Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Michael Baur, "Situating Hegel: From Transcendental Philosophy to a Phenomenology of Spirit," in the Palgrave Hegel Handbook, edited by Marian Bykova and Kenneth Westphal (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

Kant’s early readers were troubled by the appearance of a dilemma facing his theory of freedom. On the one hand, if we explain human actions according to laws or rules, then we risk reducing the activity of the will to necessity (the horn of determinism). But, on the other hand, if we explain human actions without laws or rules, then we face an equally undesirable outcome: that reducing the will’s activity to mere chance (the horn of indeterminism). After providing an (...) overview of this dilemma, this chapter explores how Fichte and Schelling attempted to resolve it, in ways that ultimately shaped the course of post-Kantian idealism in the late 1790s and early 1800s. (shrink)

Kant’s early critics maintained that his theory of freedom faces a dilemma: either it reduces the will’s activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will’s activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This Element offers a new interpretation and defense of Kant’s theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law (...) is the causal law of a free will, and that the ability to choose indifferently between multiple options is an illusion. Freedom, for Kant, is a cosmological power to initiate action from oneself, and the only way to exercise this power is through the law of one’s own will, the moral law. Immoral action is not impossible, but it does not express a genuine ability. (shrink)

‘Facticity’ is a concept that classical phenomenologists like Heidegger use to denote the radically contingent or underivably brute conditions of intelligibility. Yet Fichte coins the term, to which he gives the opposing use of denoting unacceptably brute conditions of intelligibility. For him, radical contingency is a problem to be solved by deriving such conditions from reason. Heidegger rejects Fichte's recoil from facticity with his hermeneutics of facticity, supplanting Fichte's metaphor of our always being in reason's hand with the metaphor of (...) our always having been thrown. How does Heidegger inherit and diametrically repurpose Fichte's neologism? Whence the reversed meaning of ‘facticity’ in post-Kantian thought? The answer is Lask's doctoral thesis, which exerts an acknowledged impact on Heidegger's habilitation thesis. Lask interprets ‘facticity’ as Fichte's term for the individuality problem, that is, the resistance of the material particularity of individuals to explanation by the categories genetically deduced from reason. On his interpretation, ‘facticity’ denotes radical contingency in the guise of haecceity, that is, the brute uniqueness of individuals. Lask credits Fichte with registering the problem of individuality, which highlights the world's irreducibly precategorial character. But how is ‘facticity’ transmitted from Lask to Heidegger, given their opposing interpretations of how Fichte understands its meaning? I argue that (1) Lask misreads Fichte as a proponent of facticity, that is, one whose accommodation of radical contingency deflates the Wissenschaftslehre's systematic ambitions, and (2) Lask's misreading, without deceiving Heidegger regarding the sincerity of Fichte's ambitions, encourages Heidegger's own hermeneutics of facticity. (shrink)

Kant and Fichte developed the concept of a worldview as a way of reflecting on experience as a whole. But what does it mean to form a worldview? And what role did it play in the German Idealist tradition? This paper seeks to answer these questions through a detailed analysis of the form of a philosophical worldview and its historical portent, both of which remain unexplored in the literature. The dearth of attention is partially to blame on Kant’s desultory development (...) of it, as well as its place in Fichte’s understudied lectures on religion. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s conception as the starting point and then trace it to Fichte who went on to evolve it further. Fichte endorses the basic conceptual shape pioneered by Kant, namely, a reflective process of positing an idea and then checking the coherence of necessary judgments relative to it. However, Fichte came to realize that its philosophical function needed expanding. Beyond recognizing the possibility for alternative worldviews, Fichte further fleshed out how worldview creation could lead to human flourishing. The common feature between both thinkers is that the formation of a worldview aims to turn philosophy into a life-orienting exercise. (shrink)

Contra widespread readings of Karoline von Günderrode’s 1805 “Idea of the Earth ” as a creative adaptation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, this article proposes that “Idea of the Earth” furnishes a moral account of the human relation to the natural world, one which does not map onto any of the more well-known romantic or idealist accounts of the human-nature relation. Specifically, I argue that “Idea of the Earth” responds to the great Enlightenment question concerning the human vocation, but from (...) a distinctive romantic-idealist angle. I begin by demonstrating the influence of Fichte’s 1800 Vocation of Humanity on Günderrode’s thinking, which involves an investigation of both Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s critical response to it. I then turn to “Idea of the Earth” where I analyse Günderrode’s understanding of nature and the self in light of her critique of Fichte, and thereby distinguish her position from Fichte’s and from the position espoused by her fellow romantics and idealists. By reading “Idea of the Earth” alongside Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s remarks on it, this article sheds new light on both Günderrode’s understanding and defence of Naturphilosophie – against Fichte’s critique of it – and her distinctive contribution to romantic philosophies of nature. (shrink)

