Translator's introduction

Was heisst: Sich im Denken orientiren? was first published in October 1786 in the Berlinische Monatschrift Mill, pp. 304–30.

The “Orientation” essay is Kant's contribution to the so-called pantheism controversy, one of the eighteenth century's most famous and influential philosophical disputes, whose course helped determine the course of German philosophy well into the following century. The principals in the dispute were F. H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn, and its focus was the alleged Spinozism of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Mendelssohn and Lessing had been close friends for many years. After Lessing's death in 1781 Mendelssohn intended to write a laudatory character sketch of one of the eighteenth century's greatest and most respected German writers and thinkers, particularly on the topics of religion and art. Toward the end of his life, however, Lessing had also been acquainted with the much younger Jacobi, to whom (as Jacobi claimed) Lessing had confessed his allegiance to the philosophical principles of Spinoza. This was extremely disturbing, since Spinoza was widely regarded as an atheist and necessitarian whose principles were subversive of all religion and morality. The suggestion that the great rationalist Lessing might have been a secret Spinozist was both shocking to the learned public and at the same time profoundly ambiguous in its implications. On the one hand, it could mean that the principles of Enlightenment rationalism might in fact be morally and religiously subversive; on the other hand, it could mean that Spinozist pantheism was a more formidable philosophical position than rationalist orthodoxy allowed.