The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte (Bloomsbury Handbooks) 1350036617, 9781350036611

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations
Introduction: About the Volume, Its Content, and Structure Marina F. Bykova
Part 1 Fichte in Context and His Path to Transcendental Idealism
1 Fichte’s Life and Rise to Philosophical Prominence Marina F. Bykova
2 Fichte, Kant, and the Copernican Revolution Tom Rockmore
3 Fichte’s Reception of Kant’s Critique of Judgment Sebastian Gardner
Part 2 The Jena Period (1794–1799) and the Jena System of Transcendental Idealism
4 The Generation of Intuition and Representation through the Productive Imagination in the 1794/95 Grundlage Violetta L. Waibel
5 Freedom’s Body: Fichte’s Account of Nature Michael G. Vater
6 Fichte’s Philosophy of Right Gabriel Gottlieb
7 Fichte’s Ethical Theory Allen W. Wood
8 The Development of Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion Benjamin D. Crowe
Part 3 The Berlin Period (1800–1814) and the Systematic Development of the Transcendental Philosophy
9 Fichte’s Meditations: The Practical Reality of the “Real World” in The Vocation of Man Matthew C. Altman
10 The Transcendental Spinozism of Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre George di Giovanni
11 Down by Law: On the Structure of Fichte’s 1805 Wissenschaftslehre Emiliano Acosta
12 Systematic and Doctrinal Differences of Fichte’s Early and Late Wissenschaftslehre: From the I as Tathandlung to God as Schema Rainer Schäfer
13 Fichte’s Cosmopolitan Nationalism David James
14 Freedom, Right, and Law. Fichte’s Late Political Philosophy Günter Zöller
15 Fichte’s Philosophy of History Ives Radrizzani
16 Fichte’s Conception of Bildung and His Proposal for University Reform Marina F. Bykova
Part 4 Substantive and Interpretative Questions and Key Concepts
17 Wissenschaftslehre Emiliano Acosta
18 Fichte’s First Principle: Self-Positing and Gambit Normativity Wayne M. Martin
19 The Three Basic Principles (drei Grundsätze) Steven H. Hoeltzel
20 Transcendental Method Halla Kim
21 Fact/Act (Tathandlung) Halla Kim
22 Check and Summons (Anstoß and Aufforderung) Steven H. Hoeltzel
23 The Ambivalence of Language Ives Radrizzani
24 Intellectual Intuition C. Jeffery Kinlaw
25 Fichte and Philosophy of Mind C. Jeffery Kinlaw
26 Freedom Kienhow Goh
27 Drive (Trieb) Kienhow Goh
28 Resistance (Widerstand) Mário Jorge de Carvalho
29 “I,” “You,” and “We.” Intersubjectivity, Recognition, and Summons Mário Jorge de Carvalho
30 Deduction of Right James A. Clarke
31 Separation of Right from Morality James A. Clarke
32 Are There Any Moral Rights for Fichte? Nedim Nomer
Part 5 The Reception and Influence of Fichte’s Philosophy
33 Fichte and the Emergence of Early German Romanticism Elizabeth Millán Brusslan
34 Fichte’s Response to Hegel in the Late Wissenschaftslehre Faustino Fabbianelli
35 Fichte and Phenomenology Virginia López Domínguez
36 Freedom and the Problem of Others: Fichte and Sartre on Human Freedom and its Conditions Arnold L. Farr
37 The Thought of a Principle: Rödl’s Fichteanism G. Anthony Bruno
38 Fichte and the Contemporary Debate about Speculative Realism Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel
Part 6 Timeline and Chronology
Notable Dates in Fichte’s Life
Timeline of Fichte’s Publications and Lectures
Index

Citation preview

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte

Also available from Bloomsbury Baumgarten’s Elements of First Practical Philosophy, by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason, by Georg Friedrich Meier Natural Law, by Gottfried Achenwall Preparation for Natural Theology, by Johann August Eberhard The German Idealism Reader, edited by Marina F. Bykova

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte Edited by Marina F. Bykova

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Marina F. Bykova and Contributors, 2020 Marina F. Bykova has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by Eleanor Rose Cover image © David Gysel / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bykova, M. F. (Marina Fedorovna), editor. Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of Fichte / edited by Marina F. Bykova. Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020026792 | ISBN 9781350036611 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350036628 (epub) | ISBN 9781350036635 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1762–1814. Classification: LCC B2848 .B59 2020 | DDC 193–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026792 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-3661-1 ePDF: 978-1-3500-3663-5 eBook: 978-1-3500-3662-8 Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations

viii xiii xiv

Introduction: About the Volume, Its Content, and Structure Marina F. Bykova

1

Part 1  Fichte in Context and His Path to Transcendental Idealism   1   2   3

Fichte’s Life and Rise to Philosophical Prominence Marina F. Bykova Fichte, Kant, and the Copernican Revolution Tom Rockmore Fichte’s Reception of Kant’s Critique of Judgment Sebastian Gardner

21 43 61

Part 2 The Jena Period (1794–1799) and the Jena System of Transcendental Idealism   4 The Generation of Intuition and Representation through the Productive Imagination in the 1794/95 Grundlage Violetta L. Waibel   5 Freedom’s Body: Fichte’s Account of Nature Michael G. Vater   6 Fichte’s Philosophy of Right Gabriel Gottlieb   7 Fichte’s Ethical Theory Allen W. Wood   8 The Development of Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion Benjamin D. Crowe

81 101 119 139 155

Part 3 The Berlin Period (1800–1814) and the Systematic Development of the Transcendental Philosophy   9 Fichte’s Meditations: The Practical Reality of the “Real World” in The Vocation of Man Matthew C. Altman

175

vi

Contents

The Transcendental Spinozism of Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre George di Giovanni Down by Law: On the Structure of Fichte’s 1805 Wissenschaftslehre Emiliano Acosta Systematic and Doctrinal Differences of Fichte’s Early and Late Wissenschaftslehre: From the I as Tathandlung to God as Schema Rainer Schäfer 13 Fichte’s Cosmopolitan Nationalism David James 14 Freedom, Right, and Law. Fichte’s Late Political Philosophy Günter Zöller 15 Fichte’s Philosophy of History Ives Radrizzani 16 Fichte’s Conception of Bildung and His Proposal for University Reform Marina F. Bykova

10 11 12

197 217

235 245 261 277 293

Part 4  Substantive and Interpretative Questions and Key Concepts 17 Wissenschaftslehre Emiliano Acosta 18 Fichte’s First Principle: Self-Positing and Gambit Normativity Wayne M. Martin 19 The Three Basic Principles (drei Grundsätze) Steven H. Hoeltzel 20 Transcendental Method Halla Kim 21 Fact/Act (Tathandlung) Halla Kim 22 Check and Summons (Anstoß and Aufforderung) Steven H. Hoeltzel 23 The Ambivalence of Language Ives Radrizzani 24 Intellectual Intuition C. Jeffery Kinlaw 25 Fichte and Philosophy of Mind C. Jeffery Kinlaw 26 Freedom Kienhow Goh

309 319 327 337 345 353 363 371 381 391

Contents 27 28 29 30 31 32

Drive (Trieb) Kienhow Goh Resistance (Widerstand) Mário Jorge de Carvalho “I,” “You,” and “We.” Intersubjectivity, Recognition, and Summons Mário Jorge de Carvalho Deduction of Right James A. Clarke Separation of Right from Morality James A. Clarke Are There Any Moral Rights for Fichte? Nedim Nomer

vii 399 409 421 433 441 449

Part 5  The Reception and Influence of Fichte’s Philosophy 33 34 35 36

Fichte and the Emergence of Early German Romanticism Elizabeth Millán Brusslan Fichte’s Response to Hegel in the Late Wissenschaftslehre Faustino Fabbianelli Fichte and Phenomenology Virginia López Domínguez Freedom and the Problem of Others: Fichte and Sartre on Human Freedom and its Conditions Arnold L. Farr 37 The Thought of a Principle: Rödl’s Fichteanism G. Anthony Bruno 38 Fichte and the Contemporary Debate about Speculative Realism Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel

459 475 491

507 521 539

Part 6  Timeline and Chronology Notable Dates in Fichte’s Life Timeline of Fichte’s Publications and Lectures

557

Index

561

559

Notes on Contributors Emiliano Acosta is Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Guest Professor at Ghent University, alumnus of the Young Academy of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium, founder and editor-in-chief of Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte and founding member of the Latin-American Fichte Society (ALEF). He is author of Schiller versus Fichte (2011) and Plato lezen (2020). Matthew C. Altman is Professor of Philosophy at Central Washington University, USA. He is the author of A Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (2008) and Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (2011), coauthor (with C. D. Coe) of The Fractured Self in Freud and German Philosophy (2013), and editor of The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism (2014) and The Palgrave Kant Handbook (2018). G. Anthony Bruno is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. He has published numerous articles on Kant, German idealism, and phenomenology. He is the editor of Schelling’s Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity (2020) and co-editor (with A.C. Rutherford) of Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries (2018). Marina F. Bykova is Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina State University, USA. She has authored three books and numerous articles on classical German philosophy. She is the editor of Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit: A Critical Guide (2019) and The German Idealism Reader. Ideas, Responses, and Legacy (2019), and co-editor (with K. R. Westphal) of The Palgrave Hegel Handbook (2020). James A. Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The University of York, UK. He has published several articles on the social and political philosophy of Fichte and Hegel and has recently co-translated (with C. Rhode) J.B. Erhard’s 1795 essay Apologie des Teufels (2018). He was Principal Investigator on the British Arts and Humanities Research Council international research network on early post-Kantian practical philosophy (“Reason, Right, and Revolution: Practical Philosophy between Kant and Hegel”). Benjamin D. Crowe is Lecturer in Philosophy at Boston University, USA. His work focuses on issues of religion and human agency within the larger German philosophical tradition. In addition to two monographs on Heidegger, he is author of a number of articles and book chapters on Heidegger, Fichte, and German Romanticism. Most recently, he has edited The Nineteenth Century Philosophy Reader (2016) and also edited and translated Fichte’s Lectures on the Theory of Ethics (1812) (2016).

Notes on Contributors

ix

Mário Jorge de Carvalho is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. In addition to German idealism, his research areas include ancient philosophy, philosophical anthropology, ontology, phenomenology, and contemporary philosophy. He has authored books, articles and papers on the corpus hippocraticum, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine of Hippo, Sextus Empiricus, Pascal, Swift, Jacobi, Kant, Fichte, Bouterwek, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, FrischeisenKöhler, Husserl, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. George di Giovanni is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Montréal, Canada, specializing in the late German Enlightenment, German Idealism, and the philosophy of religion. He has published widely in these areas, also contributing the translation, among other texts, of Jacobi’s main works (2009) and most recently of Hegel’s Science of Logic (2015). Faustino Fabbianelli is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Parma, Italy. He specializes in Kant and German Idealism, Phenomenology, and Italian Philosophy. His major publications include Impulsi e libertà. “Psicologia” e “trascendentale” nella filosofia pratica di J. G. Fichte (1998), Antropologia trascendentale e visione morale del mondo. Il primo Fichte e il suo contesto (2000), Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Transcendental Psychology (2016). He has also edited Reinhold’s Beiträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen, in 2 vols. (2003, 2004) and co-edited (with K. Hiller and I. Radrizzani) Reinhold’s Korrespondenzausgabe der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 2–5 (2007, 2011, 2016, 2020). Arnold L. Farr is Professor of Philosophy at at the University of Kentucky, USA. He specializes in German idealism, Marxism, critical theory, and philosophy of race. He is author of dozens of articles and book chapters on German idealism, critical theory (mainly Marcuse and Honneth), and philosophy of race. He is co-editor and co-author of Marginal Groups and Mainstream American Culture (2000), and author of Critical Theory and Democratic Vision: Herbert Marcuse and Recent Liberation Philosophies (2009). He is the founder and president of the International Herbert Marcuse Society. Arnold is presently working on four books: Misrecognition, Mimetic Rivalry, and One-dimensionality: Toward a Critical Theory of Human Conflict and Social Pathology; Liberation, Dialectic, and the Struggle for Social Transformation: The Life and Work of Herbert Marcuse; The New White Supremacy; and The New Slavery. Sebastian Gardner is Professor of Philosophy at University College London, UK. He is author of Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (1999), and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (2009), and has co-edited a collection, The Transcendental Turn (2015). His present interests focus on the legacy of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Kienhow Goh is an independent researcher. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Syracuse University in 2010, and has since published several journal articles and book chapters on classical German philosophy.

x

Notes on Contributors

Gabriel Gottlieb is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Xavier University, USA. He edited Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide (2016). His publications include “A Family Quarrel: Fichte’s Deduction of Right and Recognition” in Kant and his German Contemporaries, Vol. II, edited by Daniel Dahlstrom (2018); “Fichte’s Developmental View of Self-Consciousness” in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide. Steven Hoeltzel is Professor of Philosophy at James Madison University, USA. He is the co-editor (with H. Kim) of Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of Transcendental Idealism (2015) and Transcendental Inquiry (2016), and the editor of The Palgrave Fichte Handbook (2019). He has published widely on Fichte’s philosophy, especially its ontological implications and its value-theoretical dimensions. David James is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. He is author of Fichte’s Social and Political Philosophy: Property and Virtue (2011) and Fichte’s Republic: Idealism, History and Nationalism (2015). He is also co-editor (with G. Zöller) of The Cambridge Companion to Fichte (2016). Halla Kim is Professor of Philosophy at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea. He  is  author of Kant and the Foundations of Morality (2015) and co-editor (with S.  Hoeltzel) of Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of Transcendental Idealism (2015) and Transcendental Inquiry (2016). C. Jeffery Kinlaw is Professor of Philosophy at McMurry University, USA. He has published widely on German Idealism and Heidegger, especially in the areas of epistemology, political philosophy, free will, and philosophy of religion. He is currently working on a book on Fichte’s conception of self-knowledge. Virginia López Domínguez is an independent scholar. Until recently, she taught at Complutense University in Madrid, Spain and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard, Oxford, and Freiburg Universities and Visiting Professor at UNAM and UBA. She has published numerous translations, books, and papers on Fichte and Schelling. Her most recent book is Fichte o el Yo encarnado en un mundo intersubjetivo (2020). She has also written novels, tales, and essays on gender under the pen name Virginia Moratiel. Wayne M. Martin is Professor at the University of Essex, UK. He is author of Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte's Jena Project (1997) and, most recently, Theories of Judgment (2006). Elizabeth Millán Brusslan is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, USA. She has published in the areas of aesthetics, German Idealism, Romantism, and Latin American Philosophy. She is author of Friedrich Schlegel and the Emergence of Romantic Philosophy (2007). Currently, she is finishing a book-length study in which she argues that Alexander von Humboldt is best understood as a Romantic critic of nature.

Notes on Contributors

xi

Nedim Nomer is faculty member at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey. His work on Fichte has appeared in The Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophical Forum and Ethics. Ives Radrizzani is Professor of Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, associate editor of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences’ editions of Fichte’s and Schelling’s writings, editor of writings by Maine de Biran, Reinhold, Jacobi, and Maimon, and author of many works including monographs and seventy articles on German idealism. Tom Rockmore is Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Member of the Institute of Foreign Philosophy at Peking University, China. He has held regular or visiting appointments at Yale, Nice, Fordham, Vanderbilt, Laval, Duquesne, and Peking. He is author of many books, including German Idealism as Constructivism (2016). Rainer Schäfer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bonn. He has authored Die Dialektik und ihre besonderen Formen in Hegels Logik – Entwicklungsgeschichtliche und systematische Untersuchungen. (2001), Johann Gottlieb Fichtes “Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre” von 1794 (2006), and Hegel. Einführung und Texte (2011). Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel is Professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada as well as the University of Paris 1, France. She specializes in German idealism and contemporary philosophy (after 1950). She is the translator of Fichte’s texts and author of Critique de la représentation, Etude sur Fichte (2000) and Fichte, réflexion et argumentation (2004). Her most recent books, published in French, focus on issues central to contemporary philosophy. Her monograph The Death of Philosophy has been translated into English (2011). Michael G. Vater is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, USA. He has translated Schelling’s Bruno (1984), co-edited and co-translated (with D. W. Wood) The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Correspondence and Selected Texts (1800–1802) (2013), and co-edited (with A. Denker) volumes on Schelling (2000) and on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2003). He has recently published chapters and articles on Kant’s legacy, Paul Tillich’s theology, and Schelling’s philosophy of nature. Violetta L. Waibel is Professor of European and Continental Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has authored Hölderlin und Fichte. 1794–1800 (2000), co-edited (with D. Breazeale and T. Rockmore) Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition (2010), and edited Spinoza – Affektenlehre und amor Dei intellectualis. Die Rezeption Spinozas im Deutschen Idealismus, in der Frűhromantik und in der Gegenwart (2012). Allen W. Wood is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and Ruth Norman Halls Professor at Indiana University, USA. He has also held professorships at Cornell University and Yale University. He is author of a dozen

xii

Notes on Contributors

books and editor of a dozen others. His chief writings are on Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. His most recent publications include The Free Development of Each (2014) and Fichte’s Ethical Thought (2016). Günter Zöller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich, Germany. He has held visiting professorships at Princeton University, Emory University, McGill University, Seoul National University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Bologna. His numerous publications on Fichte include Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy (1998) and The Cambridge Companion to Fichte (2016; co-edited with D. James).

Acknowledgments The idea for this ambitious volume originated some years ago, and it took substantial effort and patience from the people involved. I would like first to thank Colleen Coalter, the Philosophy publishing editor at Bloomsbury, for showing interest in this collection and supporting its publication. I also appreciate the great help provided by the Bloomsbury assistant editors Helen Saunders and Becky Holland. Their guidance made my editorial job easier and much more effective than it would be otherwise. My heartfelt thanks goes to all the contributors, an international group of prominent Fichte scholars, who have shown great enthusiasm, cooperation, and willingness to engage with philosophically challenging material, and who have generously shared their insights with the reader. All of these made this volume not merely possible but also successful. As Editor, I am also indebted to the Bloomsbury anonymous reviewers whose detailed comments on the draft enabled me and the contributors to make valuable final edits to a number of chapters. I am grateful to Nathan Hartsoe and Sean Douglas, my undergraduate research assistants at North Carolina State University, who kindly helped me with proofreading and indexing. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my family for their continuing support of my work. A special thank you goes to my husband, Andrey Kuznetsov, a scientist genuinely interested in philosophy and its history. His encouragement and love enabled me to accomplish this challenging publication project. Marina F. Bykova Raleigh, NC March 2020

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations References to works by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are given in the text parenthetically, using the abbreviations listed below. The multivolume editions are cited by volume:page number (or, where available, by series/volume:page number). The list of English translations in use is also included below. When citing an English translation, the German source is indicated in the brackets as a part of the parenthetical reference. The only exception is Kant’s works, the translations of which already contain pagination from the Kant academic edition [Ak]. In this case, only an abbreviation of the work in question is given. If the contributor provides his/her own translations, this is stated in a note and a reference to an appropriate German edition/volume is given as well.

KANT Ak

Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols. Königlich Preußische (now Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: G. Reimer, now De Gruyter, 1902–. [Referenced by volume:page number (Ak 5:6).]

C Correspondence. Arnulf Zweig (tr., ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.—Ak 10–13. CJ

Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). P. Guyer (ed., tr.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.—Ak 5. (The title of this work is also translated as the Critique of Judgment.)

CPR

Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787). P. Guyer and A. Wood (trs.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 1st ed., 1781 (A)—Ak 4; 2nd ed., 1787 (B)—Ak 3.

CPrR

Critique of Practical Reason (1788). M. Gregor (tr.) in: M. Gregor (ed., tr.), Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, 133–272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.—Ak 5.

CSTP

“On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice” (1793). M. Gregor (tr..) M. Gregor (tr.) in: M. Gregor (ed., tr.), Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, 273–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.—Ak 8.

G

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in: M. Gregor (ed., tr.), Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, 41–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.—Ak 4.

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations

xv

LAn

Lectures on Anthropology. Robert R. Clewis, Robert B. Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel, and Allen W. Wood (trs.), Allen W. Wood and Robert B. Louden (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.—Ak 25.

LDR

Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion (1817). Allen W. Wood (tr.) In Religion and Rational Theology, Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 339–451. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.—Ak 28.

LE

Lectures on Ethics. Peter Heath (tr., ed.), J. B. Schneewind (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.—Ak 27.

LL

Lectures on Logic. J. Michael Young (ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.—Ak. 4.

LM

Lectures on Metaphysics. Karls Ameriks and Steve Naragon (trs., eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.—Ak 28.

LP

Lectures on Pedagogy (1803). Robert B. Louden (tr.). In Anthropology, History, and Education. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 437–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.—Ak 9.

MFNS Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). M. Friedman (ed., tr.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.—Ak 4. MM

Metaphysics of Morals (1797). M. Gregor (tr.) in: M. Gregor (ed., tr.), Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, 363–602. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.—Ak 6.

OP

Opus postumum (1804). Eckart Förster (tr., ed.), Michael Rosen (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.—Ak 21–22.

OT “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (1786). In: Religion and Rational Theology. Tr. A. Wood and G. di Giovanni, 1–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.—Ak 8: 133–47. Prol.

Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783). Günter Zöller (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.—Ak 4.

Rel.

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793). G. di Giovanni (tr.) in A. Wood and G. di Giovanni (eds., trs.), Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, 39–216. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.—Ak 6.

TP

Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770. David Walford, Ralph Meerbote (tr., ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

FICHTE ACR

Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation. Garrett Green (tr.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.—GA I/1:3–162.

xvi AGN

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations Addresses to the German Nation (1808). Gregory Moore (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.—GA I/10.

AP “Appeal to the Public” (1799). In J.G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798–1800), Curtis Bowman (tr.), Yolanda Estes (ed.), 92–125. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010.—GA I/5. AR “Review of Aenesidemus” (1794). In Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings Daniel Breazeale (tr., ed.), 59–77. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988, 2nd ed., 1993. ARD

“Einige Aphorismen über Religion und Deismus. Fragment” (“Aphorisms on Religion and Deism: A Fragment”) (1790).—GA II/1:283–91.

ATJ

“Ueber die Absichten des Todes Jesu” (“Concerning the Purposes of Jesus’ Death”) (1786[?]).—GA II/1:67–98.

CCS

The Closed Commercial State. Anthony Curtis Adler (tr.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.

COR

Fichte, J.G./Schelling, F.W.J (2012). Correspondence (1800–1802). In The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802). Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (trs. and eds.), 21–75. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.—[HKA III/2, 1].

CPA

The [Fundamental] Characteristics of the Present Age (1806). In The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. William Smith (tr.), Daniel Breazeale (ed.). Bristol, England: Thoemes Press, 1999.

DGW

“On the Basis of our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” (1798). In Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings (1797–1800). Daniel Breazeale (tr., ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.—GA I/5.

DP “Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höhern Lehranstalt” (1807) (“Deduced Plan of a Higher Institute of Education to be Erected in Berlin”).—GA II/11: 65–170. DR The Way Towards the Blessed Life; or, the Doctrine of Religion (1806). In The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. William Smith (tr.), Daniel Breazeale (ed.). Bristol, England: Thoemes Press, 1999. (The title of this work is also translated as Guide to the Blessed Life, or the Doctrine of Religion.)– GA I/9. EM

Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie (Private Meditations on the Philosophy of the Elements) (1793–94).—GA II/3:3–177.

EPW

Early Philosophical Writings. D. Breazeale (ed., tr.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988; 2nd ed., 1993.

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations

xvii

FEW

Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Related Writings. Daniel Breazeal (eds., trs.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.—forthcoming (Translation of the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95)).— GA I/2 249–474; SW I: 85–328.

FNR

Foundations of Natural Right, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796/97). Michael Baur (tr.) Frederick Neuhouser (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.—GA I/3–4.

FTP

Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy: (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo (1796/99), Daniel Breazeale (ed., tr.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.—GA IV/3:307–535. [The English translation pagination is to WLnm[K].]

GA

J. G. Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. E. Fuchs, R. Lauth, H. Jacobs, and Hans Gliwitzky (eds.). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964–2012. 42 vols.—Cited by series/ volume:page number (GA II/3:28); in case of correspondence, instead of page number, a letter number is indicated (GA III/6, no.20).

GEW

Grundriß des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen (1795).—GA I/3 137–208.

GR “Review of Friedrich Heinrich Gebhard, On Ethical Goodness as Disinterested Benevolence (1792).” Daniel Breazeale (tr.). Philosophical Forum 32, no. 4 (winter 2001): 297–310.—GA I/2. IWL

Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings (1797–1800). Daniel Breazeale (ed., tr.). Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.

JD “Juridical Defense” (1799). In J.G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798– 1800), Curtis Bowman (tr.), Yolanda Estes (ed.), 157–204. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010.—GA I/6. LE1812

Lectures on the Theory of Ethics (1812) (Das System der Sittenlehre. Vorgetragen von Ostern bis Michaelis 1812). Benjamin Crowe (ed., tr.). Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2015.—GA II/13:301–92.

LSV

Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794). In Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, Daniel Breazeale (tr., ed.), 144–84. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988; 2nd ed., 1993. (EPW).—GA I/3: 25–74.

NW

Johann Gottlieb Fichtes nachgelassene Werke, 3 vols. I. H. Fichte (ed.). Bonn: Adolph-Marcus, 1834–35.

OL “On the Linguistic Capacity and the Origin of Language” (1795). Jere Paul Surber (tr.). In Language and German Idealism: Fichte’s Linguistic Philosophy, by Jere Paul Surber, 117–45. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities, 1996.—GA I/3.

xviii

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations

PL

“Predigt über Luc. 22,14.15” (“Sermon on Luke 22:14–15”) (1791). —GA II/1:419–432.

PP

Praktische Philosophie (Practical Philosophy) (1794).—GA II/3:179–266.

PRFS

Fichte, J.G./Schelling, F.W.J. (2012). The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802). Michael Vater and David W. Wood (trs. and eds.). Albany: State University of New York Press.

PWF

The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. 2 vols. William Smith (tr.), Daniel Breazeale (ed., introduction). Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1999. [These translations were originally published between 1848 and 1889 (William Smith. LL. D. (tr.), with a Memoir of the Author. London: Trübner & Co., Ludgate Hill).]

SE

The System of Ethics, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798). Daniel Breazeale and Günter Zöller (trs., eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.—GA I/5.

SL

“On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy” (“Über Geist und Buchstabe in der Philosophie”) (1795), in German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel. Elizabeth Rubenstein (tr.), David Simpson (ed.), 74–93. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.—GA I/6:333–361.

SK

The Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) (1794–95), Peter Heath and John Lachs (eds., trs.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970./2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.—GA I/2.

SK1804

The Science of Knowing: J.G. Fichte’s 1804 Lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre (1804). Walter E. Wright (tr.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.—GA II/8.

SK1810

“The Science of Knowledge in its General Outline” (1810). Walter E. Wright (tr.). In Idealistic Studies, 6 (1976): 106–17.

SW

Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämtliche Werke, 8 vols. I. H. Fichte (ed.). Berlin: Veit, 1845–6 [Reprinted, most recently by de Gruyter, under the title Fichtes Werke.]

TE Der Transszendentalen Elementarlehre zweiter Theil (1790).—GA II/1: 293–318. VKdU Versuch eines erklärenden Auszugs aus Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft (Attempt at an Elucidation of Part of Kant’s Critique of Judgment) (1790–91).—GA II/1:324–73. VM The Vocation of Man (1800). Peter Preuss (tr.). Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.—GA I/6.

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations

xix

Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. Halle Transcript.—GA IV/2: 17–267. WLnm[H]  Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. Kollegnachschrift K. Chr. Fr. Krause WLnm[K]  1798/99. Erich Fuchs (ed.) Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1982. —GA IV/3:307–535. WL1800 New Version of the Wissenschaftslehre, 1800 [partial translation]. David Wood (tr.). In The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802). Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (trs. And eds.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.

SCHELLING AW

The Ages of the World (1815). Jason M. Wirth (tr.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.—SSW I/8.

FO

First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature (1799). Keith R. Peterson (tr.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.—SSW I/3.

FPr

Further Presentations from the System of Philosophy [extract] (1802). In The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802). Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (trs. and eds.), 206–25. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.— SSW I/4.

HKA

Werke: Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe. W. G. Jacobs and W. Schieche (eds.). Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976–.

IPN

Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature as Introduction to the Study of This Science (1797). Erril E. Harris and Peter Heath (trs.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.—SSW I/2.

Pr

Presentation of My System of Philosophy (1801). In The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802). Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (trs. and eds.), 141–205. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.—SSW I/4.

SSW

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke. Pt. 1, vols. 11–10; Pt. 2, vols. 1–4. Karl Friedrich August Schelling (ed.). Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, 1856–61.—Referenced by indicating part/volume:page number (SSW I/7:20).

STI System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). P. Heath (tr.). Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978.—SSW I/3. TE

Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the “Science of Knowledge” (1797). In Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F.W.J. Schelling. Thomas Pfau, 61–138. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.—SSW I/1.

xx VNFL

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations Darlegung des wahren Verhältnisses der Naturphilosophie zur verbesserten Fichteschen Lehre (1806).—SSW I/7: 1–126.

HEGEL Briefe

Briefe von und an Hegel, 4 vols. Johannes Hoffmeister and Friedhelm Nicolin (ed.). Hamburg: Meiner, 1969–81. [References to the letters are given in the following form: Briefe 2:5, indicating volume number and letter number.]

Hegel: The Letters. C. Butler and C. Seiler (trs.). Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1984. Diff.

“Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie.” Kritisches Journal der Philosophie 1.1 (1801):111–84. —GW 4:3–92.

The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. H. S. Harris and W. Cerf (eds., trs.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977. Enc.

Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1st ed.: 1817, 2nd ed.: 1827, 3rd ed.: 1830), 3 vols.—GW 19, 20 [Cited by §, as needed with the suffix “R” for Remark (Anmerkung), or “Z” for Zusatz (Addition)].

Enc. 1

Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic. T. Geraets, W. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (trs.). Cambridge, Mass.: Hackett, 1991.

Enc. 2

Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature. A. V. Miller (tr.). Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Enc. 3

Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind. W. Wallace and A. V. Miller (trs.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

G&W

“Glauben und Wissen oder die Reflexionsphilosophie der Subjectivität, in der Vollständigkeit ihrer Formen, als Kantische, Jacobische, und Fichtesche Philosophie.” Kritisches Journal der Philosophie 2.1 (1802):3–189. —GW 4:313–414.

Faith and Knowledge. W. Cerf and H. S. Harris (eds., trs.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977. GW

Gesammelte Werke, 21 vols. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, with the Hegel-Kommission der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Hegel-Archiv der Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Hamburg: Meiner, 1968–. [Referenced by volume:page number (GW 9:24)].

PhG

System der Wissenschaft. Erster Theil, die Phänomenologie des Geistes. (1807). —GW 9.

Notes on Sources and Key to Abbreviations PhS

The Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. T. Pinkard. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. (Cited by page number.)

RPh

Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821). —GW 14.

xxi

Elements of the Philosophy of Right. A. Wood (ed.), H. B. Nisbet (tr.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. SS

System der Sittlichkeit. Reinschriftentwurf (1802–1808). —GW 5, 277–361.

System of Ethical Life (1802/3) and first Philosophy of Spirit. H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox (eds., trs.). Albany: SUNY Press, 1979. WL

Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Band. Die objective Logik (1812). —GW 11.

Wissenschaft der Logik. Zweiter Band. Die subjective Logik oder Lehre vom Begriff (1816). —GW 12. Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Teil. Die objective Logik. Erster Band. Die Lehre vom Seyn (1832). —GW 21. The Science of Logic. George di Giovanni (tr.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. (Contains pagination from GW.)

xxii

Introduction: About the Volume, Its Content, and Structure Marina F. Bykova

The last three decades have demonstrated a growing interest in post-Kantian philosophy in the Anglophone world. Scholars began to delve into the intricacies of philosophical systems that emerged as a reaction to Immanuel Kant’s rigorously original philosophical project introduced in his Critique of Pure Reason, paying special attention to the philosophical and intellectual movement known as German idealism. A remarkable cultural sensation occurring in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, German idealism brought to the fore an array of original thinkers who produced new ideas and raised an enormous body of issues that drastically altered philosophy and its relation to human knowledge. The advent of German idealism is usually associated with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a founding figure of the movement whose reception of Kant’s critical philosophical project inspired Schelling and Hegel, as well as other thinkers who contributed to the flourishing of German thought in that period. Yet, ironically, until not long ago, scholarly interest in Fichte within the AngloAmerican tradition was limited, and his significance for the development of philosophical thought was largely overlooked or downplayed to a mere interim role in the transition between the two philosophical giants, Kant and Hegel. Viewed merely as Kant’s successor, his own version of transcendental idealism has often been considered as much less original and sound. Reduced to someone who paved the way for Hegel, he was not given credit for his own ingenuity. Even worse, based on the patriotic fervor that emanates from his Addresses to the German Nation, some commentators accused the thinker of nationalism and, more so, of inspiring the rise of National Socialism in Germany over a century after his death. Additionally, he was quickly associated with a number of different “isms,” such as anarchism, liberalism, egalitarianism, totalitarianism, socialism, anti-Semitism, and patriarchalism, to mention only a few. All of these had a damaging effect on the modern understanding of Fichte’s thought. Only recently have a new wave of Anglophone scholars developed a genuine interest in Fichte’s contribution to philosophical thought, attempting to revamp and reassess his disgraced image. Contemporary Fichtean scholarship is much more

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willing to engage Fichte’s thought critically and to avoid any labels in assessment of the thinker’s concepts and ideas. The new and very positive tendency is to view Fichte as a philosopher in his own right, who addresses the central problems crucial to philosophy, and to analyze his thought as an entity unto itself. This is an attempt to bring Fichte’s name back to prominence and pay due attention to his original yet very complex and philosophically dense thought. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte is a contribution to this development. Driven by the renewed interest in Fichte’s thought, this volume offers a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the thinker’s philosophy based on the best insights in contemporary Fichtean scholarship. The aim of the present volume is to provide both experienced and budding students of Fichte—Fichte scholars and Fichte readers—with a compendium on Fichte’s work that covers his entire philosophy in a relatively systematic way. Yet this is not a mere overview of Fichte’s thought composed in the manner of a dictionary or encyclopedia. Written by an international group of scholars recognized for their work in the field, this volume is conceived as a collection of scholarly essays that probe, challenge, and further enrich our understanding of Fichte’s thought. The chapter contributors develop and advance their own theses, thus engaging the cutting edge of current research in the field. In addition to explaining key concepts, they also outline the major interpretive debates as they defend their own theses, thus advancing ongoing scholarly work on Fichte. The structure of this volume largely follows Fichte’s own intellectual trajectory, addressing the major periods of his life and philosophical work. The volume is somewhat unevenly divided into six parts—five of them are conceptual and one consists of a chronology of notable dates in Fichte’s life and a timeline of his publications and lectures. Part 1, “Fichte in Context and His Path to Transcendental Idealism” (Chapters 1–3), focuses on Fichte’s early years before he gained a chair at the University of Jena, a period that proved crucial for the development of his thought. This section of the book begins with a chapter by Marina F. Bykova, who traces Fichte’s intellectual development from the Leipzig and Zurich years to Jena and then to Berlin. The chapter provides the readers with a careful reconstruction of these decisive stages of Fichte’s development by putting them into the larger intellectual, social, economic, and political context of the period, thus allowing us to understand the milieu and then-contemporary philosophical concerns that influenced the philosopher’s thought. The other two chapters included in this section discuss Fichte’s reception of Kant and his project of Critical philosophy. Tom Rockmore examines the hugely important topic of the Copernican revolution, the central novelty of Critical philosophy, which is routinely identified with Kant but more rarely with the other main German idealists. Rockmore takes on the task of reconstructing the theoretical roots and meaning of Kant’s Copernican revolution and evaluating Fichte’s version of the same. After providing historical context by establishing the Copernican revolution’s relation to the Eleatic tradition through remarks on Parmenides and describing what the Kantian Copernican turn comprises, Rockmore

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offers an interpretation of the philosophical position from a Fichtean perspective that arises as a result of his reception of the Copernican turn through Reinhold, Schulze, and Maimon. In the central part of the chapter, he turns to a description and evaluation of the Fichtean version of the Copernican turn in his “ Review of Aenesidemus” and in the 1794/95 Grundlage (Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre), the initial and most important description of Fichte’s philosophical position. The chapter ends with concluding remarks about Fichte and post-Kantian idealist theories of cognition. Sebastian Gardner’s chapter examines Fichte’s reception of Kant’s Critique of Judgment and discusses various considerations in which the Wissenschaftslehre, in its original form in the Grundlage and in later versions up to and including the 1804 lectures, may be regarded as pursuing lines of thought opened up in the Critique of Judgment. Gardner argues that a more comprehensive view of Fichte’s philosophical project, and a deeper appreciation of his indebtedness to Kant, emerges when we understand the Wissenschaftslehre as, first and foremost, an attempt to address the central problem bequeathed by the Critique of Judgment, that of the unification of Freedom and Nature. This chapter explains how the Wissenschaftslehre, as Fichte presented it in Jena, provides this unification and thus rectifies a problem of systematic unity left unresolved by Kant. In the final section of his chapter, Gardner indicates and discusses the close relation between Fichte’s theory of intersubjective consciousness as grounded on an Aufforderung and Kant’s account of pure judgments of taste as distinguished by their claim to universal validity and communicability. Part 2, “The Jena Period (1794–1799) and the Jena System of Transcendental Idealism” (Chapters 4–8), offers an account of Fichte’s work during the Jena period, perhaps the most productive and original phase in Fichte’s entire philosophical career. During this time, he rocketed into prominence, growing into a central figure in the German philosophical world, and held—through his lectures, talks, and numerous publications—a great influence on the intellectual life and culture of his time. In addition to discussing ideas central to the foundation of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre outlined in the beginning of this period, the chapters in this section turn to more specific parts of his philosophy, such as philosophy of nature, philosophy of right, ethical theory, and philosophy of religion—the philosophical areas on which Fichte lectured at Jena. This section opens with Violetta L. Waibel’s chapter on the notion of the productive imagination introduced in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95). Fichte associates the productive imagination with the various activities of the mind; intuitions of objects as well as representations of all kinds, even abstract representations, are products of the active imagination. The chapter demonstrates that, while Fichte grounds his theory in Kant’s, he is essentially moving beyond Kant’s method, providing a more detailed and conceptually developed explanation of the imaginative process. For him, the imagination carries out all thoughts, judgments, and recognitions as activities of the mind. The act of intuition occurs through what Fichte calls an oscillation of the imagination. As Waibel points out, with this metaphor the philosopher anticipates avant la lettre what in the early twentieth century will come to be called “the stream of consciousness,” which describes happenings in the flow of thoughts in the mind. Following Kant, Fichte elucidates understanding as the capacity that brings the activities

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of the eternal flow of consciousness to a standstill (“under-stand-ing”), allowing the mind to capture the myriad impressions that ceaselessly impinge on the consciousness; it is the understanding that turns actions into concepts, making them comprehensible. Tracing the development of Fichte’s thought, Waibel demonstrates that this insight into how intuition and understanding are to be conceived facilitates the thinker’s further exploration into the functionality of intuition. The result of this exploration is Fichte’s belief that the concrete intuition can also be constructed with its twofold action of image creation and the setting of objects outside of itself. Furthermore, the perception of space and time can be developed from this foundation as well. Fichte develops both of these ideas in his Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (1795). Fichte’s philosophy of nature, which he contemplated including as part of his system but never published as an independent work, is the subject matter of Michael G. Vater’s chapter. After providing helpful details about Fichte’s relation to Kant’s Critical philosophy and his attempt to bridge transcendental logic and empirical science in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, the chapter concentrates on Fichte’s treatment of nature, which is considered from two different perspectives: nature as the object of cognition, and nature as the vehicle or body of freedom. Vater’s discussion of nature as the object of cognition follows Fichte’s 1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty and then turns to an appendix to the 1796/99 Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. In that appendix, two viewpoints on the human body, as articulated and organic, suggest different paths to a theoretical philosophy of nature, which the chapter examines carefully. Vater also traces these approaches in Fichte’s practical philosophy, addressing both the 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right and the 1798 System of Ethics. Two different implications emerge from this analysis: one for rights and another for ethics. For rights, the instrumentality of the body and its vulnerability lead to a system of recognition and mutual forbearance among embodied intellects, which is nothing but the law. For ethics, the body displays needs and propensities whose satisfaction can either serve or distract from the ethical task. This insight lead Fichte to conclude that freedom as response to duty requires the work of conscientious examination to discern one’s duty, quite apart from one’s needs, drives, and desires. The discussion of Fichte’s understanding of freedom continues in Gabriel Gottlieb’s chapter, which addresses the thinker’s philosophy of right as presented in his Foundations of Natural Right (1796/97). Gottlieb notes that the central concern of this work is to solve a problem regarding the freedom of persons. Indeed, how is it possible to have a community of free beings who are determined by their will if, within such a community, persons stand under the influence of others? The solution that Fichte proposes is what Gottlieb himself terms the “system of mutual recognition”: through relations of mutual recognition persons adhere to the concept of right, which states that individuals must limit their agency according to the concept of the possibility of others’ freedom. A requirement of the system of mutual recognition is that persons influence each other through a rational, rather than causal, influence, by summoning each other to determine themselves as self-determining subjects. Approaching these issues systematically, the chapter first addresses Fichte’s views on the relationship of right and morality, showing how these views relate to his system of

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mutual recognition. Next, it reconstructs Fichte’s deduction of right and the role of the summons in his deduction. After accounting for Fichte’s deduction of the applicability of right by establishing how Fichte understands the rational influence of the summons to operate between embodied subjects in the sensible world, the chapter then turns to Fichte’s complex analysis of original right and coercion. This systematic portion of the chapter concludes with a discussion of how Fichte’s views on recognition inform his understanding of contractual rights and obligations. While he does recognize the significance of Fichte’s philosophy of right as a rich conceptual resource for social and political philosophers today, Gottlieb also points to the limitations of Fichte’s own understanding of his system of right and recognition, such as those found in Fichte’s views on marriage, as potentially incompatible with his proposed system of mutual recognition. Allen Wood offers an account of Fichte’s ethical theory focusing on the exposition of the last and most complete major systematic work of his Jena period, the System of Ethics (1798). Through detailed analysis of the work, Wood presents Fichte’s ethical theory as an original project substantially different from Kant’s. Contrary to Kant’s moral psychology, largely concerned with traditional issues about duty, reason, interest, virtue, and moral feeling, Fichte’s ethics emphasizes the relation of moral personality to its embodiment and individual identity, and discusses the role of the moral agent in the context of its interactions with a living moral community. Wood traces Fichte’s attempt at a deduction of the principle of morality as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness in the form of volition. He shows that the argument depends on an idea that every consciousness of volition involves the moral principle, which is formal in its nature and consists in effect in the concept of a categorical imperative whose end is freedom for its own sake or absolute independence and self-sufficiency. A deduction of the applicability of that concept is the main focus of the second part of the System of Ethics, which explains the application of the moral principle through the ethical drive and its manifestation through conscience. Wood then turns to Fichte’s “scientific” or transcendental presentation of the content of moral duty, which is the subject matter of the third part of Fichte’s work on ethics. In it, the self-sufficiency of the individual I is superseded by the independence of reason, whose ends and duties are to be determined by free rational communication among rational beings within the social community. In this way, Fichte connects the theory of duties with a conception of the rational society, thus establishing an important link between his ethical theory and his philosophy of right. Wood concludes his treatment of Fichte’s ethics with a brief discussion of the thinker’s later ethics, based on lectures from his Berlin period, which reflect the theocentric metaphysics of Fichte’s late Wissenschaftslehre but involve remarkably few revisions in the contents of his ethical theory itself. Benjamin D. Crowe’s chapter focuses on Fichte’s discussion of religion, which was a central concern in the thinker’s thought from his youth, as a candidate for the Lutheran ministry, until the final years of his life, as a professor at the new University of Berlin. The chapter considers how the theme of the unity of the self drives Fichte’s religious thinking throughout his career. Through historical examination of the evolution of Fichte’s views of religion and critical analysis of his main treatises on the topic, Crowe reconstructs a detailed account of Fichte’s philosophy of religion, which, in

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addition to a transcendental exposition of belief in God as a “fact of consciousness,” offers compelling ideas on the history and core doctrines of Christianity. The chapter concludes with the discussion of the 1806 Guide to the Blessed Life, or the Doctrine of Religion, where Fichte fully articulates how religion furnishes a unifying perspective on the world in the service of what he calls “higher morality,” thus connecting his treatment of religion with his account of moral philosophy. Part 3, “The Berlin Period (1800–1814) and the Systematic Development of the Transcendental Philosophy” (Chapters 9–16), gives a detailed account of the development of Fichte’s philosophical system after he moved to Berlin, which was the main setting for the remainder of Fichte’s career. The central feature of this period was Fichte’s ongoing defense of his philosophy against misunderstandings, which resulted in numerous new versions of his Wissenschaftslehre as well as additions to its different parts. The chapters in this section discuss new concepts and ideas introduced in these later versions of Fichte’s system, largely drawn from his lesser known series of lectures and other publications of this period. Matthew C. Altman takes on the task of reconstructing and assessing Fichte’s first work of the Berlin period—his Vocation of Man, a brilliant popular presentation of his system. Altman begins the chapter by setting the work in its biographical and historical context and evaluating an increasingly standard view of the book as a response to the “Atheism Controversy” that plagued Fichte following the publication of his essay “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” in 1798. In an attempt to assess whether The Vocation of Man is in fact compatible with theism, Altman undertakes a careful reading of The Vocation of Man against Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. He argues that both works share a skeptical methodology and an attempt to establish epistemic commitments on a firm foundation. They differ, however, in how they resolve the threat posed by skepticism: while Descartes appeals to God, Fichte appeals to practical faith. Altman thus concludes that Fichte’s approach is characteristically post-Kantian in his appeal to the subjective will, and that in fact it is fully consistent with the supposedly atheistic claims in the “Divine Governance” essay. George di Giovanni’s chapter addresses new yet not well-known versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, which Fichte produced after his departure from Jena, but did not publish, presenting them to the public only in a series of lectures. Of special importance are three series of such lectures given in 1804. Transmitted to us in notes published only posthumously, these lectures mark a decisive turning point in Fichte’s presentation of his Doctrine of Science. Critically examining this turn and pointing to the significance of revised versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, in which Fichte moves to a radically new methodology that had repercussions for his earlier standpoint, di Giovanni highlights and systematically discusses some novel ideas introduced there. He explains that while the “I is I,” was still understood in a transcendental sense, the principle of the earlier science, the trope of “light,” used alternatively with Evidenz, was the new principle. Further, while Fichte had earlier urged his readers to engage in reflective thinking to gain access to his science, he now encouraged them to practice “attention,” an attitude of actively being passive. These and other changes that di Giovanni associates with Fichte’s own version of Spinozism, which he calls a

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“lived Spinozism,” transcendental in form, brought to light the metaphysical monism to which Fichte had been committed from the beginning and which he shared with Schelling. Continuing the discussion of Fichte’s presentation of the Doctrine of Science after Jena, Emiliano Acosta embarks on an analysis of the version of the Wissenschaftslehre that Fichte introduced in a series of lectures held in 1805 at the University of Erlangen. Challenging a tendency to interpret the later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, most specifically those developed between 1804 and 1805, as an essentially new project that arose in response to the “Atheism Controversy” that abandons Fichte’s initial commitment to the principles of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, Acosta holds that the 1805 Wissenschaftslehre remains loyal to the central motives of the original project of the Doctrine of Science. He argues that, although the twenty-nine lectures composing the 1805 Wissenschaftslehre might not have a well-established structure, the issues that Fichte addresses there as well as the way in which he treats them suggest his adherence to the original project as well as his continued commitment to aims central to Kant’s transcendental idealism. Among those issues are the primacy of practical reason, the postulate of absolute immanence, the primacy of acting over objective being and of normativity over acting, the moral law as a principle of the structure and transformative dynamics of the world, and, finally, the identification of God or the Absolute with the (moral) law. Combined with di Giovanni’s chapter on the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre, Acosta’s probing reconstruction of the 1805 version of the same should prove crucial for future research into Fichte’s presentation of the Doctrine of Science immediately after Jena. The discussion about the presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre comes to its logical conclusion in Rainer Schäfer’s chapter, which addresses the systematic and doctrinal differences between Fichte’s early and late versions of the Wissenschaftslehre. Carefully examining several versions of Fichte’s Doctrine of Science, Schäfer demonstrates that what Fichte’s early and late versions have in common is that they form a deductive system. The early (Jena) Wissenschaftslehre (1794/5) places the “I” at the center of philosophy. In this egological system a specific method of deduction for all kinds of determinations, categories, and faculties of self-consciousness (e.g. causality, substance, reality, limitation, perception, the will, practical reason, imagination, etc.) is applied. In later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre Fichte begins with the Absolute as such, sometimes calling it God, sometimes pure being, and connects this with appearance, image, and schema. Finally, in the Wissenschaftslehre from 1812, the starting point of pure being is a necessary precondition—a kind of meta-science of knowing—for the images and imaging by which consciousness generates knowledge. Thus, Schäfer concludes that, for late Fichte, the Doctrine of Knowledge in the stricter sense starts from appearance, image, and schematization as presentations of the Absolute in self-consciousness. While providing a succinct yet historical and systematic outline of Fichte’s development of the Wissenschaftslehre, Schäfer mostly focuses on its later versions, which have not received much attention from scholars. Criticizing several existing interpretations of the later Wissenschaftslehre as a completely new project that, to some extent, betrays Fichte’s original commitments to Kant’s transcendental philosophy, Schäfer argues that whereas the later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre

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begin with the Absolute, Fichte does not violate with this the limitations of critical transcendental philosophy but rather extends the sphere of transcendental knowledge. The last three chapters—by di Giovanni, Acosto, and Schäfer—complement each other, providing the readers with very valuable insights into the evolution of Fichte’s thought and the development of his model of philosophy. David James examines perhaps the most controversial of Fichte’s works—his Addresses to the German Nation—which arguably constitutes one of the founding texts of nationalist political thought. Choosing as his probing question the issue of Fichte’s cosmopolitan nationalism, James first explores the meaning of this idea by drawing on Herder, who affirms the role of national cultures in history and provides an account of how different, unique national cultures ought to be accorded equal value in virtue of their role in furthering the goal of humanity. By turning next to Fichte’s Addresses, he explores whether relevant key claims found in this text are compatible with the idea of a cosmopolitan nationalism established based on Herder’s insights. Critical analysis of Fichte’s belief that language determines one’s membership of a nation and examination of his theory of an “original” language lead James to two key conclusions. First, he maintains that the possibility that nations other than the German nation can be regarded as speakers of an original language allows Fichte to treat different nations as possessing equal value in virtue of their promotion of a common goal, thus leaving some room for the idea of a cosmopolitan nationalism. Even here, however, James sees a problem, in that Fichte’s claim that a certain type of national character necessarily follows from the fact that a nation speaks an original language threatens to remove national differences, thus undermining the notion of a variety of national cultures. Second, he argues that Fichte’s claims concerning nations that do not speak an original language and the consequences of this fact set clear limits to the cosmopolitan nationalism that he appears otherwise to endorse. For the speakers of a non-original language would lack the right national character to promote the ends of humanity and would not even be able to comprehend these ends, given their abstract conception of humanity. Recognizing a flaw in Fichte’s argumentation, James concludes that in order to give firm grounds for cosmopolitan nationalism, Fichte would have to modify his claims about original language and its primacy in determining the nation, or explain how significant local variation is nevertheless possible. Günter Zöller’s chapter considers a group of late works by Fichte in political philosophy that have remained virtually unknown to his Anglophone readership. The works in question date from 1813, a year before Fichte’s death, and chiefly comprise an extensive lecture course on political matters, published posthumously in 1820 under the title The Doctrine of the State, or on the Relation of the Original State to the Realm of Reason (Die Staatslehre, oder über das Verhältniß des Urstaates zum Vernunftreiche). While the work has subsequently been republished several times, it has not been translated into English. The chapter consists of three parts. The first addresses the overall practical orientation of Fichte’s philosophy by tracing its essential oscillation between knowledge (or science) and worldly wisdom. Part two of Zöller’s chapter offers a carefully reasoned discussion of the prominent place of politics in Fichte’s works by investigating the principal distinction between (juridical) law and ethics as well as the precarious balance of (proto-)liberalism and (proto-)socialism in Fichte’s

