Disincanto e critica della razionalità strumentale nel pensiero di Jacobi

This essay focuses on the Jacobi’s critique of the instrumental rationality. The aim is to show how Jacobi’s philosophy does not disregard philosophical mediation at all, but rather, it aims to put into perspective the cognitive claims of rationalism. In the first paragraph the contours of the double direction of the Jacobian thought are outlined through the peculiar treatment of language in Accidental outpourings of a lonely thinker (1793). After defining this “double philosophy” as a theoretical horizon within which it is possible to understand the Jacobian critique of instrumental rationality, the second paragraph offers a reconstruction of the relationship between understanding and reason starting from the Introduction to the philosophical writings (1815). The last paragraph briefly dwells on the pars construens of Jacobian thought which, based on a suggestive expression by Valerio Verra, can be defined as a philosophy of “immediability”.