Early 20th century debates over the possibility of ‘metaphysics’ are grounded in a set of questions and answers whose central themes are already delineated in Kant’s critical philosophy. Wittgenstein and Carnap are sympathetic to Kant’s dismissal of transcendent metaphysics, but skeptical that there could be any substantive account of the fundamental conditions of our meaning-making. By contrast, Heidegger follows Fichte and the early German Romantics in seeing answers to the problems raised by metacritique not in science, but in the non-discursive (...) forms of understanding and expression exemplified in art. This Romantic turn to art is not taken arbitrarily; it is motivated by methodological considerations that emerge within Kant’s own critical system. I take up the Kantian considerations which lead to an understanding of art as a window into the fundamental conditions of meaning-making before turning to Heidegger’s development of this line of thought. Next, I examine Carnap and Wittgenstein’s skepticism concerning the meaning of Heidegger’s philosophical terminology, focusing on what is perhaps the most problematic case: Heidegger’s talk of ‘the nothing’. I argue that this skepticism is overblown. Heidegger’s talk of the nothing is meaningful in the way that talk about figure and ground is meaningful: it serves as an ostensive indication of intersubjectively accessible structural features of our encounters with things. I conclude by drawing out the existential ramifications of the decision to speak or be silent, drawing on Audre Lorde to illustrate the place of art in making it possible for us to lead authentic lives. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore two differing conceptions of J.G. Fichte’s Anstoß and how it relates to his Transcendental ‘I’, the ground of his Wissenschaftslehre. I argue that one should not attempt to read later interpretations of the Anstoß back into his earlier definition, but find that attempts to tread a middle way between the original and later interpretations have thus far been equally unsuccessful. Instead, I suggest a new way of interpreting the Anstoß as a constituent component of the (...) absolute I, built into his first principle of self-consciousness, and argue that this way allows the I to turn back upon itself without being externally determined. I argue that this way also avoids solipsistic and nihilistic objections by actually supporting the arguments of the proponents of earlier interpretations. I then advance to advocate the Anstoß’s importance in the wider sphere of understanding how Fichte’s theory of transzendentallogisch enables his first and rudimentary derivation of consciousness, prior to the finitely derived practical I of his later Jena writings. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to shed light on some of the most original elements of Fichte’s conception of morality as expressed in his account of specific obligations. After some remarks on Fichte’s original classification of ethical duties, the paper focuses on the prohibition of lying, the duty to communicate our true knowledge, and the duty to set a good example. Fichte’s account of those duties not only goes beyond the mere justification of universally acknowledged demands, but also deploys (...) different arguments than his contemporaries, most notably Kant. Fichte thereby sketches a conception of morality in which the agent is crucially required to contribute to the morality of others. The chapter explores the contrast between Fichte’s view and Kant’s thought of an end in itself and suggests that Fichte’s view of morality amounts to a form of normative perfectionism that is qualified by the underlying claim of the agent-neutral character of moral demands. (shrink)

The concept of facticity denotes conditions of experience whose necessity is not logical yet whose contingency is not empirical. Although often associated with Heidegger, Fichte coins ‘facticity’ in his Berlin period to refer to the conclusion of Kant’s metaphysical deduction of the categories, which he argues leaves it a contingent matter that we have the conditions of experience that we do. Such rhapsodic or factical conditions, he argues, must follow necessarily, independent of empirical givenness, from the I through a process (...) of ‘genesis.’ I reconstruct Fichte’s argument by tracing the origin of his neologism, presenting his Jena critique of Kant’s rhapsodic appeal to the forms of judgment, and illustrating the Jena period’s continuity with the Berlin period’s genetic method, while noting a methodological shift whereby Fichte directs his critique against his own doctrine of intellectual intuition in order to eliminate its ‘factical terms.’. (shrink)

Through an analysis of the ultimate telos of the world and of the subject’s striving in Schelling, the late Fichte, and Friedrich Schlegel—as well as via such concepts as the absolute, bliss, nothingness, God, chaos, and irony—this essay reconfigures German Idealism and Romanticism as spanning the conceptual space between two poles, world-annihilation and world-construction, and traces the ways in which these thinkers attempted to resolve what this essay calls the "transcendental knot," or to think the way the world is without (...) absolutizing it. (shrink)

In the comprehension of many 19th century European philosophers, there seems ever present in much of the work, a shared notion of struggle. This notion seems mainly to arise within the confines of human consciousness. The notion of struggle is in fact pervasive in contemporary thought as well, and could simply be inherent to human nature. However, I will maintain specific focus on the notion of struggle as brought to light by a sampling of works by three relevant 19th century (...) philosophers, namely Fichte, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. I look into some of the foundational claims made by these thinkers to see what can be discovered about their reasoning and what sense can be made of this seemingly unavoidable aspect of the human condition. The goal is to see what relations can be made among their ideas and where conflict and contradiction may arise. Once these elucidations have been made, I argue for my own stance on the notion of struggle both within the confines of human consciousness and on the outset to explain my arguments in terms of human behavior. I argue that there is one thinker amongst the three covered that offers a methodology of practical application in a person’s life in terms of human nature as opposed to the formulations made by the remaining two who I consider only to offer general descriptions of human consciousness. (shrink)