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political philosophy, with its dual focus on law and liberty. The third part examines the eschatological dimension of a future, radically free and absolutely egalitarian state of law and right in late Fichte. Zöller’s succinct yet thorough discussion places Fichte’s late political thought in the twofold context of his own earlier works and of modern political thought in general. The overall thesis that Zöller puts forward in his chapter is that Fichte’s political philosophy, while being built—like his entire philosophy—on the idea of freedom, focuses on civic liberty under the rule of law at the expense of political liberty under the guise of popular participation in political rule. In particular, the outlines of the future, “free” civil society that emerge from Fichte’s politicophilosophical opus postumum reveal not a modern, liberal polity but a society ruled by pure reason under the custody of self-appointed philosopher-kings. The focus of Ives Radrizzani’s chapter is Fichte’s philosophy of history. Through careful analysis of the relevant texts, Radrizzani reconstructs Fichte’s transcendental approach to history, which centers on three key points: the deduction of being-inhistory as a transcendental condition of consciousness; the deduction of the objectivity of history as an a posteriori science applying to facts that are essentially non-deducible; and the deduction of the universal plan of history. The latter determines the meaning of the study of the past in each period, and the principles necessarily guide human action in the progression of history toward the “system of freedom.” Following each of these decisive points in Fichte’s discussion of history and explicating how it unfolds in his works, Radrizzani is able to demonstrate that the result of the transcendental approach is a conception of history as a chain of free acts progressing by leaps, in which every moment is indeed conditioned but not determined by all the previous moments. It becomes clear that this account of history offers an open model in which the use of freedom can lead to progress or regress depending on how freedom is appropriated. Along with a critical examination of the transcendental structure of history as it is presented in Fichte’s works, Radrizzani also discusses Fichte’s contention regarding the critical task delegated to the philosopher regarding history. He explains that, according to Fichte, the responsibility of the philosopher consists in trying to bend the concrete course of history by diagnosing the disorders of his epoch and by prescribing means of progression. Yet, being neither omniscient nor omnipotent, the philosopher is obliged to go out of the a priori universal plan and open up to the world of life in order to carry out his task. Radrizzani concludes his chapter with a discussion of certain inconsistences associated with Fichte’s understanding of history, namely an existing gap between his transcendental philosophical views of history and concrete political actions. While the Fichtean philosophy is a philosophy of engagement and risk, his attitude toward France and Prussia illustrates concretely the difficulties he experienced in applying his own principles in the field of history and in identifying directive criteria for actions. In the final chapter of Part 3 of the book, Marina F. Bykova discusses the neohumanist conception of Bildung along with its significance in Fichte’s philosophical system, and argues that the thinker’s proposal for a new university in Berlin clearly reflects his own Bildung-ideal. Showing that, in Fichte’s systematic, Bildung is an intricate process of self-cultivation that necessarily involves enculturation to allow an individual to bring himself in accord with his society and the world, Bykova maintains that the university and university education thus become instrumental in

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achieving this goal. For, according to Fichte, the ultimate purpose of the university is not in providing the student with a helpful skill or the specialist knowledge immediately relevant to a civil occupation, but rather in teaching the student “the art of the scientific use of [one’s own] reason,” which is the necessary foundation for a successful self-cultivation. Part 4, “Substantive and Interpretative Questions and Key Concepts,” includes Chapters 17 to 32, which offer clarification of Fichte’s central notions, concepts, and principles, explaining their historical origins and systematic functions in his philosophy. This section opens with Emiliano Acosta’s discussion of the Wissenschaftslehre. He explains that the term “Wissenschaftslehre” (German for “doctrine of science”) is a neologism Fichte uses to give a name to something new and revolutionary in the history of Western thinking. “Wissenschaftslehre” refers not merely to Fichte’s philosophy per se but also expresses the conviction Fichte and his contemporaries shared that, after Kant, philosophy must finally become science: a system structured by means of deducing all its parts from one and the same principle. Acosta outlines the central ideas of Fichte’s philosophical project and elucidates some novelties of his system, especially emphasizing Fichte’s radicalization of the principles of Kant’s transcendental philosophy in general and, more specifically, of the Kantian postulate of the primacy of practical reason. In the second section of his contribution, Acosta critically assesses an important methodological question, namely a widely spread contention about the lack of the doctrinal unity in the historical development of the Wissenschaftslehre. Opposing the claim that there are the two different models of the Wissenschaftslehre—an original one developed in Jena (1794–1799) and a revised one advanced during the Berlin period (1800–1814)—Acosta argues for the conceptual and methodological unity of Fichte’s philosophy by engaging recent scholarly literature and findings. Wayne M. Martin clarifies Fichte’s conception of a single first principle (Grundsatz) on which the thinker’s philosophical system is to be grounded. Through a detailed survey of the variety of different formulations that Fichte explores in his quest for the first principle of all philosophy and examination of the crucial notion of “self-positing” that figures in all of them, Martin arrives at the conclusion that the key to understanding the first principle and its significance lies in Fichte’s claim that it expresses not a fact but an act. He argues that Fichte’s radical insight is best captured by understanding the act in question as a distinctive sort of gambit that is implicit in every exercise of selfconscious rational subjectivity. Continuing the discussion of the most fundamental postulates of Fichte’s philosophical system, Steven H. Hoeltzel’s first contribution examines “The Three Basic Principles (drei Grundsätze)” as they are formulated in Fichte’s 1794/95 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte sets forth these basic principles as the founding claims of a “theory of science” that should continue and consolidate Kant’s work by decisively vindicating and radically integrating the theoretical and practical essentials of Critical philosophy. Through exploring the ways in which these principles both structure Fichte’s own post-Kantian position and seek to neutralize some important criticisms of the broader Kantian project, Hoeltzel explains Fichte’s principles as drawn from a distinctively Kantian conception of pure rational activity, as the autonomous

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origination and instatement of pure order-inducing forms. After making the case for that interpretation, he also briefly discusses how and to what extent Fichte’s principles underscore his responses to some trenchant criticisms of the broader Kantian project: the “Humean skepticism” of Gottlob Ernst Schulze and the “Kantian skepticism” of Salomon Maimon. Hoeltzel’s second contribution, “Check and Summons (Anstoß and Aufforderung),” treats one of the most difficult pairs of Fichte’s concepts, which describe the necessary conditions for mental activity. Those conditions are introduced as a basic limitation that is partly constitutive of human rationality. Indeed, for Fichte, (1) a rational being posits a putatively mind-independent object only if that being’s self-initiated mental activity encounters a pre- or proto-objective “check” (Anstoß), and (2) a rational being can first become concretely conscious of its own capacity for rational selfdetermination only as the addressee of a “summons” (Aufforderung) that calls upon it to actuate that very capacity. Through the illuminating reconstruction of the indicated arguments, Hoeltzel discusses their true aim in Fichte’s philosophy and demonstrates the real systematic functions of the concepts in question. He explains both the aim and function as serving the purpose of vindicating Fichte’s transcendental idealism by demonstrating that any rational experience has, as its necessary and sufficient conditions, states and activities of the I. Halla Kim contributes two essays. In “Transcendental Method,” he points out that Fichte’s philosophical method’s close intertwinement with his transcendental idealism grew out of the thinker’s reflection on Kant’s methodology. Kant famously employed a synthetic method in the Critique of Pure Reason but an analytic method in his Prolegomena. According to Fichte, while an analytic method leads only to a contradiction between concepts, a synthetic method can resolve contradictions by introducing a new concept. In order to describe Fichte’s synthetic method, Kim carefully considers the way in which Fichte structures his Wissenschaftslehre and what characteristics it exhibits. He underscores that in the Wissenschaftslehre the object is not static and fixed but something active and is thus presented in its activity. The Wissenschaftslehre does not merely justify a given system of things but rather describes a series of acts. In it, the I is allowed to act before its eyes, so to speak; it acts while observing its own acting. The Wissenschaftslehre thus proceeds genetically, presenting the dynamic nature of the I (i.e., the mind) as it engages in its own act of representing (Vorstellen). Based on this analysis, Kim explains that Fichte’s synthetic method is thus not only phenomenological but also genetic. It is for this reason that Fichte sometimes presents his system as a “pragmatic history of the human mind” (GA I/2 364–5, GA I/2 147). Kim shows the important functionality of the method by referring to its dialectical core. Indeed, in the dynamic genetic process, a contradiction or opposition between the I and not-I can be resolved by positing a third concept – the concept of divisibility – which unites the two sides. Finally, Fichte argues that not only is the resolution of contradictions by means of a synthetic method fruitful but also far-reaching in reconciling the distinction between a transcendental viewpoint and an ordinary viewpoint. Kim concludes by showing that Fichte’s synthetic method is also useful for engagement between a transcendental, philosophical, or scientific standpoint, on the one hand, and an

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ordinary, everyday, or common sense standpoint on the other. The former can explain and justify what is known from the latter. Kim’s second essay, “Fact/Act (Tathandlung),” not only clarifies the term but also elucidates why Fichte employed it as a central concept of his philosophy. Kim explains that Fichte’s philosophical career started with a battle against skepticism, as his “Review of Aenesidemus” amply shows. The task of philosophy in his view was to put the edifice of knowledge on a firm foundation. For this reason, philosophy, Fichte says, must begin with a first principle. But this cannot be a mere fact or some stationary entity in the world. Rather, it must be something that expresses the primordial, irreducible nature of the active I. Devoid of any proper term for it, Fichte invented the term “Tathandlung” to refer to the first principle of philosophy he introduced. In his contribution, Kim first explores what Fichtean Tathandlung could not be and then turns to a more positive definition of the same. Kim concludes by showing that Fichte’s entire philosophy is a system of knowledge that is a vivid presentation of the dynamic nature of the I, which is nothing more or less than the Tathandlung that not only posits itself (the I) but also its own opposition (the Not-I). Ives Radrizzani’s “The Ambivalence of Language” examines one of the most understudied topics, Fichte’s treatment of language. Drawing on a number of his key writings, Radrizzani clarifies the place and role of language in Fichte. He points to the originality of Fichte’s approach, which lies in declaring language a transcendental condition of consciousness. Language is indeed necessary for the transmission of the summons required to explain the awakening of consciousness. This strong thesis is, however, accompanied by critical remarks on the danger of petrifaction inherent to language. In spite of the potential for creativity that makes it the archetypal tool of spirit, language, according to Fichte, is affected by a grave defect, because it is never purely performative. Furthermore, paradoxically, in its mission of transmitting information, language always betrays the spirit. As Radrizzani shows, Fichte was aware of the intrinsic deficiencies of language and sought to overcome these limitations. In the last section of his contribution, Radrizzani discusses some diverse techniques that Fichte developed to neutralize the negative effects of language and strengthen its performative dimension. C. Jeffery Kinlaw’s first essay addresses Fichte’s notion of “Intellectual Intuition.” Kinlaw begins by distinguishing the various ways in which Fichte employs the term “intellectual intuition,” all of which have the same core meaning. Then he explicates and clarifies what Fichte has in mind when he refers to intellectual intuition, pointing out that what is under consideration here is both the type of awareness one ostensibly has in intellectual intuition and precisely what intellectual intuition discloses about the nature of I-hood. Through distinguishing intellectual intuition from what we commonly understand by introspection, he establishes that what Fichte means by intellectual intuition is both a self-constituting act, whereby the I comes to be for the I, and the type of awareness that is intrinsic to intellectual intuition. In the rest of the contribution Kinlaw outlines what he calls Fichte’s intellectual intuition argument, and focuses mainly on its second component, which promotes intellectual intuition not merely as a necessary explanatory principle, but as real, demonstrating its crucial functionality in Fichte’s overall project. He infers that, although Fichte advances the intellectual intuition argument to resolve skepticism about the possibility of explaining

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consciousness as typified in the regress argument the thinker anticipates, in fact, he can secure only a modest conclusion from this argument. Kinlaw’s second contribution explores Fichte’s contribution to discussions that lie at the heart of contemporary philosophy of mind. Recognizing that the relation between Fichte’s philosophy and contemporary issues in philosophy of mind is largely unchartered territory, this essay places Fichte in conversation with two issues central to contemporary philosophy of mind: the general problem of mental causation and the nature of self-knowledge. Kinlaw explains that the problem of mental causation arises from Fichte’s effort to explicate the way in which the free, self-determining I can be efficacious in the sensible world—in other words, how intentional action is possible. The problem is highlighted by Fichte’s affirmation of the full phenomenological reality of the mental world and his commitment to a physical closure principle (only physical actions/events can alter physical objects) while also eschewing dualist explanations of intentional actions and affirming the basic unity between mind and body. Critically analyzing Fichte’s solution to affirm the fundamental unity of action and maintain that intention and action are simply two sides of the same coin, Kinlaw argues that this solution is roughly Spinozist, at least in the sense of what appears as the core problem: the question of how the I’s free self-determination can produce an observable action. Fichte’s position regarding this issue should be clear: our actions are elicited and brought about by ourselves in an agent-causal manner. Next, Kinlaw turns to the problem of self-knowledge. This brief stimulating discussion demonstrates that self-knowledge, for Fichte, is fundamentally a practical, rather than an epistemic, self-relation, which is, in principle, consistent with his view of intellectual intuition, the centrality of freedom for his conception of the I, and his program of moral self-development. Kienhow Goh contributes two essays. The first is on “Freedom,” perhaps one of the most controversial yet fundamental concepts in the Wissenschaftslehre. Introducing  the concept of freedom, Goh discusses a number of its empirical expressions, including freedom of self-cultivation, freedom of thinking, external freedom, and moral freedom. Yet his main interest is in free voluntary choice, which is the key type of freedom according to Fichte. Goh presents Fichte as both an empirical indeterminist and a transcendental determinist. Underlying his better-known empirical account of freedom of voluntary choice, Goh argues, is a transcendental account of “freedom in itself.” The latter, given from the transcendental viewpoint, presents the world of the I as a thoroughly determinate system of possible (inner and outer) experience, including the possible experience of what the I can and will do in it. From the perspective of transcendental genesis, freedom of voluntary choice is merely the result of the I’s reflection on and analysis (rather than of the I’s determination and synthesis) of the system. The second of Goh’s contributions elucidates the important Fichtean concept of “Drive (Trieb)” by examining how it is put to use in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre to account for the I’s positing of an object in general, its comprehension of nature as purposive, and its consciousness of its own pure nature. Throughout this survey of how Fichte employs the concept in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, the System of Ethics, and the popular lectures of the Jena period, Goh shows the evolution of the concept and the continuing expansion of its functions. Fichte uses “drive” not

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only to explain the I’s striving and determination of external objects, or to provide a transcendental account of nature’s purposiveness, but also as an anthropological and psychological concept to illuminate features that human beings acquire on account of their rationality, such as their social, aesthetic, intellectual, and moral nature. Mário Jorge de Carvalho’s first essay clarifies the meaning and role of Fichte’s concept of “Resistance (Widerstand),” which runs as a common thread through Fichte’s work from the very beginning (viz. from his early views on “check” (Anstoß) to his late 1813 Vorlesungen and which forms a centerpiece of his action-centered transcendental philosophy). De Carvalho’s contribution explicates the pivotal role that resistance plays in Fichte’s analysis of the connection between the I and the Not-I in the framework of both theoretical and practical philosophy, as well as in his radically original approach to philosophical questions of reality, of perception (and representation), and of action. In “‘I,’ ‘You,’ and ‘We.’ Intersubjectivity, Recognition, and Summons,” de Carvalho discusses Fichte’s radically new transcendental theory of intersubjectivity, which could be treated as a response to the question of whether there can be such a thing as a transcendental multiplicity of consciousnesses (viz. a transcendental multiplicity of what Leibniz once called partes totales). This contribution highlights some of the key points and critical issues relevant to Fichte’s views on the transcendental multiplicity of consciousnesses, and explicates the originality of Fichte’s account of intersubjectivity by recognizing its crucial role in advancing the “transcendental matrix” upon which everything else depends and in shaping the whole realm of representation and action. The two essays contributed by James A. Clarke discuss Fichte’s concept of right while approaching it from different perspectives. In “Deduction of Right,” Clarke provides a critical analysis of Fichte’s “Deduction of the Concept of Right” in the 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right. Starting by discussing the distinctive nature and aims of Fichte’s transcendental argument, he then draws upon this discussion to provide a reconstruction of the argument that addresses standard criticisms and concerns. Clarke concludes by considering the significance and contemporary relevance of Fichte’s argument. His contribution on “Separation of Right from Morality” offers a critical discussion of Fichte’s thesis that the science of right (viz. legal and political philosophy) and its corresponding domain is separate from the science of morality and its corresponding domain. Beginning with a precise elaboration of what Fichte’s thesis that right is separate from morality entails, Clarke reconstructs and evaluates Fichte’s arguments in support of it. The essay concludes by considering the originality and contemporary relevance of Fichte’s view of the relationship between right and morality. The fourth part of the volume closes with Nedim Nomer’s probing essay, “Are there Any Moral Rights for Fichte?” which concerns a topic conceptually related to that discussed in the second contribution by Clarke. However, Nomer approaches the issue from a different perspective. Recognizing that the prevailing tendency among interpreters of Fichte’s writings on ethics is to believe that, according to Fichte, there can be no moral derivation of individual rights and therefore that Fichte’s moral theory is entirely independent of his account of rights, he holds that this tendency is unwarranted. He argues that ideas such as moral entitlement and the inviolability of moral agency, which could facilitate the formation of a moral discourse on rights, are central to Fichte’s moral theory. Drawing on two of Fichte’s key writings on moral

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philosophy—the Foundations of Natural Right (1796/97) and the System of Ethics (1798)—he demonstrates that, although Fichte rarely uses the expression “moral right” (moralisches Recht) and never explicitly defines the concept of such a right, this concept, in fact, underlines and justifies many of the statements he makes concerning relations between moral agents. Part 5, “The Reception and Influence of Fichte’s Philosophy” (Chapters 33–38), is the final conceptual section of this volume. In addition to essays on the reception of Fichte in the nineteenth century, it also includes chapters on the thinker’s relevance for philosophy today, relating his work to contemporary philosophical discourse or, more generally, analyzing how Fichte’s work has emerged in the contemporary philosophical discourse. Elizabeth Millán Brusslan traces the ways in which Fichte, who became known as the soul of Jena, shaped the emergence of early German Romantic philosophy. She also addresses a rarely asked question concerning the content and path of explicitly post-Fichtean philosophy, which often gets lost in the shadows of post-Kantian or post-Hegelian philosophy. Focusing on the work of Hölderlin, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis, she explores and analyzes how Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre shaped the development of a central chapter of post-Fichtean German philosophy. Faustino Fabbianelli’s chapter sets the stage for a productive if indirect dialogue between late Fichte and Hegel. Hegel’s criticism of the Wissenschaftslehre is widely known and well addressed in relevant literature. However, the lack of Fichte’s own explicit assertions and firsthand responses to Hegelian objections hinders a constructive discussion about the differences in the two thinkers’ philosophical views. Using Fichte’s Berlin writings as his textual source, Fabbianelli identifies the main features of the philosopher’s position, presenting Fichte’s late Wissenschaftslehre as a compelling answer to Hegel’s speculative philosophy. After surveying the well-known objections that Hegel raises against Fichte’s transcendental philosophy as a philosophy of reflection and as a system of bad (spurious) infinity, he establishes the most important conceptions in virtue of which one can appreciate the contrasting characters of the two philosophical projects and modes of thinking. According to Fabbianelli, the three key ideas that conceptually separate the theoretical assumptions of the two thinkers are (1) the opposition between the heterological and the antithetical (dialectical) principles of their philosophies; (2) their different attitudes toward Spinoza’s thought; and (3) the different ways in which they understand the relationship between grounding and fact. While, in order to overcome every form of logical division, Hegel proposes a definition of the Absolute as the identity of identity and non-identity, the late Fichte grounds his transcendental philosophy on the absolute opposition of the Absolute and absolute knowing. Stressing that knowing represents only the manifestation of the Absolute and cannot be confused with it, Fabbianelli explains that even if one can speak of material identity between them, their formal difference implies that the absolute knowing and the I as its potential bearer is presently not, but only should become, the Absolute. This allows him to view Fichte’s late version of the Wissenschaftslehre as a theoretical refutation of Hegel’s speculative thought. While this chapter includes an extensive discussion of Hegel and also assumes some familiarity with Spinoza and Kant, it significantly contributes to Fichtean

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scholarship by resuming the thread of discourse between Fichte and Hegel and not confining the discussion of the two philosophers only to their Jena period, where it was in fact interrupted. The readers of our volume thus have at their disposal a new point of observation from which to understand the relationship between Fichte’s transcendental philosophy and Hegel’s speculative philosophy. As Fabbianelli clearly demonstrates, this relationship could be accurately understood and appreciated only if its analysis is not limited just to the Hegelian criticism of the first exposition of the Wissenschaftslehre. The insights contained in Fichte’s Berlin exposition of the Doctrine of Science present significant challenges to Hegel’s theoretical assumptions. In her chapter, Virginia López Domínguez shows the ways in which Fichte’s philosophy paved the way for Husserl and, more generally, for phenomenology. Through comparative study, López Domínguez draws several crucial parallels between Fichte’s project of transcendental philosophy and Husserl’s philosophical theory, especially when it comes to the methodology utilized by both thinkers. She explains that Husserl built his philosophy as a theory of knowledge without suppositions. Conceived as such, it needed to meet two requirements that Husserl, who was familiar with Fichte’s work, found in the Wissenschaftslehre: that of a radical grounding and that of systematization. The result of Husserl’s philosophical efforts was phenomenology composed as a theory of science. This influence also explains why both thinkers employed similar methods in different parts of their respective works, i.e., abstractive reflection in Fichte and the epoché in Husserl. Discussing some conceptual similarities, López Domínguez focuses on Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, specifically on his fifth Meditation. In her view, this text shows clear evidence of the influence of Fichtean anthropology, especially such concepts as the existence of the other, recognition, the idea that the world’s constitution rests upon a transcendental intersubjective community, interpretation of one’s body as an original sphere, etc. López Domínguez calls attention to Fichte’s deduction of intersubjectivity, which, being intimately linked to his commitment to explain the world from the single I, is introduced in the field of the foundation of law as the only objective instance that can regulate relationships between subjects. As a result, this monistic point of departure not only ensures individual freedom, which is strictly necessary to conclude the inescapable responsibility in one’s actions, but also serves to sustain cultural and political differences within society. In so defining the relationship between the individual subject and intersubjective relationships within the social and political world, López Domínguez argues, Fichte anticipated Husserl’s concept of pluralistic ontology, which could serve as the basis for a world that is valid in its universal totality while allowing for multiple perspectives of irreducible configuration of different modes of existence. Arnold L. Farr’s chapter explores important similarities between the philosophical theories of Fichte and Jean-Paul Sartre, a key figure in the philosophy of existentialism. He is especially interested in the concept of the presence of the “other” and the issue of freedom central to both thinkers. The question that guides Farr’s inquiry is in what way Fichte’s understanding of the primordial presence of the “other” as a “summons” (Aufforderung) to limit one’s freedom anticipates Sartre’s account of one’s freedom in the presence of the other.

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Based on his analysis of the role that the “other” plays in Fichte’s philosophy as a limit to one’s freedom as well as a condition for one’s freedom, and examination of the status of the “other” in Sartre’s existentialism, Farr shows that both philosophers struggled with the problem of individual freedom within a social context shared by other free individuals. He explains that Fichte’s notion of an Aufforderung, which is a limitation of as well as a call to human freedom by another human being, was developed in response to the thinker’s growing awareness of the limitation of human freedom with respect to an Anstoß (physical check) on human freedom. As for Sartre, while the emphasis on the “situation” freed him of the charge of holding a solipsistic view of human freedom, he did not conceptualize human freedom as conditioned by one’s social situation. Only later, with the help of Marxian philosophy, was he able to introduce this idea into his philosophy of freedom, yet it never became Sartre’s central concern. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ways in which Fichte and Sartre solved the problem they both faced. From this discussion, it becomes clear that the two thinkers end in different places regarding the meaning of the encounter with the “other” for human community. While Sartre’s account of this encounter is rather negative and does not envision any moment of actual reconciliation between the individual and society, Fichte’s account posits that other people are the necessary condition for the development of rationality in the individual as well as the necessary condition for a rational and free human community. By promoting this position, Farr argues, Fichte goes beyond Sartre and his conceptualization of the otherness. In his chapter on “Rödl’s Fichteanism,” G. Anthony Bruno engages in a critical conversation with contemporary German philosopher Sebastian Rödl, who portrays much of his work as an attempt to articulate a German idealist view of selfconsciousness. Bruno calls attention to Rödl’s accounts of first-person and secondperson knowledge that 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. In Bruno’s view, despite this obvious affinity, 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. Emphasizing the crucial conceptual and systematic importance of the latter, Bruno shows that, while for Fichte second-person knowledge between subjects is genetically prior to self-consciousness, the first-person knowledge of the I as a first principle is systematically prior to self-consciousness. This view, Bruno argues, is a point of architectonic and anti-nihilistic importance for Fichte. However, this goes missing in Rödl’s writings, thereby obstructing their intended German idealist approach. In the final conceptual chapter of the volume, Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel provides a thoughtful critical analysis of the present-day reception of Fichte by examining the role he plays in the contemporary debate concerning the speculative realism movement, for which he appears as both a true adversary and interlocutor. After giving an overview of the main aims of speculative realism and discussing key theses put forward by the movement’s key representatives, Raymond (Ray) Brassier and, especially, Quentin Meillassoux, Thomas-Fogiel focuses on the ways in which Fichte’s thought has become one of the central concerns of speculative realism and reviews how his philosophical ideas are interpreted there. Grounding her analysis in her thorough

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familiarity with both speculative realism and Fichte’s philosophy, she shows that in the case of speculative realism we deal with a double misinterpretation of Fichte and his significance for idealism. First, it misconstrues Fichte’s conception of idealism and the conflict between the latter and dogmatism, or realism. In its reading of Fichte, speculative realism establishes a link between idealism and subjectivity whereas, in fact, Fichte’s idealism has been linked to ideality ever since its origin. Second, speculative realism defines idealism in the light of the categories of reality and the existence of the thing, whereas in Fichte it is above all about the question of how one ascertains meaning. Despite this critical attitude toward speculative realism’s refutation of Fichte, Thomas-Fogiel recognizes the important role of speculative realism in energizing the contemporary philosophical landscape. She praises it for proposing new approaches and reconsidering ways of philosophizing, arguing that, in this way, it restores meaning and vigor to the adjective “speculative,” which was typical of German idealism and which defined the spirit of Fichte’s philosophical project. Situating Fichte in the contemporary debate in philosophy is a productive way to bring to fore the force of the thinker’s argumentation and to demonstrate his relevance to our current philosophical concerns. The last century was marked by increasing interest first in Kant and Hegel, and later in Heidegger and Wittgenstein, who took an active part in present-day discussions on a variety of philosophical topics and themes. Until recently, Fichte was rarely (if at all) on the front line of contemporary debates, and this makes it even more remarkable that his ideas form a focus for speculative realism, which has become a highly influential movement in contemporary Continentalinspired philosophy. Even if the goal of current realism is to criticize Fichte and make objections against his idealistic arguments only in order to overcome them, this very goal already attests to the importance of Fichte today, and this point must be well understood and appreciated. This is the greatest tribute that we can pay to thinkers of a prior generation: that we take them as living interlocutors in current debates and thereby show their central place in philosophy in the making. We study Fichte today only because we consider him to be alive, and not simply a fossil that belongs in a museum. We read his works in order to find answers to the pressing questions of our present time, and not because they are records of past events that should be displayed in archives. Assessing the place of a philosopher in a contemporary debate is an integral part of the history of philosophy, and considering Fichte in the context of the current philosophical discourse is our modest contribution to our discipline and Fichtean scholarship. I would like to conclude this introduction by expressing my hope that the readers would recognize the academic value of the informative discussions of central topics in Fichte study that this volume offers. Those who are interested in researching any aspect of Fichte’s philosophy will find in the present book a careful examination of the thinker’s highly engaging philosophy and a helpful interpretation of his key philosophical concerns.

Part One

Fichte in Context and His Path to Transcendental Idealism

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Fichte’s Life and Rise to Philosophical Prominence Marina F. Bykova

Introduction Only a few thinkers have lived more remarkable lives than Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), whose career began with an incredible ascent from rural poverty into academic celebrity, and whose journey was filled with challenge, conflict, failure, and ultimately triumph. Despite the abstract nature of his philosophical ideas and the difficulty involved in grasping the dynamics of his thought, it is possible to notice some important parallels between Fichte’s highly technical “philosophy of striving” and his personal striving to establish himself professionally and socially, to position himself within the philosophical field, and, most importantly, to have an effect upon his contemporaries and the troublesome age he found himself in through his work. Exploring links between Fichte’s career, philosophy, and specific intellectual context is the primary goal of this chapter. What I hope to accomplish is to draw a portrait of the thinker and his intellectual interactions with his world and surroundings. However, drawing an intellectual portrait of a philosopher is a difficult task, for a true philosopher is one for whom the practice of doing philosophy is intimately related to their way of life. In a genuine philosopher, professional desiderata coincide with philosophical traits and constitute a mode of existence. Thus, even the most masterfully painted portrait of a philosopher will inevitably be a sketch, rather than a finished composition. Furthermore, when considering the origins and sources of someone’s ideas and thoughts, it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint exact occurrences and denote the most valuable among them, for one’s ideas are inevitably tied to one’s unique perceptions and experiences of the world. Still, we are all products of our time. No matter how much we try to avoid it, we see and contemplate the world through the lens of our culture, current situation, and intellectual surroundings. Thus, in order to form a proper understanding of Fichte’s philosophical ideas, we must contextualize his scholarly development and explore him and his philosophy in the context of the social and intellectual discourse that influenced him—both personally and professionally. The main assumption that guides this exploration is that the meaning of philosophical ideas and philosophical texts can be recovered contextually as a product

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of a particular time and place. This undertaking is an attempt to bridge what is usually called intellectual history, which is mainly a prerogative of historians interested in historical facts, and the history of philosophy, which is practiced by philosophers concerned with the critical examination of previous thoughts, ideas, and arguments, both in their historical setting and in their relevance to ongoing philosophical inquiry. Interestingly, Fichte himself firmly advocated for a timeless philosophy; he urged his readers not to take the “letter” of his philosophical texts too seriously, but instead to discover the infinite “spirit” of transcendental idealism that is revealed over time. Thus, perhaps Fichte would contend with the contemporary biographer that his life is one that must be understood not in context, but through the lens of timeless philosophical truths. I leave it to the reader to decide how to interpret such an insight, for my attempt is to articulate an expository analysis of the rudiments and origins of Fichte’s tremendously efficacious and prolific life. This chapter consists of three parts: the first focuses on the early stage of Fichte’s intellectual development (mainly from 1790 to 1793), the second covers the Jena period (1794–1799), and the third addresses Fichte’s philosophical evolution during the late period of his life, which was mostly spent in Berlin (1800–1814). What I attempt to show is that Fichte’s radically revised and rigorously systematic version of transcendental idealism, which is known as the Wissenschaftslehre, is more than just a response to Kant and the challenges of Kant’s Critical philosophy, as it is usually interpreted. The main aims and conclusions of Fichte’s transcendental idealism only become clear when they are considered in the historical and social context that shaped his mind. While it is implausible to interpret the thinker’s philosophical system as the direct and contingent product of a specific historical context, we have to recognize that his philosophical arguments cannot be properly understood without contextualizing his intellectual development. Bringing this context to light and showing how it influenced Fichte’s philosophical work is the main goal of this chapter.

Early Life and Sudden Rise to Prominence (1762–1793) Throughout his eventful and controversial life, Fichte was acutely sensitive about his humble origins.1 While his ascent from obscurity into the realm of the philosophical elite was not unique,2 there was something very stunning about it. Fichte was born on May 19, 1762, in the rural village of Rammenau (Saxony), whose inhabitants depended primarily on ribbon weaving for their livelihood. His parents—Christian Fichte and Johanna Maria Dorothea—were no exception. While not the poorest among the villagers, they had a small ribbon-weaving home business and a little farm that was just big enough to support the family. The first—and the father’s favorite—of their nine children, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was probably also destined for the weaver’s career. However, his life took a sudden and largely miraculous turn one Sunday in 1770, when the local pastor, Johann Gottfried Dinndorf, brought the young Fichte before Baron Ernst Hauboldt von Miltitz and had the boy recite the day’s sermon verbatim to the Baron, who had missed it due to a traveling delay. Impressed by then nine-year-old Fichte’s intellectual gift, the Baron extended his financial support toward the bright

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boy’s academic future. In an unexpected twist of fate, Fichte found himself in the unfamiliar setting of the Miltitz estate on the Elbe river only a few days later. The Baron had arranged for him first to attend the Stadtschule in Meiβen, and four years later, in 1774, the privileged Schulpforta near Naumburg. After graduating from the elite boarding school, known for its great academic tradition and strong religious orientation, Fichte entered university with the intention of studying theology and eventually joining the clergy. He studied in Jena, Wittenberg, and Leipzig, yet by graduation he no longer wanted to be a pastor. By the time he entered the university his sponsor had died, and a few years later the widowed Baroness suspended his financial support after noticing Fichte’s declining interest in becoming a clergyman. Left without any academic career prospects and desperate to find prospective employment elsewhere, between 1785 and 1794 Fichte sustained himself by serving as a live-in tutor for wealthy households (a job commonly left to “poor intellectuals” of similarly humble origins) in Zurich, Krakow, and Leipzig. It was the almost ironic culmination of the previous fifteen years of his life. Extracted from his rural village at a young age, and thus separated from his family, he struggled to find his place among the academic (or any other) hierarchy of the Prussian intelligentsia. This further perpetuated his nearly infinite sense of solitude and victimization, which was especially intense in the late 1780s (see La Vopa 2001, 32–4). The only respite from the estrangement Fichte felt so keenly was his growing friendship with Friedrich August Weiβhuhn (1759–1795),3 a former schoolmate from Schulpforta, with whom Fichte studied together at the University of Leipzig from 1781 to 1784. Fichte valued the “sweet hours of soft warmth and of tender outpourings of the heart” that the two shared in the winter of 1787–88 (GA III/1:119). Aside from Weiβhuhn, Fichte also had a strong friendship with two other young men: Johann Friedrich Fritzsche,4 another schoolmate from Schulpforta, and Henrich Nikolaus Achelis,5 a fellow tutor in Zurich. These friendships, which transcended the social differences between Fichte and other academics, were his only refuge during the trying times of his late twenties. These bonds provided him with dearly needed personal attachment, intellectual stimulation, and emotional openness. Contrary to the politesse broadly practiced by the elite hierarchy of German society, these relationships were highly egalitarian, but as a result, they added to Fichte’s growing disdain at being lost between both worlds; that of his humble upbringing and the exclusive hierarchy of the Prussian intelligentsia. Perhaps this isolation was the reason for Fichte’s uneasy feeling toward his unsettled relationship with Johanna Marie Rahn, whom he had met at twenty-eight years old while travelling between tutoring positions in Zurich, where she lived. The daughter of Johann Hartmann Rahn, a textile manufacturer and city official, Johanna was thirty-five at the time of their introduction. The two became very close friends almost immediately. As Fichte wrote in one of his letters, “at first sight, at the first conversation, my entire heart was open for [her]” (GA III/1:51, no. 21). Despite their age difference, the two became informally engaged only a few months into their relationship. Yet it was not until October 1793 that Fichte and Johanna were wed, after numerous breaks and delays on both sides of the relationship. Much of the troubles and initial distance between them was socially motivated. The Rahn family, which had been in

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the lower rungs of politics for generations, exemplified a kind of political elite, while Fichte’s family origins were much more modest. Another, perhaps more pivotal reason for Fichte’s hesitation and uneasiness about that relationship was his lack of career prospects, which would make his engagement to Johanna, if formally established, one of money-chasing in the eyes of the public around them. Only when Fichte finally managed to establish a circle of scholarly contacts and—not without Kant’s input—rise from his marginal status to become a celebrity, did he feel that he was in a position to enter “an entirely new mode of being” and finally marry Johanna (GA III/1:115, no. 43). Although Fichte was financially dependent on his spouse to a large degree, especially in the early years of their bond, their marriage nonetheless provided the warmth, affection, and psychological and emotional support that Fichte needed. At the same time, it further intensified his determination to prove himself, which for him would mean not only securing his place as a scholar and “public figure,” but also eliminating his financial dependence on Johanna, which caused him much anxiety and was damaging to his pride. Fichte, with a “restless urge to expand” and an increasingly ambitious sense of purpose, specifically a desire to “have an effect upon his age,” was still in search for his calling in the late 1780s and early 1790s (GA III/1:170, no. 64). Recognizing that his condition as a commoner prevented him from developing fully due to being constricted to specialized labor, Fichte had to devise a way to find a professional career while practically earning a livelihood. This naturally led him to pursue the pulpit, though he quickly realized that the ecclesiastical hold of the church’s orthodoxy forced him to restrain his natural openness and intellectual passion. Around that time he had completed two sermons — one on Resurrection and another one on Annunciation — and a longer essay, “Some Aphorisms on Religion and Deism” (1790) (GA II/1:283–92), where he articulated his thoughts on the arbitrary nature of social power. Carefully balancing his views between the warring rational (Neologist) and natural (Rousseauian) theism of the day, Fichte developed a form of synthesis that took place within human subjectivity as a “bond” between emotion and reason, thus perfecting the nature of man. His theory of providence, laid out in the second sermon, was his early attempt to respond to the Pantheism controversy, a major intellectual and religious concern of the time that served as a ground for much wider theological and philosophical debates. Perhaps this is where he became attuned to Spinozism, which he would develop later. Yet in his early age, Fichte adhered to a form of natural determinism that—in spite of a declared attempt to avoid collision with subjectivity and free will—was at odds with human freedom. He had interpreted God as the natural order and individual free will as the self-imposed limitation required for obeying providence. At the end of the 1780s Fichte was still moving from one tutoring job to another, unable to solve his serious financial problems or satisfy his passionate nature. Only in the summer of 1790 in Leipzig, when he agreed to tutor a university student in Kant’s philosophy (which he did not know at the time) and first read and studied the Critique of Pure Reason, did he finally find a true inspiration for his passion. This encounter decisively influenced Fichte, both personally and philosophically. Personally, Fichte discovered a way to elevate himself from his utter self-pity and wallowing due to a lack

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of purpose brought about by his previous feelings of forced alienation. Around that time, he wrote to his then fiancée, Johanna Rahn: “I have finally acquired a most noble morality and instead of concerning myself with the external things, I am devoting myself to my own inner self. Thus I have been experiencing the peace of mind which I have never before experienced and am living a very happy life” (GA III/1:170–1, no. 64; see also GA III/1:172–3; 186–7, nos. 63, 68).6 Finally, he was able to resolve his youthful crisis and shift his focus to the autonomous self and its manifestation. Philosophically, Fichte took his spiritual liberation as the ground for his own philosophical investigation. He reported to his close friend Weiβhuhn that upon finishing Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, the concept of absolute freedom had been irrevocably proven to him.7 Furthermore, he realized that a morally free will does not do what it wants to do, but what it ought to do. Its freedom lies in fulfilling its duty, despite constraints of the natural self. In this sense, freedom is a necessary condition of any moral action and for morality in general. In November of 1790, Fichte shared this insight with his friend Achelis: The influence that this [Kantian] philosophy, especially its moral part (though this is unintelligible apart from a study of the Critique of Pure Reason), has upon one’s entire way of thinking is unbelievable—as is the revolution that it has occasioned in my way of thinking in particular … I now believe wholeheartedly in human freedom and realize full well that duty, virtue, and morality are all possible only if freedom is presupposed. (EPW 360 [GA III/1, no. 70a])

Fichte, who had previously defended a deterministic view of the world, discovered in Kant’s Critical philosophy a way to reconcile freedom and determinism that would not only preserve freedom but also make it one of the central tenets of his own philosophical inquiry. Setting out to meet Kant in person, in July 1791 Fichte traveled to Königsberg. However, his brief audience with his hero was not very successful. Kant showed no interest in his visitor and was unwilling to lend any assistance to him. In the hope that his expertise in Critical philosophy would be recognized by the master himself, and in  order to prove his own ability in philosophical writing, Fichte quickly—in a few weeks’ time—composed a manuscript in which he extended Kant’s practical philosophy into the sphere of religion, specifically the concept of divine revelation, an issue that Kant himself had planned to address in his future writings.8 Upon receiving the manuscript, Kant was impressed both by Fichte’s adherence to Kant’s claims about morality and religion and by the results of his effort. He encouraged Fichte to publish the work and recommended it to his own publisher. It appeared in 1792 under the title An Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation [Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung] (ACR GA I/1:17–123). For an unknown reason, the author’s name was omitted from the first edition of the work, and since the book displayed some similarities to Kant’s thought, many believed that the master himself had written it. The confusion was removed only when Kant identified Fichte as the author. This catapulted Fichte to intellectual celebrity, making him instantly famous. He became widely known as the next great Kantian philosopher.

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For the next two years, he continued working as a tutor while trying to formulate his own philosophical ideas. However, the social and cultural conditions around him became severely restricting. As a reaction to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, and in an attempt to prevent any political radicalism such as Jacobinism, the Protestant states of Northern Prussia had declared an Edict of Censorship against any irreligious writings. Such a forced confessional orthodoxy had inflicted severe internal trauma to the German Enlightenment. It also put yet another strain on Fichte’s career ambitions. As a newcomer, he had to tread lightly to avoid a backlash from his more politically oriented contemporaries. Further distancing himself from the elite hierarchy of the Prussian political sphere, in 1793 he published two short essays on the current political situation: “Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment of the French Revolution” (GA I/1:203– 404) and “Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, Who Have Oppressed It until Now” (GA I/1:167–92). Both texts were meant as a radical demystification of the notion that the ruler’s paternal vocation was to care for the people’s happiness. Critical of “Europe’s princes” and their ability to rule, he described them as those “who lag behind their own age by at least as many years as they have been in power” (GA I/1:207–8). In the latter essay Fichte also issued a call to the public, expressing his hope that people would wage a war on paternalistic government, whose proper role is to administer justice and not to watch over happiness. Perhaps the most radical aspiration of the work was a demand for the “freedom to communicate,” which would allow the members of society to learn and achieve self-autonomy and thus avoid the dehumanizing effect of the German political machine. While both texts were published anonymously, it became widely known that Fichte was their author. Thus, from the very beginning of his public career, Fichte held a reputation as someone with radical views and far-reaching political and social ideas. With his sudden rise to philosophical celebrity, he decided to devote his attention to the larger task to which Kant’s philosophy may be appropriately applied, i.e. to the education of society toward freedom and moral perfection. This aspiration defined his thought and writings from the beginning of his career. At the end of 1793, Fichte unexpectedly received an offer from the University of Jena, which was emerging as the center of the new German philosophy. Following the advice of Christian Gottlob Voigt and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe9—the two men who played important roles in the political story of Fichte’s years in Jena—the Prince of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, Karl August,10 appointed Fichte as successor to Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1758–1823), a well-known proponent and interpreter of Kantian philosophy. It was another twist of fate that brought Fichte to academia—one that allowed him to find his true calling at last. He spent the next few months, before arriving in Jena in May 1794, shaping his earlier insights into a unique philosophical system. While he saw his task as improving upon Kant’s Critical philosophy and thus forging a philosophical truce between faith and reason, as well as between free will and determinism, his overarching goal was a reconciliation of Kant’s intention to raise philosophy to the level of a science. Two events had greatly influenced the development of his thought toward the realization of this project. The first was Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie (Philosophy of the Elements),11 which challenged

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Kant’s inability to provide a satisfactory foundation for philosophy’s scientific status and insisted that “philosophy cannot become scientific until a convincing derivation from a first principle has been supplied” (Förster 2012, 155).12 In order to provide a foundation for the Kantian Critical philosophy, Reinhold proposed the concept of representation. He argued that being a reflectively known fact of consciousness, the concept of representation is a fundamental principle known with certainty. The second great influence on Fichte was Gottlob Ernst Schulze’s Aenesidemus (1792),13 which introduced a skeptical polemic against Kant’s account of the foundation of knowledge and Reinhold’s attempt to provide a missing foundation for philosophy. While Schulze agreed that to be scientific, philosophy must be grounded in a single fundamental principle, he argued that Reinhold’s principle of representation, which was empirical in its nature, was largely deficient and unfit for this purpose.14 For Fichte, these two works demonstrated the need to search for a satisfactory foundation for philosophy if it is to become a science and survive the incessant doubt of skeptics. Upon reviewing Aenesidemus for the Jenaer Allgemeine Literaturzeitung from 1793 to 1794, Fichte found himself in agreement with much of Schulze’s critique and grew confident that Critical philosophy required a new and unshakable foundation. In his letter to the Tübingen professor J. F. Flatt, he wrote: Aenesidemus, which I reckon among the notable products of our decade, has persuaded me of what I have previously suspected, namely that even after [the] effort put forward by Kant and Reinhold, philosophy has not yet attained the status of a science; it has rocked the foundation of my own system and forced me … to rebuild [it] from scratch. (EPW 366 [GA III/2:18, no. 168a])

This “rebuilding” resulted in Fichte’s philosophical—and allegedly allencompassing—system, known as the Wissenschaftslehre. The fundamental features of the new system were sketched out before his arrival in Jena in a long manuscript called “Private Mediations on the Philosophy of the Elements,” which was composed during the winter of 1793–94. In the spring of 1794, he gave his first lecture series on his newly designed conception of philosophy before a small group of intellectuals in Zurich who considered themselves the followers and advocates of Critical philosophy. Around the same time, he started to draft the outline and methodology of his rigorous philosophical system, which was later published as a concise book, Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre (1794) (EPW 94–135 [GA I/2:107–72]). As the first full-scale public announcement of his system, Fichte composed it as an “introductory work” that was supposed to attract prospective students and provide important background information for his upcoming courses and lectures. Here he laid out his conception of philosophy as a science that is grounded in a single principle, and also articulated his thoughts—first hinted at in his “Review of Aenesidemus” (AR)—on a new foundation15 that would allow a systematic deduction of philosophical propositions. Part III of the work, “Hypothetical Division of the Wissenschaftslehre,” had a short, preliminary sketch of his own system and the forthcoming presentation of its foundations (see GA I/2:151ff).16 Fichte claimed to remain true to the spirit, if not the letter, of Kant’s thought when he, following Reinhold, argued that philosophy

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must begin with a first principle. But instead of introducing a mere fact (Tatsache) of consciousness, as Reinhold had done, this principle must express a fact/act (Tathandlung) that is known with self-evident certainty, and not empirically. The elaborate development of this newly found first principle became a core of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre and was published in 1794/95, also in Jena, with the title Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and laid the groundwork for his entire system.

Jena Period (1794–1799) Fichte started teaching at Jena in the summer of 1794. He was at the peak of his fame, and when he arrived he was enthusiastically welcomed by his university colleagues, students, and the general public alike. During his five years there, which were perhaps the most productive in Fichte’s philosophical career, he grew into a central figure in the German philosophical world, which, through his lectures, talks, and numerous publications, allowed him to have a great influence on the intellectual life and culture of his time. While in Jena, he enjoyed many successful ventures both domestically and  professionally. At home, his only child, a son, Immanuel Hermann von Fichte (1796–1879),17 was born, while in terms of his career, he spoke to packed lecture halls and grew enormously popular among students, many of whom proclaimed him to be their most beloved professor. In addition to this, Fichte was basking in the academic success gained from his vast creativity and philosophical expertise. Through his prowess, he was able to establish himself as a public figure who “wants to employ his philosophy to guide the spirit of his age.”18 With immense faith in his own powers and burning with a desire “to be and do something” in the world (GA I/8:72), he launched his academic career with a series of public lectures on “Morality for Scholars,” which he began to deliver immediately upon his arrival in Jena. In these lectures, five of which were published in 1794 under the title Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (LSV EPW 144–84 [GA I/3:25– 68]), Fichte powerfully formulated his views on the topic of the moral improvement of society, much debated during the late eighteenth century. For him, only the moral perfection of the individual will return society to wholeness. The role of the scholar in this process is to provide rational guidance toward this end. As for his specifically philosophical goal, Fichte took it upon himself to elaborate his own project of reconstructing Kant’s transcendental philosophy and to lay a foundation and produce the first systematic formulation of his new system. According to Fichte, what is central to Kant’s “critical spirit” is an uncompromising insistence upon the practical certainty of human freedom and a thoroughgoing commitment to the task of providing a transcendental account of ordinary experience that could explain the objectivity and necessity of theoretical reason (cognition) in a manner consistent with the practical affirmation of human freedom. Although Fichte attributed the discovery of this task to Kant, he believed that it was first successfully accomplished only in his new system, the Wissenschaftslehre, which he therefore described as the “first system of freedom” (EPW 385 [GA III/2, no. 282b]; see also GA III/3, no. 379).

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The goal of his new system was threefold. The first, and most fundamental, goal was to establish philosophy as a science; the second, more specific, goal was to redefine the self as a moral agent; and the third, more general yet culturally important, goal was to position philosophy at the center of a new configuration of knowledge so that it could validate its claim to be the moral arbiter of modern culture. Fichte’s conception of philosophy, called the Wissenschaftlehre, or the Doctrine of Science, was his attempt to connect all three goals. Fichte explicated the fundamental principles of this theory in his first systematic work, Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95) (FEW [GA I/2:176–254]). As the title implies, the goal of this work was to present the foundational principles of his system, not the entire system itself. This work was also not originally intended for publication as it was written to be a summary or outline of Fichte’s lectures (to be supplemented with oral explanations) for the students attending his private courses during his first two semesters in Jena. While providing students with brief lecture outlines was a common practice in German universities around that time,19 Fichte’s manuscript was tremendously more thorough and systematic than a text composed merely “for the use of [the course] listeners” (GA I/2:173). Thus, encouraged by his colleagues and students, Fichte decided to publish the manuscript in two volumes; the first appeared in 1794, and the second in 1795. A few months later, in 1795, Fichte published another treatise—also originally conceived as a “handbook for his audience”—titled Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (EPW 243–306 [GA I/3:137–208]), which was meant to further clarify some of the ideas originated in the Foundation. In these two texts, Fichte offered the initial presentation of the first principles of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte’s attempt to provide a new foundation for transcendental philosophy on the basis of the I—more specifically, the principle of the self-positing I20—was met with virtually universal misunderstanding.21 Stunned by this result, and also recognizing some ambiguities in his initial presentation of the system’s foundations, Fichte almost immediately began working on a new exposition of the first principles and their deduction, which was eventually delivered as a lecture course titled The Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo. He offered this course three times—in 1796–7, 1797–8, and 1798–9—making only minor revisions to the content. Despite Fichte’s intention to later present these lectures as a book, the project never came to realization.22 The only other published presentation of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, specifically its foundational portion, was An Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre (IWL 1–118 [GA I/4:186–282]), three installments of which appeared in 1797–8 in several issues of the Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft Teutscher Gelehrten that Fichte co-edited jointly with his Jena colleague, Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848). The work, originally conceived as a serial publication of the revised lectures Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, was prematurely suspended in the spring of 1798 during the wake of the Atheism Controversy of 1798–9, which will be discussed later. While in Jena, Fichte only managed to publish two sections of the work: an Introduction to his New Presentation and its first chapter. In 1800, while in Berlin, he

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wanted to return to the project, indicating this intention in an announcement made on November 4, 1800, where he stated that the New Presentation was anticipated to “become available in the very near future” (IWL xviii). He later had to abandon the project altogether due to his dissatisfaction with some elements of the earlier presentation and the difficulties of incorporating it into the later (Berlin) version of his transcendental philosophy (see IWL xviii–xix). As he continued to revise the foundational principles of his Jena system, Fichte was also occupied with the development of the system’s specific parts and components. Within a few years, he published the two-volume Foundations of Natural Right, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796–97) (FNR [GA I/3:291– 460]), which focused on the issues of philosophy of law and social philosophy, and the System of Ethics, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798) (SE [GA I/5:1–317]), which dealt with questions that were traditionally discussed in moral philosophy. Composed as the revised versions of the lecture courses that Fichte had been offering at Jena in 1796/97, these works reflected the thinker’s desire to present and elaborate a program of philosophy that could satisfy his ambitions to develop his Jena system. He was determined to demonstrate that, as derivatives of the same primary rudiment, all genuine philosophical sciences (Wissenschaften) had separate but equal truth statuses, and, thus, he could not take Kant’s route and distinguish between the rationality of the metaphysical faculty and the mere utility of the other faculties. Instead, he had to develop a rationally justified system of the philosophical sciences where each one could be shown to be self-contained yet simultaneously complementary to the other, thus demonstrating how each contributes to the progress of philosophy as a whole. In addition to presenting some details of the philosophy of law, ethics, and social philosophy, Fichte also planned to elaborate on the philosophy of religion. True to his newly adopted practice of publishing only after his ideas had first been tested in his lectures, he announced a philosophy of religion course for the spring semester of 1799. Before he could commence this course, however, his career in Jena came to an abrupt end and he was forced to resign his chair position due to a dramatic controversy concerning his religious views.

