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140. - Pantheism Controversy

from P

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Valtteri Viljanen
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Rarely, if ever, has a thinker’s reputation transformed as abruptly as Spinoza’s did in the 1780s. The so-called Pantheism Controversy (Pantheismusstreit) of 1785 turned him apparently almost overnight from a villain to a hero. The controversy involved three German intellectual luminaries: G. E. Lessing (1729–81), Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), and F. H. Jacobi (1743–1819). Lessing and Mendelssohn were among the most revered figures of the German Enlightenment; after Lessing died, Mendelssohn planned to write a book about his departed friend. However, in 1783, Jacobi – an unremitting critic of Enlightenment rationalism – wrote to Mendelssohn that in the summer of 1780 he had visited Lessing. Much to Jacobi’s amazement, Lessing had confessed to him that he was a Spinozist, believing in the ancient credo hen kai pan, “One and All” (which echoes for instance “Whatever is, is in God” of E1p15), and denying that there are final causes, free will, providence, or a personal God.

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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 404 - 406
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Beiser, F. C. (1987). The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Förster, E., and Melamed, Y. (eds.). (2012). Spinoza and German Idealism. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Israel, J. (2011). Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jacobi, F. (1994). The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Alwill, trans. G. di Giovanni. McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
Mendelssohn, M. (2012). Last Works, trans. B. Rosenstock. University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Moreau, P.-F., and Lærke, M. (2022). Spinoza’s reception. In Garrett, D. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 2nd edn (pp. 405–43). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nassar, D. (2012). Spinoza in Schelling’s early conception of intellectual intuition. In Förster, E. and Melamed, Y. (eds.). Spinoza and German Idealism (pp. 136–55). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vallée, G. (1988). The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing Controversy, trans. Vallée, G., Lawson, J. B., and Chapple, C. G.. University Press of America.Google Scholar

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