It is often thought that desire-based versions of reasons internalism, according to which our practical reasons depend on what we desire, are committed to denying that we have any categorical reasons. I shall argue, however, that such theories are committed to a universal desire which gives rise to an unexpected categorical reason – a reason to know our surroundings. I will arrive at this conclusion by using Fichte’s argument for thinking that security from unpredictable and powerful forces of nature is (...) constitutive of agency. Fichte thinks this is the case because we ought to aim at knowledge of our surroundings, and such environments uniquely facilitate it. I show that his argument fails, but the point that we ought to aim at – or desire – such knowledge is fundamentally sound. This aim can then be leveraged to generate a categorical reason when embedded in an account of agency typically embraced by internalists. (shrink)

Sebastian Rödl portrays much of his work as attempts at articulating a German idealist view of self-consciousness. Although he rarely engages directly with German idealist texts, his accounts of first-person and second-person knowledge arrive at strikingly Fichtean theses regarding the necessary identity of subject and object in the former and the necessary reciprocity of subject and other in the latter. Despite this affinity, I argue, Rödl's accounts lack a feature that is essential to Fichte's and, indeed, to German idealism's distinctive (...) orientation: the thought of a first principle. I show that while second-person knowledge between subjects is genetically prior to self-consciousness—for Fichte as for Rödl—first-person knowledge of the I as first principle is systematically prior to self-consciousness—a point of architectonic and anti-nihilistic importance for Fichte, but which goes missing on Rödl's accounts, thereby obstructing their intended German idealist articulation. (shrink)

This paper revisits the rhetorics of system and irony in Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel in order to theorize the utopic operation and standpoint that, I argue, system and irony share. Both system and irony transport the speculative speaker to the impossible zero point preceding and suspending the construction of any binary terms or the world itself—an immanent nonplace (of the in-itself, nothingness, or chaos) that cannot be inscribed into the world's regime of comprehensibility and possibility. It is because the philosopher (...) and the ironist articulate their speech immanently from this standpoint that system and irony are positioned as incomprehensible to those framed rhetorically as incapable of occupying it. This standpoint is philosophically important, I maintain, because it allows one to think how the (comprehensibility of the) world is constructed without being bound to the necessity of this construction or having to absolutize the way things are or can be. (shrink)

Cet article montre que Fichte développe une originelle conception du langage dans ses Discours à la Nation allemande d’où il ressort non seulement le besoin de retraduire des concepts philosophiques dans un langage populaire comme aussi celui de formuler un langage plus malléable pour la philosophie en tant que telle. Afin d’explorer cette hypothèse, notre propos suivra les étapes suivantes : (i) nous analyserons la conception fichtéenne du rapport entre popularisation et flexibilisation du langage, ce qui nous permettra (ii) d’explorer (...) les raisons systématiques du rapprochement entre langue philosophique et langue populaire et (iii) de saisir précisément la compréhension du rôle philosophique du langage qui en découle. (shrink)

“Dialectic” has been a matter of growing interest in contemporary philosophy. The present article analyzes dialectical methods and positions them by reference to two paradigmatic texts of German idealism and analytic philosophy, i.e. J.G. Fichte’s Science of Knowing (1804) and J. McDowell’s Mind and World. Both dialectical approaches will be interpreted with regard to their contribution in the debate on reductionism and anti-reductionism: both Fichte and McDowell claim that philosophical positions and logical terms stand in a dualistic relationship to one (...) another, on the one hand, but are separated by a gulf, on the other. I will argue that for McDowell dialectic seems to be an alternative to one-sided reductionisms as well as to normal anti-reductionistic holism. Furthermore, for Fichte dialectic is an adequate method for describing the relationship of reductionism and anti-reductionism itself. Both see in dialectic a technique for bridging the gulf between binary opposite terms of logic as well as mutually exclusive positions, such as mind and world, subject and object, or idealism and realism. (shrink)

In the later Fichte the reflection splits the world into a fivefoldness of its possible view. To get through all the a priori arranged levels from sensuality to the Doctrine of Science means to use up all the possibilities of the views of the world. I will examine whether Fichte can offer us a direct proof of completeness of the standpoints or at least show indirectly that there must be exactly five of them. Which answer would he give us if (...) we argued that history, skepticism and nonentity could complement the array? -/- Keywords Fivefoldness-worldviews-completeness-proof-history-skepticism -/- Die Reflexion spaltet nach Fichte die Welt in eine Fünffachheit ihrer möglichen Ansicht. Das Durchlaufen der a priori geordneten Stufen von der Sinnlichkeit bis zur Wissenschaftslehre stellt zugleich ein Ausschöpfen der Möglichkeiten dar, sich zur Welt zu verhalten. Ich werde prüfen, ob Fichte uns einen direkten Beweis der Vollständigkeit der Standpunkte geben oder zumindest indirekt dafür argumentieren kann, dass es genau fünf sein müssen. Was würde er uns antworten, wenn wir behaupteten, die Geschichte, der Skeptizismus und die Nullität könnten die Reihe ergänzen? -/- Schlüsselbegriffe Fünffachheit-Weltansichten-Vollständigkeit-Beweis-Geschichte-Skeptizismus. (shrink)

