THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

3) Jacobi: The Mysterious Unity of Unity and Plurality
In his 1801 essay, Über das Unternehmen des Kritizismus, die Vernunft zu
Verstande zu bringen, Jacobi examines the relationship between the understanding and
sensibility as presented in Kant’s philosophy. Jacobi attempts to highlight what he sees
as the problematic and ultimately mysterious nature of this relationship. As the essay
progresses, Jacobi often replaces the term “understanding” with the term “unity.” He
likewise replaces the term “sensibility” with “plurality” (Mannigfaltige). Thus he often
discusses the problem about the relation between understanding and sensibility in terms
of a more general problem about the relationship between unity and plurality. In proto-
Hegelian fashion, he argues that if we begin by conceiving unity and plurality as fully
distinct, then we will not be able to explain their relation. Therefore, he argues, we must
begin with the attempt to grasp their essential unity. However, as we shall see, Jacobi
ultimately draws the very un-Hegelian conclusion that this deeper unity is mysterious and
beyond the grasp of human reason.
In the following passage, Jacobi speaks of the problematic relation between unity
and plurality, a problematic relation that has troubled him for eighteen long years,
presumably since he first read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. He says:
For eighteen long years I have sought to comprehend how you conceive
(vorstellen) a plurality, to which unity comes, and a unity, to which plurality
comes, or even how you think this pure giveness (Begebenheit) in any way. Each
year it becomes more incomprehensible to me. If you are not capable of this, but
rather you assume (setzen) that both plurality and unity presuppose one another in
the same manner, that both determine one another in the same manner, and that
they can only be thought in one another and at the same time (zugleich), as the
substantial forms of all thought and being: what will then become of your whole
apriori? 232
232 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Werke, Dritter Band. Edited by Friedrich Roth and Friedrich
Köppen. Berlin, Berliner Buchdienst. (2001). Pp. 112-3.
228