1. For a detailed sketch of Jacobi’s life, the article in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Prantl, 1881) is still the best but must be supplemented with more recent discoveries. (Booy/Mortier, 1966). Basic information is drawn from Jacobi’s autobiographical comments scattered throughout his works (Jacobi, 1812–1825, 1787, 1785) and enriched from his massive correspondence and the correspondence of third parties relating to him.

2. Johann Wolfang von Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, III, p. 681. In Sämmtliche Werke, eds Richter, K. et al., vol. 16. München: Hauser, 1985–.

3. Kant reacted to the dispute with his essay ‘Was heißt sich im Denken Orientieren?’ (‘What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thought,’ Berlinische Monatsschrift, 8 (1786): 304–330). Without endorsing Mendelssohn, whose metaphysics he could not have accepted, he none the less showed that his sympathy lay on his side. See also, di Giovanni, 1994: 32, note 70.

4. As recently expressed in Gott, Einige Gespräche. Gotha: Ettinger, 1787.

5. Morgenstunden, oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes, Erster Theil (Morning Hours, or Lectures Concerning the Existence of God. Berlin: Voß, 1785)

6.See the record of Jacobi’s 1788 oral comments regarding Reid, in Wilhelm von Humboldts Tagebücher, 1788–1789, ed. Albert Leitzmann (Berlin: Bher, 1916), 58, 61. See, also, ; di Giovanni, 1997.

7. Jacobi reproduced the passage in an appendix to his Open Letter to Fichte. (Jacobi, 1799: 101)

8.145;Über das göttliche Recht der Obrigkeit’ (‘On the Divine Right of Authority’), Der Teutscher Merkur, 20 (1777): 119–45.

9. Originally published in French; German translation, Die Reisen der Päbste, 1783.

10. For how much this pamphlet might have been a tacit attack on the programme of emancipation of the Jews in Prussia advocated by Christian Wilhelm Dohm, see Goldenbaum, 2009.

11. For a detailed account of the context of Jacobi’s essay, and its possible connection with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, see di Giovanni, 1995.

12. The Review Focus of volume 25 of the Lessing Yearbook (1993) is dedicated to Lichtenberg.

13. See the alteration made in the 1815 edition to the text on p. 123 of the original, and the new note entered by Jacobi.

14. See, for instance, J. F. Fries, Von Deutscher Philosophie, Art, und Kunst. Ein Votum für Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi gegen F. W. J. Schelling (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1812), pp. 40–49, especially 40–41, 44–48.