CONTROVERSIES: ATHEISM, PANTHEISM, SPINOZISM.

1 The Atheism, Pantheism, and

Spinozism controversies were a cluster of related religious and philosophical disputes that
involved many of the most esteemed minds in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
German. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed frequent disputes
concerning faith and reason rooted in the German Enlightenment, or Aufklärung (see
ENLIGHTENMENT, UNBELIEF DURING THE). The Aufklärung was characterized by an
overweening confidence in reason. Its champions embraced critical thinking, individual
autonomy, and religious tolerance. Although most agreed that enlightenment would foster
human well-being manifest as unlimited intellectual, moral, and spiritual progress, many
disagreed about how to promote this goal. Thus, unabashed fideism (reliance on individual faith
as the ultimate criterion of truth) and romanticism flourished alongside detached SKEPTICISM,
realism, and idealism. Perhaps inevitably, some children of the Aufklärung began to question
the ultimate compatibility of human welfare and enlightenment and indeed, of human belief and
knowledge.
The death of the Aufklärer Gotthold Ephraim LESSING initiated the Spinozismusstreit, or
Spinozism Controversy, of 1783-87. Lessing's intimate of many years, the rational theist Moses
Mendelssohn, had confided to their mutual friend, Elise Reimarus, that he intended to write a
tribute to Lessing's character. Reimarus shared this information with the fideistic writer F. H.
Jacobi, who revealed Lessing's "deathbed" confession that he had long followed Baruch
SPINOZA's philosophy. This allegation wounded Mendelssohn insofar as it implied that Lessing
had died a pantheist or even an atheist, that he had doubted his best friend's confidence, and
that he had regarded Jacobi as his intellectual heir. Soon, Reimarus was playing intermediary
in a quarrel between Jacobi and Mendelssohn wherein each behaved dishonorably. The
resulting fray attracted Immanuel KANT, Johann Gottfried von HERDER, Wizenmann, and
Johann Wolfgang von GOETHE, among others. Before it ended, the rigors of the public debate
led to Jacobi's physical decline and to Mendelssohn's and Wizenmann's deaths.
Ostensibly, the Spinozism Controversy concerned the theological implications of
Lessing's alleged Spinozism. Mendelssohn allowed that Lessing followed Spinoza, but he
argued that Spinozism constituted refined or purified pantheism, which maintains a separation
of God and world. Jacobi exaggerated Lessing's commitment to Spinozism, which he claimed
led to pantheism, or the identification of God with nature, and thus, to materialistic ATHEISM.
Actually, the Spinozism Controversy involved the question of whether reason or faith
should have priority. Whereas Mendelssohn insisted that reason--moderated by common
sense--could justify moral and religious beliefs, Jacobi maintained that abstract knowledge
undermined trust in external reality, freedom, and God, which required a salto mortale, or a
mortal leap of faith. Although Kant denied any knowledge of the objects of faith, he defended
the possibility of rational belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Wizenmann clarified the
issues at stake by exposing tensions within Mendelssohn's "common sense," Jacobi's "faith,"
and Kant's "rational belief." After Mendelssohn's death, interest in Kant's transcendental
idealism eclipsed concern over Lessing's Spinozism. Nonetheless, the battle over faith and
knowledge would reappear during the Atheismusstreit, or Atheism Controversy, of 1798-99.
The Atheism Controversy involved the social, moral, and religious implications of
transcendental idealism. It began with the publication of two essays, "On the Basis of Our Belief
in a Divine Governance of the World" (1798) by J. G. FICHTE, a popular young idealist at the
University of Jena, and "Development of the Concept of Religion" (1798) by F. K. Forberg. In
1799, protests by concerned citizens led Friedrich-August, prince-elector of Saxony, to ban the