The Atheism Controversy and Other Disputes Despite Fichte’s extraordinary success as a teacher and his popularity with his students, his tenure in Jena was plagued by numerous cases of intrigue, conflict, and personal and professional quarrels. While some of the resentment that Fichte encountered in Jena was provoked by his fame and quick successes, Fichte’s own personality often fueled or further aggravated conflicts.23 In addition, his reputation as a political radical, which was founded on his treatises from 1793—“Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought” and his piece on the French Revolution—also sparked confrontations and controversies in Jena. His lectures, which provoked listeners into thoughtful reflection, became another, even more substantial, basis for political altercations. The larger political impact Fichte made through his lectures was his effect on the Weimar court itself, which, while having a liberal reputation, was becoming the

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focus of the baroque corporatism of the Prussian heartlands at the same time that the French Revolution was challenging the relevance and usefulness of the era’s predominant ideologies.24 Because the Revolution challenged previously held beliefs, it paradoxically inflamed those who held on to the old ideologies of the past, and caused them to feel that maintaining and enforcing these ideologies was imperative. Thus, the conservatives greatly increased in number and their dogmatism became rampant. To them, Fichte was not a famous scholar with good ideas; rather, he represented the “fantasies of freedom” that they were trying to eliminate with fervor. It was this pressure from the conservative elite that led to government censorship of all published lectures, so as to ensure that the false ideologies of reason did not penetrate the good hearts of the simpleminded public outside the high walls of the universities. This forced censorship amounted to dehumanization for Fichte, who felt that without free communication there could never be moral perfection. Goethe and Voigt, the two officials who represented the Weimar court, and also presided over the functions of the University of Jena, served as mediators in this dispute by trying to tame Fichte while simultaneously relaxing the enforced censorship. However, their attempted mediation eventually failed as Fichte committed himself to a charge of atheism by publishing potentially provocative material on his conception of deification and reason. Yet even earlier, during minor confrontations between the two and Fichte, Fichte’s own reactions to Goethe and Voigt’s efforts to resolve conflicts were not always diplomatic. The first minor conflict occurred during Fichte’s very first semester in Jena, when he was forced to defend himself against the accusation that he was a Jacobian who, in his public lecture series, called “Morality for Scholars,” had declared that “in twenty or thirty years, there will be no kings or princes anywhere.”25 At that time Fichte still enjoyed the confidence of the court, and Voigt readily interpreted this rumor as “malicious slander” that was instigated by Fichte’s political opponents. Yet Fichte, who was too proud for compromise, responded with a letter26 of selfdefense and insisted that he would come to Weimar for a personal confrontation (GA III/2, no. 213). The conflict was settled when Fichte published the lectures he had delivered up to that point in Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (LSV EPW 144–84 [GA I/3:25–68]). After a few months, however, Fichte found himself embroiled in another series of disputes. The first was over his Sunday lectures and began when Fichte’s conservative critics accused him of seeking to replace the Sunday sermon with a “cult of reason,” and the second had to do with Fichte’s open opposition to the student fraternities,27 a dispute which grew increasingly violent and forced Fichte to flee Jena in order to escape physical assault.28 He spent that summer in the village of Osmannstädt, near Weimar, where he completed Part II of the Foundations and prepared to publish his supplementary Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (EPW 243–306 [GA I/3:137–207]). His vicious struggle over the student fraternities seemed to teach him a valuable lesson. After receiving an official assurance of his safety and returning to Jena in the fall of 1795, Fichte exercised caution and managed to avoid serious quarrels for the next three years, or at least those caused by his own often unbearable behavior.

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However, he could barely tolerate any ideological and philosophical differences, and he turned many theoretical disagreements into conflict. In June 1795, while in Osmannstädt, he became involved in one such controversy with Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) in connection with his newly founded literary, philosophical, and cultural journal, Die Horen (1795–97). Schiller invited Fichte to serve as a co-editor of the journal and to contribute articles on topics of mutual interest. Schiller himself utilized his journal to publish his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man in 1791, which aimed at elaborating a philosophy of aesthetics that was largely motivated by his thorough study of Kant’s Critiques. When, on June 21, 1795, Fichte submitted his first installment  of “A Series of Letters Concerning the Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy” (GA I/6:333–61),29 Schiller refused to print it, claiming that the manuscript—in both its form and content—did not qualify for publication. In his rejection letter, he charged Fichte with confusing the “enormously different concepts” of spirit in the arts and in philosophy (GA III/2, no. 291c). He also argued that Fichte’s “Series of Letters” substantially overlapped with his own Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. Fichte was outraged, taking the rejection and critique as a personal insult. “You have done me an injustice, and I hope that you wish to rectify it, as it becomes any honest man to do,” he wrote in his angry response to Schiller (EPW 393 [GA III/2, no. 292]). Only briefly discussing some specific comments that Schiller made in his review, he concluded his letter by requesting an apology: You … have denied me the respect and the trust which I believe I could expect. From now on it seems, I can be no more to you than your humble follower and disciple, and that is not something which I wish to be. But I expect amends to be made at the proper time. (EPW 396 [GA III/2, no. 292])

Schiller refused to apologize, Fichte’s manuscript never appeared in Die Horen, and his series of letters was never brought to completion. Only a few years later, in 1800, did Fichte manage to publish the rejected first installment of the “Series of Letters” in the Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft Teutscher Gelehrten, which he jointly edited with Friedrich Niethammer. This journal, however, became the epicenter of another, much more serious conflict—the so-called Atheismusstreit—that erupted in 1798, which, unlike the Horenstreit, greatly resonated with the public and led to Fichte’s dismissal from the University of Jena. The controversy was sparked by two articles published in the Philosophisches Journal: one authored by Fichte’s former colleague at Jena, Friedrich Karl Forberg (1770–1848), and another which was written by Fichte himself. In “The Development of the Concept of Religion,” Forberg dismissed all theoretical discussion of religious topics as not having any independent value. For him, religion was no more than the practical belief in a moral world-order. When Fichte, as a co-editor of the journal, reviewed the manuscript, he was struck by the apparent similarity between his own views and the ones presented by Forberg. Due to his worry that if Forberg’s essay was published, it would be thought to represent Fichte’s own position on religion, Fichte requested that Forberg withdraw it or at least allow for editorial emendations and additions in its footnotes. Forberg, however, rejected the changes and refused to

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withdraw his submission. Fichte, who was an advocate of the right to publish, agreed to print Forberg’s piece, but, in order to minimize the damage and prevent potential misunderstanding by his readers, decided to publish his own essay, “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” (DGW IWL 141–54 [GA I/5:345– 57]), which would precede Forberg’s. In his work, Fichte tried to avoid the religious skepticism introduced by Forberg. Instead, he identified God with the moral worldorder, thus transforming the discussion of God and God’s reality into the discourse about morality and moral action.30 Once the two articles came out, they almost instantly became the object of public debate. Neither Forberg nor Fichte could have expected the ramifications of these publications until the anonymously published “A Father’s Letter to his Student Son about Fichte’s and Forberg’s Atheism” (GA I/6:121–38)31 was brought to the public’s attention. In the “Letter,” a fictitious father counseled his son, explaining that both Fichte and Forberg were attempting to promote atheism while simultaneously advocating rebellion among the students at Jena. Upon reading the “Letter,” the High Consistory, who advised the Catholic Elector Friedrich August III (1750–1827), accused Fichte and Forberg of “disseminating atheism,”32 and as such, the Protestant ruling body requested a complete confiscation of all published journals containing the essays. Friedrich August, needing to appease his Protestant population, abided by the request of the High Consistory and provided a rescript proclaiming the confiscation of materials and the punishment of the editors and authors to all the Ernestine Dukes of Saxony, among which were included Karl August, Prince of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. Should Karl August deny this rescript, Friedrich threatened to disallow any of his subjects to attend the University of Jena. At this point, and with this development now involving high-ranking officials, the Atheismusstreit became a major controversy, not only for Fichte, but also for the intellectual and philosophical community at large. To be sure, it was not just a simple theological debate (see Estes and Bowman 2010, 4–9). There was also a concern for the ethical implications of transcendental idealism at the time, and specifically, for the real meaning and significance of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, that is, whether it promoted social anarchy and personal despair. During this tumultuous period of growth within the German Enlightenment, there was a wide variety of philosophical stances that ranged from transcendental idealism, which had proponents such as Forberg and Reinhold, to the pietistic and fideistic, which included Jacobi and Lavater, and even to the Popularphilosophie movement, or common sense philosophy, which includes the anonymous author of “A Father’s Letter to his Student Son about Fichte’s and Forberg’s Atheism.” Besides these philosophical stances, there was also a large variety of political influences at play during the dispute, including the European princes, the Saxon dukes, and the Protestant High Consistory. This uneven mixture of forces and influences created the climate of mistrust, suspicion, and intimidation in which Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre was dismissed so summarily. Posed as a seeming threat to the ethos of the time period, it was interpreted as promoting anarchism, nihilism, and egoism. In an attempt to clarify his own position, in 1799 Fichte published his “Appeal to the Public” (AP [GA I/5:415–53]), as well as the product of his collaborative effort

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with Niethammer, “Juridical Defense” (JD [GA I/6:26–84]), to be presented to the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, Karl August, and to the Court of the patrons of the University of Jena. While the “Appeal” was being dispersed among the public as fast as possible, and while the “Defense” was being reviewed by the Court, Fichte took it upon himself to write a letter to Karl August’s privy-councilor, Voigt, in which he threatened to resign if found guilty of the accusation of atheism. Because of this rash act and the unnecessary dissemination of his case to the public in his “Appeal,” the Ernestine Dukes unanimously condemned Fichte and Niethammer. A reprimand was sent to Jena, including the official acceptance of Fichte’s resignation. Although Fichte’s students rallied to his aid, Karl August quickly dismissed their requests to reappoint Fichte, and he was forced to leave Jena.

The Berlin Period (1800–1814) The main setting for the remainder of Fichte’s career was Berlin, where he arrived in the summer of 1799. At that time the Prussian capital had no university, and Fichte supported himself and his family by giving private lessons and publishing works that were largely aimed at a wider, non-philosophical audience. Although Fichte was very productive in Berlin, he never regained as strong an influence as he had during his time in Jena. The Atheismusstreit profoundly altered his reputation among the public, while also negatively impacting his financial well-being. After the Atheismusstreit ended, Kant and Jacobi, two philosophers whom Fichte sincerely admired for their analytic minds, published open letters in 1799 that were highly critical of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, further adding to his disgrace and tarnished public reputation. While Kant criticized the Wissenschaftslehre for foundational and methodical problems, such as its attempt to infer substantive philosophical knowledge from logic, Jacobi accused Fichte’s system of being a nihilistic “philosophy of absolute nothingness” (Jacobi 2003, 127 [GA III/3:239, no. 428.I]). Observing that idealistic speculation results in a purely “logical enthusiasm” and “chimerism,” Jacobi claimed that Fichte’s idea of the absolute movement of the Ego and his concept of a pure absolute suggested only a movement “from nothing, to nothing, for nothing, into nothing” (Jacobi 2003, 129, 127 [GA III/3:245, 239, no. 428.I]). Furthermore, Jacobi pointed to the irreconcilable conflict between idealistic speculation and life33 and expressed his skepticism concerning Fichte’s desire to replace “natural belief,” which is fundamental in ordinary life, with “science” (Jacobi 2003, 126 [GA III/3:233, no. 428.I]). As a result of these harsh criticisms, Fichte came to realize that these objections and his forced exodus from Jena were largely due to the public’s inability to understand his work. The Atheismusstreit and its aftermath became the first real test of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, which motivated his greater focus on the terminological concepts and religious convictions that were a product of his own system. Recognizing a need to drastically modify his approach in disseminating his philosophy to the public, Fichte devoted several years to the popular exposition of his philosophy and thereby composed a few significant works after leaving Jena.

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While Kant and Jacobi were by no means the only well-known personalities to critically attack the Wissenschaftslehre during this period,34 it seems that Jacobi’s strategy of criticizing his philosophical system from the standpoint of common-sense philosophy deeply affected Fichte. Hence, during the following years, he sought to respond to Jacobi in some manner. In an attempt to clarify his own position, in 1800 Fichte completed The Vocation of Man (VM [GA I/6:150–312]), which is perhaps his greatest literary work. Intended as an indirect response to Jacobi’s damaging critique of the Wissenschaftslehre, and addressed to the wider public audience, this book presents a more accessible version of Fichte’s philosophical system, defending his position on questions of morality and religion. Here, Fichte provides an analysis of the relation between theoretical and practical philosophy, and between philosophy and life, while remaining true to the conceptual position laid out in “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World.” Fichte’s ongoing effort to defend his philosophy against misunderstanding is also depicted in another publication of the time that appeared under the title Sun-Clear Report to the Public at Large Concerning the Actual Character of the Latest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand (1801) (GA I/7:167–274). Intended as a more direct response to Jacobi, and written as a popular introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre, the Sun-Clear Report points to “the opposition between speculation and life,” thus emphasizing the special character of the philosophical standpoint that requires rational contemplation and the scientific presentation of its results (EPW 439 [GA III/3, no. 443]). Fichte’s goal here is not only to protect philosophical speculation from “unwarranted intrusion and criticism,” but also to further advance his own position on the scientific status of philosophy that, as he claims, is first achieved in his Wissenschaftslehre. During the Berlin period, Fichte continued to revise the Wissenschaftslehre, rearticulating the foundations of his system and refining some of its elements. He produced more than half a dozen different presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre, delivering new versions every year or two, right up until his death. Yet, with the exception of the extremely condensed Presentation of the General Outlines of the  Wissenschaftslehre (1810) (GA I/10:325–46), none of the revised versions were published during Fichte’s lifetime.35 Due to being highly discouraged by the public reception of the early presentation of the foundation of his system, and afraid of being misunderstood again, he limited their presentation to public talks, private lectures, and other modes of public conversation with his contemporaries. One such “conversation” was a heated exchange of letters (1800–1802) between him and Schelling. Making the “difference” between their philosophical systems the focal point of discussion, each was attempting to attack his opponent while demonstrating his mastery over Kant’s philosophy. While both philosophers argued for a geometrically modeled philosophical system that would proceed from postulates and derive theorems from first principles known with certainty, they could not agree on a concept that could provide a solid foundation for this system. Fichte focused his attention on the Kantian notion of thought as a synthesis of concept and intuition,

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which he believed was conditioned by the self-consciousness of the I (or the intuition). Schelling, on the other hand, felt that concepts and intuitions were on equal ground, with neither taking precedence over the other, and that instead they resolved themselves in a synthesis meeting in indifference as reason–intuition, universality– particularity, etc. Thus, through their continued exchange of letters, Fichte tried to explain to Schelling that the basis of his intellectual intuition was a second-order non-empirical self-consciousness that necessarily accompanies all consciousness. This discussion mirrors the transformation of Fichte’s thoughts toward the presentation of the foundation of his philosophical system in the New Version of the Wissenschaftslehre of 1800 (WL1800). Yet, despite his best efforts, his attempt to persuade Schelling failed. Instead, Fichte only grew warier of his own presentation of the New Version, which he eventually abandoned. Their disagreement remains largely unsettled to this day. While for Fichte the intellectual intuition still resides in the subjective, for Schelling the true place of the intellectual intuition is in the objective—in either case the issue of the nature of this intuition is still to be resolved.36 In 1805 Fichte was appointed as a professor at the University of Erlangen, but he returned to Berlin after only one semester. He was soon forced by the French occupation to move—to Königsberg in 1806 and to Copenhagen in 1807. Although this pattern of fleeing removed Fichte from his family for long periods at a time, he still found it within himself to continue working, and in 1806 he completed three vastly popular and well-received lecture series. The first, On the Essence of the Scholar (GA I/8:42– 140), is a reworking of the same themes that he addressed in his lectures on the “Morality of Scholars” in 1794. The second, The Characteristics of the Present Age (CPA [GA I/8:147–398]), extends his “system of freedom” into the philosophy of history. The third, The Way Towards the Blessed Life (DR [GA I/9:14–212]), which is written in an almost mystical style, discusses how speculative philosophy, morality, and religion are related. Here, Fichte articulates the development of human consciousness through five levels of awareness: sensibility, legality, morality, religiosity, and philosophy, while continuing to dwell in the same realm of thought as his infamous Jena essay “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World.” In addition to their popular reception, these three works provide important insights into how Fichte’s philosophical inquiry might be applied in reality. It was not until the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 that Fichte was able to return to Berlin, where he was often unwell with a serious illness he developed in the summer of 1808. In the winter of 1807–8, he delivered his celebrated Addresses to the German Nation (AGN [GA I/10:17–298]). While these lectures are often associated with a significant shift in Fichte’s social and political thought, transforming his cosmopolitan view into a more nationalistic view, this is to some extent a hasty claim. The Addresses, which are mainly concerned with the issue of national identity and the question of national education, are consistent with the chief ideas of Fichte’s practical philosophy, and in particular with his recognition of the importance of cultural identities for the formation of individuals and societies, and thus for the possible realization of a moral order in civil and political life. It would also be a mistake to understand Fichte’s notion of patriotism that he introduces in the Addresses as a nationalistic one. This notion is instrumental to Fichte’s discussion of the vocation of man: the shaping of himself and

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his particular interests so that he can realize himself by serving a greater (moral) good. This self-realization is a journey of Bildung, an intricate process of self-cultivation that necessarily involves enculturation, and that allows individuals to bring themselves into accord with their society and the world. Thus, it would be more appropriate to read Fichte’s Addresses (along with some of his other later writings) in the context of the tradition of German Neohumanism and to understand them as an attempt to offer a more elaborate account of Bildung—the task that he began in Jena in collaboration with Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt—in order to specify and further promote the ideas of his practical philosophy. Fichte’s interest in pedagogical issues led him to assume, along with Humboldt, one of the leading roles in planning a new university that opened in Berlin in 1810. Although the proposal that Fichte put forward was rejected in favor of the plan drafted by Humboldt, Fichte was offered an important administrative position. He became the dean of the philosophical faculty and the first elected Rector of the newly established university. He continued lecturing on the Wissenschaftslehre and producing new writings that mainly focused on the issues of practical philosophy, discussing issues such as ethical theory, the doctrine of right, and the doctrine of state. When the Prussian uprising against Napoleon began in 1813, Fichte canceled his lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre so that he and his listeners could enlist in the War of Liberation. He joined the militia, but only served for a few weeks as he contracted a fatal infection from his wife, Johanna, who volunteered in a military hospital. Fichte died on January 29, 1814, from a typhoid fever (typhus) and was buried near the University of Berlin, where he rests next to Hegel.

Conclusion Perhaps the strongest influence on Fichte’s development throughout all of his intellectual endeavors was his quest to achieve self-realization through his work. This sought-after realization was both moral and social: his moralist devotion to duty was inseparable from his commoner’s determination to justify his ascent into philosophical prominence. Another important influence was undoubtedly Fichte’s affiliation with (and early discipleship under) Kant’s philosophy of moral agency and individual freedom. Following Kant, he tried to reconcile the philosophical project and religious belief, reason and faith, and individual freedom and political authority. Throughout his life, he also focused much of his attention on the moral perfection of the individual. In this sense he remained true to the spirit and ideals of the German Enlightenment and German Neohumanism. Yet by arguing for the scientific status of philosophy he passed beyond the limits of Kant’s Critical philosophy. He concluded that the first task for philosophy is to discover a single, self-evident starting point or first principle from which one could then “derive” both theoretical and practical philosophy, which are nothing else but our experiences of ourselves as finite cognitive agents. Not only would such a strategy guarantee the systematic unity of philosophy itself, but, more importantly, it would also display what Kant was not able to demonstrate, namely, the underlying unity of reason itself. Thus,

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rather than advancing the skepticism implied by Kant’s thing-in-itself, Fichte made the radical suggestion of postulating the original unity of self-consciousness. As a result, he developed a much more radical form of transcendental idealism than Kant himself maintained. While his quest for self-realization and his search for the proper foundations of a philosophical system served as internal focuses in Fichte’s intellectual development, the external societal and varied political and cultural conditions of his life led to a certain malaise that he was forced to tolerate. These external effects that were imposed upon Fichte’s life—revolutions and political altercations, the social and political hierarchies of the time, philosophical disputes, intellectual controversies, and personal disagreements—all indubitably affected the unconscious schematic of Fichte’s development, shaping his personality and fashioning his ideas. Although the censorships, misunderstandings, and general skepticism of the public and some other thinkers heavily affected his method and the way he articulated his thought, they did not have a real impact on his message and the content of his philosophy. The same is true of Fichte’s personal development. Molded by the need to conform to social expectations, Fichte nevertheless remained true to his overall perspective of moral perfection, intellectual growth, and a relentless willingness to improve upon his own thought and writings.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5

The earlier version of this essay was published as “Fichte: His Life and Philosophical Calling,” Ch. 13 in Altman 2014, 267–85. Used here with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. This painful sensitivity was present in Fichte even after he had rocketed into celebrity. In 1794, after receiving a prestigious professorship at Jena, he was still evoking the rural world of his childhood, telling his younger brother, Samuel Gotthelf, that even after departing from the university he felt that he still had “some peasantlike manners.” After such a long time, he still could not tell “whether they [were] completely eradicated” (GA III/2:151, no. 214). It is worth recalling that Kant, who was born into an artisan family of modest means, rose to intellectual prominence and became the central figure of modern philosophy. For more on Kant’s life and origin, see Kuehn 2001, 24–60. Perhaps the closest friend of Fichte’s youth and his most valued philosophical correspondent, Weiβhuhn published a very lovely description of his and Fichte’s time at Schulpforta that provides an interesting account of Fichte’s life and intellectual evolution in his early age. In 1795, at Fichte’s invitation, Weiβhuhn, who suffered from poor health, moved to Jena and lived in Fichte’s house for the last few months of his life. Fritzsche (1761–1825), who later worked in the secret service in Leipzig, was one of Fichte’s closest friends until 1791. Even later, during Fichte’s time in Jena, the two stayed in touch. In his letter to Achelis (1764–1831) in November 1790, Fichte admits how essential to his well-being their friendship was. In the opening lines of his letter, he writes: “At

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least one result of my stay in Zurich—the real influence of which upon my welfare I cannot yet appreciate—is that I will retain your friendship” (EPW 358 [GA III, no. 70a]). Fichte expressed very similar sentiments in his letter to Achelis, which he drafted a few months after his first encounter with Kant’s writings. Here, he declared that in Kantian philosophy, he “found the antidote for the source of [his] trouble, and happiness enough in the bargain” (EPW 360 [GA III/1:193, no. 70a]). In his letter to Weiβhuhn, written in September of 1790, Fichte openly recognizes that he has “been living in a new world ever since reading the Critique of Practical Reason.” He continues: “Propositions that I thought could never be overturned have been overturned for me. Things have been proven for me which I thought could never be proven—for example, the concept of absolute freedom, the concept of duty, etc.—and I feel all the happier for it. It is unbelievable how much respect for mankind and how much strength this system gives us” (EPW 357 [GA III/1:167–68, no. 63]). Kant’s own Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Rel.) appeared about a year later, in 1793. Goethe had a great respect for Fichte’s philosophical views. This is what he wrote in retrospect about Fichte’s stature around the time of his arrival in Jena: “He was one of the most capable figures ever to have been seen, and his views were, in a higher sense, irreproachable” (Goethe 1989, 10:440–1). Ironically, Karl August was one of “Europe’s Princes,” whom Fichte harshly criticized in his “Reclamation” of 1793. The work was first presented to the public as early as 1789, well before Kant published his Critique of Judgment. Eckart Förster provides a brilliant analysis of Reinhold’s criticism of Kant and his own philosophical project, which sets the agenda for Fichte—and also for Hegel— who sought to find the single principle on which to establish philosophy. See Förster 2012, esp. 153–8. Published anonymously in 1792, the book had a long yet informative title: Aenesidemus; or, Concerning the Foundations of the Elementary Philosophy Issued by Professor Reinhold in Jena Together with a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason. The unnamed author of the book was Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833). For excerpts from Aenesidemus in English, see Di Giovanni and Harris 1985, 104–35. As Henrich points out, contrary to Reinhold, who saw the task of philosophy as its broad practical application, Schulze sought to limit philosophy to the description of facts of consciousness, which resulted in a sort of philosophical phenomenalism (Henrich 2008, 150–1). Fichte first reported his discovery in a letter to his friend, Heinrich Stephani, in December of 1793: “I have discovered a new foundation from which it is very easy to develop the whole philosophy.” In the same letter, he also gives some justification for his attempt to reconstruct Kant’s philosophy: “Taken altogether, Kant has the right philosophy, but only in the results, not according to the reasons” (EPW 371 [GA III/2:28, no. 171]). Interestingly, Schelling expressed a very similar idea in his letter to Hegel on January 6, 1795: “Philosophy is not yet at an end. Kant has given results, yet the premises are still missing. And who can understand results without premises?” (Briefe 1:14) It is worth noting that when Fichte published the second edition of Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre in 1798, he omitted part III.

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17 Named after Kant and his maternal grandfather, Immanuel Hermann Fichte edited his father’s works (see SW), wrote a biography of him, and also did original philosophical work. 18 This is how Fichte was described by his colleague F. K. Forberg, who contrasted him with his predecessor Reinhold. See Forberg 1923, 43–4. 19 The 1817 edition of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophic Sciences in Outline (Enc.) was composed as a summary of his philosophy for students attending his lectures in Heidelberg. 20 Fichte introduced the first principle as the general proposition, “the I posits itself absolutely,” and more specifically, “the I posits itself as an I.” Since this activity of “self-positing” is taken to be the fundamental feature of I-hood in general, the first principle asserts that “the I posits itself as self-positing.” In the Foundation, Fichte himself summarized this line of thought as follows: “The I posits itself absolutely, and is thereby complete in itself, and closed to any impression from without. But if it is to be an I, it must also posit itself as self-posited” (FEW [GA I/2:409]). 21 The concept of the self-positing I was originally interpreted along the lines of Berkeley’s idealism, specifically the claim that the world is the product of the absolute. 22 There are two full (the Krause and the Halle) and one partial (the Eschan) student transcripts of Fichte’s lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo that are published in German. For the Halle transcript from 1797–8, see WLnm[H] [GA IV/2:17–267; for the Eschan transcript from 1796–7, see GA IV/3:143–96; for the Krause transcript from 1798–9, see WLnm[K] GA IV/3:307–534. The English edition of both the Halle and Krause transcripts—translated by Daniel Breazeale—is in FTP. 23 Discussing Fichte’s difficult situation in Jena, Rudolf Steiner argues that “the reason of all of the conflicts was that Fichte alienated people through his personality before he could make his ideas accessible to them.” He believes that the root of Fichte’s problems was his inability “to put up with everyday life” (Steiner 1894, 49). 24 For more details about the political situation of that time period, see La Vopa 2001, 231–78. 25 Voigt’s Letter to Hufeland of June 17, 1794 (quoted in EPW 23). 26 Letter to Goethe, June 24, 1794. 27 The underlying reason for this confrontation was Fichte’s sincere attempt to improve the moral climate of the university and reform student life. True to the spirit and the letter of his own lectures on “Morality for Scholars,” he saw his role as a scholar to bring positive changes and have effect on his community and the world. 28 For a detailed and thoughtful discussion of the two controversies, see EPW 24–6. 29 Under this title, Fichte intended to publish lectures from his “Morality for Scholars” course. He revised a few of these lectures for the first installment of the “Series” and planned to publish the rest in the following issues of Schiller’s journal. 30 A more detailed discussion of Fichte’s views of religion at time of the Atheismusstreit can be found in Estes and Bowman 2010, 4–9 and 17–20. 31 English translation: “A Father’s Letter to his Student Son about Fichte’s and Forberg’s Atheism,” in Estes and Bowman 2010, 57–75. 32 The Saxon Letter of Requisition to the Weimar Court, dated December 18, 1798, explicitly stated that in their essays Fichte and Forberg “did not shrink from acknowledging that they have expressed principles that are incompatible with the Christian religion, and indeed even with natural religion, and that they openly intended to disseminate atheism” (Estes and Bowman 2010, 83).

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33 In his open letter of March 3, 1799, Jacobi wrote: “We therefore both want, with similar seriousness and zeal, that the science of knowledge—which in all sciences is one and the same, the World-soul in the world of knowledge—become perfected; with only one difference: that you want it so that the basis of all truth, as lodging in the science of knowledge, reveal itself; I, so that this basis be revealed: the true itself is necessarily present outside of it” (Jacobi 2003, 125 [GA III/3:238, no. 428.I]). 34 Friedrich Schleiermacher presented a cruel parody of Fichte in his review of The Vocation of Man, published in the summer of 1800 in the journal Athenaeum. (Reprinted in: Fuchs, Jacobs, and Schieche 1995, 3:66–75). In addition, Fichte’s allies, such as Reinhold and Schelling, were publicly abandoning their support for the Wissenschaftslehre. For more details see Breazeale 2013, 385–8. 35 All other Berlin versions of the Wissenshaftslehre appeared posthumously; some of them were published (in an altered form) in the collection of Fichte’s works edited by his son (SW), and most of them are now being published in J. G. FichteGesamtausgabe (GA), the historical-critical academic edition of Fichte’s works produced by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. 36 For an enlightening discussion of the context, the form, and the content of the dispute between Fichte and Schelling in 1800–1802, see PRFS 1–20.

Bibliography Altman, Matthew C. (ed.). 2014. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking through the “Wissenschaftslehre”: Themes from Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Di Giovanni, George and Henry S. Harris (eds.). 1985. Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Estes, Yolanda and Curtis Bowman (eds.). 2010. J. G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798–1800), translated by Curtis Bowman. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. Forberg, F. K. 1923. Fichte in vetraulichen Briefen seiner Zeitgenossen, edited by Hans Schulz. Leipzig: Haessel. Förster, Eckart. 2012. The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction, translated by Brady Bowman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fuchs, Erich, Wilhelm G. Jacobs, and Walter Schieche (eds.). 1995. Fichte in zeitgenössischen Rezensionen, 4 vols. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1989. Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, 14 vols., edited by Erich Trunz, 14th ed. München: Beck. Henrich, Dieter. 2008. Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, edited by David S. Pacini. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. 2003. “Open Letter to Fichte, 1799,” translated by Diana I. Behler. In Philosophy of German Idealism, edited by Ernst Behler, 119–41. New York: Continuum. Kuehn, Manfred. 2001. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. La Vopa, Anthony J. 2001. Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762–1799. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steiner, Rudolf (ed.). 1894. “Sieben Briefe von Fichte an Goethe. Zwei Briefe von Fichte an Schiller,” Goethe-Jahrbuch 15.

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Fichte, Kant, and the Copernican Revolution Tom Rockmore

There is a tendency for the interpretation of important figures to go through a cycle in which a paradigm emerges and often becomes well established before later undergoing significant change. The twentieth century was largely dominated by an indulgent interpretation of Heidegger’s position as presented in Being and Time that now, under the pressure of new information about his Nazi allegiance, seems to be receding. Since his death, Quine, the central figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the last century, has largely receded into history. In the last century, Peirce emerged as central to pragmatism. The changes have been even greater in German idealism. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, Fichte and Schelling have often been regarded as no more than transitional figures situated between Kant and Hegel. This model is now changing thanks to the renewed attention being given to these two thinkers, most notably Fichte. Observers are increasingly aware of Fichte’s importance. According to Allen Wood, a qualified observer, “Fichte is the most influential single figure in the entire tradition of continental European philosophy in the last two centuries” (Wood 2016, ix). This chapter describes the so-called Copernican revolution. This is a term Kant never uses to refer to his position, but which was widely used by others while the author of the Critical philosophy was still active. The Copernican revolution, which many observers think is the central novelty in the Critical philosophy, is rarely discussed in detail. Elsewhere I have argued that a central thread in German idealism lies in the multiple efforts to formulate a plausible form of the Copernican revolution in the writings of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel (Rockmore 2016a). The Copernican turn is routinely identified with Kant, but more rarely with the other German idealists who also contributed to it. It is particularly crucial to understand the relation of Fichte to Kant as well as Fichte’s overall position. What later became known as the Copernican revolution arises well before the  modern period, and it even predates the Copernican astronomical revolution. (1) The chapter begins with an account of the relation of the Copernican revolution to the Eleatic tradition through remarks on Parmenides. (2) It next provides a description of the Kantian Copernican revolution or Copernican turn. (3) This is followed by remarks on how to interpret a philosophical position from a Fichtean perspective. (4) The genesis of Fichte’s Copernicanism is described in a statement of contributions

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to Fichte’s post-Kantian conception of the Copernican turn through Reinhold, Schulze, Maimon, and others. (5) The chapter then turns to a description and evaluation of the Fichtean version of the Copernican turn in his “Review of Aenesidemus” and in the initial and most important version of the roughly sixteen extant versions of Fichte’s position: the Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (1794). (6) The chapter ends in concluding remarks about Fichte and post-Kantian idealist cognition.

The Copernican Revolution and the Eleatic Tradition The Copernican revolution is both astronomical and philosophical. The astronomical form of the Copernican revolution describes, following Thomas Kuhn, a paradigm shift. The shift is from the ancient Ptolemaic geocentric model, according to which the earth was the center of the universe, to the heliocentric model, which accorded pride of place to the sun at the center of the appropriately named solar system. The astronomical paradigm shift was anticipated by Aristarchus of Samos in ancient Greece. It was much later described in short form in Copernicus’ Commentarioulus (before 1514) and in more detail in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), just before he passed from the scene. The astronomical form of the Copernican astronomical revolution is controversial. Some observers regard it as a crucial step in the rise of modern science. Kant, for whom Copernican astronomy is phenomenological, or descriptive, thinks Newtonian mechanics, which is dynamic, proves the laws of planetary motion through the discovery of gravitation, “the invisible force of attraction” (CPR B xxii). Other observers doubt whether there was in fact a paradigm shift, preferring to explain the change as merely incremental (Shapin 1996). The Kantian Copernican revolution refers to a change of perspective suggested several centuries after Copernicus by Kant. It is useful, then, to consider the history of philosophy. The originality of philosophical thought is routinely overestimated, in part due to a steadily increasing lack of awareness of the philosophical past. The history of philosophy has been out of fashion for centuries. In modern times, though there are exceptions, an approach to philosophy, particularly Critical philosophy, through the history of the tradition, is unusual. Ancient Greek thinkers typically seek to dialogue with different views in formulating alternatives. But the tradition was shorter then and the dialectical debate was easier to summarize and to conduct. Modern philosophy often emphasizes the independence of philosophy with respect to its history. The long modern turn away from the history of philosophy renders it difficult to know where we have been and where we still have to go. It suggests that, rather than seeking to build on what is still valuable in the preceding debate, we do best to start over, since nothing, nothing at all, can be saved. This point is made in different ways by numerous thinkers. Thus, Descartes thinks of earlier theories as possibly comprising no more than a series of mistakes. He is followed in his attack on prior philosophy in different ways by many later thinkers, such as Husserl, who, in Cartesian fashion, is concerned finally to make a true beginning.

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These and others think the case still needs to be made for considering philosophy against the historical background (Cramer 2014). Though the term “Copernican revolution” originates in the late eighteenth century, the idea is very old. It seems to have been closely anticipated in the ancient pre-Socratic tradition in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE by Parmenides of Elea. Parmenides is an interesting and much neglected figure. According to Bertrand Russell, he is the first metaphysical thinker, the first to argue from thought, more specifically from words, to being (Russell 1967). This amounts to an inference from thought and language to the world. Russell holds that words, hence Parmenides’ words, must refer to something, and further holds that Parmenides has in mind the indestructability of substance. Russell is perhaps right that, since words refer, in some sense whatever we talk about must exist. However, it does not follow that non-being, to which one can refer, exists in the same way. Further, many thinkers seek to know reality. Yet neither Parmenides nor anyone else has ever formulated an argument to show that we know the world, or again the world as it actually exists. In other words, referring does not imply knowing. This theme can be raised in terms of realism. All conceptions of knowledge are realist, hence lay claim to grasp the real however it is understood. There are different forms of realism, which includes artistic, social, scientific, metaphysical, and other varieties. Artistic realism refers to a specific aesthetic style. Socialist realism is a term in Marxist aesthetics. Empirical realism suggests that cognition concerns the empirical. Metaphysical realism takes as its criterion the claim to know mind-independent reality. Metaphysical realists believe we can accept as our standard nothing less than a grasp of the real, reality, or the world. The only known Parmenidean text is his poem, “On Nature,” which is extant in a fragmentary version. In this text Parmenides takes a realist approach to cognition in linking thought and being. At B 8.34, in writing “to gar auto noein estin kai einai,”1 he suggests what would later become known as metaphysical realism in opting for the identity of thought and being as the standard of knowledge. This fragment can be interpreted in three main ways: as pointing toward: (1) epistemic skepticism, (2) metaphysical realism, and (3) epistemic constructivism. Epistemic skepticism follows if one thinks cognition depends on grasping the uncognizable real. Metaphysical realism suggests that cognition depends on grasping the cognizable real. Epistemic constructivism is any form of the view later identified with Kant and others that states that we do not and cannot know the mind-independent real but rather only what we construct. Parmenides is mainly interpreted as a metaphysical realist. A metaphysical realist approach to cognition runs from Parmenides through Plato, Aristotle, and the entire later tradition. The reaction to Parmenides consists in a series of often ingenious efforts to demonstrate knowledge of reality leading to and then away from Kant, who, after a period as a metaphysical realist, rejects metaphysical realism in favor of epistemic constructivism. In other words, the link between Kant and Parmenides lies in the insight that if, as is shown by the long interval between Parmenides and contemporary philosophy, the effort to know reality fails, then the modern efforts of epistemic constructivists such as Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Vico, and Kant to know

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human reality, or what human beings construct, looks like a viable alternative. In other words, Kant’s Copernican revolution seems to have been anticipated in one of the main interpretations of Parmenides’ position in pre-Socratic philosophy. The metaphysical realist interpretation is supported by textual analysis. Thus Myles Burnyeat, who thinks idealism is a specifically modern doctrine, believes Parmenides holds that thought refers to being (Burnyeat 2012, 255).2 Mourelatos follows Kahn’s distinction between the “is” of predication and the “is” of existence. He suggests that the “is” of Parmenides is “a hybrid between the ‘is’ of predication and the ‘is’ of identity,” hence he does not simply advance an existential claim but rather suggests a speculative “is” of predication (Mourelatos 2008, 79; 47–73). Parmenides, who can be read in different ways, can be read as asserting an identity as the basis of cognition, namely that cognition depends on the identity between subject and object, knower and known. Various types of identity can be distinguished. Frege stresses semantic identity in claiming that the morning star (Hesperus) and the evening star (Vesperus) have different meanings but the same reference. Numerical identity is the sense in which a given thing is self-identical. For instance, the feather pen Krug employed to criticize Hegel is in this sense identical to his writing instrument. Qualitative identity, which refers to the way in which two or more things share a property, is illustrated in the notorious Platonic theory of forms (or ideas). Parmenidean identity in difference, which is neither numerical nor qualitative, is a metaphysical relation brought about by the subject in creating a unity between itself and the object it “constructs.” In different ways, the Parmenidean view of identity as the basis of cognition echoes through the tradition. Much later in the German idealist tradition, Parmenidean identity becomes what Hegel describes as the identity of identity and difference. Thought and being are obviously not the same, since being, or what is, is independent of thought about it. But from the Parmenidean perspective “to know” means that “thought grasps mind-independent being.”

Parmenides, Plato, and Kant The Parmenidean influence on Kant is mediated through Plato. Kant clearly identifies his deep interest in Plato in suggesting that he knows the latter better than Plato knows himself (CPR B370). The Parmenidean view that cognition requires the identity of thought and being points in three directions: (1) against skepticism, (2) towards metaphysical realism, or (3) toward cognitive constructivism. All three views are apparently restated in the Critical philosophy. Plato is perhaps the single most influential proponent of the Parmenidean view that to know is to know the mind-independent world as it actually exists. The notorious theory of forms suggests there is direct, intuitive knowledge of the mind-independent real, or reality beyond appearance. We do not know and cannot now determine if Plato accepts any form of the notorious theory of forms, which is routinely attributed to him. But he clearly rejects a causal analysis of knowledge. Thus, he accepts the view that forms are causes of which appearances are the effects. But, though he suggests

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that philosophers can directly intuit reality, he rejects the backward cognitive inference from appearances to reality, or again from effect to cause. Since he thinks that only philosophers can know, Plato famously excludes artists and poets, who do not and cannot know, from the city-state. It is unclear what Plato’s view is or even if he has a position in a modern sense. He could be saying there is cognition since philosophers cognize reality. Or he could be saying that if there is knowledge then it must be the case that philosophers in fact can directly intuit, and hence know, reality. In sum, in reacting to Parmenides Plato makes two crucial cognitive claims: we know, or at least some of us know, reality through direct or intellectual intuition, and we do not and cannot know reality through a causal analysis since we cannot justify a backward causal inference from appearance to reality. Plato’s influential support of the Parmenidean suggestion that cognition requires knowledge of reality continues to echo through the tradition. Examples include the Cartesian view that there are clear and distinct ideas about the world, and the Lockean view that complex ideas constructed out of simple ideas directly correspond with the world. This insight is present in the recent debate as well, such as in Davidson’s claim that in relinquishing the dualism between scheme and world we come into direct touch with the latter, as well as in Brandom’s nearly identical suggestion that reality makes our views of electrons or aromatic compounds true or false. Each of these thinkers lays claim to know the mind-independent external world as it actually exists. Modern philosophy, with few exceptions, mainly turns away from cognitive intuition and toward cognitive representation based on the reverse causal inference Plato rejects. Kant agrees as well as disagrees with Plato at two crucial points concerning representation and intuition. Kant defends what initially seems like an ambiguous position. Three points are important. First, he disagrees with Plato in denying intellectual intuition. Second, he continues to feature representationalist terminology even after he may have turned away from a representationalist approach to cognition. Third, he agrees with Plato in denying the backward anti-Platonic inference, hence in denying representation of the real, or in his terminology the thing in itself, or the noumenon. The ambiguity lies in the apparent conflict between the representationalist terminology and the denial of cognitive representationalism. Kant’s career extended over decades, from 1749 to 1804. A simple way to understand this tension is that during the pre-critical period, Kant, like many other modern thinkers, was a cognitive representationalist, before opting, during the critical period, for cognitive constructivism. When he came to put together the manuscripts that became the Critique of Pure Reason, he apparently incorporated materials reflecting earlier versions of his changing views. Kant’s relation to Plato is crucial for understanding his position. Since Kant claims that Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber, it is usually thought that the Critical philosophy is mainly or even wholly directed toward answering Hume. On inspection, it appears the situation is more complex, since Kant is concerned with responding to Plato as well. In the account of the possibility of pure natural science in the Prolegomena, Kant suggests that, apparently referring to Platonic dualism, early philosophers distinguished between “sensible beings or appearances [phaenomena],” terms he seems

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to understand as synonymous, and “intelligible beings … in an intelligible world” which alone are granted reality (Prol. § 32). Kant is concerned with demonstrating the existence of the thing in itself. But he is not concerned with the central Platonic claim that the forms (or ideas) cause or otherwise bring into being appearances. He also does not refer to the Platonic view that the appearance “participates” in the form. He rather argues that if there are appearances, then our senses are affected, hence the understanding is compelled to admit that things in themselves exist. He makes this point more clearly in the first Critique when claiming that if there is an appearance, then something appears (CPR Bxxvi-xxvii). We can infer that Kant, like Plato, feels compelled to invoke a dualism in order to explain appearances through reality that, unlike Plato, he claims not to be possible objects of knowledge.

Criticism of a Copernican Reading of the Critical Philosophy Since Kant denies intellectual intuition, he requires a different justification for cognitive claims than Plato and other metaphysical realists. Kant’s positive argument for knowledge lies in the claim that we cognize only what we, at least in some sense, construct. This is the central insight of the famous Copernican revolution that, if this approach is correct, lies at the heart of the Critical philosophy. The so-called Copernican revolution is a form of epistemic constructivism. This view originates in ancient mathematics and comes into the modern philosophical tradition initially through Hobbes and Vico, and then independently through Kant. This reading of the Critical philosophy is controversial for a number of reasons. They include representationalism, Kant’s knowledge of Copernicus, his link to Plato, and the extent to which even today we can claim to understand Kant. We can begin with Kant’s relation to representationalism, which is arguably the favored modern cognitive strategy. Early and late, representationalist terminology pervades Kant’s texts. He seems to feature representationalism in the famous Herz letter early in the critical period, where he asks: “What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we call ‘representation’ to the object [Gegenstand]?” (C 71). This implies that, like many other modern thinkers, Kant is an epistemic representationalist. Yet this cannot be correct, since he also explicitly states during the critical period (which is the period in which he arrived at his mature constructivist approach to cognition) that representation cannot be defined at all.3 And in the famous passage in the B introduction on the Copernican revolution, he briefly sketches a constructivist approach to knowledge.

A Note on Translation Kant suggests it is easy to interpret a position from the angle of vision of the whole (CPR Bxliv). But there has never been more than minimal agreement about how to understand the Critical philosophy. Kant is difficult to interpret for several reasons. He does not write precisely; he has difficulty in making up his mind; when his view evolves

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he fails to discard materials that no longer accurately depict his position; and so on. It has not been sufficiently noticed that in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant presents two inconsistent approaches to cognition consecutively: cognitive representationalism and cognitive constructivism. Translation is crucial here. The term “Vorstellung” that both Kant and Fichte employ with frequency can be translated as either “presentation” or “representation.” If it is rendered as “presentation,” then it refers to what is present to mind only. If it is rendered as “representation,” then it refers to correct depiction of a mind-external object or the world as it is. Kant employs “representation” to refer to a cognitive grasp of the world. Fichte uses the same term to refer to what is present to mind without reference to the external world. I come back to this point below. A constructivist approach to Kant links the Critical philosophy to Copernican astronomy. Now the most thorough study we possess of this question indicates Kant may never have read Copernicus at all (Blumenberg 1987). Yet that is perhaps not important since, as noted above, we also do not know to what extent he was familiar with, say, Hume or Plato (Guyer 2013; Kuehn 2011, 370). A constructivist reading of the Critical philosophy illuminates our understanding of the Critical philosophy. Kant is closely studied in an enormous and growing debate. Yet it is possible, since the Copernican revolution in his thought is little studied, and there is no agreement about its significance, that at least in this crucial respect for his mature view we do not understand the Critical philosophy (Friedman 2013). This is hardly implausible. It is obvious that the process of coming to grips with a great thinker is extremely lengthy. In some cases it can extend over hundreds of years. It follows that anyone understood in his own time presumably has nothing of deep interest to communicate. Kant, who thought he was misunderstood, suggests in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that a position should not be interpreted according to passages taken out of context, but rather through the idea of the whole (CPR Bxliv). He seems to have in mind what today might be called authorial intent. Yet there is not now and never has been any agreement about the Critical philosophy other than that it is singularly important. Though I believe Kant’s constructivist insight about cognition lies at the center of his position, qualified observers continue to believe Kant is best understood as a cognitive representationalist (Longuenesse 1998, 17).

Fichte and the Copernican Revolution Important thinkers notoriously misunderstand their predecessors in formulating an alternative theory (Bloom 1997). Thus Heidegger obviously reads the Critical philosophy against its intentions as an anticipation of his own position. There is reason to think, despite Kant’s atypically excited reaction to Fichte’s restatement of the Critical philosophy, that Fichte understands Kant on a deep level. Fichte’s position was developed on the basis of his (mis)understanding of Kant. It seems there is only agreement about Kant’s immense importance. Fichte’s interpretation of Kant relies on his older contemporary, Jacobi, whose view he develops in his own reading of Kant as well as in his own position.

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Though their interpretations overlap, their intentions with respect to Kant differ radically. Jacobi was an influential opponent of Kant. He famously criticized the concept of the thing in itself as indispensable but also impossible. Fichte was an influential self-appointed orthodox Kantian who always defends Kant, if necessary even against Kant himself. His interpretation of the Critical philosophy was infamously rejected by Kant (C 559–63), but accepted by the young Schelling and the young Hegel. The latter, who was Schelling’s younger colleague, throughout his career continued to read Kant through Fichte’s eyes. According to Jacobi, Kant’s position is impossible on either of the two readings he suggests. Fichte argues in favor of one reading as opposed to another, in effect reading Kant through Jacobi’s eyes. We can note in passing that Fichte is surprisingly close to Croce’s “Hegelian view” of Hegel. According to this view, later thinkers build on what is still alive in earlier thinkers. Hegel, who invented this approach, did not always hold this generous “Hegelian” view in practice. He infamously but mistakenly thinks that Kant will be forgotten. Jacobi notes Kant’s definition of sensibility as the capacity “to receive representations through the manner in which we are affected by objects” (CPR A19/B33). He holds Kant is inconsistent. Jacobi raises the following question: are the objects that affect our sensibility appearances or things in themselves? This is a pre-Copernican, metaphysical realist interpretation of the Critical philosophy in which the subject depends on the object. According to Jacobi, the thing in itself cannot appear for two reasons. On the one hand, that would involve applying the categories to things in themselves. On the other hand, they cannot be appearances, which exist in virtue of the very experiences they allegedly cause. He concludes in suggesting that Kant’s system is inconsistent (Jacobi 1815, 291–310). Fichte, who is aware of Jacobi’s objections, raises either the same or a very similar objection in the “Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre” (SK 59–60).

Jacobi and Fichte’s Kant Interpretation Fichte’s response does not lie in interpreting these and many other passages but rather in his Kantian effort to grasp the Critical philosophy as a whole. According to Kant, the difficulty lies in understanding cognition of the mind-independent object or reality. In interpreting the Critical philosophy, Fichte follows Kant’s Copernican turn in seeking to understand cognition from the perspective of the subject. Fichte states his view of Kant in the fifth part of the “Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre.” It is surely no accident if this statement occurs immediately after his claim that cognition must be explained wholly and solely in terms of the self (das Ich), his term for the subject. In the context of his suggestion that he is the only one who understands Kant, Fichte in effect argues that Kant’s position, like Fichte’s own position, is based on a conception of the subject intuitively aware of itself as intrinsically active, or always active and never passive. Since his interpretation of Kant is complex, it will be useful to stay close to the text. Fichte distinguishes between the supposedly dogmatic views of the Kantians

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and Kant’s own view. He describes the thing in itself as impacting on us so that all reality originates in the mind (SK 55). Fichte denies that Kant’s view derives sensation from the thing in itself, that rather it derives from an external transcendental object (SK 58). According to Fichte, though Kant refers to this view (CPR B1; B33), it is inconsistent with Kant’s statements expounding dogmatism that others take for Kant’s transcendental idealism. Fichte claims that the object is thought of as affecting us (SK 60–1). According to Fichte, knowledge is based on an affection that is not an affection by an object (SK 60–1). In responding to Beck and to Reinhold, he attempts to show that he has correctly understood Kant in giving the system that Kant envisioned but never stated in precisely this way (SK 51). According to Fichte, Kant deserves credit for directing attention away from external objects and into ourselves (ibid.). Fichte untypically and modestly states that the point that Kant knows nothing other than the self was already revealed by Jacobi (SK 53–4). Jacobi, as already noted, identifies two ways of interpreting Kant. In that case, Fichte’s contribution to Kant’s interpretation lies in agreeing with Jacobi that the first approach is false and in disagreeing with Jacobi that the second approach is correct. According to Fichte, Kant neither says nor holds that sensation arises through an external object (SK 58). Fichte thinks that the Kantians feature a reckless dogmatism about “things in themselves making impressions on us,” combined with inveterate idealism in which existence arises solely out of the thinking of the intellect (SK 55). Fichte holds that Kant explicitly denies that sensation comes from a thing in itself existing outside us (SK 58–9). The correct reading, he claims, is that knowledge proceeds from affection though not from affection by an object (SK 60–1). Taken together, Jacobi’s statement and Fichte’s restatement constitute a separate corner of the massive Kant debate. In the Fichte discussion, stress is placed on whether this is an acceptable reading of the letter but not the spirit of the Critical philosophy. Fichte rejects the form of idealism in which sensation derives from an external thing in itself. He rejects as well the very idea of the thing in itself as “produced solely by free thought” and without any “reality whatever” (SK 10), and hence rejects a representationalist approach to the cognitive problem. He indicates his agreement with Kant’s Copernican turn, hence with epistemic constructivism, in writing that “the [cognitive] object shall be posited and determined by the cognitive faculty, and not the cognitive faculty by the object” (SK 4).

On Fichte’s Copernican Turn By “Fichte’s Copernican turn” I will be referring to his revised version of Kant’s Copernican revolution. The main classical German idealists, including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and possibly Marx, as well as others, but not Schelling, who is an exception, can  all be depicted as participating in a post-Kantian effort to restate Kant’s Copernican turn. I have so far pointed to the relations between epistemic representationalism, epistemic constructivism, and metaphysical realism. Kant, as is his practice, multiplies terminology using different words to designate the same or very similar things.

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Representationalism is a synonym for metaphysical realism, or cognition of reality that Kant also refers to as the thing in itself, or noumenon. I have suggested that in the B edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, if not earlier, Kant rejects representationalism, or the correct depiction of the real, in favor of constructivism. Kantian constructivism, which features a theoretical subject, is a priori. Fichte’s position, which features a practical subject, is a posteriori. In initiating an anthropological transformation of the subject, Fichte follows but also transforms Kantian a priori constructivism into a posteriori constructivism in initiating an anthropological rethinking of the subject that Kant explicitly rejects. Kant, who holds that his position is misunderstood by his contemporaries, took steps to correct that misunderstanding. On the one hand, he wrote the Prolegomena, which was intended as a simplified version of his view. On the other, he created the basis of a theory about how to interpret a philosophical text in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Fichte’s position arises in his effort, which is visible throughout his writings, to present a plausible version of Kant’s position that both thinkers believe to be misunderstood. Kant suggests an original thinker often knows how to work with, but is unable to formulate, an original insight. Perhaps with that in mind, Fichte presents himself as the only one to understand the Critical philosophy, in any case as someone who understands it better than other contemporaries, even better than Kant. His view differs from Kant’s in numerous ways. Though Kant was one of the first philosophers to teach anthropology in Germany, in both his epistemic and moral writings, but not in his aesthetic texts, he typically seeks to isolate his philosophical conception of the subject from finite human being. In the Transcendental Deduction, in appealing to the difference between a quid facti and a quid juris, Kant “deduces,” or perhaps better argues in favor of, the subject as an epistemic function that is not and should not be conflated with a finite human being. Despite this and other differences between their positions, Fichte implies that he is the truest of Kantians, entirely faithful if not to the letter at least to the spirit of the Critical philosophy. Fichte’s rethinking of the theoretical subject as a finite human being totally transforms the Critical philosophy. In the transition from Kant to Fichte, the postKantian approach to cognition leaves behind the effort to describe the general conditions of cognition for the very different effort to describe how finite human beings know their surrounding world and themselves. In sum, Kant’s Copernican turn breaks with the causal approach to cognition in  suggesting that the cognitive subject cognizes the cognitive object it constructs a priori. But Fichte, writing in Kant’s wake, revises the Copernican turn in breaking with Kant’s approach to reality as the cause and the representation as its effect.