Over the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the transcendental dialectic of Critique of Pure Reason in Germany. Authors, however, often do not pay enough attention to the fact that Kant’s theory of reason (in the narrow sense) and the concept of ideas derived from it is not limited to this text. The purpose of this article is to compare and analyze the functionality of mind as a subjective ability developed by Kant and Fichte with the (...) Hegelian expansion of the mind to the idea of universal rationality. The relevance of such a comparison is connected with the need to demonstrate how the Hegelian paradigm of absolute rationality causes either the subsequent rejection of reason as a philosophical principle in the 19th and´20th centuries counter-discourse, or reduction of reason to the concept of pragmatic rationality. In the first part of this paper, the author intends to differentiate between at least 7 different types of ideas and their functions in Kant’s works. In the second part, he demonstrates how Fichte tries to systematize them beginning with reason, which at first creates an idea of itself. Special attention is paid to the way that Fichte categorizes them with the help of 5 spheres of action or 5 worldviews. The third and final part of the article discusses how Hegel goes beyond the frame of the transcendental philosophy of consciousness using different demands linked to the concepts of “reason” and “ideas”. Although these requirements are not found in Kant and Fichte, they entail a set of difficulties, which the author considers in conclusion. The author’s interpretation of the theory of ideas and their functions in Kant, Fichte and Hegel demonstrates the dynamic character of the theories of reason in classical German philosophy, as well as the relevance of the 7 types of ideas that retain their significance for philosophy of the 21st century. Keywords: Kant and German idealism, types of ideas, functions of reason, worldviews, the problem of different demands. В Германии на протяжении последних двух десятилетий возрос интерес к трансцендентальной диалектике «Критики чистого разума». Однако авторы часто не обращают внимания на то, что кантовская теория разума (в узком смысле), в которой разворачивается работа с идеями, не ограничивается этим текстом. Целью данной статьи является сравнительный анализ разработанной Кантом и Фихте функциональности разума как субъективной способности с гегелевским расширением разума до идеи всеобщей разумности. Актуальность такого сравнения связана с необходимостью продемонстрировать то, каким образом гегелевская парадигма абсолютной разумности вызывает либо последующий отказ от разума как философского принципа в контрдискурсе XIX–XX вв., либо редукцию разума к понятию прагматической рациональности. В первой части данной статьи вводится различение по меньшей мере семи различных видов идей и связанных с ними функций в философии Канта. Во второй части демонстрируется попытка Фихте их систематизировать исходя из утверждения том, что разум должен сначала создать идею о самом себе. Проанализировано также предложенное Фихте распределение идей на пять сфер действенности или типов мировоззрения. В третьей, итоговой части статьи рассмотрен выход гегелевской мысли за рамки трансцендентальной философии сознания. Автор статьи связывает этот процесс с выдвижением не осуществимых в контексте философии Канта и Фихте требований к понятиям «разум» и «идея» и анализирует ряд сложностей, вызванных этими требованиями. Таким образом, интерпретация учения об идеях и их функциях у Канта, Фихте и Гегеля демонстрирует динамический характер теорий разума в классической немецкой философии и актуальность семи видов идей, которые сохраняют свое значение для философии XXI в. Ключевые слова: Кант и немецкий идеализм, виды идей, функции разума, мировоззрение, проблема различных требований. (shrink)

The general attitude towards Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is rather fiercely critical and at times even tendentious. It seems that the figure of Schopenhauer as an irredeemably flawed, stubborn, and contradictory philosopher serves as a leitmotiv among scholars. Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will continues to be a thorny puzzle in the secondary literature, and it presents perhaps the greatest challenge to Schopenhauer scholars. Schopenhauer borrows the term ‘thing-in-itself’ from Immanuel Kant, who uses it to refer to a reality (...) that is distinct from what appears to us, and hence unknowable. Despite the fact that several interpretations have been offered to make sense of Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will, there appears to be no consensus about how to interpret this identification as well as his understanding of the term ‘thing-in-itself’. Unlike the other interpretations, the interpretation that I offer here distinguishes between three distinct and mutually incompatible views that Schopenhauer formulates about the thing-in-itself. I argue that it is not only difficult to give a coherent, consistent account of Schopenhauer’s position, but also not worth trying, because such an endeavor comes at the cost of ignoring the textual richness and depth of thought that Schopenhauer’s works offer. (shrink)

Owen Ware here develops and defends a novel interpretation of Fichte’s moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte’s System of Ethics is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian thought and a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte’s moral philosophy evolved and of the specific arguments he offers (...) in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of this study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte’s ethics—freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community—and their connection to his innovative but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte’s ethics—a commitment to the feelings of one's conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others—are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a sharp understanding of Fichte's System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life. (shrink)

