140. - Pantheism Controversy

Summary

Rarely, if ever, has a thinker’s reputation transformed as abruptly as Spinoza’s did in the 1780s. The so-called Pantheism Controversy (Pantheismusstreit) of 1785 turned him apparently almost overnight from a villain to a hero. The controversy involved three German intellectual luminaries: G. E. Lessing (1729–81), Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), and F. H. Jacobi (1743–1819). Lessing and Mendelssohn were among the most revered figures of the German Enlightenment; after Lessing died, Mendelssohn planned to write a book about his departed friend. However, in 1783, Jacobi – an unremitting critic of Enlightenment rationalism – wrote to Mendelssohn that in the summer of 1780 he had visited Lessing. Much to Jacobi’s amazement, Lessing had confessed to him that he was a Spinozist, believing in the ancient credo hen kai pan, “One and All” (which echoes for instance “Whatever is, is in God” of E1p15), and denying that there are final causes, free will, providence, or a personal God.