Fichte on the Subject of Cognitive Construction In rejecting representationalism, Kant turns attention from the object, or thing in itself, to the subject. Descartes was as important in mathematics as in philosophy. He provides a quasi-mathematical deduction of the conditions of knowledge in his

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epistemic foundationalism. In the interval between Descartes and Kant, the strictly mathematical Cartesian conception of deduction is simply discarded. In the Transcendental Deduction, Kant describes the general conditions of knowledge. He further claims to “deduce” the categories or so-called pure conditions of the understanding. The “Transcendental Deduction” culminates in the Kantian subject, or transcendental unity of apperception that constructs what it knows. The Kantian cognitive subject supposedly meets four conditions: to begin with, it constructs what it knows as a condition of knowledge. Second, it is the highest point of the deduction. Further, unlike the Lockean subject, it is not “physiological,” hence avoids what in Frege, Husserl, and others later comes to be called psychologism. Finally, the subject, or I think, must, as Kant obscurely says, “be able to accompany all my representations” (CPR B 132–3). In short, no subject, no representation. In revising the abstract Kantian subject on an anthropological basis, Fichte builds upon but also basically alters Kantian constructivism. The relation between Kantian and Fichtean forms of constructivism is obscured by Fichte’s hyperbole. Fichte implausibly claims to rigorously follow Kant, and even more implausibly asserts that the Critical philosophy follows from his own logically prior principles. Fichte does not “deduce” but rather describes the cognitive process. His view of the subject, hence his conception of its cognitive role, largely arises in reacting to Schulze and Reinhold in his “Review of Aenesidemus.” In his review, Fichte endorses Schulze’s criticism while rejecting his skeptical conclusions. He reformulates Reinhold’s principle as the claim that the “presentation [Vorstellung] is related to the object as an effect to its cause and to the subject as the accident to the substance” (AR EPW 72). Fichte’s precise view is stated in unnecessarily confusing and complex language, perhaps because Fichte himself was confused. We recall that an appearance is the effect of something given to mind. If representation were possible, it would rely on the backward anti-Platonic inference from effect to cause to claims to know, and hence correctly depict, reality. Kant denies that we can infer from the contents of mind the reality that he refers to as the noumenon or thing in itself. Fichte follows Kant on this important point. He employs representational terminology while limiting his cognitive claim to mere appearance, or an appearance to a subject that does not permit an inference to reality. Like Kant, he does not claim to know the real in limiting cognition to appearance, or again anything more than the object for us. According to Fichte, who describes his theory in quasi-phenomenological fashion, the contents of consciousness divide into two general classes: those accompanied by a feeling of freedom, for instance, one may speculate, imagining or free fantasy; and those accompanied by a feeling of necessity for which philosophy needs to provide an account. “The system of presentations [Vorstellungen] accompanied by a feeling of necessity is also called experience …. Philosophy, in other words, must therefore furnish the grounds of all experience” (SK 6). Fichte has in mind the explanation of the contents of consciousness dependent not on ourselves but on the external world, which limits our sphere of action. How is experience to be explained? The “Review of Aenesidemus,” in which Fichte provides the initial statement of what later becomes his original formulation of the

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Wissenschaftslehre, suggests Fichte takes the interaction between subject and object as his basic experiential model. In the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794), the initial and later most influential formulation of his position, he distinguishes four kinds of subject, or self. The term “self ” refers to the finite human being as practically limited through interaction with the surrounding world. This suggests that Fichte understands the finite human being as in practice situated within and as interacting with the surrounding world. “Absolute subject” or “absolute self ” refers to an individual considered in theoretical abstraction from the interaction between a human and the surroundings. Since the absolute self is not accompanied by a feeling of necessity, it cannot be an object of experience. This concept is invoked as a theoretical construct only in order to explain experience.

Fichte on the Active Subject The enormous attention to the role of the subject is a key feature in the modern tradition. At the dawn of the modern tradition, Montaigne and, following him, Descartes both present views of the subject as passive. Fichte argues for a very different, highly original view of the subject as always and basically active. He is constrained to do so by the logic of his argument that, following Kant’s Copernican turn, stresses the activity of the subject in constructing the object of cognition. Fichte holds, in disagreement with Kant, for whom the subject is unknowable, that each of us can immediately verify our own activity through “intellectual intuition.” Fichte further develops a theory of the interaction between subject and object, self and world. According to Fichte, subject and object stand in a relation of interdetermination. Each element of the interdetermination determines and is determined by the other. The self is active by definition, but only three basic forms of activity are possible. Either the subject acts in limiting the object, or it is limited by the object, or again it acts independently of the object. These three kinds of activity are respectively called positing, striving, and independent activity. To posit (setzen) literally means to set, to place, or to put (something). Positing is a positioning of something in regard to something else, and the term suggests opposition. Positing is the form of activity through which Fichte accounts for consciousness. Fichte employs this concept to refer to a supposedly necessary act that is inferred but not given in experience. “It is intended to express that Act [Thathandlung] which does not and cannot appear among the empirical states of our consciousness, but rather lies at the basis of all consciousness and alone makes it possible” (SK 93). According to Fichte, although positing cannot be experienced, it must nevertheless be thought. To strive (streben) means to struggle or aspire to, for, or after. Striving implies a perceived lack as well as an attempt to rectify it. Independent activity (unabhängige Thätigkeit) is in no sense determined by the subject–object relation, although it takes place within the bounds of this context. A presupposition is an idea or concept accepted without adequate justification or perhaps justification of any kind at the beginning of a line of argument or action.

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Modern thinkers like Descartes and Husserl sometimes claim to avoid presuppositions of any kind in their theories. Cartesian foundationalism notoriously begins in describing the cogito as a principle that must be accepted since it cannot be denied. Fichte employs the term “presupposition” in a nonstandard sense in attempting to justify the presupposition of his position. Fichte describes the claim that the self is absolutely and merely active as an “absolute presupposition” (SK 221). He argues in favor of this claim, which is hence not a presupposition, in claiming, as noted above, that the self is conscious of, thus able to verify, its activity. Selfhood and activity are synonymous terms. We remember that, in reacting to Kant, Fichte provides an anthropological rethinking of the subject as the basis of his theory. It follows that a self or individual is active, and to be active is to be a human being. Furthermore, a subject is not only active but also aware of its activity. Yet though a human being is aware of its activity or being active, it does not follow, and Fichte does not attempt to show, that a human being is aware of the specific kinds of activity through which it can be said to construct the contents of experience accompanied by a feeling of necessity. The Kantian categories are rules of synthesis that refer to forms of activity of the mind. Fichte replaces the Kantian categories through which the object is constructed with his own set of types of activity, or laws of the mind. Positing occurs according to the three fundamental principles depicted in the Science of Knowledge. The three fundamental principles, which describe the relation of subject and object, are identity, opposition, and grounding (or so-called quantitative limitation). These principles are quasi-logical laws in terms of which experience must occur, and that can be known as well as explained. Taken together these principles describe the unity and diversity, or identity and difference, of any cognitive object. Grounding should not be confused with the first principle, or the hypothesis that the self is active or activity, or again an epistemological ground in a Cartesian sense. Positing, and hence all experience, belongs to a single paradigm of dialectically rational development. It follows that conscious experience must conform to laws of the mind, and there is no limit to our knowledge of the content of consciousness accompanied by necessity.

A Note on Fichte’s Three Principles Fichte is, like Kant, a systematic thinker. He says that his system is the Kantian system presented in a different way. He further says that his revised version of the Kantian position needs to be judged not through its relation to the Critical philosophy, but rather through its own merits. We see this especially in his account of the three fundamental principles, which begins the exposition of his position. Kant, and following him Fichte, propose transcendental theories. The transcendental Deduction follows Leibniz’ view that perception requires the unity of a multiplicity.4 Kant transforms this Leibnizian insight view into the highest principle of human knowledge (CPR B135). He famously describes it as “The I think [that] must be able

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to accompany all my (re)presentations” (CPR B131–2). Kant’s point seems to be that there cannot be a cognitive object without the subject that accompanies it, by which it is constructed, and on which it depends. In other words, presentation (or representation) depends on the subject in which and to which it occurs as experience. Left unclear is the precise role the subject plays in either merely passively receiving or, on the contrary, as the Copernican turn suggests and Fichte makes explicit, in constituting the representation, in short in supposedly constituting reality. Fichte accords special attention to the three fundamental principles. They include, as noted above, in order the first, absolutely unconditioned principle that, in his words, is conditioned neither with respect to form nor content; then the second principle, conditioned as to content; and, finally, the third principle, conditioned as to form. These principles constitute Fichte’s reformulation of the Kantian view that consciousness forms a unity in respect to which experience occurs. What experience requires must meet three conditions or limits, including: an underlying unity or identity, which is identified by Leibniz, as well as difference, and, finally, the unity or identity of identity and difference that is anticipated by Parmenides and later becomes central in Hegel. Fichte’s account describes as well as speculatively reconstructs what from his perspective must occur for experience to be possible. According to Fichte, the first principle and the second principle both derive from a fact of empirical consciousness. The first principle, which is “absolutely primary,” hence depends on nothing prior to it, can neither be proven nor defined, but is the basis of all consciousness. This principle is an identity or unity that, as the basis of consciousness, underlies and makes possible all diversity in its role as the initial principle of conscious experience. We can infer that without a single unifying absolute subject, experience is not possible. According to Fichte, the second principle conditioned as to form is disunity, diversity, or difference, which is given in consciousness against the background of an underlying unity or identity. Since the subject is by definition a unity, Fichte describes diversity as the so-called not-self, or what the subject is not. In a dizzying set of remarks, he goes on to suggest that a necessary condition of experience is for the subject to contain what is not, in other words a divisible not-self, or again difference opposed to the self, in short the identity of identity and difference.

Fichte, Kant, and the Cognitive Subject Elsewhere I have argued that Fichte goes too far in seeking, perhaps under the influence of Reinhold, to derive everything from the subject (Rockmore 2016b). I do not want to repeat that argument here. The point Fichte brings out is that subject and object limit each other within the subject. I take Fichte to be suggesting that the final explanatory concept from which the entire theory is derived is what he calls the absolute self. I have argued that Kant presents representational and constructivist approaches to cognition. I have further argued that Fichte, like the mature Kant, adopts constructivism in place of representation as Kant understands it. According to Fichte, theory serves to explain practice. From Fichte’s perspective, the version of the Critical philosophy that depends on reality is unrelated to practice.

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Fichte’s effort to present the Kantian position in independence of Kant is both laudatory, since he thinks Kant makes a basic breakthrough through the shift to constructivism, as well as critical. Kant formulates the Copernican revolution since he thinks there has been no progress on the assumption that the subject depends on the object. He recommends as an experiment that the relation of subject and object be inverted so that the object is not independent of but rather dependent on the subject. Fichte approves the idea that the object depends on the subject, but thinks that Kant only goes half way so to speak, in any case not far enough. Fichte is especially critical of what, for the Königsberg thinker, is the indispensable but also unknowable thing in itself. According to Fichte, a theory based on anything other than the self is transcendent, hence dogmatic. It necessarily leads to skepticism, since it is based on what we must know but cannot know. Fichte favors a theory that, on the contrary, is wholly and solely based on the subject, hence immanent, or critical. In the final analysis, an approach to cognition through the subject shows that in practice we know objects only in so far as they pose limits to our activity. We do not know objects in themselves, but we can and do know them insofar as they are objects for us, or constructed through the interaction between subject and object. In this way Fichte develops the transition from a theoretical account of the general possibility of cognition to a descriptive account of cognition as it in fact occurs. This development both initiates and belongs to the post-Kantian anthropological turn in classical German philosophy.

Conclusion: Fichte, Kant, and the Copernican Turn This chapter has argued two points. On the one hand, Kant’s position includes incompatible approaches to knowledge that I have called representationalism, and that he explores and rejects, as well as constructivism, to which he barely refers but adopts. On the other hand, Fichte, like the later Kant, defends a version of what is sometimes designated as the Copernican turn, or the constructivist alternative to Kantian representationalism, while rejecting any form of the venerable claim to base cognition on metaphysical realism. The difference between Kantian and Fichtean constructivism is significant. Kant is concerned with demonstrating the general conditions of cognition. He does this in part by drawing attention to the distinction between finite human being and the abstract theoretical subject reduced to what is sometimes called an epistemic placeholder. Kant’s theory depends on a non- or even anti-anthropological conception of the subject he claims to deduce and variously describes as the transcendental unity of apperception, the original synthetic unity of apperception, and so on. Kant insists, and Husserl later insists, on the difference between an abstract conception of the cognitive subject to avoid conflating the logic and the psychology of cognition. Kant’s Copernican turn is intended as a solution to the cognitive problem that, however, fails in that, as Fichte, Hegel, Peirce, Dewey, and others later point out, human knowledge is made possible as well as limited by the practical limits of the human subject. The Kantian difficulty lies in part in invoking a philosophical subject as the condition of cognition. Fichte corrects this difficulty in replacing the Kantian deduction of

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the philosophical subject by finite human being. Though Fichte’s reformulation of the Copernican Revolution improves on Kant’s, it is also not a satisfactory solution to the cognitive problem. Fichte, like Kant, develops a causal view of experience and knowledge. In an important early remark on his relation, under Reinhold’s influence, to Schulze, also known as Aenesidemus, Fichte remarks that “rather than employing Aenesidemus’ terms, the reviewer [Fichte] would prefer to say that the [re]presentation is related to the object as the effect is related to its cause and to the subject as the accident is related to the substance” (AR EPW 72). This early statement already commits Fichte to the Copernican turn. The clue here is the change in the meaning of “(re)presentation.” Kant, as noted above, understands this term in traditional fashion as the accurate, hence correct, depiction of the cognitive object. Fichte understands the same term as referring not to the mind-independent object but rather to the object for us in experience. Fichte’s basic insight improves on Kant’s Copernican turn, but is covered up by his baroque language. Fichte holds the subject does not create the object ex nihilo. It rather constructs the object experienced by us through an interaction between subject and object, or subject and its surroundings. Kant invokes a philosophical subject that Fichte replaces through a finite human subject. The Fichtean subject is limited as well as unlimited: limited by its relation to the mind-external object and unlimited in its capacity for free action. This cardinal point, which appears to me to be both overly simplistic and incorrect, is also correctly contradicted by Fichte. In conceding that one cannot decide between idealism and dogmatism on rational grounds, he famously suggests that “What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is” (SK 16). In sum, Fichte cannot have it both ways. Either the subject is free in the philosophical sense and one can, in this way, explain the possibility of experience or, on the contrary, subject is always constrained within context. Rather than rely on the philosophical fiction of an absolute self, a better, more satisfactory explanation would rely on a view of the subject as always within, and hence in that sense constrained by, its surroundings.

Notes 1 DK 28 B 3, Clem. Alex. strom. 440, 12; Plot. Enn. 5, 1, 8 (Coxon et al 2009, 58). 2 See Burnyeat 2012, 255: “But the fragment (frag. 3), which was once believed, by Berkeley among others (Siris §309), to say that to think and to be are one and the same is rather to be construed as saying, on the contrary, that it is one and the same thing which is there for us to think of and is there to be: thought requires an object, distinct from itself, and that object, Parmenides argues, must actually exist.” 3 In the Dohna-Wundlacken Logic, presumably based on lectures given in the 1790s, hence in the critical period, he states that representation “cannot be explained at all” (LL 440). 4 See §14, in “Monadology,” in Leibniz 1957.

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Bibliography Bloom, Harold. 1997. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. Blumenberg, Hans. 1987. “What is Copernican in Kant’s Turning?” In The Genesis of the Copernican Revolution, translated by Robert M. Wallace, 595–614. Cambridge: MIT Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 2012. Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coxon, Allan H. and Richard McKirahan (eds., trs.). 2009. The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text With Introduction, and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary. Las Vegas / Zurich / Athens : Parmenides Publishing. Cramer, Konrad. 2014. “Das philosophische Interesse an der Geschichte der Philosophie.” In Subjektivität und Autonomie, edited by S. Land and L. T. Ulrics, 33–41. Berlin: De Gruyter. Friedman, Michael. 2013. Kant’s Construction of Nature: A reading of the Metaphysics Foundations of Modern Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Guyer, Paul. 2013. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jacobi, Friedrich H. 1815. Werke, vol. II. Leipzig: G. Fleischer. Kuehn, Manfred. 2011. Kant: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press. Leibniz, Gottfried W. 1957. Basic Writings, with an introduction by Paul Janet, translated by George R. Montgomery. La Salle: Open Court. Longuenesse, Beatrice. 1998. Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mourelatos, Alexander. 2008. The Route of Parmenides. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing. Rockmore, Tom. 2016a. German Idealism as Constructivism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rockmore, Tom. 2016b. “Fichte, Kant, the Cognitive Subject, and Epistemic Constructivism.” Revista de Estudios sobre Fichte (12), https://journals.openedition. org/ref/675 Russell, Bertrand. 1967. A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster/ Touchstone. Shapin, Steven. 1996. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wood, Allen W. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Fichte’s Reception of Kant’s Critique of Judgment Sebastian Gardner

Expositions recounting Fichte’s philosophical development in relation to Kant characteristically derive the primary motivation for the Wissenschaftslehre from Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR). The Wissenschaftslehre is commonly viewed as a creative sequitur to and transformative reworking of Kant’s Solution to the Third Antinomy, the famous footnote in Section III of the Groundwork that talks of the necessity of acting under the Idea of freedom (G [Ak 4:448n]), and the CPrR’s account of the Fact of Reason (Ak 5:31). Fichte is consequently regarded (depending on one’s reading) either as integrating the edifices of theoretical and practical reason with one another, or as subsuming Kant’s transcendental idealism under his practical philosophy: either Fichte begins with the I “as such” and advances to its theoretical and practical differentiation, or he begins with the I of practical reason and extrapolates its theoretical counterpart. This account agrees with Fichte’s own claim that the Wissenschaftslehre provides a unitary solution to problems in Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy that threaten to leave Kant’s insights indefensible in the face of its many forcible critics, and which must be solved either jointly and interdependently, or not at all. My aim in this chapter is not to contest but to enrich this picture, by showing what is gained by factoring in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (CJ) as no less formative for the development of the Wissenschaftslehre. The issue has both historical and systematic aspects. My approach will comprise an examination of Fichte’s earliest writings, followed by a broader account of how the CJ shapes and gives definition to Fichte’s philosophical project. What I will chiefly try to reveal is the extent to which the Wissenschaftslehre, in the 1794–5 SK and its later presentations, pursues a philosophical end which, on Fichte’s understanding, Kant had set himself in the CJ but failed to realize.

Aims of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790) At the end of the Introduction to the CJ, Kant defines a task which, he invites us to think, his previous works in Critical philosophy have not fulfilled. This task concerns the unification of the domains of Freedom and Nature, between which there lies “a great chasm,” eine unübersehbare Kluft (Ak 5:195). Completing the task will involve,

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as Kant presents it, no revision of the CPR’s epistemology and metaphysics, nor of the CPrR’s analysis of morality and deduction of the moral law; nor will it require revisiting the solution to the problem of the compatibility of Freedom and Nature given in the Third Antinomy. The need for further work is not immediately obvious, but as Kant explains it in the Introduction to the CJ—an exceptionally intricate piece, pitched at a high synoptic level—it centers on the extent to which his theoretical and practical philosophy can be said thus far to jointly form a systematic whole. Kant grants that in some respect this is something that remains to be established. What it amounts to is best understood in retrospect, once we have seen how Kant attempts to execute his newly defined task. What affords Kant opportunity for his new undertaking are two determinate species of judgment not yet treated in Critical philosophy, each of which requires a critique of its own: aesthetic judgments (of beauty and sublimity, in nature and fine art) and teleological judgments (of natural organisms, in both ordinary thinking and the life sciences). In these regards, the CJ comprises a supplement, extending the range of Critical philosophy and thereby fortifying the case for it. The contribution of Kant’s new critiques of aesthetic and teleological judgment to the overarching purpose of the work, however, lies in the way that each is shown to combine, in its own distinctive way, elements from the two domains of Freedom and Nature. Aesthetic experience and organic nature, on Kant’s analysis, interlace Freedom and Nature in ways that have no analogues in empirical cognition of mechanical nature, or in moral and other practical judgment. What does undergo revision in the CJ is the claim, sketched in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) and treated at length in the Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR), that the theological postulates of God and personal immortality are sufficient to unify Freedom and Nature with respect to their competing claims on our practical reason. The CJ does not revoke their necessity as a condition for securing the unity of virtue and happiness that constitutes for us the Highest Good, but it does impose a further condition, namely, that we must have positive grounds, firmer than those offered by Kant, for believing that Nature will cooperate with our moral strivings. In relation to Fichte, the most important points concerning Kant’s execution of his project in the CJ may be summarized as follows. Kant now isolates the power of judgment, in abstraction from its specifically theoretical and practical forms, as a topic for investigation, and draws a fundamental distinction between its two fundamental species, called determinative and reflective. The former subsumes intuitions (of particulars) under given concepts (universals), while the latter seeks concepts for given intuitions. Kant asks what principle might belong to the power of judgment itself, and answers that it is the principle of the purposiveness of nature for our power of judgment (hereafter, PNJ). This principle, though presupposed for all judgment, is most clearly manifest in the two spheres where the reflective dimension of judgment is to the fore, namely the aesthetic and the teleological. These are contexts in which experience presents us with particulars that strike us as too rich in their significance to be encapsulated under the principles of the understanding. Aesthetic judgment, or more precisely the sub-form of reflective aesthetic judgment that constitutes the judgment that an object is beautiful, evidences PNJ in feeling—an element in our cognitive life which, like judgment itself, has hitherto not received independent

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treatment, but which Kant now identifies as a power of its own, and which he specifies narrowly as a capacity for feeling either pleasure or displeasure. The connection of PNJ with pleasure in the beautiful is established via Kant’s innovative thesis that satisfaction in the beautiful consists in the consciousness of an object’s mere formal purposiveness. Teleological judgments of particular objects, living beings, as “natural ends” (Naturzwecke), in which the relation of the parts to the whole is reciprocal and cannot be reduced to relations of mechanism, manifest PNJ in a different form, which is conceptual and objective rather than intuitive and subjective. Natural organisms are such that their constitution can be grasped, Kant maintains, only on the model of a rational agent’s active realization of a concept of an end in the production of an object. That is to say, organisms must be treated as instances of purposiveness, even though, as Kant labors to emphasize, we are not to take them as theoretical evidence for the existence of a Divine Author. Having shown how the concept of purposiveness gets its initial purchase on Nature in the contexts of aesthetics and teleology, Kant conjoins this new thesis with the argument he had used earlier to support his moral theology—his proof of the necessity of postulating God and immortality as conditions of the Highest Good. He extrapolates the notion that Nature can be seen under the aspect of a “moral teleology.” This is to say that the natural world can and must be regarded as receptive to our endeavors to realize our moral ends, in some empirically indefinite yet practically significant sense. One final element, which has no neat linear place in Kant’s argument but arguably represents the high point of the CJ as a whole, is of supreme importance for Fichte. In the course of attempting to show the compatibility of teleological with mechanical judgments of Nature, Kant introduces in §§76–7 (Ak 5:401–10)—passages of vital importance for Schelling and Hegel as well as Fichte—the concept of an “intuitive intellect”: a mode of cognition, by implication attributable to God alone, in which cognition of the Whole necessarily precedes cognition of individual parts, and for which there is no distinction of the actual from the possible, hence, no distinction of Is from Ought.

Fichte’s First Kantian Project: Getting to Grips with the Critique of Judgment (1790–1791) Fichte’s letters from 1790, in which he describes his conversion to Kant’s philosophy, make clear that it is above all the moral part of Kant’s philosophy that has effected a revolution in his way of thinking (EPW 357 and 360 [GA III/1, no. 63 and no. 70a]).1 Evidence of its decisiveness is provided by a comparison of Fichte’s correspondence in the fall of 1790 with the brief summation of his theological views that he had composed earlier that summer. In these “Einige Aphorismen über Religion und Deismus. Fragment” (“Aphorisms on Religion and Deism: A Fragment”) Fichte had asserted that unrestricted necessitarianism is unavoidable, a conviction he had held for several years,2 and claims that the best possible case to be made for human freedom is the one to be found in the argument for the thesis given in Kant’s Third Antinomy, but that this at most explicates the concept of freedom in the weak sense

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of showing it to be coherent, while falling short of proving it to be an actual human attribute. No such claim, Fichte argues, can possibly be derived from the first principles of human knowledge (ARD [GA II/1:289–90 Anm.]). However, in a letter to Weißhuhn from August/September 1790, having completed his education in Kantianism, these reservations had been eliminated: “Things have been proven to me which I thought never could be proven – for example, the concept of absolute freedom, the concept of duty, etc.” (EPW 357 [GA III/1, no. 63]). Fichte had therefore, within an extraordinarily short timespan, utterly changed his view of what comprises the first principles of human knowledge (and presumably also of what counts as philosophical proof). In the same letter, the CJ is hailed as no less convincing than Kant’s other Critiques, and Fichte shortly thereafter selected it as the topic of what was intended to comprise his first philosophical publication, a relatively unambitious elucidation and defense of the CJ on the model of a recently published guidebook to the CPR that Fichte had found impressive.3 The limited surviving portion that Fichte completed—Versuch eines erklärenden Auszugs aus Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft (Attempt at an Elucidation of Part of Kant’s Critique of Judgment) (1790–1) [VKdU [GA II/1:324–73]]—covers only the Introduction and the Analytic of the Beautiful. It reads as a largely faithful summary exposition of Kant’s text, giving little sign of the intense difficulties that Fichte had in fact encountered in his engagement with the work, which he describes in later letters to Weißhuhn as obscure and at points seemingly contradictory (GA III/1, no. 65 and no. 69). Unsurprisingly, Fichte complains in particular of the Introduction as posing difficulties of understanding and as requiring distillation. Though Fichte’s initial intention for the book had been modest, he begins to talk of finding another route to Kant’s results, of offering an alternative (albeit not necessarily superior) perspective on the same ideas, and of a methodological reorganization that would reveal the wholeness for which Kant had aimed in the CJ. Having devoted nearly six months to the project and failing to secure a publisher, Fichte effectively abandoned it in April 1791.4 The sources of Fichte’s frustration with the CJ, and his notion of what might be needed to resolve them, can be extrapolated from the points in his treatment of the CJ’s Introduction where—though he does not signal any departure from Kant—he either nudges Kant’s ideas in certain directions or amplifies Kant’s reasoning. Fichte reaffirms Kant’s claim that there is a gulf between Freedom and Nature, which it is the task of the CJ to traverse, but with an important change of emphasis. Making clear something that, if intended in any robust sense, Kant would have rejected, Fichte asserts that the transition from the mode of thinking appropriate to the domain of Freedom to that of Nature can be made intelligible only if we possess a contentful concept of the unitary ground of both domains, and that our concept of this “Vereinigungspunct” (point of unification) must be neither theoretical nor practical (VKdU [GA II/1:329–30 and 345–6]). We can arrive at this concept only through the principle of reflective judgment, which, equipped with the concept of purpose, is appropriately intermediate between the two domains, and which allows us to postulate a grounding of Nature in Freedom (as its Grund rather than Ursache). This will allow us to regard the laws of nature as purposive for the final end of Freedom, reassuring practical reason that our moral self-determination will have effects in the sensible world (VKdU [GA II/1:345–6]).

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The crux concerns what Fichte takes to support the idea that Nature at its base is susceptible to being brought into agreement with the legislation of Freedom. Fichte attempts to meet this challenge by showing that PNJ is as much of a genuinely transcendental principle as those that the understanding legislates to mechanical nature. Taking the argument right back to the Transcendental Deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason, Fichte argues that the primary elements of our cognition are atomic, i.e., without any internal or strictly given relation to one another, but that their interrelation is required for the unity of self-consciousness, and that this interrelation  requires that their content exhibit lawfulness, i.e., systematicity (VKdU [GA II/1:335–7]). Nature’s purposivity is therefore a condition for the “I think.” Without it, the Kluft that Kant describes as separating Freedom from Nature would reappear between each of our representations. Therefore, what distinguishes PNJ as a transcendental condition from the principles of the understanding, is only the relative indirectness of the route by which it brings what is given to us a posteriori into agreement with what is required a priori. The strategy of grounding the unity of Freedom and Nature on the fundamental unity of the I itself, rather than reducing it to relations among the powers and principles of the subject, anticipates, of course, the Wissenschaftslehre.

Fichte’s Second Kantian Project: Freedom and Nature in the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792–1793) Fichte’s Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (ACR) (1792; 2nd edn. 1793), ostensibly concerned with a theological topic, concentrates intensively on the problem of Freedom and Nature, which Fichte considers more acute than Kant has realized, and gives him an opportunity to develop the ideas he had begun to form in his study of the CJ. If Fichte is right, then even if the CJ contains what is needed to solve the problem as Kant chooses to conceive it, it does not solve the deeper problem to which it nevertheless points. This helps to explain Fichte’s selection of revelation as a topic for his first published exercise in Kantian philosophy, and also the somewhat surprising upshot of what presents itself as an arch-Kantian work: namely that religion—understood in Fichte’s particular way—is of greater importance than Kant had supposed. What Fichte believes can be salvaged from Christian religion with respect to its true meaning, rather than its doctrines, goes beyond what Kant himself, in his forthcoming Religion book, will claim. The crucial point lies in moral motivation.5 Without saying as much, Fichte implies that Kant’s reconciliation of the competing demands of the moral law and our need for happiness is inadequate. The antinomy of practical reason in Fichte’s amplified version takes the following form: The moral law accords a right to all that is not forbidden. Thus, if the law is silent regarding a certain drive or impulse (Trieb) or what Kant calls inclination (Neigung), then it is implicitly justified: “To everything that is not wrong, I have a right” (ACR 24 [GA I/1:150]). The justification that reason accords inclination can be expected to be incorporated within it: though the law’s own determination is “negative” and not “positive,” since it does no more than give permission, it thereby conditions the inclination, in such a way that the moral law

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gives rise to “lawfulness of impulse.” But of course the demands of the moral law may conflict with inclination; duty may require the sacrifice of one’s life. The problem in such cases is not that natural drives clash with reason’s directives, but that reason’s law threatens to contradict itself: having granted a right to life and happiness (in so far as inclination is worthy of happiness, i.e., has allowed itself to be conditioned by the law), reason cannot without inconsistency revoke it. Transcendental idealism offers itself as a first attempt at a solution. If the objects of sensuous inclination are appearances, not things in themselves, then there is a sense in which the loss involved in moral sacrifice is not ultimately real. Fichte affirms accordingly that transcendental idealism is “just as surely a postulate of practical reason as a theorem of theoretical reason” (ACR 25 [GA I/1:150]). However, though necessary, transcendental idealism is not sufficient to remove the contradiction, for, Fichte reminds us, the law justifies the inclination “as such,” i.e., precisely as appearance: “His impulse to life, justified by the law, demands back the right as appearance, hence in time” (ACR 26 [GA I/1:151]). We now see that what is required for a full solution is something further, and which belongs squarely within the orbit of the CJ: The lawfulness of impulse, then, requires the complete congruency of the fortunes of a rational being with his moral behaviour […, i.e.,] that that appearance always ensue which would have had to ensue if the impulse had been determined legitimately by the moral law and had been legislative for the world of appearances. (ACR 26–7 [GA I/1:152])

This is, Fichte declares, “the first postulate of practical reason applying to sensuous beings” (ACR 26 [GA I/1:152]) and it resolves what he describes as a hitherto unnoticed and unresolved problem in Kantian philosophy, concerning “how it is possible to relate the moral law, which in itself is applicable only to the form of will of moral beings as such, to appearances in the world of sense” (ACR 27 [GA I/1:152]). It is now clear that Fichte’s differences from Kant go deep. Fichte has claimed that the moral form of nature is a primary assumption for our reason as a whole; it constitutes an integral part of the solution to the Third Antinomy, and it cannot be merely annexed late in the day in the form of a merely regulative moral teleology. What was merely hinted at in the Versuch, in the CJ has thus received more definite formulation. Modifying the order followed by Kant, the next step of Fichte’s argument yields theology, or rather, for Fichte emphasizes the distinction, religion, which connects belief directly with the will. In consequence of having accorded inclination a right to satisfaction, reason is also committed to the “assertion,” Behauptung, of this right, meaning that morality must “not only command” but must also “prevail” in Nature (ACR 29 [GA I/1:21]). The enforcing of this right—in which “moral necessity and absolute physical freedom are united”—can only be the effect of a self-active moral being. Hence, “there is a God” (ACR 29 [GA I/1:21]). One crucial modification to Kant that Fichte makes in completing the final step of this argument reflects his internalization of the CJ (ACR 32–8 [GA I/1:23–30]). Kant’s exposition of his moral theology in the CJ tends to blur, as commentators have noted, two considerations that Fichte neatly separates out. One concerns what is required by

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my egocentric commitment to fulfilling my duty, given the impossibility of silencing the voice of Nature within me. Another concerns the moral fate of the world at large. Fichte explicates the latter—my concern that, aside from what I do and suffer, Right should prevail in general—by reintroducing, but on new grounds, Kant’s notion of a moral-teleological world-view.6 An apprehension of the world that of course presupposes an original volitional commitment to the moral law, since a being lacking moral motivation would be unable to see the world under the aspect of right or wrong, but that is at the same time disengaged from my will; necessarily so, since the moral condition of the world does not depend on my actions alone. In terms of its systematic place, this moral-teleological world-vision intermediates between aesthetic satisfaction and actual agency, and on Fichte’s account it is crucial for the deduction of God. The concrete requirements of the moral law “in a nature like ours” would fail to engage our will if we had no assurance that the moral law has universal efficacy, i.e., efficacy with respect not merely to the “right in us” but also to “the right outside us” (ACR 35 [GA I/1:27]). Though Nature is not, and can never become, intrinsically moral, the rule of morality must nonetheless be “universally effective for” it (ACR 37 [GA I/1:28]). By way of justification for what might seem a hyperbolic estimate of what morality requires, Fichte argues that moral requirements will otherwise appear chimeric, since theoretical reason, having no reason to think moral concepts of possible relevance to Nature, will judge that it is irrational to try to “make possible something that is impossible” (ACR 36 [GA I/1:27]). The resulting conflict of practical and theoretical reason would leave moral motivation dependent on psychological disposition, i.e., a contingent matter of which of the two faculties, reason or inclination, happens to predominate in one’s psyche. We see that Fichte has raised the stakes, with the result that the project of unifying Freedom and Nature needs to be extended further than it had been in CJ. If theoretical and practical reason are not to contradict one another, and if what Kant calls “the sole fact of pure reason” (Ak 5:31) is disallowed from shrinking to a mere psychological fact, destroying the moral law,7 then Nature must have moral form in a stronger sense than Kant affirms.8 What stands in question is how things “ought to be,” as distinct from what we ought to do (ACR 33 [GA I/1:24]), and in so far as being is at issue, theoretical reason is implicated. Transcendental idealism must not be compromised, yet there must be more to Nature—in its background or Grund, if not at its phenomenal surface— than the Aesthetic and Analytic that the CPR has provided for. The net effect (to some degree already intimated by Fichte’s claim that it is possible to ground transcendental idealism in practical reason) is to impose demands on theoretical reason that it is obliged to accommodate, contra Kant, who had supposed that the results of theoretical philosophy can be held constant throughout the subsequent exposition of practical philosophy. Thus, although Fichte’s explicit terms of reference in ACR stick to a binary division of philosophy into the practical and theoretical, Fichte is veering toward a philosophical system with the triadic shape projected in the outline, but not filled out, in the CJ. The concept of revelation that ACR aims to validate, we see, has two aspects. One concerns the official topic of the work: the miracles and suchlike of Scripture, where

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the supersensible is conceived as intervening in the sensible world in the shape of an external happening cognized a posteriori. The other concerns an a priori unity of Freedom and Nature. The conception of God as grounding the moral law by way of command, which revealed religion associates with the miraculous, presupposes what Fichte calls an “alienation of what is ours [eine Entäusserung des unserigen]” (ACR 41, translation modified [GA I/1:33]). This transposition and externalization of our subjectivity into something outside us, Fichte argues, is rationally defensible, but only in indirect and conditional respects:9 what is primary, and philosophically fundamental, is instead the a priori form of revelation. The true meaning and warrant of religion consists therefore in consciousness of the necessary unity of Freedom and Nature.10 (Note that, in so far as this implies that religion has no definite doctrinal content or necessary institutional reality, the Atheismusstreit is already in the making.) An orthodox Kant might fairly object that the stronger version of Kantianism that Fichte has indicated he considers necessary is, thus far, merely programmatic. What motivates and enables Fichte to take the huge, further step involved in constructing the Wissenschaftslehre is his engagement with the deep issues raised by Maimon and Schulze regarding Kant’s theoretical philosophy and Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie (Philosophy of the Elements). Here too the CJ conditions Fichte’s perception of the task he faces: Fichte regards the CJ as having raised the measure of philosophical adequacy from the level at which it stood in the earlier Critiques, heightening the significance of the problems of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. A correspondingly large-scale resolution is demanded. What is required to rescue the CPR from its critics converges on what is required by Kant’s practical reason.11 Thus, when Fichte in his Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie (Private Meditations on the Philosophy of the Elements) (1793–94) examines Reinhold’s system—which, significantly, had been developed before the CJ appeared—we see him drawn to the idea that philosophical systematicity must be triadic in the sense of resting on a Vereinigungspunct that is neither merely theoretical nor merely practical.12

Freedom and Nature in The Science of Knowledge (1794–1795) In the ACR Fichte formulates his concept of the ground of the unity of the domains of Freedom and Nature by way of reflection on religion.13 In the The Science of Knowledge, it is reconceived in terms of the absolute Ich. Without embarking on an exposition of the Wissenschaftslehre, some general observations can be made concerning the respects in which it is shaped by the CJ—as Fichte signals in his programmatic prospectus for its first presentation, Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre, published in May 1794: “The author remains convinced that no human understanding can advance further than that boundary on which Kant, especially in the Critique of Judgment, stood, and which he declared to be the final boundary of finite knowing – but without ever telling us specifically where it lies [die er uns aber nie bestimmt]” (EPW 95 [GA I/2:110]). We may start with Kant’s notion that certain principles are fit for only “regulative” or “reflective” use, by which he indicates a suspension of ontological commitment.

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The strategy of reconstruing judgments that are naturally taken as affirming the reality of the objects to which they are directed, as functions of the subject’s mode of cognition, or of the internal relations of its components, is employed initially in the CPR’s treatment of Vernunft. It returns, in a stronger form, in the Introduction to the CJ, when it is reaffirmed that the power of judgment’s own principle, PNJ, is connected first and foremost with the power of feeling, a species of representation that lacks objective purport and rests on a self-relation. The result is to introduce a new and stronger sense in which human cognition is subjective: objects of cognition are transcendentally ideal not only in the sense of being given in space and time, with all that that implies regarding the categories and principles of possible experience, but also in the further sense that even the constitutive employment of concepts of the understanding stands under the more basic condition that Nature is assumed to be purposive for our cognition—a principle which is however itself merely reflective, i.e., validated exclusively by the needs and interest of our power of judgment. This is a deeper Copernicanism than that which Kant had propounded in the (B-)Preface to the CPR, where his claim was only that knowable objects must conform to our cognition (Ak 3:xvi): the stronger claim of the CJ is that this very relation—the reference of knowable objects to our mode of cognition—must be understood in terms of our mode of cognition’s relation to itself. The Wissenschaftslehre can be understood as extending this strategy to the limit and making its implications explicit—to a point where, if Fichte is right, transcendental idealism throws off its subjectivism and abandons Kant’s rhetoric of epistemological modesty while simultaneously disposing of the idea that the domain of Freedom is in any way ontologically deficient in relation to that of Nature. If all relations to objects simpliciter are understood as self-relations in the way proposed in the Wissenschaftslehre, then the Copernican shift to subjectivity involves none of the recessing from reality that Kant supposes it to require. It follows in addition—if self-relations are primary and determine comprehensively what it is for us to be related to objects, and what it is for objects as such to themselves have being—that there can be no fundamental sense in which the reality of the practical objects that populate the domain of Freedom is inferior to those in Nature. This development can be made more definite if we attend to the ways in which Fichte recasts the two key concepts employed in the Introduction of the CJ: reflective judgment and purposiveness. When judgment is exercised in its reflective capacity, following Kant’s definition, we find ourselves presented with objects in intuition for which we seek concepts, while the principle of reflective judgment assures us that relevant concepts can be found, whereby it is implied—though not asserted as such, since it does not belong to the actual content of the principle—that there is a ground for this epistemological necessity (if not, then the principle would reduce to a mere reassertion of epistemological need). In the Introduction to the CJ, the ground itself remains completely indeterminate. Our only routes of approach to it are via the idea of Nature as a law-governed systematic totality, and via whatever concept we may be able to form of the ground that makes possible a transition in our mode of thinking from the domain of Freedom to that of Nature.

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Connectedly, with regard to the concept of purpose too, Kant draws a limit to what can be done with it. The fully general concept of purpose is that of an idea, concept, or representation’s causing the existence of an object that it subsumes, or in which it is realized. Deployment of this concept in the CJ leaves us in the position of knowing on one hand the morally good will (or humanity qua the moral law) to be the only thing that we can represent as an end in itself. On the other hand we are also, on Kant’s account, required to employ the concept of purpose without moral reference, as we do in our conceptualization of natural organisms, and in reflective judgment’s overarching PNJ. To be sure, we can think of the ultimate end of our use of theoretical reason as lying in practical reason, and to that extent the morally Good can serve as a final unification point for a system of purposes; but in saying this we continue to presuppose a non-moral concept of purpose, in so far as systematicity has been invoked as the justification for according the morally Good this privileged role. It is clear that the concept of purpose cannot be identified with that of the morally Good. Our original situation of confronting a Kluft between Freedom and Nature that needs to be straddled is not purposive, and the existence of this Kluft is a precondition of the morally Good, so the morally Good cannot make it purposive. It follows that whatever understanding we might achieve of how the growth of natural scientific knowledge, the cultivation of fine art, and so on, contribute to the moral Good, we will never be able to conceive the original differentiation of our cognitive powers—the division of their domains— as purposive. Therefore, the concept of purpose that we employ when we say that theoretical reason exists “for the sake of ” our practical vocation cannot be resolved fully into moral concepts. (The ultimate explanation of the impossibility of a full systematic unification of the concepts of purpose and the morally good is that moral goodness, on Kant’s account, cannot be identified with unity or wholeness. This distinction was a condition for his emancipation of morality from rationalist perfectionism.) For the reasons just given, no general system of purposes encompassing both theoretical and practical reason is thinkable in Kant’s terms. The concept of an unconditioned totality of ends is incoherent. However, this does not make Kant’s system inconsistent, nor does it undermine Kant’s claim to have united the domains of Freedom and Nature, to the qualified extent that Kant thinks required. It does mean that the CJ leaves us with two distinct and disjoined end-points and a corresponding philosophical double vision. On the one hand, we know that the good will is the only thing we can represent as an end in itself, and on the other, that our rational powers in their entirety operate under a concept of purpose that must be taken as given and that it cannot in principle take itself to realize. Whatever unity our cognitive faculty may achieve by using the concept of purpose, it cannot grasp itself as being its own purpose. The points just indicated, at which Kant sets a limit to systematic unification, are eliminated or sublimated in the Wissenschaftslehre in a way that removes the double vision (and restores something of rationalist perfectionism). The role that Kant had assigned to the principle of reflective judgment is overtaken in the Wissenschaftslehre’s derivation of Nature from its three fundamental principles, while the transition from the unsolved contradictions of the Theoretical Part of the 1794–95 SK to the Practical Part allows the purposiveness of Nature for our cognition to be understood in terms of the purposiveness of the subject for herself. The absorption of object-relations

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überhaupt into a self-relation makes possible a contemporaneous deduction of Nature and of Freedom in the form of the moral law. And this self-relation has a single, final characterization: its concept is simply that of the pure I, whose principle is “I am absolutely, because I am [Ich bin schlechthin, weil ich bin]” (SK 99 [GA I/2:260]). It can accordingly be understood why, in his reading of the CJ, the concept of formal purposiveness should have struck Fichte as of special importance. The necessary formal purposiveness of nature that Fichte had deduced in VKdU becomes Ichheit in the Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte’s theory of the I is as much a development of Kant’s model of the aesthetic subject of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, as it is of the self-legislating subject of the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant’s practical self-relation expresses an opposition between the self as it is, and the self as it ought to be, which is sublated in Kant’s account of the experience of beauty as a condition, an account in which the object-directed and self-directed sensible and intellectual faculties are in harmony. The internal harmony itself, and the subject’s cognition thereof, sustain one another. This model of the aesthetic subject reappears at two different points in the Wissenschaftslehre: in the concept of the absolute Ich, whose self-relation, if brought to full consummation, would place it beyond the sphere of the practical (it would be neither theoretical nor practical); and in the later Jena Wissenschaftslehre’s theory of the self as a unity of the ethical drive and Naturtrieb. The Wissenschaftslehre can also be understood as carrying over the intuitive intellect of §§76–7 of the CJ. We saw that in the VKdU Fichte made the formal purposiveness of Nature a condition for the “I think.” In this context he also affirmed that an intuitive intellect must be presupposed. Since our own understanding is not what gives Nature its laws, which can only be discovered a posteriori, it must be assumed that these have already been given by another Verstand; so the principle of the reflective power of judgment requires us to judge the manifold of empirical perception as if it arose in accordance with certain laws that have been given with the intention of our making out of them a connected whole in experience (VKdU [GA II/1:333]). And if the formal purposiveness is necessary and sufficient for us to avoid the Kluft which would otherwise destroy the Ich, and if the intuitive intellect is a condition for this formal purposiveness, then the intuitive intellect is a condition for Ichheit. The next question concerns the exact way in which Ichheit is related to the intuitive intellect. They cannot be simply identified, for although the Ich may take over the dimension of the intuitive intellect described in §77—that of providing a prior Whole out of which parts are carved (Ak 5:407)—it does not exhibit the dimension described in §76—the sublation of the distinctions of the actual from the possible, and hence of Is from Ought (Ak 5:402–3). Since the 1794–5 SK concludes with the knowledge that all thought and volition stand under an overarching Sollen, Fichte upholds the final separateness of Is and Ought. At the same time, however, Fichte has reinterpreted this distinction. What may be said, if we allow ourselves to momentarily employ Spinozistic vocabulary to elucidate Fichte, is that the Ich grasps the intuitive intellect under the attribute of Ought, or alternatively, that the I is the intuitive intellect qua Oughtness-to-Be, Seinsollen;14 in a manner characteristic of Fichte’s metacritically self-conscious raising of Kantianism to a higher power, a distinction that Kant treats

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as subordinate—Kant regards the distinction of Ought from Is as merely derived from our cognitive limitation—has been shifted up a level. In conclusion, what the 1794–5 SK has achieved in relation to the CJ may be understood as follows. Kant asks for “a concept of a ground of the unity” of Freedom and Nature, but leaves it undecided which concept in the CJ is supposed to play this role. Several concepts of the supersensible are employed. In the First Introduction, a supersensible ground of the lawfulness of Nature is mentioned (Ak 20:218). Later the sublime is said to “lead the concept of nature to a supersensible substratum (which grounds both it and at the same time our faculty for thinking)” (Ak 5:255). In the Solution to the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment (Ak 5:340–2), Kant posits a relation between the supersensible ground of Nature and that of the moral human subject; and in the Solution to the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment, he posits a supersensible ground of the unity of mechanism and teleology in Nature (Ak 5:412–15). But none of these can be the concept which the Introduction asks for. Therefore, it seems that we have, on Kant’s account, no single concept of the supersensible The most that can be said regarding the relations of Kant’s several supersensibles is that we are permitted to identify them, an identification for which, however, we have no positive contentful concept. To the extent that any concept of a ground of unity is supplied in the CJ, it is that of the purposivity of nature for all our cognitive powers. This concept has various correlates—our several ideas of the different supersensibles, and of the intuitive intellect, which belong to a single architectonic—but the concept itself adds little to the simple operation of the power of judgment. “Taking nature to be purposive” appears to be only notionally distinct from simply engaging in the activity of judging. Kant may have amplified in the CJ our understanding of the different forms that judgment may take, but he cannot be said to have supplied insight into the ground of judgment as such. In this light, Kant’s solution to what at the outset seemed to set a task of considerable magnitude seems vanishingly thin. Returning now to Fichte, we can see immediately how substantial the achievement of the SK is. The Wissenschaftslehre unifies at a stroke the Kantian manifold of supersensibles and absorbs Kant’s concepts of reflective judgment and purposivity. The concept of a ground of unity we have been seeking is the concept of the pure Ich, in which Zweckmäßigkeit is realized.

Freedom and Nature in the Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre (1796–1799) The later Jena presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre does not conform to the same pattern as the 1794–95 SK, but works forward from the original construction of the concept of the I—via the ideas of self-reverting activity, self-determination, drive, feeling, and so on—to the conception of oneself as an embodied, practically striving being located in space, subject to an “ought” and summoned to freedom. The final upshot—the “complete synthesis” with which the task of the Wissenschaftslehre is “fully accomplished”—reads as a direct answer to the question that Kant had posed in the Introduction of the CJ:

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Both the rational world and the sensible world interact with themselves; again, they reciprocally interact with each other, and they also appear [to us] to do so. First of all, nature and freedom mesh with each other within articulated bodies. This occurs by means of the freedom of the individual, and this is how freedom as a whole operates within the whole of nature. Conversely, articulated bodies are first produced by nature; therefore, as judged from the usual viewpoint, nature produces the very possibility of reason and [consequently] intrudes into the realm of rational being. (FTP 464/WLnm[H] [GA IV/2:260])

At a much later date, when the Wissenschaftslehre had entered yet another phase of development, Fichte looked back and gave his final assessment of the CJ: The way his decisive and only truly meaningful works, the three critiques, come before us, Kant has made three starts. In the Critique of Pure Reason, his absolute (x) is sensible experience [ … In the CPrR] we get the second absolute, a moral world = z. Still, not all the phenomena that are undeniably present in self-observation have been accounted for; there still remains the notions of the beautiful, the sublime, and the purposive, which are evidently neither theoretical cognitions nor moral concepts. Further, and more significantly, with the recent introduction of the moral world as the one world in itself, the empirical world is lost, as revenge for the fact that the latter had initially excluded the moral world. And so the Critique of Judgment appears, and in its Introduction, the most important part of this very important book, we find the confession that  the sensible and supersensible worlds must come together in a common but wholly unknown root, which would be the third absolute = y. I say a third absolute, separate from the other two and self-sufficient, despite the fact that it is supposed to be the connection of both other terms; and I do not thereby treat Kant unjustly. Because if this y is inscrutable, then while it may indeed always contain the connection, I at least can neither comprehend it as such, nor collaterally conceive the two terms as originating from it. If I am to grasp it, I must grasp it immediately as absolute, and I remain trapped forever, now as before, in the (for me and my understanding) three absolutes. Therefore, with this final decisive addition to his system, Kant did not in any way improve that which we owe to him, he only generously admitted and disclosed it himself. (SK1804 31–2 [GA II/8:27, 30–2])

Fichte’s verdict, though harsh in tone, simply spells out a view that, as we have seen, he had formed in his very first encounter with the CJ, confirming the key role it had played in leading Fichte to the elevated point he later took himself to occupy. Of the several topics in Fichte’s Jena writings—such as Fichte’s aesthetics, his concept of Naturtrieb, and his theory of natural teleology15—that deserve discussion on account of the way in which they transform relations of Freedom and Nature that Kant had allowed to remain contingent upon relations of necessary harmony, I will conclude with some remarks on a topic whose relation to the CJ has received little attention, namely Fichte’s theory of intersubjectivity.