Levinas never engaged closely with Fichte’s work, but there are two places in the chapter “Substitution,” in Otherwise than Being (1974), where he mentions Fichte by name. The point that Levinas underscores in both of these passages is that the other’s encounter with the subject is not the outcome of the subject’s freedom; it is not posited by the subject, as Fichte has it, but is prior to any free activity. The aim of this paper is to deepen the comparison (...) between Levinas and Fichte, giving special attention to Fichte's own novel theory of intersubjectivity and the summons. One result that emerges from this treatment is that both Levinas and Fichte view the second person in a way that has no equivalent in the current philosophical landscape. On this reading, each thinker views responsibility to the other, not only as an immediate and particular obligation, but also as an asymmetrical relation that gives the other moral priority. (shrink)

La doctrina del choque (Anstoß), que Fichte desarrolla ante todo en el Fundamento de toda la Doctrina de la Ciencia, pero también en otros escritos de la época de Jena, ha sido desde antaño objeto de crítica tanto por los admiradores como por los detractores de la filosofía fichteana. Existen al menos dos modos específicamente diferentes y aparentemente contrapuestos de comprender su sentido: según una lectura, el choque sería una autoafección del propio Yo; según otra, un residuo realista, en última (...) instancia incompatible con los compromisos idealistas del pensamiento de Fichte. La tensión entre ambos modos de comprender la tesis del choque pueden reeconcontrarse en la confrontación entre las interpretaciones así llamadas epistemológica y ontológica de la tesis de la “cosa en sí” en la filosofía de Kant –tesis con la que de hecho suele asociarse la tesis fichteana del choque. En este contexto, Hegel parecería a primera vista presentarse –por ejemplo, si se considera el escrito de la Diferencia entre los sistemas de filosofía de Fichte y Schelling– como partidario de una interpretación robusta, ontológica, de la tesis del choque; sin embargo, si se analiza el corpus hegeliano en su conjunto la posición de Hegel resulta ser más matizada y próxima a una interpretación por así llamarla epistemológica de dicha tesis. Con todo, aun así la postura de Hegel sobre el sentido de la tesis fichteana del choque en el contexto de una filosofía idealista continúa siendo crítica. (shrink)

It is often assumed that Fichte's aim in Part I of the System of Ethics is to provide a deduction of the moral law, the very thing that Kant – after years of unsuccessful attempts – deemed impossible. On this familiar reading, what Kant eventually viewed as an underivable 'fact' (Factum), the authority of the moral law, is what Fichte traces to its highest ground in what he calls the principle of the 'I'. However, scholars have largely overlooked a passage (...) in the System of Ethics where Fichte explicitly invokes Kant's doctrine of the fact of reason with approval, claiming that consciousness of the moral law grounds our belief in freedom (GA I/5:65). On the reading I defend, Fichte's invocation of the Factum is consistent with the structure of Part I when we distinguish (a) the feeling of moral compulsion from (b) the moral law itself. (shrink)

While Kant’s claim that the moral law discloses our freedom to us has been extensively discussed in recent decades, the reactions to this claim among Kant’s immediate successors have gone largely overlooked by scholars. Reinhold, Creuzer, and Maimon were among three prominent thinkers of the era unwilling to follow Kant in making the moral law the condition for knowing our freedom. Maimon went so far as to reject Kant’s method of appealing to our everyday awareness of duty on the grounds (...) that common human understanding is susceptible to error and illusion. In this paper I shall examine how these skeptical reactions to Kant’s position shaped the background for Fichte’s method of moral justification, leading up to his own deduction of the moral law in the System of Ethics. By way of conclusion, I shall propose a new interpretation of how consciousness of the moral law serves as an entry-point to Fichte’s form of idealism. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant seeks to discredit rational psychology on the grounds that we cannot access the nature of the soul by reflecting upon the ‘I think’ of self-consciousness. What is far less understood, however, is why Kant still believes the theorems of rational psychology are analytically true insofar as they represent the ‘I’ through the categories of substance, reality, unity, and existence. Early post-Kantian thinkers like Fichte would abandon this restriction and approach the concept of the ‘I’ (...) instead through the category of community or reciprocal interaction. The result was nothing less than a radical shift in thinking about persons after Kant, yet in a way that would bear a striking affinity to the substance monism of Spinoza. The aim of this chapter is to trace the origin of this shift and its aftermath in Fichte’s effort to defend a new conception of the ‘I’. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)

One of the most controversial issues to emerge in recent studies of Fichte concerns the status of his normative ethics, i.e., his theory of what makes actions morally good or bad. Scholars are divided over Fichte’s view regarding the ‘final end’ of moral striving, since it appears this end can be either a specific goal permitting maximizing calculations (the consequentialist reading defended by Kosch 2015), or an indeterminate goal permitting only duty-based decisions (the deontological reading defended by Wood 2016). While (...) I think each interpretive position contains an element of truth, my aim in this paper is to defend a third alternative, according to which Fichte’s normative ethics presents us with a unique form of social perfectionism. (shrink)