1Published in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, edited by Tom Flynn (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2007).
essays and to coerce Duke Karl-August of Weimar to reprimand the authors. Fichte responded
with a fiery self-defense that received a deluge of recriminations and justifications from every
camp. His erstwhile allies Kant and Jacobi issued public repudiations of his philosophy.
Eventually, Fichte resigned his position and sought refuge in Berlin.
Tradition holds that the Atheism Controversy concerned personal and theological issues.
The firebrand Fichte had often found himself at odds with authorities, garnering a list of charges
that included disrupting public worship and supplanting God with reason. Although he might
have moderated his position, thus avoiding the entire dispute, he refused to compromise,
insisting that his critics were the true atheists. Kant suggested that, if not necessarily atheistic,
Fichte's theory lacked religious and philosophical significance, whereas Jacobi described it as a
more thoroughgoing atheism than Spinozism.
In truth, the Atheism Controversy concerned more than Fichte's idiosyncratic personality
and theology. It raised the question of whether idealism entailed social anarchy (see
ANARCHISM AND UNBELIEF) and moral despair. Fichte's contempt for the Weimar Court
threatened the tolerance that his moderate colleagues enjoyed under the enlightened Karl-
August. Moreover, as a supporter of the French Revolution and self-proclaimed author of the
"first philosophy of freedom," he tested the social and political order. Jacobi coined the term
NIHILISM to describe the amoral egoism that he believed Fichte's "inverted Spinozism" implied
(see also STIRNER, MAX). The Atheism Controversy opened fissures within post-
Enlightenment thought that widened further during the Pantheismusstreit, or Pantheism
Controversy, of 1811.
The Pantheism Controversy concerned issues raised by idealism, romanticism, and
fideism. The sanctioned origin of the dispute was Jacobi's "Of Divine Things and Their
Revelation" (1811), wherein he accused F. W. J. Schelling of pantheism, but his attack was
motivated by Schelling's lecture"Concerning the Relation of Fine Arts to Nature" (1807). Still
earlier, Jacobi had quarreled with Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel over Hegel's Faith and
Knowledge (1802), responding indignantly with letters to his young followers Köppen and
Bouterwek. Eventually, the controversy alienated Jacobi from his former cohort, the romantic
Goethe. More importantly, it demarcated boundaries between the older transcendental
idealists, Kant and Fichte, and the younger absolute idealists, Schelling and his follower, Hegel.
Although Hegel wrote Faith and Knowledge, Schelling helped revise it before
publication. Hegel and Schelling criticized Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte for failing to reconcile the
dichotomies of God and nature, infinite and finite, and faith and knowledge. Hegel claimed that
Kant opposed faith and knowledge, whereas Jacobi equated faith and knowledge, while Fichte
tried to overcome the division between the object of faith and finite knowledge by postulating an
infinite striving to transform nature into an earthly "kingdom of God." He also disparaged
Köppen, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Johann Gottfried von Herder for their part in the
Kantian-Protestant tradition of despair.
Although Schelling and Hegel thought that transcendental idealism neglected nature and
religion, they rejected the romantic veneration of nature and the fideist elevation of faith as
crassly sentimental and "unphilosophic." Despite their implicit critique of romanticism, Goethe
supported Schelling and Hegel during the debate, describing himself as a polytheistic artist and
pantheistic scientist. Jacobi, for his part, regarded Goethe, Hegel, and particularly Schelling as
pantheists, thereby guilty of the deification of nature they condemned. As Köppen, Bouterwek,
and Fries rallied to his cause, Jacobi argued that Schelling's philosophy of nature disguised
Spinozism in appealing Platonic garments that would lead gullible youth into atheism and then
nihilism.
Although the Pantheism Controversy destroyed neither lives nor careers, it ruptured the
fragile bonds between the movements generated by the Aufklärung, shattering their vision of the
concurrence of human happiness and enlightenment. So, the contest between the idealists,
fideists, and romantics deadlocked over the priority of faith or knowledge. Nonetheless, the
debate isolated rifts within enlightened thought, forcing theorists to clarify their positions and
thereby to scrutinize the intricate relations between belief and reason in the post-Enlightement
world.
The Spinozism, Atheism, and Pantheism controversies profoundly affected European
intellectual development. The Spinozism Controversy revived interest in Spinoza, arguably the
most consistent and courageous modern philosopher. Moreover, it introduced the world to
Kant's transcendental idealism, which influenced nearly every branch of the arts and sciences.
By revealing the specter of nihilism, the Atheism Controversy compelled philosophers to
examine the ethical implications of abstraction in general and of idealism in particular. As a
result of the Pantheism Controversy, Hegel escaped Schelling's shadow and dominated the
European universities for the next fifty years.
Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling influenced the pessimist Arthur SCHOPENHAUER and in
turn, the protoexistentialists Friedrich NIETZSCHE, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyoder
Dostoyevsky. The theories that emerged during the controversial legacy of the enlightenment
generated contemporary EXISTENTIALISM, romanticism, and post-modernism. As the young
Hegelians including Ludwig FEUERBACH and Karl MARX threshed out the social implications
of Hegel's philosophy, initiating worldwide revolution, the proto-fascists misappropriated the
idealist and romantic traditions, spawning international genocide. Thus, the reverberations of
the Spinozism, Atheism, and Pantheism Controversies extend well into the twentieth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beiser, Frederick. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Fichte, J. G. "On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World" (1798). In
Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings, translated and edited by
Daniel Breazeale. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
Hegel, G. W. F. Faith and Knowledge. Translated and edited by Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977.
Jacobi, F. H. The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill. Translated by George di
Giovanni. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.
Vallée Gérard. The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi. New York:
University Press of America, 1988.

Yolanda Estes
ydestes@gmail.com
Quito, Ecuador