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In Kant’s practical philosophy, intersubjectivity is subordinated to a selfrelation: my relation to others is conceived under the aspect of my self-legislation. This theme comes into its own, however, in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, where intersubjective claim-making—placing demand on others—is identified as what most fundamentally distinguishes taste from pleasure in the merely agreeable. In the aesthetic sphere we relate to one another first and foremost as sharing a sensus communis (§40, Ak 5:293–6). It is part of the sense of a judgment of taste that it is directed, not at the object judged beautiful (in praising the rose, we do not address it), and not originally at oneself (aesthetic judgment is not a case of self-determining or self-knowing), but toward other human beings. This notion is incorporated in Kant’s thesis that it is precisely recognition of the universal communicability of the feeling of pleasure in the beautiful that allows the judgment of taste to be considered an instance of universally valid reflective aesthetic judgment. This conception of a judgment of taste becomes, in Fichte’s ground-breaking treatment of intersubjectivity in FNR (1796–97), the primitive Aufforderung that at once facilitates consciousness of myself as an effective agent, and cognition of the existence of others, a communicative act which, though deriving from freedom and reason, must necessarily realize itself in natural form. The general notion of acting on others in a way that renders me present to their consciousness, yet has no coercive quality and instead elicits their own actualization of their own freedom, had in point of fact been employed by Fichte prior to his encounter with Kant’s philosophy.16 But there can be no doubt that, before it appeared fully formed in the FNR, Kant’s Analytic of Pure Judgments of Taste assisted Fichte in giving it theoretical articulation. Fichte transforms Kant’s judgment of taste in the following way: in the case of a judgment of the beauty of an object, my vision remain fixed on the rose, for example, and the other-directedness of my judgment shows itself obliquely, as a horizontal intentionality; in the case of Fichte’s Aufforderung, by contrast, I turn and face squarely the other who summons me. Yet in both cases one agent acts on another in a way that seeks to freely set them in free harmony with themselves (FNR 31 [GA I/3:342])—i.e., to put them in a condition that presupposes my intervention, and that carries over my own self-relation, but which subtracts nothing from their Ichheit, and which is orthogonal to the opposition of I and Not-I.17 On Fichte’s picture, the reciprocal attunement of individuals that Kant postpones to a late stage of human development, when fine art is subject to cultivation, is located right at the beginning, as a transcendental condition of human community and of its establishment of a realm of right, through the medium of which our selfreferring pursuit of our moral vocation is directed. Kant’s conception of beauty as a relatively frail meeting point of sense and reason—an adjunct to the project of practical reason that is not underwritten by any strict necessity, whence its character as a “favor [Gunst]” bestowed by Nature (Ak 5:380)—gives way in Fichte to a picture that interlocks human subjects as free and natural beings, reciprocally interrelated in a shared natural world, before the activity of explicit practical deliberation has so much as begun.18

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Notes 1 On Fichte’s early philosophical formation, see the illuminating accounts in La Vopa 2001, Chs. 1–2, and Kühn 2012, Chs. 3–5. 2 Absorbed from Ulrich and Platner, his philosophical instructors at respectively Jena and Leipzig in the 1780s. 3 Peuker 1790, which preceded publication of the CJ, and which also does not discuss Kant’s practical philosophy. 4 Concerning the composition history of VKdU, see the editorial Vorwort in GA II/1:321–4. 5 The relevant passages comprise Sect. III of §2 and the first half of §3 (per the section renumbering in the 2nd edn. of ACR in 1793) (ACR 24–38 [GA I/1:149–53 and 19–30]). 6 This conception can be thought of as taking up two items in the CJ: the intuitive intellect’s cognition of the world as an identity of Is and Ought (Ak 5:403–4), and the concept of the beautiful as the sensible Darstellung of rational ideas (Ak 5:351). The latter also provides Fichte with a prototype for revelation as a sensuous stimulus that determines sense “to let itself be determined by the moral law”: ACR 64 [GA I/1:47]. 7 Clearly anticipated here in ACR, then, is Fichte’s conception of what is at stake in the choice between idealism and dogmatism in the 1797 “[First] Introduction” to the Wissenschaftslehre (IWL 7–35 [GA I/4:186–208]). 8 Though Fichte does not amplify the point—and perhaps does not yet see the implication—he is in fact denying that Kant’s claim that the “merely practical” yet also “objective” “cognition” of the “reality” of the Ideas of reason that are employed in the postulates suffices for them to play their assigned role (CJ, Ak 5:175 and 484–5). 9 The representation of God as giving us moral reason by virtue of his commanding the moral law is in effect reduced by Fichte to our simple direct conformity with the self-given moral law: we respect God (qua commander) only qua his own agreement with that law; God is subject to the principle of autonomy and affirms the moral law for the very same reason that we do (ACR 42 [GA I/1:34]). This is either to eliminate the holy will or to give it a different meaning from that which it has in Kant. 10 In his LE1812, returning to the topic of revelation, Fichte puts it in exactly such terms: see LE1812 150 [GA II/13:379]. At this very late stage, Fichte has adopted a new idiom, which allows (the “genuine doctrine of ”) revelation to be described as the original breakthrough of “the concept” to moral consciousness (LE1812 156–7 [GA II/13:382]); philosophy itself “rests upon the factual ground of a revelation” (LE1812 169 [GA II/13:391]). 11 An important contributory factor here, requiring a separate discussion, concerns the problems of Kant’s theory of freedom, again made more visible by Reinhold, and on which Fichte had made a start in the “Theory of the Will,” which he inserted as §2 of the expanded second edition of ACR. 12 Also noteworthy is the respect in which, in his Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie (Private Meditations on the Philosophy of the Elements) (1793–4), what Fichte identifies as missing from Reinhold’s account of cognition mirrors what, on Fichte’s construal, Kant in CJ confesses to be missing from the conjunction of his theoretical and practical philosophies: Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie describes a relational unity of subject, representation, and object, but it does not grasp the supra-relational unity that the relational structure

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presupposes. Again we find Fichte mapping Kant’s problem of the Freedom/Nature Kluft and the unity of self-consciousness onto one another. It is worth adding that the two major topics of the CJ—aesthetics and teleology—are discussed at length in the notes that followed EM, entitled Practische Philosophie (1794), where Fichte’s focus is no longer on Reinhold: see PP, GA II/3:197–227 (on aesthetics) and GA II/3:244–63 (on teleology). 13 Note, however, Fichte’s affirmation of forthcoming philosophical innovations in the Preface to the Second Edition (1793), where he introduces a new category of philosophical concept not found in Kant, viz., “ideas of reflection,” Reflexions-Ideen, and carefully modifies a formula employed by Kant in the Introduction to the CJ in such a way as to raise the status of ACR: whereas Kant spoke of merely annexing the newly articulated conceptions of the CJ to the theoretical and the practical parts of philosophy, Fichte describes ACR as offering not a “separate adjacent structure,” Nebengebäude, but as “inseparably united with” the whole, unzertrennlich mit ihm vereiniget (ACR 5 [GA I/1:133]); in effect setting it in the position of a mediating term, Mittelglied, between Freedom and Nature. 14 This is exactly the formula that Fichte will later employ and endeavor to explicate in the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre. The task is defined in Lecture 17: see SK1804 128–33 [GA II/8:258–71]). 15 See SL (1795) [GA I/6:333–61] on Fichte’s aesthetic theory. On Naturtrieb and teleology in nature, see SE (1798), §§8–12 (SE 98–145 [GA I/5:102–43]), which employs key elements from the CJ, and FTP 460–6/WLnm[H] [GA IV/2:256–61]. 16 See ATJ (1786[?]) [GA II/1:53–98]. It is also in Fichte’s PL (1791), postdating his exposure to Kant: the Last Supper is a single communicative act of Christ’s [GA II/1:419–32]. A trace is also present in the sublime in VKdU [GA II/1:348]: it is what is felt when a natural object’s form is taken to be determining us by means of the laws of freedom. 17 Fichte’s modelling of intersubjectivity on the Kantian aesthetic subject is explicit: self and Other are related in “free reciprocal efficacy [freier Wechselwirksamkeit],” whereby they constitute “partes integrantes” of an “undivided event [einer ganzen Begebenheit]” (FNR 33 [GA I/3:344]); our recognition, Anerkennung, of the Other instances reflective judgment, the topic of which is “cognition itself [die Erkenntniß selbst]” (FNR 35–7 [GA I/3:345–7]), in parallel with the Kantian judgment of taste. Concerning the influence of CJ on FNR, see Scott Scribner 2006. 18 For further consideration of Fichte’s relation to the CJ in general terms, see Farr 2001, Horstmann 1995, 191–208, Roy 2012/13, and Zöller 2006, 315–34. Pippin 1997, though focused on Hegel, has interesting bearing on Fichte. On Fichte’s aesthetics, and the importance of Kant’s aesthetics for Fichte, see Piché 2002, and the essays in Radrizzani and Coves 2014.

Bibliography Farr, Arnold. 2001. “Reflective Judgement and the Boundaries of Finite Human Knowledge.” In New Essays in Fichte’s Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 103–21. New York: Humanities Books. Horstmann, Rolf-Peter. 1995. Die Grenzen der Vernunft: Eine Untersuchung zu Zielen und Motiven des Deutschen Idealismus. Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum Verlag.

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Kühn, Manfred. 2012. Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Ein deutscher Philosoph. Biographie. München: C. H. Beck. La Vopa, Anthony. 2001. Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762–1799. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peuker, J. G. 1790. Darstellung des Kantischen Systems nach seinen Hauptmomenten zufolge der Vernunftkritik und Beantwortung der dagegen gemachten Einwürfe. Leipzig: Verlage der Schulbuchhandlung. Piché, Claude. 2002. “The Place of Aesthetics in Fichte’s Early System.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 299–316. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Pippin, Robert. 1997. “Avoiding German Idealism: Kant, Hegel, and the Reflective Judgement Problem.” In Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations, 129–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radrizzani, Ives, and Faustino Oncina Coves (eds.). 2014. Fichte und die Kunst. FichteStudien Jahrgang 25, 2014/1 (Fichte-Studien, Band 41). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Roy, Manuel. 2012/13. “La réception fichtéenne de la Critique de la faculté de juger.” Archives de Philosophie 75: 493–514. Scott Scribner, F. 2006. “An Aesthetics of Influence: Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right in View of Kant’s Third Critique.” In Rights, Bodies and Recognition: New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 138–51. Aldershot: Ashgate. Zöller, Günther. 2006. “Die Wirkung der Kritik der Urteilskraft auf Fichte und Schelling.” In Die Vollendung der Transzendentalphilosophie in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, edited by Reinhard Hiltscher, Stefan Klinger, and David Süss, 315–49. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

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The Generation of Intuition and Representation through the Productive Imagination in the 1794/95 Grundlage Violetta L. Waibel

The project of the Wissenschaftslehre that Johann Gottlieb Fichte had been developing since 1793 was introduced in his treatise Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre (1794) as well as in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95) and in the Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (1795). This project not only opens with the provocative concept of the “Absolute I,” but further develops the concept of imagination as the central actor in the activities of the mind, clearly going beyond the scope of Fichte’s primary influence, Immanuel Kant. Fichte was already studying Kant’s second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787) in 1790, as is shown by the excerpt “The Transcendental Doctrine of Elements” from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which appeared in Fichte’s Nachlass. From this excerpt, we see that Fichte had a clear understanding of Kant’s doctrine of the two types of cognition, intuition and conception, that he would eventually articulate anew a few years later. While reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Fichte noted: All of our knowledge arises from two basic sources in the mind: the first, the capacity to receive intuitions (Receptivity of Impressions); the second, the capability to recognize an object through these intuitions (Spontaneity of Concepts). We are given an object by the first; the object is thought by the second according to that representation, but only in as much as that representation is a determination of the mind. Intuitions & concepts … constitute the elements of all of our knowledge. Both unified. Because neither concepts without an intuition to ground them, nor intuitions without concepts to ground them, nor intuitions without concepts can constitute knowledge. … Neither of these capabilities has priority over the other. Neither can exist on their own. (TE II [GA II/1: 299])

This quote demonstrates how closely Fichte studied Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, even if the reader may not agree with every detail of his interpretation. Fichte made

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himself extensively familiar with the most important determinations of Kant’s doctrine of the two types of cognition, its dualism of receptivity and spontaneity, and the necessary reciprocal relationship of concept and intuition. He also maintained that pure self-awareness must be regarded as originally empty and that all determinations of empirical experience must be given to the subject through sensory perceptions (as material of sensations). Nevertheless, we encounter in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95) Fichte’s surprising thesis, which no longer strictly conforms to Kant’s, that the understanding is only the container in which mental activities are held, fixed, and stored by means of concepts. In contrast to Kant, he sees the imagination as a capacity constantly in motion, whose spontaneity and agility he designates as oscillation, a very appealing and systematically noteworthy metaphor.1 This metaphor is very important in the deduction of representation, which he concludes in the theoretical section of the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre: The intuition is supposed to be stabilized as such, so that it can be grasped as one and the same [intuition]. But the act of intuiting is, as such, by no means anything stable; instead, it is an oscillation of the power of imagination between conflicting directions. To say that this is to be stabilized is to say that the power of imagination should no longer oscillate or hover, which would mean that the intuition would be utterly annihilated and annulled. This, however, is not supposed to occur; consequently, the intuition must retain at least the product of this state [of oscillation], some trace of the opposing directions, consisting of neither but assembled [zusammengesetztes] from both. Three elements are involved in such a stabilization of intuition, by means of which an intuition first becomes an intuition: [1.] First, there is the act of stabilizing or positing as fixed [festsetzen]. The entire process of stabilization occurs spontaneously, for the sake of reflection; and, as we shall soon see, it occurs by means of the spontaneity of reflection itself. Consequently, this act of stabilizing is accomplished by that power of the I which posits purely and simply, i.e., by the power of reason. – [2.] Then there is what is determined or becoming determined, and this, as we know, is the power of imagination, for the activity of which a limit is posited. – [3.] finally, there is what comes into being by means of this determination: the product of the power of imagination in its oscillation. It is clear that, if the required holding fast [Festhalten] is to be possible, then there must be some power that accomplishes it, and neither the determining power of reason nor the producing power of imagination is such a power. The power in question must therefore be an intermediate one, lying between the powers of reason and imagination. This is the power in which what is changeable persists [besteht] and is, as it were, brought to a stand [verständigt wird], and this power is therefore rightfully called the power of understanding [Verstand]. – The understanding is understanding only insofar as something is stabilized therein; and everything that is stabilized is stabilized only in the understanding. Understanding can be described either as the power of imagination stabilized by the power of reason or as the power of reason provided with objects by the

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power of imagination. – Despite what may have been said from time to time concerning the actions of the power of understanding, it is a dormant, inactive power of the mind, the mere receptacle for what is produced by the power of imagination and for what is determined or remains to be determined by the power of reason. (FEW [GA I/2: 373–4; SW I: 232–3])

In the period ending the composition of the Foundation, Fichte was no longer aligned with Kant’s bisection of receptivity through the passive intuition and spontaneity through the processing understanding. He remarks correctly that the bisection becomes difficult to uphold once one asks which elements in the cognitive process are passive (merely receptive) and which are active (dependent on spontaneity). In Kant’s transcendental deduction in the 1781 and 1787 editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, the question of how exactly the connection between the two cornerstones, receptivity and spontaneity, is to be understood is always looming. With his novel view of the intuition in the Foundation, Fichte seeks to clarify the connection between spontaneity and receptivity and between forms of thought and materials provided by sensation. Thus, Fichte does not, like Kant, precede the transcendental logic with a transcendental aesthetic, but instead supplies it with a systematic foundation in the Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (1795). In contrast to Kant, Fichte sees the occurrence of intuition as primarily a product of the activity of the perceiving subject. According to Kant it is primarily the faculty of reason that fathoms the origin, scope, and boundaries of reason and makes the critical perspective possible, while according to Fichte it is the productive imagination that illuminates itself while also illuminating other faculties and reflecting on their actions. It is this conceptual separation between Kant and Fichte that I will investigate in the rest of this chapter. Before describing Fichte’s construction of the action of imagination through itself in the “Foundation of Theoretical Knowledge,” a short look at the systemic architecture of the Foundation is presented. The Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre famously begins with the introduction of three principles, according to which the absolute I is to be thought of as pure agility or action that does not initially reveal any further content. The negation of the I leads to the determination of the Not-I. Finally, Fichte shows the connection between I and Not-I, whereby the consciousness is understood as a progressive quantification. Once the Kantian categories of quality have been obtained by the introduction of these three principles, the program sets out to develop the other categories, most relevantly the categories of relation, from the increasingly differentiated relationship of the I and Not-I. The Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre is divided into three parts: the first contains the three principles, the second the “Foundation of Theoretical Knowledge,” and the third the “Foundation of the Science of the Practical.” The “Knowledge of the Practical” in the Foundation is, however, not concerned with moral philosophy, but with a theory of action and intention that, together with a theory of knowledge, provides a general foundation for a perspectival, practical Wissenschaftslehre. This chapter is concerned with the “Foundation of Theoretical Knowledge” and more precisely with its Synthesis E, the deduction of representation in the Foundation.

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The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the generation of space and time in the Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty that Fichte produced in 1795 after the completion of the Foundation.

The Production of a Mere Intuition In the “Foundation of Theoretical Knowledge,” Fichte develops the relational categories of reciprocal determination of causality and substantiality in the syntheses B, C, and D that he obtains through analyses and syntheses of the three principles. Synthesis E, whose purpose is an explanatory model of mere intuitions, relies above all else on the relational categories with which self-activity and dependency in the generation of intuitions are more precisely defined. Spontaneity with its forms of thought is found to be a mere subject relation that results from a substantiality relation, while receptivity results from the affect mechanisms of the causality of the external object on the I. This connection of idealistic and realistic moments—intended by Fichte—has an equivalent in the Kantian dualism of spontaneity and receptivity, which leads to further enlightening differences. In the theoretical section of the Foundation, the relations of reciprocal determination, causality and substantiality, which are explicitly understood as independent of time and space, are deduced. Following this deduction, the non-concrete intuition is developed as the connection of subject and object in the consciousness. This conceptual development of mere intuition allows the opposition in the theoretical principle to be mediated on one end or the other of the relation of I and Not-I, leading to the fact of the imagination, whose activity is involved in a continual oscillation. The course of the deduction is described as resulting from the tension of idealistic and realistic theoretical claims. Fichte’s own position on critical idealism is a productive synthesis of the ever-unifying idealistic and realistic explication of knowledge-based intuition. Taken by itself, each position, realism and idealism, offers a rationally grounded explanatory model of the intuition. Fichte intends to differentiate their theoretical one-sidedness by his synthesis. From the idealistic perspective, the intuition of something is a determination of the conscious, thinking subject. In this respect, Fichte considers intuition through the relation of substantiality. Because of its freedom and spontaneity, the I is a substance with regard to its representations, whose accidents are concrete determinations. As far as the subject is examined with concrete reference to the objects of its intuition, it seems that objects affect the subject. They stand in a causal relationship to it whereby the object originates an effect on the subject. This is the reason for the enabling of the intuition. These two initial positions support the argumentative framework of the Wissenschaftslehre and are also further differentiated as concepts. The course of the self-construction of the imagination2 produces results from the fundamental relation of the I and the Not-I, which is already shown in paragraph 3 and from which arises the theoretical principle: “the I posits itself as limited by the Not-I” (FEW [GA I/2: 285; SW I: 126]).

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Substantiality as a relation of the I with itself and causality as a relation of the I with the Not-I are understood by Fichte to be non-symmetric reciprocal determinations, where “the order of reciprocity is fixed and determined” (FEW [GA I/2: 299; SW I: 141]). Fichte further distinguishes between the “independent activities” of these two relations: the spontaneity of the imagination on the side of the I, and the causal moment of receptivity, which he understands as the concept of “impulse” [“Anstoß”] (FEW [GA I/2: 356; SW I: 212]), on the side of the Not-I. By his discussion of impulse, Fichte expresses the necessity of an external influence, the existence of a real object, for intuitions to arise, without further examining the influence of a Not-I in the same context. Fichte calls all relations that are solely determined by the I, the mental, “quantitate” following the quantification established by the third principle. Conversely, the impulse, and the causal relationship determined by it, introduce a qualitative difference by which something totally foreign to its material origin is introduced into the I, thereby reducing what Kant addressed much more generally as the receptivity of the intuition. Like Kant, Fichte also differentiates between form and matter over the course of his construction. Indeed, it is clear that for Fichte, like Kant, it is only the material aspect of the impulse and the causal relationship given by it that can introduce something foreign into the I, whereas the form in which this occurs is one with the I.3 Fichte calls the form of causality an activity of “transference” [“Uebertragen”] (FEW [GA I/2: 315; SW I: 162]) and calls the form of substantiality an admittance of the Not-I, or an “alienation” [“Entäußern”] (FEW [GA I/2: 317; SW I: 164]) of the I, in which the I, which is solely considered as self-acting, creates space for the Not-I, which transcends consciousness. Mere spontaneity is consequently the matter of the I which is, as potential, a continually active being to the substance, while the matter of the impulse, which is at the same time the causal origin of the changes in the I, presents an equivalence to Kant’s given manifold. It must be shown how the potentially agile I receives determinations, limitations, and passivity, and how it allows them to enter into it. Fichte states explicitly that the I is a substance whose representations are accidents. Nevertheless he finds the belief that the I should be understood as a persisting substance to be false. In actuality, this substance is to be understood as a totality that presents the universal. In Fichte’s words: “It is furthermore clear that what is indicated by the term ‘substance’ is not that which endures but rather that which is all-encompassing. The distinguishing feature of endurance applies to substance only in a very derivative sense.” (FEW [GA I/2: 341; SW 1: 194])4 Fichte’s characterizations of the reciprocal relations of independent activities with their reciprocating of causality and substantiality and their Form–Matter differences describe the basic components of the following successive steps of synthesis. In these syntheses, the form and matter of independent activities and the reciprocal determinations of causality and substantiality that were at first considered separately are finally examined together. The two syntheses of the independent activities and the reciprocation are then each considered together in a final synthesis. Fichte first carries this out on the side of the causal relationship between the Not-I and the I and finally in the substantiality relation between the free, undetermined I and the determined I.

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The structure of consciousness emerges in these syntheses as a continuous transition that simultaneously allows for a mutual intertwining of the moments situated in reciprocation. Fichte’s choice of words, using “transition” [“Übergehen”] on the one hand, and “encroachment” [“Eingreifen”] on the other hand, which lead together to  a  “circular movement” [“Kreislauf ”] of mental activities (FEW [GA I/2: 322; SW I: 170–1]), reflects the imperative linearity of consciousness in the succession of time, and a grasping back and forth, a holding fast of singular moments in the passage of time. The synthesis regarding the causality of I and Not-I demonstrates how one is to think of the actions of the mind in relation to the objects of intuition, in spite of “essential opposition” [“wesentliches Entgegenseyn”] (FEW [GA I/2, 329]; SW I: 179]), a term Fichte uses to describe the qualitative tension between the matter of the object and the form of the subject, and the causality of Not-I and I, which Fichte describes as a “coming to be by means of a passing away” [“Entstehen durch ein Vergehen”] (FEW [GA I/2: 329; SW I:179]), namely as a “passing away” of the foreign by way of a “coming to be” of the matter that is now appropriated mentally. The unity of reality and ideality is achieved in the consciousness. This unity is one of object and subject that, in intuition, refers to one another inseparably, but nevertheless presents only a preliminary unity throughout the course of the reconstruction of the formal structure of intuition. This is because this unity is developed in the paradigm of consciousness and is therefore quantitative and not merely developed as a simple realistic qualitative affect-mechanism, but rather in the paradigm of an already quantitative but only causal realism. Therefore, the last syntheses must show how the intuition is to be understood in the paradigm of quantitative idealism. Allowing the Not-I, an object, to enter the I has already been described as a form of alienation. In order to explain this in more detail, Fichte introduces the concept of a sphere that in one respect is fulfilled merely by the activities of the I; in another respect the I excludes somewhat from this sphere, and is made determinable by this “exclusion” [“Ausschließen”] (FEW [GA I/2: 340; SW I: 192]). From a subjective perspective, the determinability of the I is the factor that enables foreign material to enter the I. What, from a realistic perspective, was still treated as a unity of subject and object now changes in the idealistic perspective to the unity of subjectivities and objectivities. The character of the mere, entirely undetermined activities of the spontaneity is brought into a new light by the moment of subject determinability. Self-activity always requires determination through itself, whereby the determinability of the substantial I is fixed to a specific determination. At the same time, this determinability requires the suspension of every determination in order to create anew the space for determinability and freedom. Fichte summarizes: The I posits itself as both finite and infinite at the same time and therefore stands in a reciprocal relationship [Wechsel] in and with itself – a reciprocal relation that, as it were, contradicts itself and thereby reproduces itself, inasmuch as the I wants to unite components that cannot be united, first attempting to assimilate the infinite to the form of the finite and then driven back to positing it beyond the finite and,

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in the same moment, once again attempting to assimilate it to the form of the finite. This reciprocal relationship of the I with itself is the power of imagination [das Vermögen der Einbildungskraft]. Coming together and the act of combining are, in this way, completely united with each other. The coming together, or the boundary, is itself a product of the subject that combines them, in and in order to combine them (absolute thesis of the power of imagination, which, to this extent, is utterly productive). (FEW [GA I/2: 359; SW I: 215]).

A little further on, Fichte calls the power of imagination a faculty that “oscillates or hovers in the middle between determination and non-determination, between the finite and the infinite” and even later in the text he speaks of the “hovering or oscillating of the power of imagination between components that cannot be united” and thereby emphasizes the “conflict of the power of imagination with itself ” (FEW [GA I/2: 360; SW I: 216–17]). This continuous oscillation of the imagination between determination and nondetermination presents a theoretical model of how the interplay between matter and the activity of the subject can be more precisely presented on various levels. The form of this continuous oscillation could be understood as a “stream of consciousness.” The subject produces intuitions from moment to moment that are not just actively created by it, but which are also displayed in it. Therefore, oscillation groups the active subjective spontaneity and the passive causal determination, showing these two aspects to be sides of a highly complex model of interlocking and interspliced moments. In the Foundation, Fichte proceeds further in the section entitled “Deduction of Representation.” For Immanuel Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold (Essay towards a New Theory of the Faculty of Representation, 1789), “representation” is a general notion that describes every form of representation in the human mind. To both, the concept of intuition is reserved for sensory representations depending on direct perception, or on reproductions of intuition in our memory or imagination. At the end of Synthesis E, Fichte’s mere intuition depends on any given matter and is—with Kant in mind—an intuition that is not yet brought to a concept. In his excerpt from 1790 Fichte contends: “Because neither concepts without an intuition to ground them, nor intuitions without  concepts to ground them, nor intuitions without concepts can constitute knowledge. … Neither of these capabilities has priority over the other. Neither can exist on their own” (TE II [GA II/1: 299]). With the deduction of representation, it is necessary to show either how concepts are generated from intuitions, or how mere intuitions, which are constantly in motion and which the imagination constantly produces, can be held fast in concepts. Only after the self-presentation of the imagination and its generation of intuitions, set in motion by perpetual oscillation (traced here in a reduced form), is it possible, according to Fichte, to construct in detail what the individual object of the imagination is, mainly generating concrete intuitions of objects and their situation in time and place. Fichte investigates sensation as a starting point of every concrete intuition; however, the concrete intuition itself, and the representation of spatial and temporal determinations of each intuition, is dealt with not in the Foundation, but in the Outline.

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Fichte rightly calls the construction of the imagination and its generation of intuitions artificial (see FEW [GA I/2: 363; SW I: 219–20]), because they do not present a factual transmission of reality from the I to the Not-I. Instead, they take the known realistic and idealistic models of intuition as a theory of affects, or as a doctrine of the mere immanence of consciousness and its necessary synthesis. It is also artificial in another sense. Fichte is certainly aware that because he constructs the mind in a linear way by means of discursive language, he is always prematurely referring to elements that are only deduced later. This also applies for all temporal and spatial determinations, whose explicit presentations are not situated even once in the Foundation, but are positioned in a somewhat irritating way at the end of the Outline. In contrast, Kant’s “Doctrine of Elements” begins with the Transcendental Aesthetic and the identification of space and time as mere forms of pure intuition. The title Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty is very misleading because it implies a discussion of particular features of the Wissenschaftslehre, while it actually states, or, as Fichte would say, “deduces,” parts of the Foundation that had not been previously realized. As has already been mentioned, the language of the deduction continually employs a repertoire of temporal and spatial determinations.

The Production of Representations, Reflections, and Abstractions Once Fichte has shown how an intuition is to be reconstructed as content of the I’s consciousness, his next step, in the theoretical section of the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, is the “Deduction of Representation.” Because the theoretical Wissenschaftslehre is determined by the construction of the imagination through imagination, the activity of the imagination, which is originally directed at empirical intuition, must also be able to render a dimension of constitutional output, which is beyond empirical objects. It is peculiar that representation as an act, which is abstracted from a concrete intuition, occurs in direct connection to the deduction of mere intuition, which does not necessarily correspond to a concrete intuition. As previously mentioned, this is presented first in the Outline. The fixation of intuitions into concepts also occurs in representations. Furthermore, the capability to reflect and to abstract is also considered for representations. The generation of the activity of the imagination (1) through imagination (2) previously described a meta-level with which the process of philosophizing (2) looked at its action by intuition (1) and produced this before its own eyes. As Fichte emphasizes, intuition is understood as intuition by means of representation, whereby intuition can be recognized as the basis for all original representations and at the same time be differentiable from the production of concepts and abstract representations for those that can see on a meta-level the constant, already familiar activity of the active mind. The production of concepts by which, in Kantian terms, intuitions are subsumed, furthering the production of reflections and abstractions, is the reason why Fichte discusses the deduction of the representation at this point.

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This treatment of representation naturally brings to mind Reinhold’s project in Essay towards a New Theory of the Faculty of Representation, a text in which Reinhold attempts to simplify Kant’s critical undertaking. The systematic place that Fichte assigns to representation demonstrates that, at least from Fichte’s perspective, Reinhold’s assessment is fundamentally flawed. Near the end of the Outline, Fichte argues that it is the Wissenschaftslehre that systematically precedes Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, because it demonstrates fundamentally what Kant assumes as given (see EPW [GA I/3: 208; SW I: 411]). Fichte presents the deduction of representation in eleven distinct steps. Some of these steps are here presented summarily, while others are dealt with in more detail, according to the aims of the present analysis. I. The intuition, generated by the oscillation of the imagination, must be differentiated from subjectivity’s other cognitive activities. II. Therefore, the intuition must also be differentiated as reflective from mere, unreflected intuition that occurs through the imagination. III. In its unreflected state, intuition is based on mere impulse, while the reflection of intuition is based on spontaneity, and, like intuition itself, presents an original fact of natural consciousness. At the same time, this presents a constructive condition for the possibility of all philosophical reflection (see FEW [GA I/2: 373; SW I: 232]). Reflection occurs through a stabilization of intuition into concepts by the understanding. As Fichte states, the holding fast of intuition, whereby it is first understood to be intuition, involves three distinct moments: The intuition is supposed to be stabilized as such, so that it can be grasped as one and the same [intuition]. But the act of intuiting is, as such, by no means anything stable; instead, it is an oscillation of the power of imagination between conflicting directions. To say that this is to be stabilized is to say that the power of imagination should no longer oscillate or hover, which would mean that the intuition would be utterly annihilated and annulled. This, however, is not supposed to occur; consequently, the intuition must retain at least the product of this state [of oscillation], some trace of the opposing directions, consisting of neither but assembled [zusammengesetztes] from both. Three elements are involved in such a stabilization of intuition, by means of which an intuition first becomes an intuition: [1.] First, there is the act of stabilizing or positing as fixed [festsetzen]. The entire process of stabilization occurs spontaneously, for the sake of reflection; and, as we shall soon see, it occurs by means of the spontaneity of reflection itself. Consequently, this act of stabilizing is accomplished by that power of the I which posits purely and simply, i.e., by the power of reason. – [2.] Then there is what is determined or becoming determined, and this, as we know, is the power of imagination, for the activity of which a limit is posited. – [3.] finally, there is what comes into being by means of this determination: the product of the power of imagination in its oscillation. It is clear that, if the required holding fast [Festhalten] is to be possible, then there must be some power that accomplishes it, and neither the determining power of reason nor the producing

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Violetta L. Waibel power of imagination is such a power. The power in question must therefore be an intermediate one, lying between the powers of reason and imagination. This is the power in which what is changeable persists [besteht] and is, as it were, brought to a stand [verständigt wird], and this power is therefore rightfully called the power of understanding [Verstand]. – The understanding is understanding only insofar as something is stabilized therein; and everything that is stabilized is stabilized only in the understanding. Understanding can be described either as the power of imagination stabilized by the power of reason or as the power of reason provided with objects by the power of imagination. – Despite what may have been said from time to time concerning the actions of the power of understanding, it is a dormant, inactive power of the mind, the mere receptacle for what is produced by the power of imagination and for what is determined or remains to be determined by the power of reason. (FEW [GA I/2: 373–4; SW I: 232–3])

An act of spontaneity, which is attributed to the I’s reason and consequently as the reflecting and determining capability, is necessary. Moreover the imagination, which determines anything at all, sets a limit that generates an intuition. Furthermore, it is the understanding that is seen as the capability that brings to a standstill the oscillating product of the power of imagination. The under-stand-ing is therefore that which is described as the capability of bringing to a “stand,” of “Holding Fast.” The order that Fichte gives here is surprising. It is presumably chosen because the spontaneity of reflection is inherent with an interest, a direction, which is responsible for the fact that in the stream of the simple and possibly disinterested intuitions, an interest and direction are lifted out, preserved and brought to the concept. Compared to the detailed construction of the imagination in its examining action, the “Deduction of the Representation” is presented only with its essential features. Fichte further argues: Only in the understanding is there reality; it is the power of what is actual; it is in the understanding that what is ideal becomes real. [Consequently, the term to understand also expresses a relationship to something that is supposed to come from outside, with no assistance from us.] The power of imagination produces reality, but there is in it no reality. The product of the power of imagination becomes something real only when it is apprehended and comprehended by the power of understanding. (FEW [GA I/2: 374; SW I: 233–4])

Imagination, as Fichte argues here, produces all reality ideally, that is, according to possibility, through its oscillatory activity. However, he attributes reality as an actuality to the understanding. Understanding is said to be reality for human consciousness, whereas intuition is transient in its mere oscillation and is thus in itself constantly moving and intangible, understandable reality. With this determination of reality, Fichte is writing about the Reality that is reality for the I in the empirical sense. In the Outline, Fichte finally reflects that on the one hand intuition loses itself in the object of intuition and thereby attributes being to the object outside of the being of the

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I, but on the other hand it must be understood as a state produced in consciousness that is conscious and fixed in a concept by the understanding. IV. By the newly introduced activity of conceptual stabilization, the intuiting I can now also be understood as the intuiter and the intuited as the intuited, whereby they mutually necessitate each other, and the one cannot be thought without the other. V. In spite of the mutually conditioned relationship of subject and object, the subject is described as a mere activity of its spontaneity. Fichte, in open regression, describes the fundamental activity of the pure absolute I as the Real-Ground for all cognitive acts, while the objective activity in this perspective is merely conditional, described by Fichte as the Ideal-Ground. VI. Fichte contends that the differentiation of both activities, the objective and the subjective, is now possible through a modal component. The activity the subject experiences through the objective activity of a restriction is felt as a force, which leads to a necessity because it is not based on free spontaneity. On the other hand, the oscillation of the imagination is free to conceive or not to conceive some content. The modal state of the oscillating imagination is that of possibility. This possibility is based on the subject’s, or the consciousness’s, choice to turn its attention to something, or to turn away from it and to direct its attention toward something else. Thus the concept of striving as intentionality is already to be found here, even though Fichte develops it in more detail in the practical section of the Wissenschaftslehre. These modal differences, which come into appearance through force and through freedom, constitute the difference between intuiter and intuited in the consciousness. Whether the subject intuiter stands in its free choice (possibility). When the subject intuits, it is forcefully determined by the object (necessity); what the subject intuits is produced through the imagination, and reality is held fast through the understanding (actuality), as has already been demonstrated. VII. The activity of self-determination is at the same time the determination of a fixed product of the imagination in the understanding, and a thought produced by reason. Thought is originally not possible without intuited objects and depends in this respect on the causality of the subject-affixed objects. VIII. Without any further preparation, Fichte introduces a new mental faculty, the power of judgment, to which he attributes the option to either reflect over the objects fixed by the understanding or abstract from them. With this option to conceive of objects or to conceive only their conceivableness, the understanding and the power of judgment stand in a reciprocal relationship of possibility. The judgments of the conceivable show themselves as the last cause of that which is thought of as intuition, or even that which can be produced in the construction of the imagination through imagination. IX. The possibility lies in the conceivableness to abstract from all determined objects, or any object at all. Fichte clarifies this as an oscillation of the imagination between object and non-object. Its activity is fixed on having no object and namely by a selfannihilation of the imagination by which it watches itself. Fichte explains: By its very nature, the power of imagination oscillates anyhow [überhaupt] between the object and what is not an object. It is stabilized as having no object:

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Violetta L. Waibel this means the (reflected) power of imagination is completely annihilated, and this annihilation, this non-being of the power of imagination, is itself intuited by the (non-reflected, and therefore not attaining to clear consciousness) power of imagination. (FEW [GA I/2: 382; SW I: 243]; translation revised)

This is a central point which proves, according to Fichte, that the imagination does not only have the capability of generating intuition, but is also able to negate itself in it and to annihilate it in order to generate a non-intuition, until it is determined by abstract thought through a concept. In mere abstractions, thus produced, the rules of pure reason are articulated. The former abstains from the real activity of objects of the imagination, as demonstrated by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant, however, did not reflect on the possibility of abstract reflections specifically. This is what Fichte does here from the perspective of the self-reflecting reflection. The source of all self-awareness lies in the so-enabled differentiation of reflected objects and reflected subjects. X. The reason for the original emptiness of the I as pure self-awareness lies in this differentiation, which is undetermined in itself, but at the same time is the condition of all determinations. If one reflects on the self-determination of the I, the Not-I is made infinite. If one reflects on the Not-I, the I is thereby made infinite. Fichte sees in this the basis for Kant’s problem of the antinomies of pure reason. The reciprocal relationship of the I and the Not-I and the resulting metaphor of an oscillating imagination, through reference to the Kantian antinomies, is contained exclusively in the Foundation at the end of the deduction of representation, which is at the same time the end of the theoretical section of the Wissenschaftslehre. This reference to Kant implies a hardly noticeable but important connotation that should be examined more closely. Fichte’s position is: It follows that when the I is engaged in self-determination it must be considered to be determining and determined at the same time. If, by means of the present, higher determination, one reflects upon the fact that what determines what is purely and simply determined must itself be purely and simply undetermined, as well as upon the fact that the I and Not-I are purely and simply posited in  opposition to each other, then, if what is viewed as determined is the I, what is determining and undetermined is the Not-I, and, in contrast, if the I is viewed as determining, then it itself is what is undetermined, and what is determined thereby is the Not-I. From this there ensues the following conflict: If the I reflects upon itself and, in doing so, determines itself, then it is the Not-I that is infinite and unlimited. If, on the other hand, the I reflects upon the Not-I as such (upon the universe) and thereby determines it, then it is the I itself that is infinite. In representation, therefore, the I and the Not-I reciprocally interact with each other: if the one is finite, then the other is infinite, and vice versa. But one of the two is always infinite. – (This is the basis of Kant’s antinomies.) (FEW [GA I/2: 383; SW I: 245])

For Kant, let it be summarized, the conflict of the antinomies resides in the disregard of scope in each respect given through the understanding or the reason

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and the boundaries of possible knowledge. Fichte’s analysis suggests that he sees an antinomic conflict between the I and the Not-I and their respective determination or indetermination. Kant sees the problem of the contradiction of two principles in that thought follows at one time sense-oriented understanding, and at another time a rational thought aimed at principles and unification. With reference to the reason that the antinomies are stateable, Fichte skips any further differentiations given by Kant with laconic brevity. He refers to no concrete antinomy of Kant’s, because he professes to have made all their causes clear. With a look to the dialectic of the oscillating imagination, this conjecture lies near the fact that, from the perspective of reflective philosophy, the antinomy of freedom—with its spontaneity of the I and causality on the side of the Not-I —stands already unspoken in the background (see Waibel 2017). Fichte can point out that he has already demonstrated with the construction of the oscillating imagination that in oscillating there is a cohesion of the realistic, empirical, causal chain, and rational, idealistic substantiality: a cohesion of two seemingly antagonist, even antinomic principles and opposites. The cohesion is not permanent, and the seemingly radical opposition even less so. Fichte demonstrates with the construction of intuition that the reciprocal correlation of the relations of causality and substantiality presents itself as a determined form of self-manifested freedom and the foundation of productive imagination. In the deduction of representation, where this brief reference to the antinomies is to be found, the dialectical reciprocal correlation is elevated to an abstract form of reflection. The representation, as is shown, is for Fichte an abstraction of the mind achieved through reflection on the original self-manifesting intuition. Where indetermination exists, reason is able to achieve determination. To determine concepts is the matter of the understanding. This happens at one point on the side of the I, and on another point on the side of the Not-I, and is always implemented through the action of the I, that, now as reason stands with access to the undetermined, now as understanding with access to the determined in activity. XI. Fichte’s circular movement of reflection concludes the deduction of representation with the I, and with the note that ultimately all determinations of the Not-I are no different than determinations of the I in the consciousness.

The Production of Concrete Intuitions through the Imagination By means of a kind of phenomenology of the mind, Fichte develops conditions for knowledge (such as the imagination) in his theoretical Wissenschaftslehre. Just as with striving, drive, and feeling, which are all derived in the practical Wissenschaftslehre, these conditions for knowledge originate in elementary types of action that together demonstrate a general coherence of the mind. In the Outline, the actions of the mind undergo concretization and important additions. Already in the Foundation, Fichte announces: “As we shall see later, it is this hovering or oscillating of the power of imagination between components that cannot be united, this conflict of the power of imagination with itself, that extends the state of the I in this oscillation and conflict to a moment of time” (FEW [GA I/2: 360; SW I: 216]).

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In the Outline, the deduction of concrete sensory intuition is further developed as a continuation of the mere intuitions developed throughout the course of the Foundation. Fichte distances himself from Kant’s “Doctrine of Elements” when he comments: For Kant, the categories were originally generated as forms of thoughts, and from his point of view he was quite right. But in order to make possible the application of these categories to objects, Kant required the schemata produced by the imagination. For Kant, therefore, as well as for us, the categories are worked up by the imagination and are accessible to it. According to the Wissenschaftslehre, the categories arise together with the objects, and, in order to make the objects possible at all, they arise in the imagination. (EPW 288 [GA I/3:189; SW I: 387])

In several discrete steps, Fichte deduces mere intuition and representation in the Foundation and sensation and concrete intuition in the Outline. By doing this he shows the subject’s capability of constructing an object in the consciousness. With the constructed object as a result, spatiality and temporality can be developed as conditions of its representability. Thus, time and space are developed as relationships of subject and object, of I and Not-I. The principles of Fichtean object-construction, which stand in contrast to the Kantian approach of using schemata, will now be outlined. While Fichte followed a dialectic language game of analyzing and synthesizing to construct the imagination, he uses a different method in the Outline for analyzing the condition of self-consciousness. In the constitution of the object Fichte differentiates three moments. First, the intuition of the object as far as the subject loses itself in it. Second, the reflection of the intuition on the object as something alien by which the object is set outside of the consciousness, i.e. external to the representation of the subject’s I. Third, the reflection on the constructive process that shows that the intuited object is set in consciousness at the same time as the object is set down externally from the subject by its intuiting subject. Thus, there are three moments of interaction in concrete intuitions: the intuition, the object of the intuition, and the intuiting subject.5 In the theoretical section of the Foundation, Fichte had already developed the categories of substantiality and causality as the basic principles of the pure activities of the subject, and he reconstructed on that basis the oscillation of the imagination. Accordingly, Fichte associated the subjective moments of a consistent idealistic explication of representations with substantiality. While he sought to do justice to the realistic combination of an affect mechanism of external objects on the subject with causality, Fichte no longer focuses on the interplay of idealism and realism, but rather on the justification of the transmission of subjective relational categories to the object. The I, which produces the image of the Not-I, is active as producer and recognizes itself in its reflection as essentially free in nature and acting out of spontaneity. It recognizes this spontaneity, moreover, as the only power that can facilitate a determination through an object. This relationship, to understand oneself on the one hand as necessarily free, yet on the other hand to freely allow a determination in oneself, is an expression of a causal relation as an original relation of the subject with itself. Nevertheless, the self-limiting I also feels a coercion in this activity,

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by which it recognizes that it is not the only cause of the self-determining activity. Namely, the I is free to intuit or to not intuit, but once it commits itself to sensory intuition it cannot remain free from the content of its intuition. The I can only replace the content of a sensory intuition with another one and again with another one. This feeling of coercion appears incidental and foreign to the I. This feeling of not being the complete cause of its actions and conscious states is the reason why the I must accept an additional, necessary source of the incidental and foreign state of the I. Thus the I, the sole source of all spontaneity, transfers a small amount of reality’s foundation to the Not-I. With this transmission, causality is simultaneously projected onto the Not-I, which necessarily produces a state of contingency and foreignness. The spontaneous subject thus actively exercises causality on itself, while, on the other hand, causality is conceded to the object. The I thereby experiences itself as essentially free and spontaneous, even though the determinations introduced to it by sensory intuition are also contingent characteristics of the I. The spontaneity understood as essential in relation to the contingent states now indicates not only causality, but also presents a relationship to substantiality. This relationship to substantiality with its substance determined by its essence and its contingent accidents is now, from its perspective, projected on the Not-I, which finds itself as the necessary cause of contingent determinations inside the I. As the necessary cause, it is not only causal but also substantial. But so far as the I like the Not-I must be regarded as a substance, they are in a certain respect fully independent from one another. This explains why the subject may lose itself completely in the object through its intuitions, but also why it can isolate its intuitions from objects. A reflection on the conditions of the possibility of self-recognition, whereby the internally aware and externally aware moments of object constitution are examined in their reciprocal determination, directs one’s attention to the I lost in its intuition of objects and the subject’s awareness of its self-activity in object-construction. This reflection demonstrates, according to Fichte, the applicability of the categories of causality and substantiality on the I’s reflection of itself and its activities, and also on the subject as transmission performance, as applied on the object itself. Right after developing substantiality and causality, as well as subjects and objects, Fichte goes on to develop space and time as conditions of the possibility of selfrecognition and object recognition.

The Imagination as Capacity for Time and Space Generation The difference between the investigation just traced and the following investigation lies, according to Fichte, in that before we were speaking “of something, namely, an intuition, whereas here we are speaking only of a relationship, that is, of a synthetic union of opposing intuitions” (EPW 292 [GA I/3:194; SW I: 391]). More precisely, what Fichte had in mind is explained in the heading to paragraph 4, which states: “The Intuition Is Determined in Time; What Is Intuited Is Determined in Space” (EPW 291 [GA I/3:193; SW I: 391]).

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It has become clear with the construction of a determined intuition that the productive imagination sets intuitions of Not-I objects externally from itself, and that it can simultaneously reflect that intuition takes place in the consciousness and that it is performed in it. Therefore, it follows that this external of the I and in the I are explicitly determined as an intuition of an object in space and a representation in time. Fichte wants to show that just as space, in the external sense (in the intuited), and time, in the internal sense, meet together in the representation of a viewed object (intuition), they can also be presented as separate or distinguishable from one another. Fichte places the already demonstrated causality of the Not-I in intuition at the beginning of his investigation. It is now our task, Fichte says, to examine the relationship of two intuitions. The reflection on two intuitions is the reflection of intuition, in which the I loses itself in the Not-I, and the reflection on the fact that this outside-of-the-I is simultaneously a representation of the I. Fichte seeks to avoid, where possible, spatial designations like external to the I and in the I, because space has been unknown throughout the previous course of reflection and is only now made explicit. For the deduction of intuition one had to show that the two instances of intuition are one from the perspective of being in relation to the intuition’s representations. From another perspective, however, they are clearly differentiable. In order to present this difference more precisely, two intuition instances are called, respectively, the incidental X, which is interchangeable with other intuitions, and the necessary Y, which can only be constituted by the incidental. Fichte then introduces two more variables by linking X with v and Y with z. In a further step, Fichte shows that Y is necessarily linked with z while X is not only interchangeable with other intuitions, but can also interchange its link with v. X is only excluded from one linking point, namely from z to Y. This exclusion determines a negative relationship of Y with z and X with v. Although this relationship is only negatively determined, there exists nevertheless a similarity in that each link fulfills its own sphere of its effect cycle, which are both mutually bounded. The resulting limit is therefore also negative, as the sphere of the one excludes the sphere of the other without a reciprocal determination or a causality between the two intuitions taking place. We automatically ask ourselves if Fichte had in mind a spatial relationship when he talked about the relation of the spheres of two intuitions, a relation he develops in many discrete steps, which will, however, be skipped at this point. Fichte’s construction of space starts with a point that is arbitrarily fixed; every other point must set itself in relation to this first point. There is a singular point on which the construction derives its origin, namely the point that the intuiter occupies, Fichte’s Y in z. Space is continually constructed from the location of the subject outwards through the intuition of objects. The ideality of space that has already been argued for is, according to Fichte, thereby proven, namely that the imagination alone not only constructs the ordering of different intuitions with each other, but also constructs the unfilled space between objects of intuition that are distant from one another. The spatial points themselves have no causality; they are only linked by the constructed intuition. In this way, the continuum of space as such is finally constructed by the imagination. The ideality of space is further proven by the thought experiment in which the determination of a

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single point can never determine space. There must always be two points for that. It suffices for a subject to determine a single point outside of itself, because the subject’s observing eye already presents the second point by which the minimal determination of space is set. The continuum of space constructed and always constructible by the imagination is also, according to Fichte, endlessly divisible. Even the smallest section of space presents a space to which extension is attributable, the division cannot end on a point, which, as a point in space itself, must also have an extension and thereby be divisible (see EPW 298–9 [GA I/3: 200–1; SW I: 400–1]). Fichte then asks how the imagination constitutes that which lies between two space-filling substances, i.e. how the continual transmission of intuition from one substance to another is to be considered. “Consequently, there is no empty space at all except while the imagination is making the transition from filling the space with A to filling it with b, c, d, etc., as it chooses.” (EPW 298 [GA I/3:200; SW I: 400]). Fichte reconstructs from consciousness-immanence the phenomenality of experience of various substances in space. In contrast to Kant, who seeks to prove the ideality of pure forms of intuition argumentatively, Fichte derives their ideality from the imagination that constructs space (and time). Fichte understands the object as a room-filling power  that presents the union point of intensity and extensity (EPW 299 [GA I/3: 201; SW I: 401]). Intensities are those properties of objects that are synthesized with help from the categories of quality, and that present the material of all properties that are sensory, tangible, and perceptible by the five senses. Intensities then are all properties that intrinsically belong to the object, such as tone, color, smell, taste, and the properties of the object accessible to the tactile sense. Extensities are those properties of an object that are synthesized with the help of the category of quantity and are taken as true by the subject as expansions of material in space. It is noteworthy that Fichte laconically reflects on these connections without expressly establishing a connection to the categories of quality and quantity, either by projecting them into the object-world or deducing them at all. Thereby space is produced. This is followed by a short derivation of time. According to Fichte, the Not-I is in a certain sense independent from the I with regard to spatial determination. Therefore, the object (Not-I) is also substance. I and Not-I are related to one another through the constructing activity of the imagination whereby an object in the intuition can be continually exchanged with another. While the choice of a first point in space determines other points in relation to itself, the replacement of one intuition by another yields yet another relationship of the imagination to objects, namely that of the succession of intuitions in time. Attention to the continual changeability of sense occurrences in the consciousness constructs a “now” of present moments that stands in relation to displaced perceptions, which represent the immediate past. Only because the last moment’s events can be remembered as the past is there a temporal determination of the present, the now. Further operations of the imagination allow a future to be imagined and anticipated. Space and time are thus phenomenologically conceptualized by Fichte on the basis of the subject’s actual perceptual events that are simultaneously constituted by the imagination.6 It is Husserl, who studied in much more detail than Fichte the

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Phenomenology of the Internal Time Consciousness in his 1905 lectures, first edited by Martin Heidegger in 1928. A few years later, in 1907, Husserl began to study the phenomenology of Thing and Space. Fichte determines space as the concurrent existence of the totality of the Not-I, while time is a continual successive perception-existence of the present of the thing. To the I, it is only the object that exists in an empirical sense, while the past and future must be imagined or remembered in the present. With the last words of the Outline, Fichte clarifies that he is setting his readers down where Kant’s Critique can pick them right up again: In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant begins his reflections at a point at which time, space, and a manifold of intuitions are already given as present in and for the I. We have now deduced these a priori, and so they are now present in the I. Consequently, we have now established the distinctive character of the theoretical part of the Wissenschaftslehre. Thus for the moment we take leave of our reader – who will find himself precisely at the point where Kant begins. (EPW 306 [GA I/3:208; SW I: 411]) Translation by Luke Swenson and David Wagner

Notes

I want to thank Gabriele Geml, Céline Silbernagl, and David Wagner, who most diligently helped in the revision of this text. My particular thanks goes to Daniel Breazeale, who generously allowed me to use his new translation of Fichte’s Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre before being published (forthcoming in 2020), a key text for the development of German idealism. 1 Friedrich von Hardenberg—better known as Novalis—was one of Fichte’s followers at the time. In 1795/6, Hardenberg displayed a special liking for Fichte’s theory of the fundamental agility of the subject and Fichte’s metaphor of the oscillating imagination in his Fichte-Studies. A small number of Hardenberg’s succinct expressions may suffice to substantiate my claim. In one of his studies Hardenberg writes: “Universal [allgemeingültige: universally valid] philosophy would presuppose the fixation of the so-called subjectivity, that is, [it would presuppose] a free fact, or the assumption of a hypothetical, free principle. One’s philosophy can be called true just as certainly as something can be called beautiful” (Hardenberg 1965, NS II, FS 234, 177; Hardenberg 2003, 75). Any fixation of the self is thus opposed to the principle of the imagination, if imagination is understood as emphatically indefinite or oscillating between seemingly irreconcilable conditions. To Hardenberg, the imagination becomes the core productive faculty of the human mind. In this his conception is very close to the early one proposed by Fichte. In the important Fichte-Studie 249, Hardenberg understands the oscillation of imagination as freedom as such. There he writes:

“/Freedom signifies the state of the oscillating [schwebende] imagination./ /Law must be the product of freedom/ We only ever think and see the product.