This interview with Professor Dr Jürgen Stolzenberg, board member of the Kant-Gesellschaft and co-editor of the Kant-Lexikon (2015), explores a wide range of topics — from Leibniz and Wolff to Heidegger and Husserl. The leading idea of Stolzenberg’s philosophical research is the justification of the principle of modern subjectivity in Kant’s philosophy and its transformations until our days. He discusses the meaning and development of the concept of self-consciousness and the understanding of subjectivity in Kant’s ethics as well as in (...) Fichte’s philosophy. Stolzenberg shows the significance of Heidegger’s philosophical relations with Kant, Fichte, and the Neo-Kantians. He outlines the reasons which explain the different structures of the philosophical theories after Kant in comparison with the structure of Kant’s philosophy itself. Answering the question of Kant’s role in affirming the value of human dignity, he emphasises the non-empirical essence of this concept as it is presented in Kant’s ethics and as it should be defended against recent critics. According to Stolzenberg, the principle of modern subjectivity proves to be fruitful in understanding the development of the history of modern music, too. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is contributing to a context-informed understanding of Fichte’s theory of conscience. This crucial element in his moral philosophy (and, in fact, in his whole philosophy) represents the last of the many significant accounts of conscience in the 18th century, before in the following century the role of conscience in moral life was repeatedly put into question. Accordingly, in my paper I argue that: (1) Fichte puts forward an un-Kantian account of conscience, following, instead, a quite different (...) model; (2) Fichte’s views on conscience grew out of a complex conceptual milieu, from which Fichte borrows important (quasi-)sentimentalist elements; (3) Fichte’s idea of the infallibility of conscience must be distinguished from other similar views put forward in the same years. (shrink)

German idealism stems in large part from Fichte’s response to a dilemma involving the concepts of pantheism, freedom and time: either time is the form of the determination of modes of substance, as held by a pantheistic or ‘dogmatic’ person, or the form of acts generated by human freedom, as held by an idealistic person. Fichte solves the dilemma by refuting dogmatism and deducing time from idealism’s first principle. But his diagnosis is more portentous: by casting the lemmas in terms (...) of person-types, he unintentionally invites Schelling’s philosophical rethinking of personality. In his middle period, Schelling argues for the consistency of the concepts of pantheism, freedom and time, claiming that it depends on a ‘good’ as opposed to ‘evil’ personality. However, since on his view personality is an absolute or originally undecided capacity for good and evil, the trio’s consistency is entirely contingent. In §1, I trace Fichte’s resolution of the dilemma. In §§2-3, I reconstruct Schelling’s arguments for consistency from the Freiheitsschrift and Weltalter, texts written just a few years apart. In §4, I allay a Kantian worry that this consistency relies problematically on the liberty of indifference or Willkür. (shrink)

In the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason (2nd edition), Kant claims that a transcendental cognition is a one ‘that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as is this ought to be possible a priori (a priori möglich sein soll)’. In this paper, I argue that Kant scholarship should take into account the specific signification of the term ‘sollen’, which might require us to reconsider the usual distinction between (...) the system of freedom and the system of nature. Following a Fichtean perspective, I will try to show that, even if ‘sollen’ in this context does not refer to a duty in the strict sense, it does refer to the demand that transcendental philosophy itself be possible. I will argue that this demand is contingent at its very origin and, accordingly, expresses a particular kind of ‘freedom’. On this basis I will consider the tribunal of reason enacted in the Critique of Pure Reason as a tribunal that emerges from a free decision, in which the transcendental philosopher imagines its own possibility. Because it is a ‘free’ and ‘contingent’ tribunal, it cannot exceed the status of a problematic philosophical strategy. (shrink)

Eine Untersuchung zu Nietzsches Kritik am Deutschen Idealismus im Rahmen seiner allgemeinen Idealismuskritik und seiner Lehre vom Willen zur Macht.

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and second, (...) the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss Spinoza’s critique of free will, though our brief study of this topic in the first part of the chapter will aim primarily at preparing us to address the main topic of the chapter, which is Spinoza’s explanation of the reasons which force us to believe in free will. At times, Spinoza seems to come very close to asserting the paradoxical claim that we are not free to avoid belief in free will. In the second part of (...) the chapter I will closely examine Spinoza’s etiological explanation of how we come to form the belief in free will. In the third part, I will raise and respond to a crucial objection to Spinoza’s explanation of the formation of our belief in free will. I will then turn to examine Fichte’s intriguing claim that Spinoza’s position on the issue of free will suffers from an internal contradiction, as evinced in Fichte’s suggestive remark: “Spinoza could not have been convinced of his own philosophy. He could only have thought of it; he could not have believed it [Er konnte seine Philosphie nur denken, nicht sie glauben].”. (shrink)

