
, and subjected the Kantian view of knowledge to searching examination.
The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and
deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them: the
unity
Unity may refer to:
Buildings
* Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building
* Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper
* Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England
* Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a ...
of all that exists, the regularity of all that happens, and the identity of spirit and nature.
At the dawn of the first remarkable
Spinoza revival in history, the break of the ''Pantheismusstreit'' marked the moment in which
Baruch Spinoza's radical thinking moved from the clandestine underground to the center of the public debate and Spinoza's impact on Western thinking became public.
[Boehm, Omri: ''Kant's Critique of Spinoza''. (Oxford University Press, 2014) ]
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Spinoza's thought was a vital force in the development of German philosophy and culture in general. From the age of
Leibniz–
Wolff
Wolff is a variant of the Wolf surname which is derived from the baptismal names Wolfgang or Wolfram.
List of people surnamed Wolff
A
* Albert Wolff (disambiguation), several people
* Alex Wolff, American actor
* Alexander Wolff, American writ ...
to Lessing–
Mendelssohn–Jacobi–Herder to
Fichte–Schleiermacher–Hegel–Schelling to
Feuerbach–
Hess–
Marx–
Engels to
Nietzsche to
Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new s ...
, Spinoza's philosophy was especially both an immense source of inspiration and challenge for almost every major German thinker, including both the
idealists
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ...
and
materialists
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism ...
. Spinoza's influence on German literary luminaries, particularly the
Romantics, was highly significant from the age of Lessing to Goethe–Hölderlin–Novalis–
Schlegel–
Heine
Heine is both a surname and a given name of German origin. People with that name include:
People with the surname
* Albert Heine (1867–1949), German actor
* Alice Heine (1858–1925), American-born princess of Monaco
* Armand Heine (1818–188 ...
.
See also
*
Atheism dispute
*
Spinozism
References
{{Baruch Spinoza
German idealism
1780s in the Holy Roman Empire
History of philosophy
controversy
Neo-Spinozism
Spinoza studies
Philosophical debates