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All transition – all movement is the efficacy of the imagination. All determination is product.” (Hardenberg 1965, NS II, FS 249, 188; Hardenberg 2003, 86)

Here, freedom is explicitly compared to the oscillation of the imagination, and laws are conceived as products of this freedom. This, of course, does not imply that any law necessarily derives from freedom. But one may assume that Hardenberg wants to suggest that every viable law is a product of freedom, of transition, of an oscillating imagination. For a more precise reconstruction of Fichte’s individual steps see Waibel 2000, 301–17. In his excerpt of the Critique of Pure Reason, Fichte notes that one can only “name sensation … material of sensory knowledge” (TE II [GA II/1: 299]). Compare this to Kant, CPR, A 20/B 34. Furthermore: “Synthetically united, the accidents are the substance, which contains nothing whatsoever except these accidents. An analysis of the substance yields the accidents, and, following a complete analysis of the substance, nothing at all remains but the accidents. Here one should not think of an enduring substratum, of a possible bearer of accidents. Whatever the accident, it is in every case the bearer of itself, as well of those accidents posited in opposition to it, and it has no additional need for any special bearer [of accidents]” (FEW [GA I/2: 350; SW 1: 204]). It is noteworthy that only at the very end of the early Wissenschaftslehre’s architectonic does the triplicity of 1. content of consciousness, 2. emergence of object, and 3. subject occur, whereas Reinhold’s theory of representation-capabilities begins with representation, the represented, and representing. A detailed reconstruction of the time theory according to Fichte’s approach can be found in Lauth 1981. Starting from the consciousness of a sensory experience, it is successively unfolded how temporally composed object consciousness of experience becomes possible. The analysis of the conditions of sensory, concrete experiences shows that they always depend on temporal experience, which alone facilitates the abstraction of past object experience in a consciousness and finally allows the possibility of representation of future experiences.

Bibliography Hardenberg, Friedrich von (Novalis). 1965. Fichte-Studien (1795/96). In Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis): Novalis Schriften. Die Werke von Friedrich von Hardenberg, edited by Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel. Second edition in four volumes and one companion volume, revised, following the manuscripts, extended and improved, Darmstadt 1960–1988: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Hardenberg, Friedrich von (Novalis). 2003. Fichte Studies (1795/96), edited by Jane Kneller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lauth, Reinhard. 1981. Die Konstitution der Zeit im Bewußtsein. Hamburg: Meiner. Reinhold, Karl Leonhard. 1789. Versuch einer neuen Darstellung des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens. Prague: C. Widtmann and I.M. Mauke. Waibel, Violetta L. 2000. Hölderlin und Fichte. 1794–1800. Paderborn: Schöningh. Waibel, Violetta L. 2017. “Kant und Fichte über die Antinomie der Freiheit: Was bleibt?” In Die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie und ihre Folgen, edited by Christian Danz and Michael Hackl, 183–215. Göttingen: Vienna University Press (Vandenhoek und Ruprecht).

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Fichte penned a single sketch for a complete system of transcendental idealism that would include considerations of nature, religion, and aesthetics “according to the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre” (FTP 467–74 [GA IV/2: 262–6]). None of Fichte’s writings from the Jena or Berlin period fulfills the promise of works on nature or aesthetics, though a series of popular Berlin lectures consider religion. Schelling, widely perceived early on as Fichte’s partner, produced several drafts of a system of nature. Some took physics as the basis of philosophical explanation, others worked from biology. A contentious but confidential exchange of letters between Fichte and Schelling, which were sent around the turn of the century, cast doubt on whether Wissenschaftslehre’s account of the activity at the basis of consciousness had room for an account of nature or whether the sort of movement and development that nature exhibits could be aligned, even analogically, with the free activity or agency of the moral subject.1 The debate became public in an exchange of polemical essays in 1806, which included Fichte’s On the Essence of the Scholar and Schelling’s True Relationship between Philosophy of Nature and Fichte’s Revised Teachings (see SSW I/7: 5–14). Since Fichte’s system sketch did not find its way into print until early in the twentieth century, it is unsurprising that the literature has ignored the topic, except for Reinhard Lauth’s reconstruction of the missing part of Fichte’s philosophy (Lauth 1984). Lauth’s monograph is brief, accessible, and displays a broad command of texts, particularly those dealing with the operations of organic nature. I join with Lauth in taking a historical approach that places Fichte’s sketch for a philosophy of nature in the tradition of transcendental philosophy that begins with Kant and continues to Schelling and Hegel. Though Kant was clear from the first publication of the Critique of Pure Reason that Critique and systematic philosophy (metaphysics) were different endeavors and that the ground-clearing or limiting intent of Critique did not exhaust the possibilities that transcendental questioning opened for philosophy, he failed to offer a clear path forward from Critique to Transcendental Idealism. Instead, he offered several: (1) an argument for the necessity of putting philosophy in systematic form, contained in the Critique’s Doctrine of Method; (2) some specific metaphysical analyses meant to bridge transcendental logic and the empirical study of nature or a normative treatments of ethics; and (3) the concept of reflective judgment introduced in the Critique of the Power of Judgment to validate

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the thinking involved in the scientist’s research program or valorize the equilibrium of intellectual and sensible powers the artist brings to her craft. One can argue that Schelling’s early philosophy pursued the first path, especially his effort to provide a transcendental account of nature that could explain the discoveries of empirical science without subjecting all of science to experimental technique. Kant devotes a brilliant but complicated essay, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, to the second (see MFNS [Ak 4]). Lauth traces his reconstruction of Fichte’s contribution to the third, Kant’s relaxation of regulative judgment to an informal, projective, or approximate standard. Daniel Breazeale suggests that the 1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty provides another entrée to the possibility of a Fichtean philosophy of nature (Breazeale 2001). Fichte believed that Kant’s idealism could not be completed until its assumption of the difference between formal and material considerations, and its more hidden assumption of an ontological difference between subjects and objects, was unearthed, reformulated, and constructed just the way categories, schemata, and principles were in the Transcendental Dialectic. The peculiarity of Fichte’s account of cognition in this text is that it deduces what Kant merely supposed, so that many puzzling features of the Transcendental Aesthetic are eliminated, e.g., the synthetic a priori character of mathematics, the formality of space and time, and the difference between appearances and “things in themselves.” The Outline is as difficult a text as its companion The Science of Knowledge, and more audacious since it attempts not only to give account of the judgments, categories, and mental faculties involved in the synthesis of finite cognition or experience but of its very components, the sensory content and the objectivity of what offers itself in perception. The task would be daunting if Fichte’s concerns were merely epistemic, but Wissenschaftslehre’s overriding concern is to argue that the possibility of freedom, felt and incompletely enacted in the moral sphere, is what provides the limits, and hence the parameters, of human existence. Nature—we must now call it by its real name, not-I—must first be established or validated as the field of objective cognition as in the Kantian Critique, but subsequently it must be devalued or “abolished” on moral grounds if it is to find a place in transcendental philosophy. As Plato’s Sophist (258b–259b) might put it, what we have in nature is non-being, that which is but ought not be. Consequently, Fichte’s philosophy of nature falls into two parts: the cognitive construction of nature and its practical deconstruction or annihilation. The chapter begins by considering how Wissenschaftslehre transforms Kant’s enterprise. Then, to show what Fichte is not trying to do in the Outline, I turn to Kant’s attempt to provide physics with an a priori foundation. Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science expands the Critique’s static picture of the objects of perception into the mobile view of physics, whose basic concepts are matter and motion. Fichte takes inspiration from Kant’s dynamical picture of matter as the impenetrable occupation of space, since force is the physical counterpart of will or striving. These modes of acting are the chief ways humans must explain themselves to themselves. In the chapter’s main section, I examine two sketches of what nature might look like for cognition if built on a dynamic construction of space, time, and matter rather on the scattered phenomenal snapshots of empiricism or Kantian phenomenalism. I then turn to

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the practical domain and consider texts that make embodied nature, the body, into either the vehicle for expressing activity or field of combat for a freedom that seeks to transcend inevitable finitude and find self-sufficiency. The abruptness of my turn from the cognitive to the practical order is not accidental or stylistic. Fichte’s own constructive-antagonistic attitude toward nature reveals something fundamental about Transcendental Idealism: the transcendent, unargued, and unarguable nature of the claim to the “primacy of the practical.” In general, I argue that there is an unwritten doctrine of nature that accompanies the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, that the question of nature for Fichte was really the question of how to conceive the not-I, and of how to factually support finite consciousness as originating from the activity or agency of I-hood. On the cognitive side, the problem is getting from activity to limitation. And on the practical side, the problem is getting from limitation to activity, or from habitual stimulus-response to decision.

Wissenschaftslehre as Transcendental Philosophy Though the label “German Idealism” has long roots, it is not widely appreciated that the idealism of Kant and his successors is methodological, not ontological. The transcendental tradition explains any number of situations, whether the nature of belief or the “ways of the world,” by referring them to mind, its capacities, and its operations. Its idealism is heuristic, usually not reductive, and a matter of philosophical technique or explanatory strategy.2 Various transcendental theorists call on different mental functions: Kant appeals to cognition, Fichte to imagination, Schelling to intuition, and Hegel to reflection or self-reference. But the reality or realities they consider are robustly independent of mind and fall outside the perceptual ontologies of a Berkeley or a Whitehead or the logico-linguistic ontologies of a Wittgenstein or a Sellars. Kant’s precarious phenomenalism puts him closest to the latter thinkers, but the clamor of his successors to excise the ghostly “thing-in-itself ” behind appearance quickly puts them on the road to a heuristic idealism that is clear about what it can and cannot do. Fichte’s confidence as a philosopher rests on his conviction that philosophy’s task is to transform the beliefs and cultural currents of an educated public, even the beliefs of the newly minted Critical philosophy, into views backed by compelling argument. He is clear about what he is doing: defending freedom or primacy of agency over static being. But he never finds a way to adequately expound his insights. Some features of the contemporary philosophical situation turn his thought from simple to complex in his search for clarity—e.g., Kant’s failure to fully explain the “synthetic method” he employed or the widespread imitation of the kind of axiomatic deduction used by Spinoza and Newton. Kant offered a linear approach to the synthetic character of cognition, in which he presented the elements of cognition in analytic abstraction, ascending from simple to complex—or from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. Fichte looks instead to the complicated or dense nature of mental activity as we have it—the so-called “fact of consciousness”—takes the synthetic character of that activity as given, and uses hypothesis and argument to deconstruct the synthesis into its (abstractly)

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simple components. But Fichte is not always clear that he is using Kant’s terminology and ways of argument in novel ways, or that the focus of his own philosophical outlook is more experiential than analytic. His taste for the simplicity and clarity, on view in his use of Euclidean proofs or his imitation of Reinhold’s foundationalism, which tries to unpack everything from fundamental principles,   tempts him to misstate what he had seen in a series of bold dialectical experiments—I-hood, the not-I, and the space of lively  interaction that is their concrete reality—as simple starting points or generalities to be fleshed out in hurdy-gurdy deductions. This pseudo-deductive procedure obscures the reality of Fichte’s own engagement with the tussle of freedom and constraint and prevents the reader (though perhaps not his lecture students) from seeing that human being and philosopher alike start and end in the muck of life, with limited degrees of freedom and set boundaries, with reason itself precariously embedded in threatening situations where striving can be the only incubator for freedom and feeling the sole sprout of reason. Perhaps in non-revolutionary settings even the Jacobin must speak circumspectly. But the heat and heart of Fichte’s philosophy was closer to the disruptive fragments and genre-bending narratives of his poetic friends—Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, and Schleiermacher. I-hood or agency, not-I or nature, and the space of their mutual interaction, cognition and willing, first introduced in 1794/95 as the “fundamental principles” of his system, are best viewed as generalizations from discrete dialectical exercises, the terminus ad quem of philosophical construction, not its premises or starting points (SK 93–119 [SW I, 91–122]). Fichte is prescient, but not always clear, on the role of interactive limitation or determination in the life of mind as we experience it—imagination being the driver or tool of theoretical cognition, and feeling or self-affection being the heart of praxis. In both these territories, original activity becomes “eye” or I-hood on second bounce, through a twofold process of intuition and reflection. Just the reverse of the retina with its non-seeing center, I-hood emerges as consciousness in the vacant spot left in the middle of agency’s productive activity. Based on feeling and productive imagination, the finite I of self-consciousness emerges as a totemic substitute for the world-productive original activity that can never be wholly determined or brought to consciousness. Consciousness is fundamentally imaginative (not fictive), for it is the power to limit activity, be on both sides of that boundary simultaneously, establish that boundary as a “reality,” but not impede further acts of activity and limitation. Fichte’s transcendental construction is idealistic in a metaphysical way, but it is not a subjective, one-sided philosophy of consciousness, for the “imagination” or intuition–reflection it posits in its transcendental hypothesis is the active support or agency underlying all mental function, not a specific mental activity (EPW 200–207 [GA II/3: 324–32]). There is room for a philosophy of nature in Fichte’s transcendental idealism, but hardly the a priori deductions of Newton’s laws of dynamics and mechanics that Kant envisioned.

Kant’s Metaphysics of Natural Science Once he had established the framework of transcendental idealism in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant turned his attention to the elaboration of the system of critical idealism, whose idea he explored in the Doctrine of Method. On his account, the

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task of metaphysics is to exhibit the systematic unity of a priori cognition, with transcendental philosophy or “ontology” exploring our cognitive powers and rational physiology exploring the sum of given objects, or nature (Ak 3: 873–74). Nature comprises corporeal nature, treated in rational physics, and the thinking being, treated in rational psychology. These disciplines, later redefined as the metaphysics of nature and the metaphysics of morals, offer a priori knowledge about objects given to the senses—“impenetrable, inanimate extension” and causality of the will (ibid., 876, 878). These fields are unique because they enlarge our knowledge of body and mind with synthetic a priori cognitions, although their objects are given only in outer or inner sense. They provide a slim but positive answer to Kant’s initial question: What can provide a body of knowledge that is well-founded, hence scientific (CPR Ak 3: xxxvi, 23–4; Prol. Ak 4: 274–5)? Kant approached the question of an a priori body of cognition about nature in a variety of ways. The Prolegomena, where he prefaces the question of the scientific status of metaphysics with a look at the possibility of mathematics and natural science, offers a general account of the possibility of nature. Materially, space, time, and that which fills them are given in our sensibility and are conditioned by the relations and properties of these frameworks. Formally, appearances or perceptions cohere into experience because of a lawfulness that our understanding introduces into nature, not one drawn from nature (Ak 4: 318–20). The Critique itself anticipated the metaphysics of nature in the Synthetic Principles, which extends the temporalization of the categories from the Schematism into principles framing the quantity, quality, relation, and modality of objects of experience, expressed in terms of temporal intervals in inner sense. In the B edition, however, Kant makes two further points: (1) we have no insight into how something can be a substance, or a cause, or stand in causal interactions unless we have an intuition that displays the category in question, and (2) we require not merely intuitions, but outer intuitions that display substance as matter, causality as motion, and community as interacting bodies (Ak 3: 288–93). This note summarizes the argument of Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that nature is possible because of the lawfulness that the categories impart to the appearances of the motion, spread (impenetrability), and interaction of bodies. The Metaphysical Foundations, published in 1786, is a sparse but tightly reasoned text. Its Preface argues that an a priori construction of the key concepts of physics must be pursued prior to the inspection of empirical data, for empirical physics touches on the existence of moving bodies and only aggregates disparate items of knowledge, while metaphysics provides pure rational cognition from mere concepts. Only by means of such a construction will mathematics, itself a process of constructing concepts given in a priori intuition (space and time), be applicable to the study of motion (Ak 4: 469). For Kant, the mark of completeness of a metaphysics is its employment of the whole matrix of a priori concepts of understanding, summarized in the table of categories. Each of the essay’s four chapters applies one class of categories—quantity, quality, relation, and modality—to corporeal nature. The first application yields phoronomy (the account of motion), the second dynamics (forces), the third mechanics (the laws of motion), while the last recapitulates the other three under the concepts of possibility, actuality, and necessity (ibid., 476–7).

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The chapter on phoronomy is difficult, since it must establish conditions for the application of mathematics to motion and must therefore define its primitive terms (motion and rest) in a nonmathematical way. This involves putting the different relational parameters of space and time together, or generating the concept of place— but without measure, number or quantification. Renowned as an astronomer for decades before turning to Critical philosophy, Kant had advanced the hypothesis of nebular rotation, which claimed that every astronomical body is in motion relative to others and that, even if the totality seems stationary, its apparent rest comes from the pervasive nature of motion. It is for him rather natural, then, to conceive being in place as being equally rotated in the opposite direction to a framework of observation that is itself rotated. I can stand in Trafalgar Square at the summer solstice of 2019, observe the geographical relation of the British Museum of Art and St. Martins-in-the-Field at noon and one hour later, and little will appear to have changed—except the light. My location has been rotated eastward roughly 1/24th of the earth’s circumference, but its spatial framework has rotated westward to the same extent, so I am (relatively) in the same place. Viewed in this way, place or any definite spatial location becomes a function of universal motion. When space becomes a colocation of points, measurement and quantification of the motion of bodies moved in the same framework is possible. The possibility of nature depends on there being some here here, and with here there, hence distance—or something to which the abstract but synthetic a priori truths of mathematics can apply. Kant argues in this way: [A]ll motion that is an object of experience is merely relative, and the space in which it is perceived is a relative space, which itself moves in turn in an enlarged space, perhaps in the opposite direction, so that matter moved with respect to the first can be called at rest in relation to the second space, and these variations in the concept of motions progress to infinity along with the change of relative space (Ak 4: 481).

So, mathematics can be applied to observed objects because what is abstractly intuitable about objects (position in space and time) can be translated to their speed and direction of motion. Kant’s second chapter, dynamics, is of greater relevance to the systems of nature that Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel offer, for it adds the notion of a persisting occupation of space to the simple idea of movement. It invokes the force (or dual forces) Newton used to define matter and the movement of astronomical of bodies as a system of universal gravitation. Dynamically, matter is defined by its resistance or impenetrability, called the repulsive force; only as if it were fighting off all foreign invaders does a chunk of matter get to fill the space it encompasses. Repulsive force generally covers the surface of a body and works through direct contact, though a body may admit degrees of penetration by other bodies (Ak 4: 499). Each quantum of matter would infinitely repel all others were it not counterbalanced by an opposite force, universal attraction, which operates globally and at a distance (ibid., 512–13). Newton himself identified gravity with universal attraction, but there were subsequent debates about whether gravity is the product of the two forces or simply attraction as opposed to impenetrability

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(measured by density or cohesion). Kant insists that the paradoxes that arise from the infinity, continuity, and infinite divisibility of space can be solved only by treating matter in space as appearance, not a “thing in itself ” (ibid., 506–8). For post-Kantian philosophies of nature, the key feature of dynamics is the polarity of forces involved, or, as Fichte will phrase it, the tension between activity and limitation. Kant devotes a third chapter to mechanics, where matter’s definition is enlarged to include moving forces. In a system or field of forces, bodies communicate motion to one another and thereby move at different speeds in varying directions. Kant underscores the static or inertial character of mechanical force and offers versions of Newton’s laws of motion that correspond to the relational categories of substance and accident, cause and effect, and interaction or reciprocity (Ak 4: 549–51). A fourth chapter, entitled phenomenology, ties the preceding three chapters together as describing the possibility, actuality, and necessity of the interplay of bodies and their motions in space. Only by introducing the modal perspective into the account, argues Kant, can physical bodies count as objects of experience (ibid., 554–5). All possible motions occur in relative space; absolute space is merely an idea, not a physical possibility. Kant’s version of classical physics ties measurement to framework of observation and makes it possible to assimilate it to the physics of relativity theory, though the latter makes different assumptions about space-time and gravity.

Fichte’s Theoretical Philosophy of Nature An appendix to Fichte’s 1796/9 (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo outlines a complete system of transcendental philosophy. It promises that we can discover the world by discovering ourselves, or all the laws of thinking. While some basic features can be displayed in a foundational or “overview” section, it is the task of theoretical philosophy to give a full account of cognition—everything that can be found in consciousness. When one inspects what is found in consciousness, one looks to nature—what is there to be cognized. Nature can be considered in two ways: either as subject to merely mechanical laws of motion, as in “Kant’s Metaphysics of Nature” or as subject to organic laws that govern the existence of humans, animals, and plants. These two endeavors exhaust theoretical philosophy or “theory of the world” ([GA IV/2: 262–3]). This is an important bit of text. For those who know Fichte, situating “what is discovered,” or the merely found character of nature, inside the process of selfdiscovery that is human consciousness gives a clear indication that for Fichte, however integral nature might be to the life of consciousness as a support and an instrument, only consciousness has independence, efficacy, and the ability to explain itself from its own point of view. What is found is foreign (EPW 251 [GA I/3: 150]). For those who know Kant, it is clear that Fichte intends to overlap with Kant’s treatment, but in wanting to progress from the rudiments of physics to those of biology, he was enlarging Kant’s view of what philosophy could do for empirical science—or altogether surpassing Kant’s distinction between what is a priori and a posteriori. Using a constructive or “experimental” method, Fichte’s transcendental philosopher

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freely produces an image of what she finds necessarily present in consciousness and, with this experiment, bridges the divide Kant saw between thinking and experience (IWL 33–4 [GA I/4: 207]).

Redoing Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic (1795) We shall return to the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo’s sketch of physical and biological nature, but must acknowledge that it is scant and intended only to support the idea of some environment for the finite I’s activity. The 1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty offers a richer picture of the active underpinnings of nature, and it supplements The Science of Knowledge by demonstrating Fichte’s independence from Kant. The First Critique launched its argument for the objectivity of cognition by supposing that space and time were merely formal features of the appearances or phenomena, whose fully minted “objectivity” or veracity depends on further mental processing, both conceptual and judgmental. This is the viewpoint of transcendental idealism, but it lacks a precise explanation of this processing. Kant, as is well known, compromised the simplicity, if not integrity, of his transcendental philosophy by continuing to refer to an extramental ground of objectivity, a “thing in itself.” Though Reinhold stood by Kant in this matter, Jacobi, Maimon, and Schulze denounced its incoherence inside transcendental philosophy, where it can at best be a redundant concept alongside the functional objectivity of the objects of experience, the thing from our side. Fichte is not so much interested in reproving Kant as in improving transcendental idealism, so in place of the awkwardly introduced and insufficiently argued hypotheses of the Transcendental Aesthetic, he presents a complete construction (or theory) of intuitions—not just the spatio-temporal nexus that Kant viewed as the formal framework of sensory contents, but the sensory qualities that provide the “material manifold” and even their demarcation into denumerable entities. Fichte sets out to fully deduce what Kant could only suppose and support by piecemeal argument. Kant made it plain he was no Berkeleyean idealist, that philosophy cannot supply “the given,” but at most anticipate it. But there is no given, thinks Fichte, and what is ultimately found in experience is only a trace or archaeological remnant of the I’s hidden activity. Although he nominally retains Kant’s contrast between intuition and concept, he lessens its binary bite, defining the former as a productive activity never to be brought to consciousness and the latter as reified or suspended activity. No one sees a speeding bullet or the action it performs; video can record the event, but only subsequent forensic examination or stop-frame analysis can determine what happened. It is the slowing or glaciation of activity that makes the process of intuition, imagination, and conceptualization into an object of cognition—something that does not just happen, but something we understand. Consciousness is emergent upon these functions that the philosopher introduces as its substrate. Fichte’s claim is that Wissenschaftslehre can accomplish more than Criticism dares—not only secure the objectivity of experience, but its necessity, and not just illuminate mind’s formal contributions to experience, but show that primitive activity constructs the entire

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theater of experience and populates both sides of the proscenium, finite subject(s) and finite object(s). Whereas Kant failed to anticipate sensations or the found content of experience in the Transcendental Aesthetic, Fichte proposes to do just this in the Outline. His narrative constructs the unique point of the cognitive project where activity, which has come to consciousness only after a double course of limitation and reflection, shows up as a (self-aware) awareness of finite content. Wissenschaftslehre, argues Fichte, must take the path of progressive determination to descend from the infinite to the finite, and so display the system of the human mind: “It must prove that a manifold is given for possible experience … Whatever is, must be something, but it is something only insofar as there is something else, which is also something through a different something. As soon as this can be proven, we enter the realm of particulars” (EPW 246 [GA I/3: 145]). These simple words in the Outline’s introduction call attention to the knottiest of difficulties at the heart of Fichte’s thinking, as does the obscure locution “path of determination.” By strict accounting there is nothing but activity, yet activity as such is nothing until it becomes something, until it limits itself. Indefinite (categorial) activity cannot be infinite until it becomes every something—a complete world of finite particulars that exists for a limited agent-observer. But whence limitation? If there is only activity, what could limit activity? Why must I-hood take the form of an I situated alongside a not-I? Stated top-down, the problem seems insoluble. The Outline has clear linear structure, unlike the 1794/95 Science of Knowledge, which evidently must be played backward like a satanic recording to deliver a message. It was meant to accompany the latter, and both were published with the proviso that they were handbooks meant to accompany Fichte’s lectures. After a brief introduction, a second section introduces a first theorem: the original fact of consciousness (activity checked by limit and mediated by imagination) is established in sensation, literally, that which is found in the I (EPW 251 [GA I/3: 150–1]). Most of a long third section (I.–VI.) articulates a second theorem: a sensor is established in intuition. The focus moves from what is found to the finding or intuiting, and this turns out to be activity in conflict with itself—a force that encounters an opposing force and establishes the sensation (of the first theorem) as a copy of this opposing force. Both Kant’s appearance and its referent “thing” are just doubled image of activity; contradictory activities morph into self-conflict (EPW 252–5 [GA 152–4]). The discussion subsequently elaborates this activity as a cascade of dynamic processes that collectively underlie consciousness as a substrate, but never appear in consciousness. Fichte borrows common philosophical concepts for this task—impression and intuition, ideal and real activity, activity and passivity, production and reflection. Most philosophers view these pairs as binary or exclusive, but in Fichte’s hands the first member is fluid, vital, and evanescent, the second evolved, settled, and permanent—as in living and dead. The treatment of sensation and intuition on offer here comes from the foundational Wissenschaftslehre and offers no content different than The Science of Knowledge. It is only with the concluding number (VII.) of the third section and the fourth, which follows, that the discussion turns to what is unique to cognition or the theoretical stance: the double limitation and double reflection that underlies finite consciousness. It is this potentiated limitation-reflection that permits a world of objects to constellate around the apprehending (and incidentally self-apprehending) subject. If the reader

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cares to take “constellate” literally, there is something here analogous to the galactic splay said to surround a black hole. Here Wissenschaftslehre divides into two streams of description: one of a developing center of finite activity that functions under limitation as feeling, and another that of a philosophical observer who can see this nexus of activity and limitation mediated by imagination as cognition. At the point of division, the evolving stream of activity and reflection has accumulated all the conditions of consciousness through the dance of distinctions mentioned above, but it has not yet achieved reflection and remains opaque to itself, though transparent to the observer (EPW 271–2 [GA I/3: 171–3]). The developing I turns into a double field of activity, since a single stream of action cannot simultaneously produce a not-I and be aware that it is its product. Reflection grasps the product as copy or a merely determinable entity and contrasts it to its own activity as a fully determined or actual thing. The correlated ideal aspects, the determinable and the determined, form a harmony, the inchoate basis of our concept of truth. But they cannot be cognized or brought to consciousness until there is an interruption. An observer intervenes and imposes a law (or interpretation) that transforms the copy/thing relation into that of property/thing (EPW 278–82 [GA I/3: 178–82]). The observer then brings Kant’s categories of relation and modality to bear upon the qualia or feeling-tones generated. Since these categories are dyadic or relational, the observer forces embryonic entity-awareness into a split in which one field becomes two “substances” or spheres of efficacy, each connected to but excluding the other, overlapping and pressing one another into a single dynamic point. The interacting forces are categorical or necessary features, since as they coalesce they exhibit contingency, the ontological correlate of freedom (EPW 290–1 [GA 192–3]). In the Outline’s concluding section, where Fichte must “do the magic” and demonstrate what Kant merely supposed, the argument becomes very abstract (or “clear” like the geometrical constructions that Newton and Kant advance as illustrations). What drives the discussion is the idea of overlapping fields of force or competing spheres of efficacy. This is the exact meaning of imagination: equal action on both sides of a boundary which, therefore, does not divide but connects. We could call productive imagination projective intelligence: the power of mind to go where it is not, or to not mind its own business but overleap boundaries. So, the pulsating point explained above will not stay single, but transforms into a multiplicity of points, each one exclusive of others yet contiguous with them. This not-quite-one and not-quite-many is space and the lapsing thrust of actuality that generates the notquite-there dimensions of past, present, and future (EPW 298–306 [GA I/3: 200–8]).3 Intuitions—the only kind of somethings or substances in the idealist’s tool-kit—are therefore not passively dumped into an aquarium space-time; they are self-presenting and self-framing, items of performance art. Finite consciousness finds itself situated in a nature produced by the very activity that is consciousness’s precursor and support—garbed in a body and situated in matter, space, and time. Kant’s dry talk of forms of intuitions and concepts of understanding has become the phenomenology of embodied perception.

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One could add more to the basic picture of the Outline, but Fichte’s capacity for detail seems endless. I prefer to dwell on problematic points in Fichte’s account of the evolution of activity into embodied consciousness: (1) the nature of the “path of determination” he pursues, or the capacity of what he calls “imagination” to be on both sides of a boundary; (2) the bifurcation of agency-on-the-way-to-entity into two streams, that of the developing subject that feels or reacts and that of an observing consciousness which has already become a subject; (3) the multiplication of force into a multiplicity of forces, and of forces into single and then multiple points. If we look to these items, an interesting feature emerges. All three share a fundamental ambiguity. It is said there is one activity, but it falls apart into two directions or breaks into two entities and simultaneously acts on both sides of a divide. The ambiguity crops up regularly, at the culmination of the three main sections of the Outline’s argument: the deduction of sensation, the emergence of a proto-subject (feeling), and the derivation of embodied consciousness in space-time. These points interrupt the flow of intuition–reflection and introduce new kinds of organization: the mental processing that Kant codified in his table of a priori judgments and categories of the understanding. They function like a voice-over in a film where interpretation or even novel content is inserted into the narrative without being seen. Each of these nodes of complication also points to intersubjectivity as the necessary background of individual consciousness—the “voice-over” (or Other) that summons one to agency and freedom, whose intervention here potentiates the process of self-actuation that might otherwise stall out at the self-enclosure of feeling. These nodes of complication point to the practical character of finite cognition–agency: the projective character of intelligence that Fichte sometimes called “imagination” and sometimes “intuition– reflection.” What Fichte ultimately has in view in the practical orders of law and ethics is a social energy that realizes itself as a plastic field of self-and-other and shapes itself into a social order to achieve necessary ends, but first achieves individual agency as striving against a series of limits to be abolished. It would require separate studies of the themes of imagination and summons to fully explain these matters. Let me instead aim for economy and restate the above discussion as three general features of the Outline’s construction of nature (or the not-I). ●●

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In the developing narrative governed by imagination (projective intelligence, or the duplicity of intuition and reflection), activity encounters a limit, inhabits both sides of the limit, and takes different forms on either side of the limit. The dominant story is the flow of activity. As nothing but activity, it is incessant and unconstrained. Limits in the flow are redirections, reorganizations, or energetic bump-ups: they do what Kant thinks a priori concepts do when impressed on intuitions and imaginatively integrated with them. Perhaps, as Darwin thought, mutation is the mother of invention and random changes accumulate to functions that in retrospect seems designed or chosen. But in Fichte’s account of the evolution of activity into freedom and reason, there is instead a persistent social shaping, the summoning power of existing selfconsciousness. Social pressure imparts temporary goals, accommodation becomes choice, one is pushed into being free.

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Although Fichte was unable to produce a definitive version of Wissenschaftslehre, it is clear from descriptions he offered that he speaks from the present situation of humankind, one that is social and historical, that has actualized some degree  of  rationality, freedom and social sharing—enough to provide hope for the evolution of ethical–religious ideas and institutions.

Nature as Body: Mechanism, Organism, and Expression (1796/99) The concluding section of the Jena nova methodo lectures briefly describes two approaches to formulating a philosophy of nature. While the first version of Wissenschaftslehre, to which The Science of Knowledge belongs, had buried the interactive springs of consciousness—feeling and striving—in an opaque logical discourse about first principles and self-affirming (or self-positing) truths, the Introductions and fragmentary chapters of the 1797 Attempt at a New Presentation shadow the “new method” lectures. There is no longer any pretense that one can deduce consciousness or advance some fundamental fact of consciousness. Transcendental philosophy is not accidentally self-referential, as Kant suggested in arguing that his idealism was heuristic or just methodical, with no commitment to mental items as the stuff of reality. Fichte now sees that philosophy’s path is phenomenological: because one already stands in consciousness, there is an interest in explaining it, but no route to anything outside, no ready-to-hand fact of consciousness. The only possible fact of consciousness is self-assembling, but its mode of assembly is simultaneously deconstructive and reconstructive, or, in Fichte’s own words, synthetic. Early in the 1795 Outline, he argued that activity which is synthetic or determined is already both thetic and antithetic (EPW 249 [GA I/3: 148–9]). Synthetic method doesn’t go anywhere except where it is already located, but it turns inwards, disassembling the synthesis of activities that is its origin and functional support. Of the two sorts of philosophies of nature that Fichte envisions, both are equally primary and irreducible to the other. The first is the mechanical model that Kant elaborated in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. In it, matter is defined as the occupation of space by opposite forces and motion figured as correlated changes among bodies, measurable in spans of space and time. While Kant wanted to find a link between a priori philosophy and empirical physics, Fichte’s interest in a mechanical nature centers on articulation, the expression of agency as body, which is at once the limitation of my activity and the vehicle for expressing my will. Nature as body is the limit of my activity—or the place where my will and rationality are confronted by an independent reality, a product of thinking or rationality, to be sure, but not my thinking or my rationality. I am not body, but my freedom and rationality are bounded by body, which is a product of nature, not of my will (FTP 461 [GA IV/2: 258]). As the limit of my freedom, the body is organized, the summons to activity made sensible, in fact produced by natural causality. But there is another aspect to nature, which is not only organized but organizing, hence another sort of philosophy of nature that is centered on the organic, not the mechanical. Through organization, holistic unity arises, since the parts of the body

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as parts are produced mechanically by the causal forces of nature but cannot subsist independently or outside interconnection. As organized, the body is made up of parts, but it functions only as a whole of parts or a nexus of functions; hence it is both organized and organizing, like Spinoza’s natura naturans and naturata. The whole of nature is likewise interconnected and is one organism: Nature as a whole  “must necessarily be an organized whole, because individual organized wholes are possible within nature, and these are made possible only by means of the entire force of nature. Individual organized wholes are simply products of the organization of the whole universe” (FTP 463 [GA IV/2: 259]). Evidently, it takes a universe to raise a consciousness. If we consider that the body is both organized and organizing, my limit but at the same time the vehicle of my reason and its summons to freedom, the body is the universe, and my agency is the totality of everything that comes to be. Fichte’s ultimate view of nature is that it is a super-organism, an organization of organizations. At the sensible levels, even the mechanical world is interactive, a harmony of intersecting interactions among entities. At the rational level, it is cooperative, since the embodied nature common to all finite rational centers of activity forces them to interpret each other’s actions as those of rational agents. Finally, these orders as such interact or are organically interrelated; just as nature and freedom interact with the individual rational being, so do nature and freedom as such. While from the common point of view, an independent nature seems to encroach upon freedom and put limits on its action, the articulated body serves as its vehicle or language. Nature is freedom’s body and its voice (FTP 464 [GA IV/2: 260]).

Fichte’s Practical Philosophy: The Rebuke of Nature Each conception of body mentioned in the system sketch plays a significant role in one of the two branches of Fichte’s published practical philosophy.

Foundations of Natural Right (1796/97) The articulated or organized body expresses intelligence in nature, offering for the perception of others a complex machine capable of all sorts of actions in many directions and multiple sensory modes. I am the sole inhabitant of the articulated body, the only entity capable of conceiving it as a functional unity with my intellect, but thereby also inclined to treat the motions of other perceived bodies and their behavioral repertory as signs of the presence of other cases of embodied intellect (FNR 56–8 [SW III: 59–61]). If it seems odd to argue to an arrangement of mutual forbearance among persons on a materialistic basis, the community of bodies in nature, it is because, absent self-limitation, the actions of persons would be like the inertial movements of bodies in Newtonian mechanics. The definition of matter as the impenetrable occupation of space implies that two bodies cannot occupy the same space, or if they do, they coalesce into one. My body as articulated both situates and expresses the intelligence I am, but it does so by putting it out into a common space where like objects (imputed to be subjects) can impinge on it, or alter, inhibit, and

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destroy it. As far as I directly know, I am the only case of embodied intelligence, with its limitless possible movements. Since I am compelled to infer that the other body in the vicinity capable of acting in myriad ways (as I can) is a rational being like me, I am related to her as resisting her and her activities (FNR 72–4 [SW 77–80]). The idea arises that persons should not try to occupy the same sphere of activity, the way material bodies in fact cannot share the same space. The other’s body becomes the limit of my freedom. As my freedom is limited or constrained, she becomes an object for my practical intelligence, a bearer of right with responsibility for actions that impact one another. Fichte is precise here about the order of causality: it is not my activity that makes the other into a rational being or center of freedom, but my self-restraint in the face of what might be another free being (FNR 70 [SW III: 74–5]). The fiction of juridical personality puts flippers and bumpers into the pinball game—or round-abouts and speed-bumps into the traffic pattern—that would otherwise be governed only by the initial thrust and speed of my shot, and resultant collisions. Rights are mutually agreed limitations upon activity, an abrogation of freedom for the protection of embodied intellect. The realm of law, while requiring intelligent construction and maintenance, is part of nature. Well-crafted, it effects a mechanics of agency consistent with formal freedom (conscious behavior) but antithetical to material freedom (self-sufficiency) (SE 129, 132 [SW IV: 135–6]).

The System of Ethics (1798) The organic or self-organizing body plays a crucial role in Fichte’s System of Ethics not just because the organism gives physical and physiological support for the rational being, but because, due to its complicated systemic self-maintenance and regulation, its needs and processes provide the subject an array of choices for its free activity. There are two aspects to this nest of life-supporting activities, the natural aspect or the organized and organizing life of the body, and the psychological, pre-moral aspect that Fichte calls the natural drive. The living body is a whole made up of living parts, and its life consists in whole and part sustaining each other through specific functions. The biology, chemistry, and physiology of Fichte’s day had traced the broad outline of major subsystems, but there was little specific knowledge of the life of cells, the information-bearing function of nerves, or the bodily basis of voluntary muscle movements. Schelling had argued that the so-called Galvanic function was not a unique phenomenon, but just a specimen of electricity excited by chemical means—in effect, opening the door to biochemistry and study of the nervous system. Fichte offers an abstract but prescient account of organic functionality: all sorts of cells, organs, and structures interface with more complicated systems and facilitate their execution, while themselves depending on complicated subsystems. The organism becomes a system of systems, each depending on other living systems, held together at all levels by items whose properties enable them to in many different functional contexts (SE 108–16 [SW IV: 112–21]). In virtue of my body, I am part of nature and an organic totality. But in Fichte’s philosophy, nature is not a self-enclosed or independent domain. It is a product of activity come to consciousness through (self) limitation, and just as nature

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lies within the larger territory of formal freedom (activity emergent as consciousness), my organic body is the self-sustaining assemblage it appears to be by the work and limitation of material freedom, the drive toward complete self-determination or selfsufficiency. Just as my articulated body can be both a vehicle and a vulnerability as I move among other beings prior to the reciprocal recognition that brings with it the security of law (right), so my living body and its process presents a display of needs and possible satisfactions for my deliberation and unforced choice. This dynamic display, termed the natural drive, is the domain of the lower faculty of desire; sorting through and ranking the possible satisfactions it displays, I can discern the sole item that is my duty, or what is commanded by the higher faculty of desire. The natural drive is embedded in the life of the body: certain functions are automatic and need no attention. I am mostly unaware and usually without influence upon digestion, metabolism, circulation. Hunger, thirst, itchiness, cold, and fatigue register as behavioral prompts (striving, desire, longing, or craving) and step out into a no-man’s land between necessity and freedom, where it is in my power to satisfy or not satisfy a given one, or one at the expense of others. But since it takes awareness and reflection to move from sensing hunger to satisfying it—or from desire to craving—the business of satisfying desire is part of the house of intellect (SE 120–1 [SW IV: 125–7]). It has been easy to this point to agree with Fichte and simplify his presentation. When it comes to the moral significance of the body, Fichte’s thinking becomes simultaneously naturalistic and puritanical. Nature is a system of operations and ends, its life—inorganic nature and our body—is a presentation of change that is both unceasing and lawful. Our agency, the telos of a rational being, is to use nature as a tool, a vehicle to self-sufficiency or autarchy. What displays itself in the natural drive, however, is the causality of nature. Our personal causality, the ethical drive, consists in the perception of possibilities, evaluation of the requirements of the specific situation, and willing to do what is morally necessary—the response of freedom to the summons of duty (SE 204–5 [SW IV: 215–16]). From this follow three material commands of ethics: ●●

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Preserve and cultivate the body solely as a tool for moral activity, not as an end in itself. Cultivate the body, as far as possible, to be a tool for all possible moral actions. Whatever does not fall under the above two laws, e.g., enjoyment, is impermissible.

In short, morality demands the subjugation of the natural drive to the ethical, or the crafting of single requirement of duty from the possibilities available to deliberation and arbitrary choice (SE 150–1, 218 [SW IV; 159, 229–30]). Much can be said of Fichte’s moral theory. Allen Wood has furnished a detailed and sympathetic defense of it. I can embrace Fichte’s emphasis on context (or situation) and conscience as what fixes duty, but I am not as sanguine as Wood about driving “the permissible” and enjoyment from the motherland of morals (Wood 2016). But we can clearly see the upshot: Fichte leaves us as human beings precisely where our burgeoning technology leaves us on

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the brink of rule by algorithms and conveyance by “autonomous automobiles.” The question put to nature is whether we drive the vehicle or the vehicle drives us. If the roadway is concrete, it matters little. But in this case, the highway is freedom. It is clear, therefore, that morality requires the subjection of the instrumental value of nature to the intrinsic value of agency or activity for the sake of activity. Not only is nature without intrinsic value, even embodied reason or the empirical I does not exist for its own sake, but it is only valuable as the instrument of reason bent on securing its liberation from the thrall of necessity. My empirical self, “the entire sensible and empirically determined individual”—both body and mind—cannot be the object of will or moral endeavor. “Our ultimate goal is the self-sufficiency of all reason as such, not the self-sufficiency of one rational being, insofar as it is an individual rational being” (SE 220 [SW IV: 231]). From such a line of thought one might derive a pragmatics for the use of earth’s inorganic resources and the maintenance of its species, but not an environmental ethics. There are no direct duties toward nature, and indirectly only duties to fashion (and perhaps manage) nature for human use. Even then, human needs and satisfactions are pre-moral matters, supports for human life of moral interest only insofar as the life of the body is for the sake of the mind. Duties toward other rational agents extend only in securing formal freedom or the conditions of conscious life. The morally good human person “wills that reason and reason alone should have dominion in the sensible world. All physical force ought to be subordinated to reason” (SE 262 [SW IV: 275]). If the reach of morality transcends embodied perception, nature, and even the empirical I that cognizes and wills, it crosses the line between the sensible and the supersensible and merges into religion. Fichte conceives religion as a minimalist endeavor to promote morality, a body of widely shared opinion about the nature and demands of duty, propagated by moral educators and embedded in social institutions. The communal convictions propagated by the moral church would be general beliefs about duty, conscience, freedom, and human perfectibility—all and only such things upon which all persons could agree and package in a creed (mission statement) or symbol. Overly general and non-exclusive by design, the convictions furthered by the social church are not meant as substitutes for the work of shaping one’s conscience. Society is not a moral agent; at best it can prepare individuals to become instruments of reason—a work that is self-wrought and demands the individual doubt and question her way to a discerning conscience (SE 224–5 [SW IV: 235–7]). While the “theological” content of the social church seems bland, its intent is directed on the formation of moral capacities, or the willingness to throw off the rule of habit—really the rule of nature in us—and take up a life of examination and decision. Fichte nods to Kant’s essays on religion in identifying the rule of habit, conformity, and sheer laziness in us as a core of “radical evil.” Here, as in key points of Wissenschaftslehre’s account of cognition, an intervention is needed: some shock, knock, or summons. The moral life requires a leap from poetic life, seen in imagination’s modus operandi of hovering about on both sides of a boundary, into ethical life—examination and decision. One must tear oneself away from nature inside oneself, inertia, and habit, and kick oneself into freedom:

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What pertains to nature as a whole must also pertain to the human being insofar as he is nature: namely, a reluctance to leave his state, a tendency to remain on the habitual track … It always requires some effort to tear oneself loose. Even if we succeed every once in a while and the jolt we receive continues to reverberate, the human being still falls back soon enough into his habitual inertia, just as soon as he stops watching over himself. (SE 190 [SW IV: 200–1]).

Vigilance and training in renunciation are required because the final end of action transcends individuality, satisfaction, even one’s humanity. The summons to morality is addressed to me alone; others are not likewise moral agents but ends, so they, not I, are objects of moral attention. In the ultimate perspective, which Fichte maintains is “beyond all individual consciousness,” other rational agents are united in one final end. In the divine perspective, which for this reason seems supra-individual and supraconscious, each rational being is an absolute and final end. Put another way, every rational person is called to become God, a pure presentation of morality, the pure I. If nature is the condition of the individual or the empirical I, and the renunciation of individuality is entailed, the moral law requires the annihilation of nature in oneself (SE 244–5 [SW IV: 255–6]). The end of nature, it seems, is the abolition of nature.

Notes 1 See Schelling IPN [SSW I/2], FO [SSW I/3]; and PRFS, COR [HKA III/2:1]. 2 Kant advanced the heuristic understanding of transcendental method in the 1786 What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (See OT.) It was his contribution to the Spinoza controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn. See Kant 1996 (See OT). 3 A simplified version of these final sections might be as follows: The functional and of intuition-and-reflection becomes the categorial and of substance-and-accident and contingency-and-necessity. This conceptual conjunction/distinction is given sensible expression as the one-alongside-another of space, the one-after-the-other of time, as well as the dynamic and of the forces of repulsion and attraction (matter).

Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2001. “Johann Gottlieb Fichte.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Revised 2014. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/#4.2 Lauth, Reinhard. 1984. Die transzendentale Naturlehre Fichtes nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Wood, Allen E. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Fichte’s Philosophy of Right Gabriel Gottlieb

The central concern of Fichte’s philosophy of right, as it is presented in Foundations of Natural Right (1796/97), is to solve a problem regarding the freedom of persons. Persons, insofar as they are “absolutely free” are “dependent solely on their will” (FNR 79 [GA I/3:384]). However, persons “stand with one another in a state of mutual influence” and are not “dependent solely on themselves” (FNR 79 [GA I/3:384]). Freedom in community with others appears to be an impossibility. This problem presents the science of right with its most fundamental question: “how is a community of free beings, qua free beings, possible” (FNR 79 [GA I/3:384]).1 One may reconceive this question as one about the possibility of freedom within a system of social cooperation: accepting that there are various ways to conceive of a system of social cooperation, under what conditions of social cooperation is it possible for persons to be dependent on their will alone, or “absolutely free”? Fichte’s solution to the problem of freedom, I argue, is a system of mutual influence I will refer to as a system of mutual recognition. His system of mutual recognition holds that a norm of reciprocal interaction between persons obligates them to recognize each other as possessing the capacity to exercise their own free purposive agency in response to a “summons” [Aufforderung]. This summons offers agents a reason act, in the form of a concept of an end, that they may either freely act upon or reject. What makes this form of social cooperation a system is that (1) it proceeds from a first principle that grounds the a priori deduction of the requisite concepts and conclusions of the system; and (2) mutual recognition and the corresponding concept of right shape relations between persons throughout the various social and political institutions that constitute the community of free beings. To defend the system of mutual recognition, Fichte (1) transcendentally deduces the concept of right as an a priori concept of pure reason, (2) establishes how right and recognition apply within the sensible world, and (3) outlines permissions and obligations of right regarding coercion, contracts, political rights, civil right, family right, and cosmopolitan right. Fichte’s Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment Concerning the French Revolution (GA I/1), published in 1793 at the height of revolutionary ferment in France, defended a moral theory of right that was grounded in Kantian moral philosophy.2 However, in the Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte jettisons morality as the normative basis of right. Instead, following the principles of his Wissenschaftslehre,

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he finds the normative resources for grounding right in the free self-activity of the I and considerations of theoretical consistency. His surprising thesis is that the concept of right can be derived a priori, not as a feature of our moral agency, but as a necessary and “original concept of pure reason” (FNR 9 [GA I/3:319]). Even more surprising is his claim that the concept of right is a necessary condition of self-consciousness, our self-reflexive awareness of ourselves as free, rational agents, a principle he establishes in the Wissenschaftslehre (ibid.). Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right proceeds, as the subtitle of the work makes clear, “according to the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre.” Fichte aims to deduce a contested concept, the concept of right, from the most minimal premise he can provide: we are purposive, self-conscious individuals. From this premise, he constructs an egalitarian philosophy of right that offers a normative framework of right for public, private, and international law.3 Without a moral foundation, right may appear to lack normative force. Right receives its normative force, according to Fichte, through persons voluntarily willing to live in community and then recognizing that the laws of thought demand theoretical consistency, which in this case entails consistently acting in accordance with the normative requirements that follow from one’s will to live alongside other rational beings.4 Adhering to the demands that follow from the application of the concept of right in the sensible world constitutes the most fundamental normative requirements that shape relationships between rational beings choosing to live alongside one another.

The Concept of Right The heart of Fichte’s political philosophy is the concept of right. His initial formulation of the concept of right states that “each member of the community lets his own external freedom be limited through inner freedom, so that all others beside him can also be externally free” (FNR 10 [GA I/3:320]). It is not, however, clear how Fichte conceives of freedom in his initial characterization of the concept of right. In fact, Fichte refers to two concepts of freedom: inner freedom and external freedom. Some clarification is offered in the conclusion to his deduction, where he restates the concept of right as a principle: “I must in all cases recognize the free being outside me as a free being, i.e. I must limit my freedom through the concept of the possibility of his freedom” (FNR 49 [GA I/3:358]). In this second formulation, it becomes clearer that by “inner freedom” Fichte has in mind the freedom of a subject as a purposive agent to set its own ends, whatever they may be. Fichte’s conception of right requires a setting of one’s own ends in such a way that one’s choices allow for other purposive agents to set their own respective ends and to exercise their external freedom. External freedom refers to the exercising of one’s embodied agency in accordance with a freely chosen end (inner freedom). Right, on Fichte’s model, is a second-personal, recognitive relation. As he puts it, “the concept of right is the concept of a relation between rational beings,” a relation in which I must “recognize the free being outside me as a free being” (FNR 51, 49 [GA I/3:360, 358]). Relations of right require a distinctive type of social cooperation that Fichte calls “mutual recognition,” “reciprocal recognition,” or “reciprocal interaction”

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(FNR 117, 51 [GA I/3:417, 360]). Recognition is not simply a cognitive state, but a mode of treatment that takes the form of a summons, a second-personal form of address in which a request or demand is made non-coercively, thereby allowing the addressee to freely consent and determine itself (Darwall 2005). Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right establishes how the demands of the system of mutual recognition shape social and political obligations within the various domains of right.

