ANNO DOMINI 1799

By all accounts, 1799 was not a peaceful year. It certainly was not peaceful for the German lands, threatened as they were by the revolutionary armies of France. But neither was it peaceful for the more recondite circles of academic affairs. In this case, the center of turmoil was at Jena. Fichte was finally losing his battle against the charge of atheism that he had been waging for over a year. His legal case with the university administration had spawned a dispute that, just like the earlier Spinoza dispute, had engaged intellectual as well as political figures from far and wide. In the literature, it is known as the ‘atheism dispute’ (der Atheismusstreit). It all began with the claim made by a certain Forberg, and published in a journal of which Fichte was the editor, that religious faith in God is but a pious wish. But the circumstances that had led to the charge against Fichte need not concern us here, nor are we concerned with the details of the surrounding controversy. They are all well documented in the literature. Of interest to us is rather the role that Jacobi and Reinhold played in it. The two men had also figured prominently in the earlier dispute. There was much that differentiated the two controversies.