Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill Book

I am very glad to have finally read this collection of Jacobi's writings. He is a bit hard to classify; he had elements of both "Sturm Und Drang" and "Idealism", while at the same time, heavily criticizing both movements.
If one were to sum him up philosophically, maybe one could use the term Ideal-Realist; he seemed to retain certain aspects of Idealist thought, while also being an advocate of tangible realism. He is noted in the history of philosophy as being a proponent of "glaube" or faith. He held that reason and rationality are really only partially correct modes; they needed to be supplemented by, or completed with, faith.
Prior to reading this, I was not aware of Jacobi's profound influence on Fichte and on Idealism in general. His philosophy regarding the "ich" or "I" undoubtedly had some affect on Fichte, and thus, on Idealism. Although an opponent of Fichte's subjective Idealism, Jacobi also said some positive things about Fichte. Jacobi saw all subsequent Idealism as having it's roots in Spinoza, whom Jacobi considered an atheistic philosopher. Jacobi saw Fichte as the culmination of Spinozistic philosophical atheism. Of course, he also saw Schelling this way as well. His opposition to Schelling was a lot less cordial, unfortunately; and Schelling and Jacobi were not always entirely civil in their philosophical debate. Jacobi echoes Leibniz and Berkeley in some of his ideas; and one must acknowledge as the editor does, that Jacobi was probably also influenced by Spinoza. Jacobi was not always the most consistent, but he was certainly often profound and did have a considerable influence in Germany during the romantic period.
In some ways, as I said before in a review, Jacobi and Hamann were precursors to the Christian Existentialism of Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard. There are definite parallels. Kierkegaard was known to have an overall favorable opinion of both and some influence in his writings is evident.
For those who are interested in Existentialism and German Idealism, I would highly recommend Jacobi. This collection was long, but well worth reading.