Right and Morality Fichte’s philosophy of right holds that obligations of right are not derived from the moral law, but that they are grounded independently of morality and are obligating for different reasons. In the immediate years following the appearance of Kant’s moral philosophy, it was common among Kantian jurists to derive a principle of right from Kant’s conception of the moral law (see Gottlieb 2018). Fichte is adamant that “in the doctrine of right there is not talk of moral obligation.” Instead, the principle of right receives its normative force from “the free, arbitrary [willkürlichen] decision to live in community with others” and the demands of “theoretical consistency” that obligate one to consistently carry out the commitments that follow from the will to live in community (FNR 11–12, 44 [GA I/3:322, 354]). Fichte offers several reasons why the concept of right cannot be derived from the moral law and why it “has nothing to do with the moral law” (FNR 50 [GA I/3:359]). First, Fichte is skeptical that a permissive law can be derived from a law that commands unconditionally and “extends its reach to everything,” that is, all acts of willing (FNR 14 [GA I/3:324]). The issue here is that the unconditionality of the moral law is inferentially preserved and passed onto whatever duties follow from it. Since “a right is clearly something that one can avail oneself of or not,” and so a permissive and escapable norm (one that is “limited to a certain sphere”), the concept of right cannot be derived from an unconditional, inescapable moral law. A second, but related, reason is Fichte’s skepticism that Kant’s moral philosophy could offer a normative justification of right that provides a framework for reconciling permissions of right with the obligations of morality. The moral law determines one’s categorical duties, yet the domain of right determines permissions to act—it does not necessarily establish a claim about what one must do. A person may under the certain circumstances have a right to use one’s property solely for selfish reasons. Yet, the moral law commands benevolence. In this case, right and duty are at odds with each other. Thus, the concept of right may permit an action that the moral law forbids (FNR 50 [GA I/3:359]). Finally, in the doctrine of right, Fichte sees that the concept of a good will is irrelevant. Moral agency, within the Kantian tradition, requires an unconditional, good will. Yet, if for some reason within the civil condition human beings lack a good will, perhaps because social conditions result in pathologies of reason or because material conditions incentivize immoral behavior, right must remain enforceable. In other words, doing what is rightful does not require that one acts on a good will. Given these considerations, Fichte’s conclusion is that right is independent of morality.5

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Fichte’s views about the second-personal nature of right and the independence of right from the normative principle of morality have important implications for his conception of freedom and community. First, the kind of freedom afforded by the system of right is a social conception of freedom, since, independent of a relation to others, the concept of right cannot be applied and the system of freedom it affords cannot be established. It is a kind of category mistake to think that an individual has a right independent of a relation to another individual, and likewise a mistake to think that independent of a relation to another an individual (perhaps some Robinson Crusoe figure) possesses freedoms of right. Second, a community of free beings need not be a community of beings who exercise moral freedom for the system of mutual recognition to be upheld. Reciprocal recognition is not the recognition of the moral standing or righteousness of an individual; it simply involves the recognition of the individual as acting in accordance with the concept of right.6

Fichte’s Deduction of Right One innovation of Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right is its transcendental deduction of the concept of right, which proceeds not from moral considerations, but from Fichte’s conception of the self-positing I. Fichte’s challenge is to show that from a principle of self-consciousness the concept of right can be legitimated. The argument of the deduction of right is made up of three theorems and an inference drawn from the first theorem. The first theorem states in §1 that “A finite rational being cannot posit itself without ascribing a free efficacy to itself ” (FNR 18 [GA I/3:329]). There are two points worth noting about the concept of rational being as employed in Natural Right. First, a rational being is constituted by the activity of self-reflexivity, or “the activity that reverts into itself in general (I-hood, subjectivity)” (ibid.). This is the self-activity of the I Fichte carefully describes in the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, rational beings are finite agents. Bringing these two points together, a rational being is a finite agent that is aware of itself as an agent, or is self-conscious. From this basic premise about the general form of a rational being, Fichte deduces the concept of right. In the first theorem, Fichte exploits the finitude of the rational being to argue that a rational being must ascribe to itself “free efficacy” (§1) and must posit a “sensible world” (§2) outside the activity of the I. Drawing on the distinction between the I and not-I and the fact that a finite being must be limited, Fichte argues that a condition of a finite rational being is a dual-activity, a world-directed and self-directed activity. The world-directed activity is directed at an object that limits or checks the activity. Insofar as the activity is limited or constrained it is not free. The self-directed activity consists in a self-reverting activity that by not being limited or constrained amounts to a free activity. At this point, Fichte has identified a necessary condition of the finite rational being: that it ascribe a free efficacy to itself. Importantly, the kind of free efficacy Fichte has in mind is not primarily a theoretical activity, but a practical activity: “the act of forming the concept of an intended efficacy outside us, or the concept of an end” (FNR 20 [GA I/3:331]). This is the practical activity Kant identifies as constituting “humanity”

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(MM 522 [Ak 6:392]). It is in this practical activity of willing (forming an end) that the rational being reverts into itself as a free activity and strives to realize the free efficacy originating from itself. Through this activity, the I comes to self-consciousness of itself as a practical I (FNR 21 [GA I/3:332]). The sensible world is inferred in §2 by Fichte, since an object-directed activity requires that something exists outside the I upon which its activity is exercised. In the second theorem (§3), Fichte provides an argument that requires the positing of other rational beings as a necessary condition of exercising free efficacy in the sensible world. The previous theorem established that positing a free efficacy requires positing an object upon which the efficacy is exercised, yet in the second theorem Fichte argues that, upon further analysis, an aporia in the form of a circular explanation arises when attempting to account of the possibility of self-consciousness: (1) positing one’s own efficacy requires positing an object of the sensible world (§2); (2) for the object to appropriately constrain one’s activity it cannot be a product of one’s activity (in which case it would not be a constraint), hence, the object must exist and be determined at a moment prior to the rational being engaging it; (3) it is by virtue of being conscious of the object’s determinacy in this prior moment that one is capable of being conscious of one’s own efficacy and the object as a limit on one’s activity; (4) but this entails that consciousness of one’s own efficacy is conditioned by a prior moment of consciousness.7 If our goal is to explain consciousness of oneself, then it appears one must appeal to consciousness in the explanation, which is circular. Fichte’s solution is to explain the origination of the object and consciousness as being constituted together, thereby avoiding the need to posit a consciousness of the object’s determinacy in a prior moment. By considering “the subject’s efficacy” as “synthetically unified with the object in one and the same moment” so that “the object is nothing other than the subject’s efficacy,” he attempts to avoid the circular explanation (FNR 31 [GA I/3:342]). But what could count as an object that is synthetically unified with the subject’s efficacy? This would have to be a special kind of “object.” Fichte’s answer, the special kind of “object” he has in mind, is a “summons” [Aufforderung] by another subject that calls upon it to exercise its free efficacy. Examples of a summons might be a parent calling upon his child for her to put down a toy or a police officer asking for a driver’s license and registration. In both cases, the summoner is requesting another agent to exercise their free efficacy in response to a practical reason, a reason to act on the basis of a concept of an end. The parent’s request may include the reason that it is bedtime; the officer’s reason might be about a traffic violation. In both cases, the one agent is demanding that the other self-determine itself in accordance with a specific concept of an end, to place the toy down or to hand over one’s license and registration.8 A summons is constituted as a summons for the subject by virtue of the subject’s consciousness of it; the subject exercises its free efficacy by acting or not acting in accordance with the concept of an end. In either case, the subject posits itself as a rational being in response to the summons. What is especially important about the summons is that it serves as the needed constraint on the subject, yet the constraint does not issue in a circular explanation. As an object, the summons is distinct from objects such as tables and walls in that it provides a rational constraint,

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not a causal constraint. Its being a rational constraint allows for it to be synthetically unified with the subject’s own efficacy. In the third theorem, Fichte derives the concept of right as a requirement of having two rational beings standing in community with each other. Fichte’s thought is fairly straightforward: a community of rational beings in which one’s free efficacy is possible requires the concept of right. As a freely efficacious rational being, one must distinguish oneself from other rational beings in terms of one’s agency. Doing so requires that one distinguish one’s own sphere of activity from the sphere of any other rational being. Yet, a necessary condition of making this distinction is that one recognize other rational beings as having their own sphere of activity. They must do the same. If I perceive the other as a rational being, then insofar as we both will to live in community, I am obligated by virtue of theoretical consistency to treat the other as a rational being through actively recognizing them as such. They must do the same. By each rational being engaging in such acts of recognition, each being respects the other’s sphere of free activity; thereby, they follow the concept of right—each limits one’s freedom through the concept of the possibility of the other’s freedom (FNR 49 [GA I/3:358]). At this point, Fichte has transcendentally deduced the concept of right as a necessary condition of self-conscious agency and answered the central concern of the Foundations of Natural Right: under what conditions is it possible for individuals in a community to mutually influence each other while depending solely on one’s own will (FNR 79 [GA I/3:383])? His answer is that such a community of free beings is possible when the concept of right shapes the interpersonal activity that constitutes the community. This entails that social cooperation occurs through the form of mutual influence and recognition afforded by acts of summoning, since the influence of the summons does not undermine the capacity for others to act as self-determining and freely consenting agents.

The Deduction of Right’s Applicability The second main division of Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right deduces the “applicability” of the concept of right. The argument of this portion of Natural Right aims to legitimate the concept of right, not as an a priori concept of reason, but as a concept that justifiably applies to persons, or embodied human begins existing empirically in space and time within the sensible world. This transition in purpose is evident in an important terminological distinction Fichte makes at the beginning of the Fourth Theorem (§5). In the previous sections, he referred to the subject of right abstractly as a rational being; now he refers to the subject as “the person,” or “this person,” one that is “called by this or that name” (FNR 53 [GA I/3:361]). As a person, the subject is a free person that must be capable of “exclusively ascribing to itself a sphere for its freedom” in which no one else can “make choices within the sphere allotted only to him” (ibid.). To show that the concept of right applies to persons in the empirical world, Fichte must explain how the reciprocal interaction between persons is possible and how it occurs.

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His first task is to deduce the body of persons. Fichte’s fourth theorem (§5) argues that the “material body” is a necessary condition of a person’s free efficacy. Fichte’s argument in the fourth theorem can be summarized briefly.9 If one is to attribute to oneself a sphere of activity, then that sphere must be such that it is, in some sense, separate from oneself but a sphere one may actually act within. The relevant sense in which this separation can be upheld is if a distinction is made between the sphere of activity and the self-reverting activity of the I. The sphere of activity is posited as opposed to the I’s activity, and so the former is posited as part of the world (FNR 54 [GA I/3:362]). If the sphere of activity is posited as part of the world, it must be posited as extended, limited, and spatially determinate. As extended in the world and spatially determinate, the sphere must be a material body of some sort. This sphere of activity, however, is meant to be one in which the subject can exclusively choose to act independently of the influence of others. For this reason, the sphere must be a human body through which the will is exercised. The body, Fichte suggests, can be viewed from two aspects: (1) as a material body [Körper], or the body as a persistent entity whose identity is tied to personality and (2) as a human body [Leib], or the body as an embodied agent. When one identifies a person at the morgue, one perceives or understands the body as a material body; when a mother summons her child, she perceives him as a human body. In the fifth theorem (§6), he argues that ascribing a material human body to oneself entails that one must posit the body as standing under the influence of other persons who do not determine the body, even as they influence it. This section appears to redescribe aspects of the second and third theorem by placing the idea of the summons and the relationship between others concretely within the material world. Fichte’s argument in this section is quite complex and at times difficult to parse. He appears to revel in quasi-transcendental claims and, in the proof of his theorem and corollaries, he introduces a surprising number of empirical, evolutionary, and racial ideas that constitute the outlines of a questionable philosophical anthropology. Together they constitute some of the most controversial moments of Natural Right. For the purpose of understanding Fichte’s insight into the applicability of the concept of right in the fifth theorem, the focus must remain on his claims about the nature of the way in which persons influence one another. Drawing on his argument in the fourth theorem, Fichte claims that the human body consists of members, or body parts, that consist in an articulated whole, which, under the will’s influence, can be enacted in an infinite number of ways. Wherever we perceive the “human shape,” we are compelled to recognize it and to summon it through a rational material influence (FNR 84 [GA I/3:388]). Fichte identifies two modes of material influence: a causal influence and a rational influence. The former operates through what Fichte calls coarser matter, and the latter through subtler matter. I can influence a child through coarser matter by grabbing the toy from his hands, if he fails to put it down upon being summoned. If the child did not actually hear my summons, then perhaps I can influence him through a form of subtle matter by gesturing at the child to get his attention and verbally requesting him to put down his toy. Through embodied agency and subtle matter (or a rational influence), persons can reciprocally influence each other.10 Hence, the concept of right applies to persons like us within the sensible world.

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Original Right and Coercion Having shown the applicability of right, Fichte turns to outlining his actual doctrine of right. Due to the principal purpose of Fichte’s theory of right—securing the absolute freedom of persons in community—the right of coercion is of central importance, especially when social or political conditions fall short of the standards of mutual recognition. A right of coercion, Fichte claims, “does not exist unless an original right has been violated” (FNR 89 [GA I/3:392]). It is not, however, entirely clear what Fichte understands by the term “original right.” First, what makes an original right “original” is that it has an analytic relationship to the concept of person: the doctrine of original right is “contained in the mere concept of the person and are therefore called original rights” (FNR 87 [GA I/3:390]). More specifically, an original right as a mark of the concept person expresses, in part, the content of the idea of a person as free in general. Yet, it is important to remember that the concept of a person is always a social concept in that being a person requires “standing in relation to other individuals” (FNR 101 [GA I/3:403]). Only within a social context is the concept of a person possible and the idea of a right coherent. Original rights, then, are constitutive features of personhood, yet they are normatively binding only under the condition that free beings will to live alongside one another in a “community of freedom” (FNR 87 [GA I/3:391]). Fichte defines original right in general as “the absolute right of the person to be only a cause in the sensible world (and purely and simply never something caused)” (FNR 103 [GA I/3:404]). Fichte is keen to point out in his “Analysis of original right” that the central concept in his definition is that of “cause and effect.” The concept he is especially interested in is that of an “absolute effect” (FNR 103 [GA I/3:405]). An absolute effect is (1) an effect that is determined fully only by its cause, or the causal power of the agent, and (2) the action’s effect immediately follows from the action, and is not influenced or determined by some intermediary. What Fichte has in mind with these stipulations is the idea of the agent’s body as the medium through which it exercises itself as a causal force capable of producing an “absolute effect” in the sensible world. Fichte sees, then, that two aspects of original right can be made explicit: 1) Original right includes a right to bodily self-determination: as the medium of absolute causality and a source of absolute effects, the body is inviolable. No one may exercise a forceful influence or effect on the body without violating the original right (FNR 108 [GA I/3:409]). 2) Original right includes a right to freely influence the sensible world: others cannot forcefully use the body of another to influence the world, because that would count as exercising an external influence on one’s body. As an absolute cause, one has the right to influence the sensible world at will, or freely (ibid.).

These two determinations of original right are necessarily limited by the concept of right. For instance, one’s free influence on the sensible world must be limited to make room for the free influences of others. Furthermore, the self-determination of one’s body cannot undermine or interfere with the self-determination of another’s body.

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In discussing original right, Fichte makes an odd claim that has confused many of his readers. He asserts that “there is no condition in which original rights exist; and no original rights of human beings” (FNR 102 [GA I/3:403]). Even more, he claims that original right “is a mere fiction [Fiktion], but one that must necessarily be created for the sake of the science of right” (FNR 102 [GA I/3:404]). What is particularly striking about this claim is that original right is part of the concept of person and a condition of freedom in the sensible world. Why would he suggest it does not exist or is merely a fiction? One suggestion is to deflate Fichte’s claim as simply a qualification: original rights are only fictional or non-existent within a pre-social context, since in a state of nature or without some enforcement mechanism they cannot be secured.11 This is not a satisfactory response, since the same point can be said of the concept of right or the right to property, yet Fichte does not consider either as fictional.12 He only applies the term “fiction” to original right. It also does not make sense of why such a right is necessary for “the sake of a science of right.” Fichte’s use of the term “fiction” is influenced by the writings of Salmon Maimon and Johann Benjamin Erhard.13 Similar to Maimon’s use of the term, Fichte employs the term Fiktion for systematic reasons—original right is fictional because it is a heuristic or regulative idea employed to construct a science of right.14 Original rights do not exactly exist as embodied in law; instead they serve the science of right as the orienting principles for positive rights. Original right is essentially a transcendental right that regulates the construction of concrete or empirical rights. In this sense, original right parallels Fichte’s conception of the absolute I, which is never instantiated in the consciousness of any subject, but is a fiction or ideal posited for systematic reasons from the philosophical standpoint (see Breazeale 2002 and Crowe 2008). Fichte’s conception of coercion must be understood in relationship to original right. The purpose of a theory of right is to establish the conditions necessary for freedom to be possible within a community of rational beings. Rightful coercion, Fichte argues, is one condition of such a community. Coercion is only justified when an original right is violated, or, since original rights are fictional, when there is a violation of a concrete right that has been constructed from the norm of original right. By imposing the law of right upon oneself, one gives to oneself that which the end of living in community, an end the law of right, including original right, presupposes (FNR 87 [GA I/3:391]). Yet, if a subject does not impose the law of right upon itself, it fails to give to itself the end of communal life, and has instead given to itself an end compatible with the interference of another subject’s freedom. If the obligation to follow the law of right requires reciprocity, when the other fails to follow it, then one’s own obligation to follow the law of right with respect to that individual is released. This is, in part, what it means to say the law of right is hypothetical, rather than categorical. For instance, a subject’s immoral treatment of me does not give me license to treat him immorally. The moral law is indifferent to how another person acts toward me, and there are no conditions that release a subject from its obligations. This is not the case with right. Being released from the law of right in such a situation does not entail that one is released in general from the law of right, but only with respect to the particular individual who has not imposed the law on themselves (FNR 88 [GA I/3:391]). One remains obligated to respect the rights of anyone engaged in the system of mutual recognition. With respect

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to the offending subject, one may choose to undermine the “person’s freedom and personality” and exercise one’s “right of coercion” (FNR 88 [GA I/3:392]). There is an epistemic quandary that arises in Fichte’s analysis of coercion, the solution of which requires the intervention of a third party. The epistemic issue concerns one’s knowing the actions of others are trustingly rightful. First, it is important to notice that a legal judgment is required by the violated subject. The person must judge that his freedom was violated since another person failed to subject himself to the law of right. The offender has “by his present violation” made it “known that he has not made that rule into a universal law for himself ” (FNR 90 [GA I/3:393]). As Fichte acknowledges, “one action contrary to right … proves that the rule of right is not an inviolable law for this person” (ibid.). How can a person know the offender will not offend again? According to Fichte, the only way to be convinced that the person will not violate one’s freedom again is an empirical proof, but an empirical proof is only possible by the person not offending. The means such proof must appeal to “the entirety of future experience” one may have with this person. One is in no position to appeal to this future experience, since it has not yet occurred. Trust lacks a ground, if the ground has not occurred (FNR 91 [GA I/3:394]). Fichte’s solution to this epistemic quandary is to transfer authority to a third party who passes legal judgment and retains the right of coercion. The trust between each party is mediated by the trust they have in the third party to pass legal judgment and rightfully coerce subjects for the sake of upholding the conditions of freedom required for personhood and communal life. This solution, however, presents a difficulty that jeopardizes the possibility of absolute freedom. The only permissible limit on a person’s freedom is the rights and freedom of others. By handing over both the power to judge the limits of right and the power to coerce when these limits are transgressed, the person alienates himself from those powers and rights. It seems that for the sake of a rightful order, persons are required to release essential rights. Fichte’s goal is to secure “all the freedom that properly belongs to me in my sphere, in accordance with the law of right” (FNR 94 [GA I/3:396–7]). To overcome this difficulty, Fichte holds that future judgments of right made by the third party, or the state, that relate to oneself must be judgments one would have made in accordance with right. They must be norms that are publicly scrutable and formulated as positive laws (FNR 95 [GA I/3:391]). Under such conditions, they are compatible with the freedom of persons.

Fichte’s Contractualism Securing the absolute freedom of individuals and the requisite conditions of personhood in the sensible world through the system of mutual recognition is the principle aim of Fichte’s philosophy of right. One essential condition, according to Fichte, is that persons have an exclusive domain in which their freedom can be exercised. A civil contract involving relations of mutual recognition is, Fichte argues, necessary to ensure that persons are able to exercise their freedom within an exclusive sphere. Fichte’s conception of the civil contract places him within the social contract tradition, yet Fichte’s philosophy of right, as developed in the Foundations of Natural

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Right, awkwardly fits within that tradition.15 His view of the civil condition offers an original model of contractualism that departs from the atomistic model of the social contract familiar to classical liberalism, substituting in its place an organic model of liberalism, a shift that might count, as Dean Moyar has suggested, as a “self-overcoming of social contract theory” (Moyar 2016, 236). Understanding Fichte’s contractualism requires some appreciation of his conception of contracts. In The Closed Commercial State, a work he closely associated with Natural Right, Fichte clarifies that contracts are not primarily agreements over objects, but an “exclusive right to acts” (CCS 92 [GA I/7: 54]). The need for a contract emerges when the free activity of two subjects comes into conflict. Who, for instance, has the right to invest their free activity into a thing? While this might look to be a conflict over the thing, it is, from Fichte’s perspective, a conflict primarily over the exercise of agency and whether one may exclusively act within a certain sphere. The right to an object is secondary, according to Fichte, as it is derived from the “exclusive right to a free act” (CCS 93 [GA I/7: 55]). In Natural Right, he identifies two conditions for a contract to be possible: (1) there must be a dispute between two persons over the willing of exclusive ownership of a thing, and (2) the thing under dispute must be the kind of thing that one can exclusively own. It might look as though these two conditions conflict with the priority of thinking about the contractual right to property as “an exclusive right to acts, not things,” but in the first condition it is important to notice that for Fichte the dispute is one concerning acts of willing. Now, according to the second condition for the possibility of contracts, if sunlight is the type of thing one cannot exclusively own, then there cannot be a contractual agreement concerning the possession of sunlight. And, according to the first condition, if there is no dispute about who has exclusive property in a thing, the need for a contract is moot. A contract, then, is a dispute over what falls within the exclusive domain of one’s free acts of willing, and when there is a dispute between two wills, a contract mediates this dispute by determining which of the wills has an exclusive right to act with respect to some object. When this determination occurs, the two wills are “united for the purpose of peaceably resolving their dispute over rights” (FNR 167 [GA I/4:6]). As Fichte understands the civil contract, it consists of three conceptually distinct contracts: (1) the property contract, (2) the protection contract, and (3) the unification contract. The property contract consists of the contractual agreement between all members of the civil condition with each other that “each individual pledges all of his own property as a guarantee that he will not violate any of the others’ property” (FNR 170 [GA I/4:9]). The basis of this contract is that one individual exercises his will in a positive manner over a thing by taking possession of it and thereby summoning all others to relinquish their claim to that thing. If all other persons recognize the claim as legitimate (it is the kind of thing one can possess) and orient their wills negatively toward the thing by not claiming it, then the conditions of a contract to exclusive possession are met. The property contract, hence, relies on the system of mutual recognition. Now, if there is an act of misrecognition, such a violation of the contractual agreement “entitles the injured party to take everything from the transgressor, if he can” (ibid.). One might consider this entitlement excessive. However, one must appreciate that this is merely an entitlement, not a requirement.

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The entitlement stems from the fact that, by violating the contract, and thereby the principle of right, the transgressor has removed himself from the community of right and released others of their duty to recognize the subject as a right-bearing subject. The protective contract naturally follows from the property contract. Since the point of the civil condition is to guarantee that the absolute freedom of persons is “protected through the coercive power of physical force,” there must be some contractual agreement concerning persons’ commitment to protect the property of each other (FNR 171 [GA I/4:10]). The second contract requires that each person promise to every other person “that he will use his own power to help them protect the property that is recognized as theirs” on the condition that they reciprocate by employing, not once but continuously, their power to protect his property (ibid.). When persons mutually recognize each other’s property and actively protect their property, both the property contract and protective contract are upheld. Given how Fichte initially defined the term “contract,” one might think the protective contract is not technically a contract, since the subject matter of the contract does not concern a dispute over exclusive acts with respect to a thing, but rather a commitment to positively will to protect another person’s property. Unfortunately, Fichte does not appear to recognize this problem (one that arguably plagues the unification contract as well). To resolve it, he must either expand his definition of a contract or recognize that the protection contract (and unification contract) are not distinct contracts but simply aspects of the original property contract; they might be considered commitments that can be made explicitly and condition the possibility of the property contract. These two contracts are, however, precarious without the addition of a third contract. For instance, the protective contract (and thereby the property contract) is violated by my failing in a single instance to protect your property. My efforts to protect your property may have been simply misguided or unsuccessful, or perhaps I toiled upon my property blissfully unaware your property had come under threat. What is particularly troubling is that if I do violate the protective contract, I undermine your trust in me. I may ask for your forgiveness and re-commit myself to our agreement, but you cannot be certain I will keep my promise. Fichte holds that, as a set of contracts, the protective and property contract are incomplete. In his terms, he claims that the protective contract is “problematic.” What he means is that we cannot always know if the contractual conditions of the protective contract are met. The protective contract is a conditional contract: if you protect my property, then I am obligated to reciprocate by protecting your property. In that case the system of mutual recognition is upheld. I am not, unfortunately, in a position to always know that you have actually protected my property; I am only in a position to know that it is possible (or problematic) that you’ve protected my property. Without some reliable evidence, I lack an obligation to provide reciprocal protection. For this uncertainty between contracting members to be resolved, the protective contract must transition from a problematic contract to become categorical, a contract in which one is warranted to believe the conditions are actually met and the obligation to protect inferentially necessitated. This transition is provided by a third contract, the unification contract. The unification contract, the aspect of the civil contract that most closely resembles Rousseau’s concept of the general will, involves a commitment to contribute to the state

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not as an isolated atom (or piece of sand, to use Fichte’s analogy) but as a member of a whole, an organ of the state that, by virtue of willing one’s own self-preservation, wills at the same time the preservation of the state or whole. Fichte illustrates this point with the image of a tree: the preservation of a tree’s branch depends, not on itself alone, but the preservation of the tree as a whole (FNR 176 [GA I/4:14]). The state, in this model, is conceived in terms of social cooperation. These terms require that a person within the state is not indifferent to other members of the state, and they understand that the constitution and preservation of their absolute freedom is reciprocally entangled with the constitution and preservation of the absolute freedom of their fellow citizens. Fichte’s language is particularly striking when he characterizes the unification contract: the state is a “natural institution” akin to an “organized product of nature” in which the individual, by declaring to protect the whole state “becomes a part of the whole and merges together with it,” the individual “melts into one with the whole” (FNR 176–7 [GA I/4:14–15]). A worry some liberals might have about Fichte’s conception of the state is that it appears to annihilate the very freedom it is meant to protect by essentially annihilating individuality. Fichte’s response to this kind of worry is twofold. First, it is by virtue of the state that individuals receive their freedom as individuals, so it does not make sense to hold that something is lost by merging with the state.16 Second, the “merging” or “melting” occurs only in a qualified sense: citizens merge with the state by virtue of constituting its authority to protect individuals’ rights and absolute freedom (FNR 178 [GA I/4:16]). The property that any individual owns does not become part of the state by virtue of this “merging,” at least not in the sense in which the individual would lose exclusive control over it. The point of the civil contract, after all, is to protect exclusive possession of property for the exercising of absolute freedom. Fichte’s civil contract is not only distinctive in its holism.17 He draws some surprising egalitarian conclusions about property ownership and labor: “a principle of all rational state constitutions is that everyone ought to be able to live from his labor” (FNR 185 [GA I/4:22]). Fichte’s argument for this conclusion is relatively straightforward. His reasoning begins with the claim that “to be able to live is the absolute, inalienable property of all human beings” (ibid.). Now, the point of the property contract is to guarantee that individuals have the goods required, first to live, and second to live freely. By virtue of the civil contract, it falls under the purview of the state to guarantee this possibility. The state cannot exactly coerce one to live, since doing so would undermine that person’s freedom. Instead, according to the doctrine of original right, the individual should be a cause, never merely the effect of someone’s causal efficacy. It follows from this that the labor required for living must originate from oneself. Hence, the state must provide for an arrangement in which each person is guaranteed to be able to live off his own labor. One necessary condition of such an arrangement is that each person possesses the requisite property for living off his labor, and when an individual lacks such property, “the civil contract must provide for such a repartitioning of property” (FNR 186 [GA I/4:22]). Fichte understands that the state has an obligation to provide for the needy both for the purpose of persons being able to live off their labor, and because he understands that poverty threatens the capacity of the state to provide “necessary protection” (ibid.). Assistance from the

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state is conditional upon an individual establishing that he has done everything in his power to provide for himself. In the case of “idlers,” or citizens who expressly declared an occupation but do not freely exercise their labor upon their property to provide for themselves, thereby fulfilling their contractual obligation, the state reserves the right of coercion, or the authority to force idlers to fulfill their contractual obligations (FNR 186–7 [GA I/4:23]). Fichte’s contractualism importantly differs from hypothetical consent models in that, when it comes to the commitments of citizens, it endorses an actual consent model of the social contract. After introducing the property contract, Fichte writes: “Each individual has at one time actually expressed himself in the manner described, whether through words or actions, by dedicating himself publicly and openly to a particular occupation; and the state has agreed to it, at least tacitly” (FNR 170 [GA I/4:9]). He also acknowledges that the guarantee for the protection contract requires a promise and an actual fulfillment of the promise, which occurs “when one’s word itself becomes a deed” (FNR 174 [GA I/4:13]). Fichte’s actual consent model allows for the consent to occur explicitly through words or tacitly through actions. However, if one’s word is not consistently actualized in action, one’s promise is broken. Fichte’s commitment to an actual consent model of the social contract and political obligation follows from his conception of mutual recognition, since a condition of such recognition is some warrant that one has given to oneself the law of right as the constitutive principle of one’s agency. This cannot be guaranteed simply by a promise, since one’s word and deed can come apart; it requires, instead, that one’s word and deed are identical, that one’s agency exemplifies the principle of right.

Family Right and Mutual Recognition Fichte’s analysis on family right raises an important question about his system of mutual recognition: are his views on family right compatible with his theory of mutual recognition and his commitment to the principle of right?18 His views on gender relations within the family, the secondary status he attributes to the “female sex” and women in marriage, and the idea that women are passive by nature, in addition to the thought that love is “innate only to women,” are deeply troubling and morally repugnant, even though many of these views were not uncommon at the time (and are still endorsed by some today) (FNR 269 [GA I/4:100]). Fichte’s analysis of family right is significantly influenced by outdated anthropological and cultural assumptions about sexuality. Nonetheless, he puts forward a doctrine of family right that stems from his “deduction of marriage” based on these false assumptions. Fichte’s deduction of marriage and analysis of marital right offers fertile material to assess the compatibility of his doctrine of family right with his system of mutual recognition. Marriage, according to Fichte, is not simply a juridical relationship (as it is for Kant); it is also a natural and moral relationship. Beginning with the claim that there is by nature an active sex (males) and a passive sex (females), Fichte suggests an immediate problem arises: reason is always active, yet if females are passive, how can they be rational beings?19 Yet, women certainly are rational beings. To resolve this

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difficulty, Fichte must either reject his initial assumption that women are passive, or he must establish how the natural passivity of women does not necessarily preclude them from becoming active rational beings. Unfortunately, Fichte takes the latter route. In doing so, he characterizes the sexual drive of women as “a characteristic drive towards an activity unique” to the female sex (FNR 266 [GA I/4:98]). A woman’s sexual drive can either be employed to degrade herself, if it is taken to be the end of her activity (sex for the sake of sex), or it can elevate her above her natural state of passivity, if the sexual drive is understood to serve some greater end such as reproduction and loving her husband. Through reproduction and loving her husband, she can overcome her passivity. By nature, Fichte holds that women have the natural drive to satisfy men, and particularly a husband. However, if this satisfaction were to remain at the level of nature, were it to be a mere sensual satisfaction, women would be degraded and would remain passive, irrational beings. This means, for Fichte, that love must introduce some rational element, it must be a satisfaction of the “heart,” and not simply a natural drive for sexual pleasure. Only by this means does her drive acquire “the character of freedom and activity, which it must have in order to be able to co-exist with reason” (FNR 270 [GA I/4:100–1]). Although marriage is not simply a juridical relation, there are certain rights that are conferred by entrance into a marital relationship. Additionally, the state has unique duties to women given their innate sexual difference. As for the latter, the state has a duty to protect the personality of women and the loss of their dignity, which, on Fichte’s view, is degraded if she is sexually coerced absent feelings of love, as in the case of rape. As for the former, marriage, from the juridical perspective, must be the result of “absolute freedom” through the involvement of actual consent (“I do”). Yet through this consent, she gives herself over (for moral reasons, Fichte suggests) entirely to her husband. Fichte does not mince his words: By recognizing marriage … the state from now on ceases to regard the wife as a juridically distinct person. The husband represents her entirely; from the state’s point of view, she is completely annihilated by her marriage, in consequence of her own necessary will, which the state has guaranteed. In the eyes of the state, her husband becomes her guarantee and her legal guardian; in all things, he lives out her public life, and she retains only a domestic life. (FNR 282 [GA I/4:113])

It is hard to see how this conception of marriage retains the promise of his system of mutual recognition. In Fichte’s words, the wife “surrenders her personality,” releases ownership of her property to her husband, and loses all “exclusive rights” within the state (FNR 282 [GA I/4:114]). However, they constitute a unit as one “juridical person,” according to Fichte, whereby considerations of right no longer apply between them, but only between them as a unit, on the one hand, and the state and its citizens, on the other (FNR 283 [GA I/4:115]). The husband retains a position of domination, represents the interests of the family, and thereby receives the benefits of public recognition from the state and other citizens. With a loss of personality and public recognition, the husband, within the marriage, is not bound to recognize his wife as a person and to treat her in accordance with the principle of right. If follows that she need not be summoned. In

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fact, the husband can coerce her and even rape without violating her external freedom. Such are the clear and deplorable limits of Fichte’s own conception of his system of mutual recognition.

Conclusion One may attempt to disentangle Fichte’s theory of right from the difficulties apparent in his analysis of marriage by simply rejecting his original premise about the passivity of women and what follows, at least for him, from that premise. Yet, other difficulties may perhaps remain, whether they concern the nature or plausibility of the unification contract, the coherence of his actual consent view of contractualism, or the normative basis of a hypothetical theory of right that rests upon voluntarism.20 One might object that his theory of right is not even a theory of natural right, as its title suggests.21 Whatever objections one might have, Fichte’s theory of right offers an a important alternative to the classical natural right theories, Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and Hegel’s more communitarian conception. While some contemporary theories of right resemble Fichte’s deductive strategy,22 or consider right to involve relations of social recognition (Darby 2009), Fichte’s philosophy of right currently offers a distinctive model of right based around the construction of a system of mutual recognition aimed at guaranteeing the requisite conditions for absolute freedom and personhood. Despite its clear shortcomings, it has rich conceptual resources on offer for social and political philosophers today.

Notes 1 See also Fichte’s remark: in §19: “the main problem for a doctrine of right is: how can several free beings as such co-exist” (FNR 220 [GA I/4:53]). Fichte’s characterization of the science of right captures Rousseau’s own conception of the task of political philosophy: “Such a sum of forces can be produced only by the union of separate men, but as each man’s own strength and liberty are the chief instruments of his preservation, how can he merge his with others’ without putting himself in peril and neglecting the care he owes to himself? This difficulty, in terms of my present subject, may be expressed in these words: ‘How to find a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself, and remains as free as before’” (Rousseau 1968: 60). 2 His most prominent defense is in Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment Concerning the French Revolution, and a summary of his view appears in his “Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe.” 3 I will not address issues of international law, or cosmopolitan right. However, my thesis that Fichte’s theory of right constitutes a system of mutual recognition can be extended to cosmopolitan right: “The contract between states as we have described it necessarily involves reciprocal recognition, which is presupposed as a condition of the contract’s possibility” (FNR 322 [GA I/4:153]).

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4 A principle one might call reciprocal egoism is internal to this conception of the normative bindingness of right: “In the sphere of right, there is no way to bind human beings together other than through the insight: whatever you do to the other, whether good or bad, you do not to him, but to yourself. In the case at hand, this means that I would have to be able to see that, in protecting the other, I protect only myself; I do so either actually in the present, or else – if in the future I should need protection – his protection of me follows with absolute necessity from my having protected him” (FNR 172 [GA I/4:11]). The principle is egoistic, not because it is a maximization principle, but because it invokes the end of self-interest. It is reciprocal because it is a relational principle in which another agent is also expected to uphold the same relational commitments. 5 For discussion of the separation of right and morality see, Nomer 2013, Clarke 2016, Neuhouser 2016, Kosch 2017. Kosch points out that the independence of right and morality is not a bi-lateral independence, as, for Fichte, “right must be (able to be) a part of ethics; it is simply not a part that ethics is able to produce from its own principle” (Kosch 2017: 7). 6 This is not to say that there cannot be a kind of moral recognition, but that the system of mutual recognition, from a juridical standpoint, does not require it. 7 McNulty 2016 offers a careful analysis of Fichte’s circle. 8 Wood 2016 understands the summons as offering reasons that incline us to act without necessitating it, rather than compelling reasons. 9 For a more detailed analysis of Fichte’s views on the body, see Bernstein 2007 and Russon 2016. 10 Scribner 2002 attempts to make sense of Fichte’s views on subtle matter. 11 This is the view endorsed by Neuhouser 2000 in his editorial remark to §9 (FNR 10, n. 4). 12 For a discussion of Fichte’s deduction of property, see Martin 2016. 13 See Breazeale 2002. James Clarke has pointed out to me that Erhard also uses the term Fiktion in his 1795 review of Fichte’s Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment Concerning the French Revolution (Erhard 1970: 156–7). Erhard refers to the absolute primitive state, or state of nature, as a fiction. He considers the state of nature as a representational device that is presupposed for the sake of a deduction of natural right. In this respect, natural right normatively depends on the state of nature, but there is no natural right in the primitive state since such a state is only a fictional posit. It is important to note that Fichte himself acknowledges the influence of Maimon and Erhard’s writings on his Natural Right when he states that they offered some “excellent hints” in their own writings that prompted him to question the “the usual way of dealing with natural right” (FNR 12–13 [GA I/3: 323]). 14 Not unlike Neuhouser, Moyar understands original right as akin to a provisional conception of right that receives its “full meaning in the system of social practices instituted by the contract” (Moyar 2016: 228). 15 Schottky 1995 examines Fichte’s Natural Right in relationship to the social contract tradition. 16 In a footnote, Fichte writes: “According to our theory, no individual can bring anything with him to the civil contract, for prior to this contract he has nothing. The first condition of giving something up is that one already received something. Therefore, this contract – far from starting with giving – ought to begin with receiving” (FNR 177 [GA I/4:15]). 17 See Moyar 2016 for a more extensive account of Fichte’s holism.

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18 I focus only on marital right here; for an analysis of parental right see Gottlieb 2016. For a more general overview of family right see Archard 2001. Archard does not address question of the compatibility of his views on marital right and mutual recognition. 19 Archard 2001, 189–90 examines Fichte’s “transcendental” argument for passive– active gender dichotomy. 20 See Ware 2010. Darwall 2005 and Nance 2015 have argued he would be better off defending a theory of right that is based upon moral considerations. 21 Fichte is attuned to this worry. See his remarks about “natural right” at FNR 92, 132 [GA I/3:395, 432]. James 2014 offers an analysis of these remarks. 22 See Clarke 2014 on Gewirth and Fichte.

Bibliography Archard, David. 2001. “Family Law (First Annex).” In Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts, edited by Jean-Christophe Merle, 187–96. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Bernstein, J. M. 2007. “Recognition and Embodiment.” In German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Espen Hammer, 183–205. New York: Routledge. Breazeale, Daniel. 2002. “Fichte’s Philosophical Fictions.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 175–208. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Clarke, James. 2014. “Fichte’s Transcendental Justification of Human Rights.” In Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 242–56. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarke, James. 2016. “Fichte’s Independence Thesis.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 52–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crowe, Benjamin. 2008. “Fichte’s Fictions Revisited.” Inquiry 51 (3): 268–87. Darby, Derrick. 2009. Rights, Race and Recognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darwall, Stephen. 2005. “Fichte and the Second-Person Standpoint.” In Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus/ International Yearbook of German Idealism, edited by Karl Ameriks and Jürgen Stolzenberg, 99–113. 3 Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Erhard, Johann Benjamin. 1970. “Rezension von Fichtes Revolutionbuch.” In Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution und andere Schriften, edited by Hellmut G. Haasis, 135–64. Munich: Carl Hanser. Gottlieb, Gabriel. 2016. “Fichte’s Developmental View of Self-Consciousness.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 117–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gottlieb, Gabriel. 2018. “A Family Quarrel: Fichte’s Deduction of Right and Recognition.” In Kant and his German Contemporaries, Vol. II, edited by Daniel Dahlstrom, 170–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, David. 2014. “How ‘Natural’ Is Fichte’s Theory of Natural Right?” In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, edited by Matthew C. Altman, 344–63. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kosch, Michelle. 2017. “Individuality and Right in Fichte’s Ethics.” Philosophers’ Imprint 17 (12): 1–23.

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Martin, Wayne. 2016. “Fichte’s Transcendental Deduction of Private Property.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 157–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNulty, Jacob. 2016. “Transcendental Philosophy and Intersubjectivity: Mutual Recognition as a Condition for the Possibility of Self-Consciousness in Sections 1–3 of Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right.” European Journal of Philosophy 24 (4): 788–810. Moyar, Dean. 2016. “Fichte’s Organic Unification: Recognition and the Self-overcoming of Social Contract Theory.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 218–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nance, Michael. 2015. “Recognition, Freedom, and the Self in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right.” European Journal of Philosophy 23 (3): 608–32. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2000. “Introduction.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, edited by Frederick Neuhouser, vii–xxviii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2016. “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 32–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nomer, Nedim. 2013. “Fichte’s Separation Thesis.” Philosophical Forum 44 (3): 233–54. Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. 1968. The Social Contract. Translated by Maruice Cranston. New York: Penguin. Russon, John. 2016. “The Body as the Site of Action and Intersubjectivity in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 138–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schottky, Richard. 1995. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der staatsphilosophischen Vertragstheorie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Hobbes – Locke – Rousseau - Fichte) mit einem Beitrag zum Problem der Gewaltenteilung bei Rousseau und Fichte. FichteStudien-Supplementa 6. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Scribner, Scott. 2002. “The ‘Subtle Matter’ of Intersubjectivity in the Grundlage des Naturrechts.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 65–79. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Ware, Owen. 2010. “Fichte’s Voluntarism.” European Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 262–82. Wood, Allen 2016. “Deduction of the Summons and the Existence of Other Rational Beings.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 72–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Fichte’s Ethical Theory Allen W. Wood

Fichte’s entire philosophy was motivated by moral concerns. Fichte’s conversion to Kant’s Critical philosophy around 1790 was above all a conversion to the Kantian moral outlook. This outlook, as Fichte understood it, is animated by its commitment to radical freedom of the will and the conceptions of human dignity, and the moral vocation of human beings that are rooted in this radical freedom. The decisive period in Fichte’s career, the Jena years of 1794–1800, culminated in the production of his writings on right and ethics. As his conception of a fundamental principle of a Doctrine of Science (Wissenschaftslehre) developed beyond that of the Foundations of the Entire Doctrine of Science of 1794, his Jena period philosophy found some of its clearest expression in his publications on right and ethics. Fichte’s publications after 1800 mainly took the form of popular writings and lectures. His thought about the foundations of philosophy, and also about religion and politics, displayed some development beyond the thinking of his Jena period, but this is less true of his ethical thought in the narrower sense, which is the topic of this chapter. Fichte’s chief work in ethics is his System of Ethics (1798) (SE [SW 4:1–385, GA I/5:19–347]). It followed his chief work on right: Foundations of Natural Right (1796–7) (FNR [SW 3:1–385, GA I/3:311–460, I/4:5–165]). Toward the end of his life, however, after recasting the foundations of his Doctrine of Science, Fichte gave two series of lectures in 1812, which appeared among his Nachlass, and were first published in the mid-nineteenth century in the first comprehensive edition of Fichte’s writings, edited by his son: The System of the Doctrine of Right (SW 10:493–652; cf. GA II/13: 197–293) and The System of Ethics (SW 11:1–144, cf. GA II/13: 307–92). Following changes in Fichte’s Doctrine of Science during his years in Berlin, these late lectures display a basic change in the foundations of Fichte’s moral theory, but the significant revisions in his practical philosophy itself were relatively few. Therefore, the present account of his ethical theory will focus on exposition of the 1798 System of Ethics. But in a brief final section, I will have something to say about Fichte’s later ethics. Fichte is usually thought of as a follower of Kant, no doubt because he himself thought of himself that way. But as a moral philosopher, Fichte is related to Kant, even in the most straightforward chronological sense, not as a follower but rather as an independent contemporary. Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right (FNR) (1796–7) was published before Kant’s Doctrine of Right (which appeared January, 1797), and

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Fichte’s System of Ethics (SE) (1798) was written at the same time and certainly quite independently of Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue (MM also 1798). Even if the ethical theories of the two philosophers arose in a broad sense from a common idea or inspiration, they differ significantly as regards the way this idea is formulated. Whereas Kantian ethics represents a strikingly original resolution of eighteenthcentury issues about duty, reason, interest, virtue, and moral feeling, Fichte’s ethical theory focuses attention more strongly on the relation of moral personality to its embodiment and individual identity. Even more, it gives a systematic place to the moral agent’s relation to a living moral community. Fichte initiated thought about just those issues which were to determine ethics and social thought in the German tradition, and more broadly in the continental traditions in the nineteenth century and beyond. Fichte should be seen as the principal thinker who offered the tradition of existentialist philosophy a comprehensive and systematic grounding. It served as an indispensable background even for the less systematic (or anti-systematic) thinkers in that tradition. In his own time, Fichte’s philosophy had played the same role already in relation to early German Romanticism. Fichte’s influence and historical importance has never been properly appreciated, probably due to the fact that owing to the vicissitudes of his academic career—his sudden rise to prominence, his short, tumultuous career at Jena, and his later, less influential period in Berlin—it was left to other thinkers, namely Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, later Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, then Husserl, Sartre, and others, to be the effective disseminators of many ideas of which Fichte was the true original author. The common underappreciation of Fichte’s moral and political thought has serious consequences for our understanding of where our own ideas and problems originated (see Wood 1991). Until moral philosophers understand Fichte better, we cannot properly understand ourselves.

Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy or Doctrine of Science Fichte’s Doctrine of Science is a “science of science as such” (SK, SW 1:43–5 [GA  I/2:117–18]). This first principle is the I. Every act of awareness, Fichte maintains, involves an awareness of the I. “No object comes to consciousness except under the condition that I am aware of myself, the conscious subject” (SW 1: 524–5 [GA I/4:274–5]). For Fichte, what is crucial about this awareness is not only its ubiquity and certainty, but even more that it is an awareness of my activity, which is present even in my most passive states of perception. In every thought “you directly note activity and freedom in this thinking, in this transition from thinking the I to thinking the table, the walls, etc. Your thinking is for you an acting” (SW 1: 522 [GA I/4:271–2]). The starting point of every philosophical science for Fichte is to cognize this act, in the Kantian sense of cognition: that is, to intuit it, and then bring that intuition under a concept. Although this free act is the starting point for transcendental idealist philosophy, the concept of a self-positing act is an abstraction from ordinary experience. In ordinary experience, every free volitional act is situated—the act of the I is an act of

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a living body, situated among other things that limit its possibilities, while leaving some possibilities open. It is the aim of transcendental philosophy to begin from this abstraction and then work its way through the synthetic method toward the conditions of our action as it is experienced concretely. Critical or idealist philosophy, which begins from the act of the I, accepts the appearance as true, while dogmatic or materialist philosophy, which begins from the assumption of a thing in itself, tries to explain it away as an illusion, the result of necessary causal interactions between things. Fichte maintains that idealism, on its assumptions, can account for our relationship to things. Dogmatism, however, is self-undermining, because it cannot account for our consciousness of things. The dogmatist must cling to the thing in itself as an act of faith. But dogmatism cannot be theoretically refuted by idealism, because the two philosophical approaches share no common principle from which either might directly refute the other. Both the doctrine of right and the doctrine of ethics presuppose freedom, but they begin with the free act of willing in different senses. Right begins from the act of will as externally efficacious and is directed toward objects in the material external world, while ethics begins from the act of will solely in its self-positing relation to itself and elicits from it a norm or law of action that is self-given. The I’s intuition of its own free activity is an intellectual intuition—an immediate presence of the I to itself through its own action. Kant denied that we have intellectual intuition, but the disagreement between him and Fichte is not as direct as one might suppose. Kant supposes that all cognition, requiring both intuition and concepts, is cognition of an object. But as Fichte points out, Kant himself allows that we have consciousness of our acting without consciousness as object of that which acts. We have it in the form of the transcendental unity of apperception, which makes experience possible, and also in the form of the categorical imperative, which tells us how we ought to act. Fichte takes these two to be identical. He expands the concepts of cognition and intuition by applying them to to acts as well as objects. He infers that we can intuit an act in abstraction from the object that acts. The awareness is the intellectual intuition of the I. Perhaps a natural objection to Fichte at this point is that an act must be the act of something, something that performs the act. An act with no agent is an incomplete or even an incoherent thought. Perhaps this is Kant’s reason for refusing to apply the concepts of intuition and cognition to acts alone, and for insisting that only objects can be intuited or cognized. Fichte thinks the point is well taken, but that it is a mistake to see it as an objection to his procedure or to his application of the concepts of intuition and cognition to acts. For it is precisely Fichte’s transcendental method to begin with an abstraction—an incomplete thought, a thought that would be incoherent if thought to be complete in itself—and then systematically deduce the conditions required to make it coherent. In the case of the I, the first of these conditions is that the act must be an act on something external to which it at the same time limits and constrains it. This is the concept of the not-I, or a material world in which the I is situated. The next condition is that in order to act on this world, the I must itself be material. The I is necessarily embodied. (Fichte holds that the concept of a Cartesian immaterial self is incoherent.)

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We begin, then, with the intellectual intuition of the act which is the I. The next task is then to cognize this act by forming a concept of what is intuited. Every act of conceptualization, however, involves distinguishing the item brought under a given concept from those excluded from it. Therefore, reflective self-awareness involves the I’s self-limitation: the I must distinguish itself from what it is not. From this Fichte infers that the very possibility of the I requires its limitation by a “not-I”: “The  following is implicit in our principle: The I posits itself as limited by the not-I” (SK, SW 1:126 [GA I/2:285]). To posit the I is at the same time to “counterposit” a not-I (SK, SW 1:105 [GA I/2:268]; SW 3:18 [GA I/3:330]). This means that the activity of the I must be twofold: that of the I, directed toward a not-I and that of a not-I, directed back against the I as a “collision” or “check” (Anstoss) of the I’s activity (SK, SW 1: 210–19 [GA I/2:354–62]). Since both are conditions of the I’s existence, Fichte regards both as activities of the I: the former is “ideal” activity, the latter “real” activity (SK, SW 1: 267–9 [GA I/2:402–4]). As the fundamental science, the Doctrine of Science (Wissenschaftslehre) is supposed to ground all other particular sciences, including both theoretical and practical sciences: “The absolute first principle must be shared by all parts of the Doctrine of Science, since it is supposed to provide the foundation, not merely for a portion of human knowledge, but rather for knowledge in its entirety” (GA I/2:150–2). Fichte intends this not in the sense that other sciences are each grounded on some particular principle or principles belonging to the Wissenschaftslehre, but rather in the sense that they are each grounded on the fundamental principle itself. The boundary between the Wissenschaftslehre and particular sciences is marked by the way the first principle is taken. “As soon as an action which is in itself entirely free has been given a specific direction, we have moved from the domain of the general Wissenschaftslehre into that of some particular science” (SK, SW 1:63–4 [GA I/2:134–5]). The division of theoretical from practical science, Fichte says, is based on considering the two ways in which the I can relate to the not-I. If the I adopts a dependent relation to the not-I, then it is determined as “intelligence” and the science is theoretical. If we consider the I as independent in relation to the not-I, then its relation is one of striving and we are dealing with the practical part of the Wissenschaftslehre.

The I as Principle of Practical Philosophy Fichte apparently always regarded the practical as the foundation of the theoretical, so that his earlier procedure is not to be understood as founding the practical on the theoretical but, on the contrary, as a regressive method, moving from what is grounded back toward the ground. The I, therefore, is always regarded as fundamentally a practical rather than a theoretical principle (see Zöller 1998). In both the Foundations of Natural Right and the System of Ethics, the direction taken by the first principle is the I’s “finding itself as will.” In The System of Ethics this principle is explicitly given fundamental status; it approaches the first principle of the Doctrine of Science from a distinctively practical (or even ethical) standpoint, and in that sense it is still a derivative science resting on

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the Doctrine of Science as its foundation. It is a bit different from the Foundations of Natural Right (1796), not only because it apparently predates the transformation in Fichte’s thinking on this point, but also because for Fichte the science of right is a theoretical rather than a practical science (see Ferry 1988 and Neuhouser 1994). This is because the science of right (or law) tells us merely what conditions must be satisfied if free beings are to co-exist as free beings in a community; it does not directly enjoin us to create such a community (FNR, SW 3:9–10 [GA I/3:320]). For Fichte the theory of right (or law), which deals with rights, property, and political legitimacy, was constructed first precisely because it is entirely independent of ethics or morality. Right deals solely with external actions, not at all with inner motivations; it concerns only the conditions under which people might live together while retaining their freedom. Unlike many moral philosophers, Fichte does not regard the norms appropriate to property, economics, law, and politics as applications of ethical norms. Norms of right are entirely independent of moral duty, conscience, and moral right and wrong. As the moral principle is developed we do have a moral duty to respect the rights of others, but this presupposes that these rights have been established and determined on their own, entirely independent of ethical norms and their rational foundation. The theory of right does not appeal to any moral considerations. These rest on the inner aims of freedom, and the actualization by free beings of the final ends of their existence. Right makes no appeal to them. Both right and ethics depend, however, on the absolute freedom of the volitional act that is the I. The I is not a thing or being of any sort, but only an act. The I is a free act. This means it is an act that is self-positing, not caused by anything outside it. Any act of the I is one that could have been other than what it was, and was chosen from a plurality of possibilities open to the agent. Willing is free self-determination, a transition from indeterminacy to determinacy with consciousness of the transition. The concept of an unfree will, therefore, is self-contradictory. Fichte thinks freedom is the way our volition appears to us. We cannot demonstrate that this appearance is not an illusion, but we cannot coherently act or cognize the world without presupposing that it is not an illusion.

