Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was an influential German philosopher, literary figure, socialite, and the younger brother of poet Johann Georg Jacobi. He is notable for popularizing the term nihilism and promoting it as the prime fault of Enlightenment thought particularly in the philosophical systems of Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte and Friedrich Schelling. Instead of speculative reason, he advocated Glaube and revelation. In this sense, Jacobi anticipated presentday writers who criticize secular philosophy as relativistic and dangerous for religious faith. In his time, he was also wellknown among literary circles for his critique of the Sturm and Drang movement, and implicitly close associate Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and its visions of atomized individualism. His literary projects were devoted to the reconciliation of Enlightenment individualism with social obligation.
He was born at Dsseldorf, the second son of a wealthy sugar merchant, and was educated for a commercial career, which included a brief apprenticeship at a merchant house in FrankfurtamMain during 1759. Following, he was sent to Geneva for general education. Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at Geneva mainly with the literary and scientific circle of which the most prominent member was Le Sage. He studied closely the works of Charles Bonnet, and the political ideas of JeanJacques Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1763 he was recalled to Dsseldorf, and in the following year he married Elisbeth von Clermont and took over the management of his fathers business.
Source: Wikipedia