There is no question that Fichte's theory of conscience is central to his system of ethics. Yet his descriptions of its role in practical deliberation appear inconsistent, if not contradictory. Many scholars have claimed that for Fichte conscience plays a material role by providing the content of our moral obligations—the Material Function View. Some have denied this, however, claiming that conscience only plays a formal role by testing our moral convictions in any given case—the Formal Function View. My aim in (...) this paper is to offer a new contribution to this debate. I begin by supplying further evidence in support of the view that conscience only plays a formal function in Fichte's ethics. Then I call attention to a deeper problem this view faces, namely, that it invites an infinite regress by making one's conviction a matter of higher-order reflection. The key to overcoming this threat, I argue, lies in Fichte's doctrine of feeling, whereby the criterion of one's conviction lies, not in a cognitive state, but in an affective state. In closing, I discuss the relevance of Fichte's theory for current debates over the nature of moral error and moral deference. (shrink)

Whitehead claims there is only one type of individual in the universe—the actual entity—but there are necessarily multiple tokens of this type. This turns out to be paradoxical. Nevertheless, a type of individuality that is necessarily plural because, for each token, relations to other tokens are constitutive is something familiar from ordinary language, everyday politics, and, not least, 19th century German social thought. Whitehead’s actual entity generalizes the notion of species-being we find in Fichte, Feuerbach, and Marx. The rationale for (...) the concept of species-being brings to light important social and political implications of Whitehead’s cosmology. (shrink)

If a problem is the collision between a system and a fact, Spinozism and German idealism’s greatest problem is the corpse. Life’s end is problematic for the denial of death’s qualitative difference from life and the affirmation of nature’s infinite purposiveness. In particular, German idealism exemplifies immortalism – the view that life is the unconditioned condition of all experience, including death. If idealism cannot explain the corpse, death is not grounded on life, which invites mortalism – the view that death (...) is the unconditioned condition of experience. In “Philosophical Letters,” Schelling critiques idealism, arguing that death symbolizes the regulative ideal of a philosophical system’s derivation, our striving for which unifies our rational activity. I interpret Schelling’s critique as explaining how death puts philosophy into question, an idea he develops in the Freedom essay and Berlin lectures. Death is not a problem to be solved by a system, but represents philosophy’s highest yet unrealizable end. (shrink)

It is known that in connection with proposed educational reforms in the German states around 1800, Johann Gottliebe Fichte, following the Enlightenment concepts, developed a program, which considered education as an indispensable human right. In this program, the idea of providing all the citizens with the opportunity to get an education has been formulated as a social task and a condition of social and political modernization. In accordance with Fichte’s thought, over the cultivation of individuals, a new morality, and then, (...) on that basis, a new civic subject had to shape itself. The science thenceforth should have obtained a function of organizing a new society, in Fichte’s vision of it, instead of theology having previously played that role, while the public education system should have mediated the application of the scientific principles of organizing the society and thus to become a driving force in this development process. The generally accessible education and science were conceived by Fichte as autonomous moments of social organization, being the area intact by any immediate influence of authorities and based on the principles of individuals’ free communication. Fichte’s theorem of intersubjectivity has introduced an understanding of teaching as a social and communicative process into the ethical and political, as well as into the educational thought. It was not limited to reproduction of predetermined skills by the subject, but took into account the subject’s formation in the course of actively perception of educational contents and the change of the subject himself taking place by that. Имея в виду произошедшие около 1800 г. в немецких государствах реформы образовательных учреждений, И. Г. Фихте в направлении развития соответствующих просветительских концептов предложил программу, в которой образование обосновывалось в качестве неотъемлемого права человека. В этой программе идея предоставить всем гражданам возможность получения образования была сформулирована как общественная задача и условие социально-политической модернизации. По мысли Фихте, посредством культурного развития индивидов должна была сформироваться новая нравственность и на этой основе — новый гражданский субъект. Функцию обоснования организации нового общества, как оно виделось Фихте, вместо прежде игравшей эту роль теологии отныне должна была получить наука, а общественное образование должно было стать посредником в применении научных принципов формирования общества и тем самым одновременно движущей силой процесса общественного развития. Общедоступное образование и наука мыслились Фихте в качестве автономных моментов организации общества, областей, неподверженных непосредственному влиянию власть предержащих и основанных на принципах свободной коммуникации индивидов. Фихтевская теорема интерсубъективности ввела в этико-политическую и педагогическую мысль понимание обучения как социально-коммуникативного процесса, не ограничивающегося воспроизведением субъектом предзаданных навыков, но имеющего в виду его образование в ходе активного восприятия учебного материала и осуществляющееся при этом изменение самого субъекта. (shrink)

