  Jacobi also had the good fortune of belonging to a privileged segment of society. The Enlightenment as well as the French revolution presented him with more than just an intellectual challenge. In their different ways (which, as will be seen in Section 3, Jacobi however thought to have much in common), they both threatened the system of values that justified his social status. In the case of the French revolution, the threat was physical as well, since the events in France spilled over across the Rhine and were the cause for a time of much dislocation in his life. There were, in other words, interests other than purely intellectual that must have motivated his reaction to philosophy and philosophers and which would have to come under close scrutiny in a full study of Jacobi’s life. They can however be abstracted from when the main interest, as here, is with the internal logic, or lack of it, of his view of things. A quick review of the main events and the more influential circumstances of his life is none the less in order, at least as signposts of his intellectual career.