This chapter explores Kant’s, Reinhold’s, Fichte’s, and Hegel’s stances toward transcendental philosophy and transcendental arguments. Having explained the new meaning that Kant assigned to the term ‘transcendental’, the chapter surveys his attempt to develop a transcendental philosophy by employing transcendental arguments. Since these arguments presuppose unproven matters of fact, authors who were deeply concerned by scepticism deemed them unsuitable for the task. The chapter explains how Reinhold and Fichte sought to establish solid foundations for transcendental philosophy without relying on transcendental (...) arguments. The final section of the chapter discusses whether Hegel, who rejected transcendental philosophy, employed transcendental arguments. (shrink)

The article examines Kant's various criticisms of the broadly Cartesian ontological argument as they are developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that each of these criticisms is effective against its intended target, and that these targets include—in addition to Descartes himself—Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. It is argued that Kant's most famous criticism—the charge that being is not a real predicate—is directed exclusively against Leibniz. Kant's argument for this thesis—the argument proceeding from his example of a hundred (...) thalers—although it may seem to beg the question, in fact succeeds against Leibniz. It does so because the charge of begging the question can be rebutted if one makes certain Leibnizian assumptions. (shrink)

Review article on Alexander Schnell’s book “Hinaus: Entwürfe zu einer phänomenologischen Metaphysik und Anthropologie” (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011). According to Schnell, an exclusively descriptive phenomenology is not enough; phenomenology must also be constructive. He thus outlines an ambitious project for constructive phenomenology that promises (1) to provide an ultimate justification for knowledge and (2) to ground a phenomenological metaphysics and anthropology, each of which is centered on the “image” (Bild). Insofar as Schnell fills in the details of this outline, (...) his analysis is careful, provocative, and filled with insight. (shrink)

As a philosopher, psychologist, and physician, the German thinker Hermann Lotze defies classification. Working in the mid-nineteenth-century era of programmatic realism, he critically reviewed and rearranged theories and concepts in books on pathology, physiology, medical psychology, anthropology, history, aesthetics, metaphysics, logic, and religion. Leading anatomists and physiologists reworked his hypotheses about the central and autonomic nervous systems. Dozens of fin-de-siècle philosophical contemporaries emulated him, yet often without acknowledgment, precisely because he had made conjecture and refutation into a method. In spite (...) of Lotze's status as a pivotal figure in nineteenth-century intellectual thought, no complete treatment of his work exists, and certainly no effort to take account of the feminist secondary literature. Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography is the first full-length historical study of Lotze's intellectual origins, scientific community, institutional context, and worldwide reception. (shrink)

In Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew takes up the central question guiding Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy: How could something like phenomenal reality emerge out of the meaninglessness of the Real? Carefully reconstructing and expanding upon his controversial reactualization of German Idealism, Carew argues that Žižek offers us an original, but perhaps terrifying, response: experience is possible only if we presuppose a prior moment of breakdown as the ontogenetic basis of subjectivity. Drawing upon resources found in Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-Kantian philosophy, Carew (...) thus develops a new critical metaphysics—a metaphysics which is a variation upon the late German Idealist theme of balancing system and freedom, realism and idealism, in a single, self-reflexive theoretical construct—that challenges our understanding of nature, culture, and the ultimate structure of reality. (shrink)

Our understanding of Schelling’s internal critique of German idealism, including his late attack on Hegel, is incomplete unless we trace it to the early “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,” which initiate his engagement with the problem of systematicity—that judgment makes deriving a system of a priori conditions from a first principle necessary, while this capacity’s finitude makes this impossible. Schelling aims to demonstrate this problem’s intractability. My conceptual aim is to reconstruct this from the “Letters,” which reject Fichte’s claim (...) that the Wissenschaftslehre is an unrivalled system. I read Schelling as charging Fichte with misrepresenting a system’s livability or commensurability with our finitude. My historical aim is to provide a framework for understanding Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, which argues that a system’s liveability depends on its incompleteness or limitation by our finitude. On my reading, Schelling is early and continually committed to systematicity within the bounds of human finitude. (shrink)

When discussing the problem of evil, philosophers often distinguish between physical evil (harm caused within the natural world such as natural disasters, disease, and the like), and moral evil (harm caused by human agency). Mapping this traditional distinction is mapped onto the third section of Fichte’s The Vocation of Man would at first seem fairly straightforward: for Fichte, evil arising from nature occurs through “blind mechanism” and is unfree; in contrast, evil done by human beings arises out of free agency. (...) The answer may be more complicated, however, in two different ways. First, Fichte holds that nature is to be cultivated and controlled by human beings so that it is no longer a source of harm; this may imply that the continuing harm done by nature is the result of humans’ failure to have sufficiently tamed nature. In that case, some of the harm caused by nature may be attributable to free human causality and thus no longer be a clearcut instance of natural evil. Second, Fichte repeatedly states that those who fail to act morally and who fail to conform their wills to the moral law are still be in the power of the mechanisms of nature. Even though we must think of them as free, Fichte compares their actions to the operation of nature and its mechanism of necessity. By presenting a careful and nuanced Fichtean account of the traditional distinction between physical and moral evil, we can better appreciate how Fichte understood the meaning and scope of human responsibility. (shrink)