Recognition and the Relation of Right The condition for reflective self-awareness, or forming a conception of oneself as an I, is that the I as activity is opposed and limited by the not-I. In part this means that the I is opposed and limited by a material world, but it also means the I is opposed and limited by other Is. An I cannot conceive itself at all unless it conceives itself as one of a plurality: “The consciousness of individuality is necessarily accompanied by another consciousness, that of a thou, and is possible only on this condition” (SK, SW 1: 476 [GA I/4:229]). “No thou, no I” (SK, SW 1: 189 [GA I/2:337]). The topic of this essay is not Fichte’s theory of right, but his theory of ethics. However, we cannot properly understand the theory of ethics without seeing how it is systematically marked off from that of right. So we must begin with a brief sketch of the foundation of those norms. Norms of right are not grounded on ethics in any

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way. Fichte’s argument for this in the Foundations of Natural Right is based on the idea that the I must act on a not-I and be checked by that same not-I in one and the same moment. From this he derives the conclusion that the I must itself limit its own action based on a concept of limitation from outside: this concept he calls a “summons” (Aufforderung). The external source of a concept of action can be thought only as another I, who issues the summons. Therefore, the I is possible only on the condition that it conceives of another I, which summons it to act, and to limit its actions, in certain ways (SW 3: 30–40 [GA I/3:340–8]) (Wood 2014, 194–228 and Wood 1990, 77–84; for a contrasting treatment, Williams 1992). To understand another as a rational being issuing such a summons, and to display such understanding in action, is to “recognize” (anerkennen) the other (FNR, SW 3: 44 [GA I/3:353]). Since every free being necessarily wills to make use of its freedom, the basic demand I necessarily make on every other free being is that it should limit its action in such a way that I am allowed a sphere for the exercise of my freedom (FNR, SW 3: 52 [GA I/3:357–8]). Fichte argues that for this reason I must assume that others will recognize me, but since I cannot expect others to do so unless I treat them as rational beings, I am bound by mere logical consistency (and prior to any moral requirement) to recognize all others and treat them accordingly (FNR, SW 3: 41–7 [GA I/3:349–56]). Recognition grounds the “relation of right”: “I must in all cases recognize the free being outside me as such, i.e. limit my freedom through the concept of the possibility of its freedom” (FNR, SW 3: 52 [GA I/3:358]). By the principle of right each free being is to have an external sphere for the exercise of its freedom, and others are to limit their freedom accordingly. This external sphere begins at the point of origin of one’s action on the external world itself (FNR, SW 3: 71–2 [GA I/3:377–9]). The relation of right is the foundation of “original rights” (Urrechte), that is, those not based on any positive laws, but that serve as the basis of any conceivable community of free beings (FNR, SW 3: 85, 111–19 [GA I/3:390, 403–10]). Original rights are fundamentally only two: the inviolability of the body, and the right to act freely on the external world (FNR, SW 3: 118 [GA I/3:409]). Fichte insists that property rights are entirely derivative from—and exhaustively analyzable into—rights to noninterference with one’s actions (FNR, SW 3: 93–100 [GA I/3:415–23]). Thus he says that, properly speaking, persons stand in relations of right only to other persons, never to non-rational things (FNR, SW 3:55 [GA I/3:360]). Fichte even goes so far as to deny that there is any right of property, literally speaking, to the substance of things, or to land (FNR, SW 3:401 [GA I/3:428–9]). This is the starting point, according to Fichte, for political philosophy. Fichte maintains that the recognition of others, including treatment of them in accordance with their original rights, does not require any moral principle as its rational basis. It also does not necessarily provide us with a reason for respecting the rights of others in practice, or for expecting others to respect ours (FNR, SW 3:86–7 [GA I/3:384–5]). The actualization of a community of rational beings must therefore depend on an external force capable of coercing rational beings to observe its laws. Each of us, he argues, has a “right of coercion”—but no satisfactory community can come about in this way, since that community requires that each have a guarantee in advance that others will subject themselves to the principle of right (FNR, SW 3:100 [GA I/3:395]). This, in

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turn, is possible only if all equally subject themselves unconditionally to the judgment of another party, transferring to it their power as well (FNR, SW 3:101 [GA I/3:396]). This power must erect a “law of coercion,” bringing about whenever someone attempts to violate these laws the opposite of what it intends should happen, so that such intentions annihilate themselves (FNR, SW 3:142 [GA I/3:426]). The common governmental power that is to make possible a relation of right between people can be consistent with their freedom only if it is the result of their mutual consent. Consequently, Fichte argues, the state must be founded on an express declaration establishing a will common to all members of a state, that is, a “civil– political contract” (Staatsbürgervertrag) (FNR, SW 3: 152–3 [GA I/3:432–4]). Fichte argues for the necessity of a series of such contracts as transcendental conditions for the possibility of a relation of right—which, in turn, as we have seen, is regarded as a condition for the possibility of a relation of community or mutual recognition between free beings. For Fichte, right is wholly independent of ethics, and in a transcendental sense, even prior to it. Norms of right arise out of an understanding between any two Is that is transcendentally necessary for the self-consciousness of any one of them. To be a self-conscious individual I, I must be summoned by another, whose individual selfconsciousness depends in turn on being summoned by me. This mutual summoning and being summoned is what Fichte calls “recognition.” Right is essentially a system of second-person address and the acts of external coercion necessary to enforce and guarantee the external freedom that each I requires. The most basic summons, necessary to the recognition of a free being, is the summons to leave the summoning I an external sphere of freedom. This sphere begins with the living body of the I, and extends as far as mutual agreements between Is will determine. The shared norm of mutual recognition creates what Fichte calls “the relation of right.” The norm in question imposes no duties or obligations, but it does involve consent on the part of the summoned I that the summoning I should remain externally free within its sphere. That consent can then be used as the basis for rightful coercion in case the summoned I behaves inconsistently with its consent and violates the external sphere of the other. Fichte’s theory of right develops a series of contractual relations between Is that are transcendentally necessary if each I is to be secure in the freedom to which others have consented. These contractual relations are inherently limited in extent—limited to those Is with which any given I must interact in asserting its external freedom. The community of right for Fichte is always a contingent aim of an empirically limited collection of human beings who interact externally with one another. It involves relations of property, the enforcement of which requires a contingent collection of human beings to form a unity whose common will is enforced by a government. Accordingly, the system of right for Fichte is nothing but a system of rightful coercion in accordance with the consent of all, providing each with its external sphere of freedom. The norms of ethics are entirely those transcendentally necessary for the consciousness of one’s own freedom. The sphere of ethics is based solely on the consciousness of freedom belonging inwardly to each I. However, we will see in due course that the application of principles of ethics requires a mutual summoning and

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being summoned. The extent of ethical norms is implicitly universal—encompassing all rational beings. The content of ethical duties for Fichte is determined by free rational communication—ideally, a communication that extends to all rational beings regarded as a single ideal community. This is not a community based on coercion, but only on free rationality.

Deduction of the Principle of Morality Fichte’s philosophy of right, grounded on recognition, the summons, and the relation of right, could be described as a “second person” theory in the sense recently used by Darwall (2006). This cannot be correctly said, however, about his theory of ethics or morality. It is grounded not on interpersonal relationships, but solely on the individual Is striving to actualize its absolute freedom. Fichte’s System of Ethics (SE) (1798) begins with a deduction of the principle of morality from the I’s self-awareness of its freedom and its drive for absolute independence of everything external to it, including the empirical desires which belong to the I in virtue of its embodiment and its relation to the external material world (SE, SW 4:18–45 [GA I/5:37–58]). The moral principle, as Fichte presents it, is only a certain concept: that of an absolute “ought” or categorical imperative or moral law that has objective validity for the I, is considered as self-legislated by it, applies to every situation and morally significant decision it makes, and overrides any other grounds or reasons for action (SE, SW 4:45–61 [GA I/5:58–71]). What this means is that my concept of myself as a free being is always essentially a normative conception of myself. For me to be a determinate entity and at the same time free, I must conceive of myself as subject to rational norms, so that certain free activities are conceived as proper to me, and others excluded as not truly mine—not in the sense that I can’t perform them, but rather in the sense that I ought not. If I fail to conform to these norms, I am not living up to what I am. As Fichte also puts it: the I which is formally free—having the ability to do otherwise than it does—achieves freedom in a different sense, material freedom, by actions that bring its empirical I into harmony with what I truly am, the pure or ideal or absolute I (SE, SW 4:139 [GA I/5:132, 140]; LSV, SW 6:296–7 [GA I/3:30]). Freedom is a capacity: the capacity to achieve or conform to a norm. I may have the capacity (be formally free) whether or not I exercise it. But when I successfully exercise it, I am materially free. “What I am” in this normative sense does not mean some “nature” I was born with, some metaphysical essence which, as a natural given, it is my task to “actualize.” On the contrary, the self that is normative for me is an “I,” that is, an activity of freedom; the ideal with which I ought to harmonize must be my own free creation (see Tugendhat 1986, 132–43 and Neuhouser 1990, Chapter 4). Fichte argues in Part I of The System of Ethics that the concept of such a law is derived solely from the I’s awareness of its own freedom or self-determination. We could summarize or paraphrase his argument this way: To act freely is to act for a reason. One reason for each action is an end, that state of the world, which the action seeks to produce. But a rational being also regards each action itself that it chooses

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as valuable in itself. This means that every action contains within itself, internal to itself simply as a free act, something objective—something experienced as real or constraining. This objective side of the action is an absolute “ought”—a norm to which the act is subject. This means that every free act is subject to what Kant calls a categorical imperative or a moral law. But the concept of the law is purely formal and even its applicability to particular actions must be deduced separately from the principle itself. This applicability is the subject of Part II of the System of Ethics, while the actual application is discussed in Part 3.

Applicability of the Moral Principle Part 2 begins with a lengthy deduction of the transcendental conditions of the I’s action. The I is necessarily embodied, and stands in relation to an external material nature on which its life is dependent. This means that the I always finds itself as willing, and is characterized by a striving or fundamental drive, originally unconscious, which is a condition of the possibility of every determinate volition or desire (SK, SW 1: 263 [GA I/2:397]). Fichte locates this insatiable striving in the organic body which, in reciprocal interaction with the external world, is a condition of the I’s possibility. Consciousness of this indeterminate striving is “longing” (Sehnen), but any determinate form it assumes is called “desire” and the immediate sensuous experience of such a desire is called a “drive” (SE, SW 4: 105–10 [GA I/5:104–9]). Desire in general is directed outward at objects. Its general form is to seek to abolish their independence, yet not by destroying them but rather by making them conform to the I, or to its “practical concepts” of what they ought to be, assigning to each object its “final end” (SE, SW 4:128–30 [GA I/5:123–5]; SK, SW 1:260 [GA I/2: 390]; LSV, SW 6:299 [GA I/3:31–2]). The I’s fundamental drive (Grundtrieb, Urtrieb) is originally one, but is experienced in two forms: the “lower” or empirical drive, expressing the I’s organic life and its dependency on material nature (SE, SW 3:125–30 [GA I/5: 120–25]), and the “higher” or pure drive, which expresses the I’s striving for absolute freedom and independence— freedom for freedom’s sake (SE, SW 4:130–9 [GA I/5: 125–32]). This drive is the source of the moral principle. One is a particular drive—involving feelings produced by sensuous encounter with specific objects and aiming at determinate ends, the other ideal, aiming at the absolute freedom or self-sufficiency of the I: this “tendency to self-activity for the sake of selfactivity,” or “an absolute tendency to the absolute”—is the source of the moral principle (SE, SW 4:28 [GA I/5:45]). But we would be badly misled if we thought that for Fichte the ethical drive is to be identified with the pure drive, and that the ethical consists only in the dominion of this drive over the empirical drive. For originally the two drives are one, and the ethical drive is a drive for the whole I (SE, SW 4: 43–4 [GA I/5: 57–8]). Free action is possible only when they are reunited. The ethical drive is therefore a mixed drive, which derives its form—the form of the moral principle— from the pure drive, but its content always from the empirical drive (SE, SW 4: 151–3 [GA I/5:141–3]).

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Ordinary moral consciousness becomes aware of the ethical drive through the conviction that some particular action is its duty, and this conviction arises out of the feeling of conscience (SE, SW 4: 156, 166–77 [GA I/5:146, 155–64]). Fichte draws a distinction between the theoretical judgment that some particular action is my duty, and the conscientious conviction that I ought to do it. Theoretical inquiry, according to Fichte, never by itself reaches certainty, either about the true or about the right (SE, SW 4:167 [GA I/5:156]). The certainty or conviction needed for moral action requires a practical decision, arising out of a feeling of harmony between the pure I and the empirical I (SE, SW 4:172–3 [GA I/5:160–1]). Conscientious conviction does not guarantee the theoretical correctness of the judgment about what the agent ought to do. Our cognitive faculties are fallible, and theoretical error is still possible. But the feeling of certainty-supplied conscience is a certainty that I have followed my best judgment about what to do. And no more than that, Fichte thinks, can be asked of me. From the ordinary moral point of view, actions required by duty are those accompanied by this conscientious conviction, and the application of the moral law consists in following one’s conscience (SE, SW 4:154–6 [GA I/5:144–6]).

The Content of Duty Fichte provides a transcendental deduction of the conditions of conscientious conviction, and regards it as a philosophical confirmation of the ordinary moral standpoint regarding the application of the moral law. But the System of Ethics also seeks a philosophical or “scientific” account of the content of duty. Fichte attempts a deduction of this content in Part III of the System of Ethics. The final end of the ethical drive is the complete independence or self-sufficiency of the I. But this end is unreachable, since complete independence would abolish the not-I, and with it a transcendental condition of I-hood itself. The task of determining the content of duty, therefore, is the same as that of determining what ends the I can strive for when the final end of absolute self-sufficiency is united with the conditions of I-hood (SE, SW 4: 211–12 [GA I/5:193–4]). Fichte considers this task in three (very unequal) parts. First, our duties toward our body and its natural drives; second, our duties regarding our cognitive faculty; and third, our duties regarding our relations with other rational beings. He categorizes these according to the Kantian categories of relation: causality, substance, and reciprocity. Under each, he divides the duties according to the Kantian categories of quality: negative, positive, limitative (SE, SW 4:212–18 [GA I/5:193–9]). By far the most extensive topic is our duties regarding other rational beings. For here, not in the foundations of ethics but in the application of the moral law, Fichte does introduce a “second person” perspective. In considering our relation to others, we must unite our striving for complete independence, and for bringing the external world into agreement with our practical ends, with the ethical demand that we must not violate the freedom of others but must further their promotion of their ends (SE, SW 4:222–5, 229–30 [GA I/5:202–5, 208–9]). The only resolution of this potential

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conflict, Fichte argues, is that we must proceed on the assumption that the ends of all rational beings are in agreement. The end of the self-sufficiency of the individual I must therefore be transformed into the self-sufficiency of the community of rational beings, or the self-sufficiency of reason (SE, SW 4:230–3 [GA I/5:208–11]). In practice, this means two things: first, we must act in a way to which we can suppose that all rational beings might rationally agree. This heuristic test is what Fichte identifies with the Kantian universalizability formula (SE, SW 4:233–4 [GA I/5:211–12]). Second, we must interact communicatively with others, attempting to reach actual agreement, and we must understand our moral convictions as provisional formulations of the actual agreement of all rational beings, which it is the final end of this endless (uncompletable) collective task (SE, SW 4:234–6 [GA I/5:212–14]). Fichte then begins a lengthy investigation into the necessary social conditions for this communicative project (SE, SW 4: 236–53 [GA I/5:214–27]).

The Social Unity of Reason Fichte holds that the true human society will be attained only when people freely act on the same principles because, through a process of communication, they have reached rational agreement on these principles. A society based on authority or coercion is therefore not merely imperfect, it is less than human (LSV, SW 6: 307 [GA I/3:37]). The state, which is founded on coercion, is thus “a means for establishing the perfect society,” but “like all human institutions which are mere means, the state aims at abolishing itself. The goal of all government is to make government superfluous” (LSV, SW 6: 306 [GA I/3:36]). In the end, therefore, “the state will fall away, as a legislative and coercive power” (SE, SW 4: 253 [GA I/5:226–7]). But a coercive political order is provisionally necessary, not only from the standpoint of right (which we have already considered) but also from the standpoint of our ethical ends, since rightful freedom is a condition of free rational communication. Also provisionally necessary is society regarded as a “church,” that is, as sharing a symbol or creed—certain provisional beliefs on the basis of which further communication reaching agreement can be possible (SE, SW 4:236–48 [GA I/5:213–23]). But the most important institution, Fichte argues, is the “learned republic,” a sphere of free rational communication between human beings simply as scholars (SE, SW 4:248–52 [GA I/5:223–6]). Fichte models this on Kant’s conception of the realm of public communication necessary for enlightenment, and both philosophers view the university as the center of this learned republic. The System of Ethics thus connects the theory of duties with a conception of the rational society. This is, as we have seen already in Fichte’s philosophy of right, a society made up of estates. It is the task of the state to insure that every citizen belongs to an estate. All citizens are eligible for every estate, and it is the ethical task of each individual to choose an estate appropriate to that individual’s talents, and to be educated for this estate (SE, SW 4:258–9, 271–4 [GA I/5:231–2, 242–5]). Fichte divides society into the “lower class,” which provides for the material needs of society, and the “higher class,” that exercises cultural (educational) influence or

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governmental rule over the rest of society. As we have seen, however, Fichte regards individuals as equal in status whatever their estate. The estates belonging to the higher class, Fichte says, exist for the sake of the estates belonging to the lower class: “The members of the government, as well as the estate of teachers and guardians, exist only for the sake of these first three estates” (CCS, SW 3:405–6 [GA I/7:58–60]). The lower class (System of Ethics §33, SE, SW 3:403–14, [GA I/7:56–65]) Producers: Those who gain raw or natural products (CCS, SW 3:403–7 [GA I/7:56–60]) Agriculturalists (Foundations of Natural Right §19 [A]) Miners (Foundations of Natural Right §19 [B]) Domesticators of animals (Foundations of Natural Right §19 [C]) Artisans: Laborers on raw or natural products (Foundations of Natural Right §19 [D]) Merchants: Facilitators of the exchange and delivery of goods (Foundations of Natural Right §19 [E]) The higher class (SE, SW 4:343 [GA I/5: 300]) The teaching estate (CCS, SW 3:407 [GA I/7:59]) Scholars (System of Ethics §29) Moral teachers of the people: clergy (System of Ethics §30) Fine artists (System of Ethics §31) State officials (System of Ethics §32, CCS, SW 3:405 [GA I/7:57–8]) The military estate (CCS, SW 3:405, 407 [GA I/7:57, 59])

The Ground of Evil in Human Nature: Inertia, Cowardice, Falsity, Despair Fichte is a merciless critic of all ordinary ways of thinking and acting, which he regards as fundamentally false and immoral. Fichte is also an acute moral psychologist, whose insights anticipate much that is found in more recent philosophy, especially in the existentialist tradition. At the same time, Fichte often traces moral evil to the social conditions of its existence, which lie in habits, ways of life, and social institutions that put their own self-perpetuation ahead of the aspirations of human freedom and the values of human dignity. His stern moralism is deeply allied with his social radicalism. Fichte holds that every action that proceeds from conscience, even if it’s based on theoretical error about what to do, is free from moral blame, because acting on conscientious conviction is the most that can be demanded of us. The demands of conscience regarding self-honesty, however, are uncompromising. Thus no immoral action can occur without self-deception or (in Fichte’s biblically inspired phrase) the “darkening of moral consciousness.” Like Sartre, Fichte thinks that people have a profound and tenacious propensity to flee the burdens their freedom imposes upon them, and he describes with acuteness and sensitivity the subtle forms of false consciousness—such as “floating,” “hesitation,” “thoughtlessness,”

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“distraction,” “indistinct consciousness”—that moral self-deception can take (SE, SW 4: 194–6 [GA I/5:178–80]). Falseness, however, is a vice that Fichte traces to the more basic vice of cowardice, which makes people afraid to tell the truth, or even to face the consequences of it. People lie because they are “afraid to exert the power it takes to assert their selfsufficiency. Only in this way is slavery among human beings, physical as well as moral, to be explained: submissiveness and mechanical imitation (Nachbeterei)” (SE, SW 4:202 [GA I/5:185]). The real origin of falseness, however, is social and political: “All falsehood, all lying, all treachery and cunning arise because there are oppressors; everyone who subjects others holds fast to it” (SE, SW 4:203 [GA I/5:186]). Cowardice itself is rooted in a still deeper vice, which Fichte calls “laziness” or “inertia.” People are free, but resist exercising their freedom. Instead of asserting their freedom and achieving their authentic selfhood, they prefer a life of everyday habit, of  the customary track, that of the Gleisner and the Schlendrian (SE, SW 4: 200–2 [GA I/5:183–4]). Fichte’s political convictions are evident even in his choice of pejorative moral epithets. Schlendrian is derived from schlendern (to dawdle or loiter). A Schlendrian is a fuddy-duddy or stick-in-the-mud, a believer in traditional ways, slow to liberate himself from old habits. In J. S. Bach’s Coffee Cantata, “Herr Schlendrian” is the comical father who growlingly (and unsuccessfully) attempts to enforce on his spirited daughter Ließchen the old-fashioned belief that women should not be permitted to drink coffee. A Gleisner is a hypocrite, a two-faced double-dealer. Fichte exploits the etymological connection of this word with Gleis (rail), implying that being in a rut consorts well with a dishonest flight from yourself. Both terms imply that one can be a social conservative only by suppressing one’s awareness of human freedom and dignity, and in this way being fundamentally dishonest with oneself as well as with others. Idealism for Fichte is a revolutionary philosophy because it bases everything on the I’s consciousness of its freedom, its ability and vocation of thinking for itself, and of being content with nothing as it is but striving ceaselessly and tirelessly to make it what it ought to be. For this reason, Fichte regards all forms of materialism, particularly those stressing determinism and reducing human beings to cogs in a universal mechanism, as allied with the old regime of social and political oppression. The spiritual force through which each human being may be lifted out of the inertia of complacency is the experience of respect. To feel respect for anything, according to Fichte, awakens respect for oneself, and respect for myself calls me to fulfill my Bestimmung (vocation) as a free individual. By the same token, the deepest form of evil is that attitude through which self-respect is suppressed, an attitude to which (writing nearly half a century before Kierkegaard) Fichte gives the name “despair.” In despair, the human being “seeks to flee from himself ” in order to avoid “the torture of selfdespising,” falling into self-deceptions, “deafening his conscience,” and finally finding comfort in the thoughts that all goodness is an illusion. The will is unfree, everyone acts solely from self-interest, and everything is as it is and nothing can ever get any better. The despairer is thus “divided (entzweit) from all good because he is divided from himself ” (SE, SW 4:318–19 [GA I/5:279–81]). Like Kierkegaard, Fichte regards despair

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as the opposite of faith, though for Fichte this is a faith in God and immortality held on moral grounds (SE, SW 4: 351 [GA I/5:306]; cf. DGW, SW 5:209–10 [GA I/5:429]). The remedy for despair, as for all moral evil, is, as always, free rational social interaction. No one has a right to compel another to be virtuous, or to make another good (or wise, or happy) against the other’s will (LSV, SW 6: 309 [GA I/3:39]). But the despairer can be brought out of despair if others show that they do not despair of him, and provide him with a good example, so that having something he can respect will awaken his respect for himself (SE, SW 4:318 [GA I/5: 280]). The moral improvement of the human race will occur only insofar as all come to regard themselves as members of a single great community, all drawing strength from the whole and influencing one another for good through free and mutual give and take (FNR, SW 3: 310–11 [GA I/3:40–1]). Thus, if Fichte’s conception of the sources of moral evil anticipates existentialism, his conception of its cure anticipates Habermas’s theory of dominionfree rational communication.

Fichte’s Later Ethics In the dozen or so years after Fichte was dismissed from his professorship at Jena on grounds of “atheism,” his philosophy underwent a number of decisive developments (see Baumanns 1990, 175–442). His changing conceptions of fundamental philosophy, the Doctrine of Science, under the influence of his erstwhile follower and then critic Schelling, became more speculative. Fichte’s thought also became more religious in its orientation, and, like the later philosophy of Schelling, made greater accommodations for divine revelation. Accordingly, the basis of ethical theory would seem to have changed fundamentally, in accordance with Fichte’s latest (and last) conception of a Doctrine of Science. The world, according to Fichte, is the image (Bild) of God (SW 11:117). It is not the I that has the concept, Fichte says, but the “concept” which “has” the I—in which it becomes “a seeing, a seeing of seeing, a self-seeing” and becomes “the absolute eye, the faculty of seeing, understanding” (SW 11:64–5). The concept, however, is also God’s image, not in the sense of a copy or imitation, but in the sense of a necessary manifestation. The “concept” in this sense is the ground of the world, or of being (SW 10:5), but also the ground of an independent world of images, which, like the practical concepts of things in Fichte’s earlier philosophy, provide ethical theory with its ends and principles. Ethical theory is taken to be a science distinct from the Wissenschaftslehre, presupposing it and grounded on it, taking as its point of departure a fact of consciousness, namely the grounding of being on the concept, which Fichte interprets as equivalent to the thesis that reason is practical (SW 11:7). It is beyond the scope of this essay to decide how far these changes involve Fichte in a metaphysical or ontological form of idealism, rather than the epistemological or transcendental form that (at his own repeated insistence during the Jena period) characterized his philosophy before 1800. But the changes in Fichte’s Doctrine of Science after 1800 (whatever their nature) make it all the more remarkable that in his final system-cycle, Fichte’s 1812 lectures on right and morality, involve relatively little

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modification in the substantive ethical and political views present in Fichte’s treatises of the Jena period. Just as the I as practical activity was opposed to objectivity and made its foundation, so now the concept, which takes the I as its conscious form, is likewise contrasted with being or the existing world, and regarded as its foundation. In practical philosophy, this is once again taken to mean that the real is grounded on a spiritual activity that proposes ideals and demands according to which it is to be transformed. Much of the Ethics of 1812 focuses on the subjective side of the ethical disposition, which rests on the principles of “selflessness” (SW 11:86), “universal philanthropy” (SW 11:92), “truthfulness and openness” (SW 11:96), and “simplicity” (SW 11:99). It would be a mistake to think that Fichte’s ethical theory has lost its earlier social orientation (see Verweyen 1975, 259–60). Although his language now has religious overtones, Fichte continues to hold that ethics requires us to represent all rational beings as a community, or as he now puts it, a “communion” or “congregation of I’s” (Gemeinde von Ichen) (SW 11:65). This, however, is not so distant from his Jena period presentation of the moral community, in terms derived from the Apostle’s Creed, as the “communion of saints” (SE, SW 4:254–5). *** Fichte is a major voice in modern moral and political philosophy, fully the equal, in depth and importance, to Kant, Hegel, Marx, or Nietzsche. Few modern social thinkers have been as radical in their starting point or their conclusions, none at all has also been so seminal in influence—though regarding this last fact the modern continental tradition has usually been oblivious to or in denial. No social thinker of comparable power or historical importance in any tradition whatever is now so seldom read or discussed.

Bibliography Baumanns, Peter. 1990. J. G. Fichte: Kritische Gesamtdarstellung seiner Philosophie. Freiburg and Munich: Alber. Beck, Gunnar. 2008. Fichte and Kant on Freedom, Rights and Law. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second Person Standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ferry, Luc. 1988. “The Distinction between Right and Ethics in the Early Philosophy of Fichte.” Philosophical Forum 19: 182–96. James, David. 2011. Fichte’s Social and Political Philosophy: Property and Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merle, Jean Christophe. (ed.) 2001. Grundlage des Naturrechts. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Merle, Jean-Christophe, and Andreas Schmit (eds.). 2015. System der Sittlichkeit. Frankfurt/M: Klostermann. Nakhimovsky, Isaac. 2011. The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Neuhouser, Frederick. 1990. Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 1994. “Fichte and the Relationship between Right and Morality.” In Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 158–80. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1997. The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings. Edited and translated by V. Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1986. Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination. Translated by Paul Stern. Cambridge: MIT. Verweyen, Hansjürgen. 1975. Recht und Sittlichkeit in J.G. Fichtes Gesellschaftstheorie. Freiburg/Munich: Alber. Williams, Robert R. 1992. Recognition. Fichte and Hegel. Albany: SUNY Press. Wood, Allen W. 1990. Hegel’s Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wood, Allen W. 1991. “Fichte’s Philosophical Revolution.” Philosophical Topics 19(2): 1–28. Wood, Allen W. 2008. Kantian Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wood, Allen W. 2014. The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wood, Allen W. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zöller, Günter. 1998. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8

The Development of Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion Benjamin D. Crowe

From start to finish, Fichte’s intellectual career is punctuated at key moments by engagement with religious issues and debates. From his valedictory address at Schulpforta in 1780, to the famous misidentification of the authorship of the 1792 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, to his Staatslehre of 1813, religion provides a focal point for some of Fichte’s most challenging and intriguing philosophical writings. Fichte’s contributions to the philosophy of religion are, however, disparate in nature, ranging from drafts of sermons, to essays and notices in journals, to complete treatises and public addresses. What, if anything, connects the development of Fichte’s thinking about religion over the course of his tumultuous career? I contend that the key issue, to which Fichte returns again and again across these writings, is the unity of the self. During his student days and Wanderjahren as a tutor (in the 1780s), Fichte focuses on the issue of harmonizing intellectual reflection and immediate, animating faith (Herzensglaube). Following his intensive study of Kant in the early 1790s, Fichte shifts focus to the problem of unifying the competing demands of practical reason and our sensible nature. This issue occupies him throughout his time in Jena, where Fichte argued that religion provides the view (Ansicht) of self and world necessary for harmonizing the finite self and “reason as such.”1 Finally, as evidenced particularly in his 1806 work Guide to the Blessed Life, or the Doctrine of Religion (Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre), Fichte turns his gaze toward the attainment of “spiritual energy (geistige Kraft),” which unifies and focuses the self even in the midst of the dispersion (Zerstreuung) of finite existence. At each stage, Fichte takes upon himself the task of articulating a religious vision capable of satisfying what he at one point calls the “fundamental drive [Grundtrieb]” (SE 137 [GA I/5: 136]) of human nature toward wholeness and unity.

Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion: A Brief Systematic Sketch While my focus in this chapter is the interconnection between Fichte’s efforts to theorize the unity of the self and his religious thought, his philosophy of religion

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covers considerably more ground than this. This should not be too surprising, since Fichte suggests that the philosophy of religion is the crown of his entire system (e.g., GA II/4: 289). Thus, it is important to provide at least some sense of the full range of topics that Fichte considered over the course of his tumultuous career.2 First and foremost, religion is an integral part of Fichte’s basic philosophical project. While he formulates the terms of this project in a variety of ways, the basic goal is to provide a transcendental account of what he variously calls “experience,” the “facts of consciousness,” or “representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity.” Others have aptly examined the origins and nature of this enterprise, so I will not provide further detail here. The important point is that religion, or belief in God, is one of the “facts of consciousness” for which it is incumbent on Fichte to provide a transcendental explanation.3 As will be discussed in somewhat more detail below, by taking belief in God to be a “fact of consciousness,” Fichte is making a strong claim that it is on a par with other intuitive features of human experience, such as the belief in the external world and the belief in other minds. In addition, for reasons that are not always entirely easy to understand and in ways that do not always square perfectly with his stated intentions, Fichte maintains that a transcendental explanation of religion does not alter or revise the fundamental nature of its explanandum.4 Second, Fichte also developed accounts of the history and core doctrines of Christianity, along with reformist ideas about religious institutions and an interesting account of the role of symbolism in the formulation of religious teachings. Some of his very earliest writings are dedicated to the exposition of Christian doctrine. In his great treatises on moral and political philosophy from the latter half of the 1790s, Fichte has much to say about institutional structures as well as about the role and obligations of the clergy. In texts from the first decade of the nineteenth century, including the influential (albeit controversial) Addresses to the German Nation (1808), Fichte articulates a critical view of religious education. Both before and during his tenure at the nascent University of Berlin, Fichte rethought the relationship between the theology faculty and other disciplines within the university. In the tradition of German educational reformism stretching back to the late seventeenth century, Fichte argued for the rights of the philosophical faculty against the theological, reordering division of labor regarding the study of religion. Fichte’s account of the relationship between philosophical theology and first-order religious belief likewise evolved over his career. Even before the storm of the “Atheism Controversy” broke over him in 1798, he developed a view of the nature and necessity of a religious creed (Fichte typically used the less common Greek-derived term, Symbol). He further explored the nature of a doctrinal creed in relation to philosophical accounts of religion in lectures on ethics from 1812 and in the Staatslehre of the following year. Finally, as will be touched on in more depth below, Fichte developed his own philosophical or transcendental theology in line with the great tradition of rationalist leaning thinkers that preceded him. He defended his own unique account of the concept of God and of the possibility and limits of knowledge of God, though much of his thinking in this respect was left in fragmentary form by the political and career exigencies caused by the “Atheism Controversy.” Along the way, he critically examined a number of traditional arguments for God’s existence, both in published works and

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in introductory lectures that he gave in Jena. Following his departure for Berlin, Fichte also critically engaged with the religious thought of contemporaries like Schelling and historical giants like Spinoza. Unlike more or less contemporary figures like Kant, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, or with slightly later thinkers in the same tradition such as Feuerbach, Fichte’s philosophy of religion has to be pieced together from disparate works. Nevertheless, he did manage to publish two treatises exclusively devoted to the topic—the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792/93) (ACR) and Guide to the Blessed Life (1806) (DR). More importantly, as this brief overview has hopefully made clear, religion constituted a sustained philosophical interest for Fichte throughout his adult life, and his philosophy of religion is every bit as revolutionary, insightful, and worthy of consideration as the rest of his philosophy.

Unifying the Believing Heart: Religion in Fichte’s Jugendschriften According to oft-repeated Fichte family lore, Johann Gottlieb’s meteoric rise from provincial obscurity to intellectual prominence was owed to his uncanny ability to commit the local pastor’s sermons to memory. Fittingly, his university studies were aimed at preparing him for a career in the Lutheran clergy. Many of his earliest extant writings testify to this provenance. Beginning with his valedictory address of 1780 at Schulpforta, one issue is particularly conspicuous and prominent in his youthful writings: the importance of lively, heartfelt faith, or “Religion des Herzens” (GA II/1: 75). Multiple influences converge in Fichte’s thinking at this stage. As Rainer Preul first painstakingly documented some time ago, Fichte’s early religious thought combined a Rousseau-inspired insistence on authentic sentiment, a broader Enlightenment-era polemic against authoritarian religious institutions, and the native Pietism of Fichte’s Saxon homeland (Preul 1969, 19–35). For the young Fichte, true religion is a matter of the heart, of “inner” certainty and affectively tinged conviction. Both mechanical piety and merely intellectual assent fail to produce true conviction and ultimately negate the very core of Christianity. At the same time, the remoteness of these kinds of religiosity from “Religion guter Herzen” (GA II/1: 88) generates a slide into fanaticism or, equally disastrously in Fichte’s mind, a politically enforced institutionalized faith (Preul 1969, 41–2). As a person of considerable intellectual endowments very much committed to the ideals of rationality espoused by the likes of Lessing, Fichte also insisted on the importance of rational comprehension for true faith. As a young man, Fichte was already the enemy of any perceived obscurantism (see, for example, GA III/1: 61). These two sets of convictions set the stage for Fichte’s first formulation of the problem of the unity of the self. True religion necessarily harmonizes both intellect (Verstand) and sentiment (Herz), and the pastor’s mandate is to encourage this harmonization in his flock for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Fichte’s future relative by marriage, Klopstock, had already expressed this particular vocation in his 1756 “Von der heiligen Poesie” (Preul 1969, 66–7). While the young Fichte did venture briefly into the domain of literature, he ultimately set this task for himself as a philosopher.

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Thus, in a draft sermon from the mid-1780s, Fichte maintains that true religion rests on the unity of two faculties: understanding (Verstand), which is needed in order to grasp the content of the faith, and heart, the seat of sentiments and affections (GA II/1: 59–61). Faith forged in this unity of the faculties allows one to overcome doubt and despair and to stand fast against temptation. In another text, Fichte meditates on how the central drama of Christianity—i.e., the crucifixion of Jesus—best makes sense not as atonement for sin but rather as the means to inspire exactly this kind of authentic religiosity. True faith rests on reason and understanding, not on compulsion or force (Zwang) (GA II/1: 75). While it demands the “rooting out (Ausrottung)” of debased sensuality, it nonetheless inspires sentiments of goodness and benevolence. Fichte’s clearest statement of his nascent religious vision, importantly illustrating the centrality of the unity of the self to it, comes from this same text: [Christianity] is the only [religion] that is not at all concerned with externalities; [it is] the only religion of the heart. According to it, worship is the perfecting [Vervollkommnerung] of the entire person [des ganzen Menschen]; its lofty goal is the enlightenment of the understanding and the improvement of the heart. It enlightens the understanding, though not by means of evident, profound reflection or rigorous demonstrations. This would transform it into the religion of a few clever folk, into a mere science … and, because it would have little influence on practice, it would contribute little to the happiness of either its individual adherents or to that of the collective. It enlightens the understanding by warming it through the heart, and a genuine conviction of its truth must always arise from the goodness of our sentiments [Empfindungen]. (GA II/1: 87)

This account of the true nature of religious conviction is a constant across Fichte’s career. For instance, in the Appeal to the Public of 1799, Fichte ties genuine religious conviction to the “ineradicable moral sense in every human breast” (GA I/5: 433). In one of his last complete lecture courses, Fichte argues that the “truth” of a religious doctrine must be “attested to inwardly by each person’s moral sense” (GA II/13: 385). Here in this early text Fichte insists that both features of human nature—understanding and heart—must be improved for the whole person to live a complete life.

Unifying Nature and Reason: Religion in the 1790s Following the suspension of his university studies due to a lack of financial resources, Fichte entered his lean years as an itinerant household tutor who rarely managed to find suitable employment for long. Yet, a ray of light emerged during this otherwise dark period when Fichte discovered Kant’s Critical philosophy in 1790. The effect of this discovery can be quite accurately likened to that of a religious conversion, as various letters he wrote in the winter of 1790–1 amply attest. Strikingly, he at one point uses the very language of unifying “head and heart” to describe the effects of his discovery of Kant (GA III/1: 166). His newfound philosophical outlook culminated in a pilgrimage to Königsberg to meet the great man himself, which, in turn, led to

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Fichte’s first substantive philosophical work, the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (first edition, 1792). Here, Fichte reframes the question of the unity of the self in keeping with the basic Kantian orientation of his thinking at this point in his career. While the discovery of Kant had indeed afforded him some resolution for the discordance of reflection and affective conviction that had shaken his intellectual confidence in earlier years, he shifts his attention in the Attempt to the Kantian problem of the opposition between the demands of practical reason and our natural inclinations to “sense enjoyment.” Developing his own conception of agency, Fichte puts the problem in terms of the unification of the higher and lower faculties of desire. From this perspective, he raises some sharp criticism of what he calls “stoicism” in moral philosophy. “Stoicism” is Fichte’s label for a one-sided morality that emphasizes the self-sufficient sovereignty of reason at the expense of natural sentiments and inclinations.5 While morality rests on the capacity of the “higher faculty of desire” to restrain and guide our sensuous nature, this cannot be the end of the story (GA I/1: 149). A more complete picture must allow for a way of bringing “unity to the whole man” (GA I/1: 149). Moral life is incomplete unless it goes beyond obedience to the moral law strictly conceived and affects a harmonization of one’s sensuous inclinations and the dictates of the moral law (GA I/1: 152–3). An important move then occurs in the Attempt. Fichte comes to see religion not as the locus of disunity (e.g., between heartfelt conviction and reflection), but rather as the key to unity. Religion—here understood as it typically is by Fichte as a view of life rather than as a “science” or a body of doctrines—operates on human moral psychology in order to at least approximate the desired kind of wholeness (GA I/1: 23; 36). Fichte does not fill in the details of how this works in the Attempt. Instead, for the remainder of the decade, he develops the theory of agency first outlined in this text, and only then does he articulate the significance of religion in bringing “unity to the whole man.” In his Theory of Ethics (1798), the second of the two great treatises on practical philosophy that he published during the most influential period of his career while at Jena, Fichte continued to think through the nature of moral agency in terms of a division between drives or between “higher and lower faculties of desire.” On the one hand, this division is an essential ingredient of moral consciousness. On the other hand, it poses an as yet unfulfilled demand for unification. Thus, “I am a natural being [Naturwesen] (for there is no other I for me); at the same time, I am also for myself the reflecting subject. The former is the substance, and the act of reflection is an accident of this substance, a manifestation of the freedom of this natural being” (SE 126 [GA I/5: 127]). And yet the unification of nature and reflection is not automatic; instead, it the central project of human life to bring this about, such that the natural self and the reflecting self become the same “I” (SE 126 [GA I/5: 127]).6 However, as Fichte makes clear a bit further on, “the fulfillment of our entire vocation is not possible in any time” (SE 143 [GA I/5: 141]). It would seem, then, that Fichte has created a difficulty for which he has no solution on hand. Moral experience and moral life are possible because we have competing “faculties of desire,” because we are both natural creatures and rational agents. As in the Attempt, a complete picture of morality does not stop with the triumph of

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the latter over the former. Instead, a “real” ethics, as Fichte puts it, demands the unification of these two sides of ourselves. And yet, their heterogeneity seems to put this unification hopelessly beyond our reach. We are required to strive for it, but how can we ever be assured that our actions bring us any closer to an impossible and incomprehensible goal? It is in his writings on religion from the end of this period, despite the shadow cast by the “Atheism Controversy” of 1798–9 and his dismissal from his position in Jena, that Fichte returned to the examination of how religion furnishes a view (Ansicht) of things on which finite agency is reconciled with “reason as such.” The assumption of a “moral order” of things, far from being a simple thesis that one maintains on practical grounds, is actually a perspective on self and world that Fichte boldly characterizes as the attainment of “heaven” here in the world below.7 One fairly clear statement of this position comes from the Appeal to the Public. Again, the problem is that we have no way of understanding how we are progressing toward the ineradicable and yet seemingly unachievable goal of unifying nature and reason in our own persons. In this 1799 piece, which, despite its polemical nature, contains some of the more perspicuous statements of Fichte’s religious thinking, he argues that we must come to understand that there is a “rule [Regel],” a “fixed order,” which makes it the case that a conscientious action does contribute to the goal of unifying self. This rule governs an order “of which I myself am a member [Glied], and upon which is based the fact that I occupy this position in the system of the whole” (GA I/5: 427). Parallel comments can be readily found in other works from this period, such as the infamous essay on “Divine Governance” (GA I/6: 351–3) and the important “From a Private Letter” (GA I/6: 382–3). Importantly, despite some obvious parallels, Fichte’s view here is not the same as that put forth by Kant in the Critique of Practical Reason, where he argues for the postulates of pure practical reason from the heterogeneity of sensuous satisfaction or happiness and duty. For Fichte, what is at issue is the unification of the self, not the apportionment of happiness according to merit. God, rather than being the dispenser of satisfaction, is conceived in much more abstract terms as a principle of coherence or connectedness.8 This difference from Kant is made most explicit in lectures based on Ernst Platner’s Philosophical Anthropology that served Fichte during this period as a kind of propaedeutic to his lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre proper (see, for example, GA II/4: 300). It is the realization of the moral law, the “kingdom of God,” rather than the unification of happiness and moral merit in the highest good, that lies at the basis of Fichte’s move from morality to religion (GA II/4: 302). Fichte’s thin conception of God is also much in evidence in these lectures. While stressing the incomprehensibility of God, Fichte also maintains that we can have some idea of God on account of His relations with us. Thus, God is “what mediates finitude and reason as such” (GA II/4: 289), “the cause of the progress [Fortganges] of morality” (GA II/4: 302), that “which promotes [befördert] our freedom before and after” (GA II/4: 310), a “link” in the “world of freedom” (GA II/4: 320).9 Here as well, the key issue for Fichte is the unification of nature and reason in the person: Reason posits that free action and nature, which is the object of action, are incapable of being unified in concepts and in the understanding – but it is possible

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[that they are capable of unification] in something higher, which unifies concept and action but which itself cannot be conceived of. (GA II/4: 291)

As something that cannot be defined or comprehended, God is not an object of knowledge or rational insight, but rather of faith. This is the faith that there is a “reason upon which ours is rooted [aufgepflanzt]” (GA II/4: 289), “without which I neither live nor move” (GA II/4: 303), the “highest, ultimate ground of all things; the truly absolute being” (GA II/4: 322). At the same time, in another striking departure from Kant, Fichte also maintains at points that we have the same warrant for faith in God as we do for believing in the existence of nature and in our own free agency.10 In published works, such as the Appeal to the Public, Fichte likewise characterizes God abstractly as the “all in all,” the “only thing that exists, and all of us other rational minds live and move only within it” (GA I/5: 440). No wonder Fichte found the charge of atheism baffling! During this most fertile and influential period in his career, Fichte developed the idea that morality points beyond itself to something else, to a view of things or a picture of the world unified by divine being. As he makes quite clear, this view of things is not a substitute for morality as conscientious action.11 Instead, religion is a way of seeing things that supports and nourishes the conscientious person by providing the only possible fulfillment of the “fundamental drive” of human nature toward unity. As Fichte puts it, “Religion is something inward: a confident, courageously good way of life. Faith is the firm conviction of a moral rule of the world …. In faith one has his heaven already on earth” (GA II/4: 302).

The Unity of Love: Religion and Selfhood in Guide to the Blessed Life The core thesis of Fichte’s 1806 Guide to the Blessed Life, which first appeared as part of a great cycle of public lectures communicating the essential insights and consequences of the Wissenschaftslehre in “popular” form, is that to live a blessed life is “to repose and to persevere in the One,” while “misery is to be strewn across the manifold and the disparate” (GA I/9: 64). An alienated life, “since it likes to be at home everywhere, is at home nowhere,” while a blessed life consists in “composure of mind [Sammlung des Gemüthes] and in its communion with itself ” (GA I/9: 64). Clearly, Guide to the Blessed Life likewise proclaims Fichte’s conception of religion as a standpoint [Ansicht] on self and world that makes possible a unified identity and a concomitant self-contentment.12 Fichte introduces this central theme at the outset of the lecture, by ascribing to love the same structure that he had long ascribed to consciousness, namely that of a unity-in-diversity. Taking up K. L. Reinhold’s “principle of consciousness” in the early 1790s, Fichte had maintained that consciousness involves the distinction between subject, object, and representation, all held together in a unity and rooted in a more fundamental act of self-positing. Similarly, here in the Guide, he describes how love separates the subject of love from the object of love while holding them together in a conscious awareness. But, more than that, love unifies the divided self

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by transferring the very existence of the self into the beloved. In this regard, love is “satisfaction [Zufriedenheit] with oneself, joy in oneself, enjoyment of oneself; and so it is blessedness [Seligkeit]” (GA I/9: 56). Love, as Fichte understands it, furnishes one’s life with a fundamental normative orientation. “Reveal to me what you truly love, what you seek after and strive for with all of your longing, if you hope to discover true enjoyment of yourself – and you have thereby shown me your life” (GA I/9: 57). As the conscious unification of lover and loved, love in its highest pitch overcomes any alienation. Self-awareness is thus part and parcel of fulfilled love, for, as Fichte points out, no one would ascribe blessedness to someone who had no awareness that her deepest longing had indeed been fulfilled (GA I/9: 62). Echoing Spinoza, Fichte describes thought as the “element” or “aether” for this fulfillment (GA I/9: 61–2). It cannot be sought in sentiment or feeling alone, for these are radically contingent (GA I/9: 63). Only an intellectual love possesses the kind of stability needed for blessedness. This insistence on the role of thought in the love constitutive of blessedness fits with Fichte’s later characterization of religion as a contemplative perspective on self and world that complements the active, engaged stance of what he calls “higher ethics.” That is, religion is a kind of cognitive stance in and through which love is fulfilled. Fichte adds more specificity to his vision of a unified, non-alienated existence in §5 of the work. There, he distinguishes five “standpoints” or “points of view [Ansichten]” on the infinite manifold of finite reality. Crucially, it is not the case that these standpoints are supposed to correspond to some reality “in itself ”; that is, they are not metaphysical theories in the classic sense. Instead, these points of view are groups of concepts that each center on a particular conception of what is normatively significant. In other words, the five “standpoints” are ways of orienting oneself in the world, or, in the case of the “scientific” standpoint, of comprehending the structure and transcendental grounds for these orientations. One might helpfully compare Fichte’s exposition of these five “standpoints” with Hegel’s account of the different shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, each of which focuses on something “in itself ” as the norm or standard of judgment. In the Guide, Fichte does not ascribe any kind of dialectical progression from one standpoint to the next, and his account differs from Hegel’s in a number of other important ways. But what the two idealists share is a conception of consciousness or mindedness as a complex whole oriented around some defining sense of what is most “real.” In the first of these standpoints, one regards what is perceived by the senses as comprising the “actual world” (GA I/9: 107). Again, this is not meant as a metaphysical thesis, but rather as a claim about what is most important, about that which most demands attention. This is made clear once one turns to the next standpoint, which finds its reality in “lawful order (ein Gesetz der Ordnung)” of “equal right in a system of rational beings” (GA I/9: 107). This is the moral point of view, where a law that both rests upon and upholds the freedom of all is the focal point. Clearly, there is no assertion here that the moral law is some kind of substance. Fichte explains: a law is for this view of the world [Weltansicht] what is primary, what alone truly is, and through which everything else that exists first exists. Freedom and the human

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species exist in a secondary way, simply because a law of freedom necessarily posits freedom in a free being. The only basis and proof for the self-sufficiency [Selbständigkeit] of a human being is for this system the moral law that manifests itself within people. Thirdly, there is a sensible world, which is simply the sphere for the activity of human beings. (GA I/9: 107)

These three—law, human agents, sensible world—are not to be construed metaphysically as components of the universe, but rather as conceptual elements of a way of thinking about the world that are mutually implicating. These elements are structured in a normative hierarchy. What is most important, or what most demands to be reckoned with, is the law. Human beings, as the means for the realization of this law, derive their own worth and significance from their awareness of this law and their free capacity to act in accord with it by restricting or constraining sensuous inclinations. Fichte here takes Kant to be the preeminent philosophical champion of this second standpoint. According to Fichte, one of Kant’s key insights in the Critique of Practical Reason is that “the reality and self-sufficiency of human beings is proven only through the moral law that holds sway within them, and that it is just through this that a human being becomes something in himself [Ansich]” (GA I/9: 108). At the next level of development lies what Fichte calls “true and higher ethics [Sittlichkeit]” (GA I/9: 109), a standpoint that he is at pains to articulate throughout much of the remainder of the work. Here, too, a law for the “spiritual world” is taken to be what is primary, highest, and absolutely real. The difference is that this law does not simply impose formal order on what is already present (e.g., one’s occurent desires), but it is creative, bringing about something genuinely new. What this means is not immediately clear. The first step to understanding the distinction between the two kinds of morality lies in recognizing the characterization of the moral law of the second standpoint as one aimed at overcoming the conflict between the different free powers of the mind in order to achieve balance or equilibrium [Gleichgewicht] and a degree of “peace [Ruhe].” The law of “higher ethics” goes one step further. Rather than taking simply what Fichte calls the “formal Idea” (i.e., non-contradiction) as its aim, the law of “higher ethics” aims at a “qualitative and real Idea,” a “copy, impression, and manifestation of the inner divine being” in the finite world (GA I/9: 109). That is, while the moral law as such aims at overcoming contradiction, this law aims at activities that instantiate a substantive ideal. Fichte summarizes the structure of this higher point of view this way: For it what is truly real and self-sufficient is the Holy, the Good, the Beautiful; what is secondary for it is humanity as destined [bestimmt] to present these within itself; the [formally] ordering law is third, merely a means for bringing humanity into a state of internal and external peace for the sake of its true vocation. Finally, the sensible world is fourth. (GA I/9: 109)

The standpoint of religion is, for Fichte, a natural extension of that of “higher ethics.” Indeed, the two are difficult, if not quite impossible, to cleanly disentangle from each other. Of course, in his earlier work, the complementarity of ethical life as practical and

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religion as contemplative is repeatedly stressed. Nonetheless, religion is distinct, and is characterized by an explicit awareness or cognition (Erkenntnis) that is not necessarily present for the standpoint of “higher ethics.” Religion involves the recognition that the “holy, the good, and the beautiful” are not our “offspring [Ausgeburt],” but rather represent the “appearance of the inner essence of God within us,” that these are “His expression, His image, plain and simple, without remainder” (GA I/9: 110). As with each of the other standpoints, Fichte delineates the internal structure of religion. He first of all identifies the “exclusive condition of every religious view [Ansicht]” as the recognition that “God alone is, and outside of Him nothing [exists]” (GA I/9: 110). This is the core normative claim at the heart of the standpoint of religion. Religion involves the further articulation of this basic normative claim, and so Fichte’s exposition likewise proceeds by detailing its implications. The assertion that “God alone is,” by itself, furnishes no knowledge about God’s inner “essence” or “nature [Wesen].” The only possible addition [Zusatz] [to this concept] – that He is absolute, [that He exists] from Himself, through Himself, in Himself – is merely the basic form of our understanding made visible in Him [an ihm dargestellt]; it says nothing but that this is our way of thinking about Him. Negatively, it asserts how we ought not to think of Him, i.e., we ought not to think of Him as derivative of something else as we do of other objects in keeping with the nature of our understanding. This concept of God is therefore a shadow-concept without content; by asserting that God is we are asserting what is, for us, inwardly nothing, that through this assertion God becomes nothing. (GA I/9: 110–11)13

This comment echoes Fichte’s earlier treatment of the concept of God in writings from his last years in Jena which, as previously noted, are relatively thin, particularly in comparison with both traditional philosophical theology and with that of Kant. For instance, in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, lectures from the latter half of the 1790s, Fichte explains how we can know nothing of God’s consciousness, since the condition of conscious life as we know it includes the limitation, “constraint,” or “check [Anstoß]” of a drive (WLnm[H] 172–4). Of course, for Fichte, God is much more than the “shadow concept.” Indeed, Fichte asserts that God is the “real, true, immediate life within us” (GA I/9: 111), albeit in a manner that is generally not apparent except from the standpoint of religion. “We do not see Him, but always only his outer garment [Hülle]; we see Him as stone, plant, animal, and, when we leap to a higher level [höher uns schwingen], as a law of nature, as the moral law, while these nevertheless are still not Him” (GA I/9: 111). The standpoint of religion is the closest that finite beings can get to comprehending the nature of God, which remains “reflected” into an infinity of forms. These forms are no longer those of natural objects, but rather of ideals and, more importantly, of the visible actions and life courses of those inspired by such ideals. In that which the holy person does, lives, and loves, God no longer appears in shadows, or as cloaked in a mantle [Hülle], but rather in his own immediate and

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dynamic [kräftige] life; the question, “What is God?” that was left unanswered previously by the empty shadow concept of God is answered here: He is the very thing that the person devoted to and inspired by Him does. (GA I/9: 111)

For all his emphasis on God’s transcendence over our cognitive capacities as well as the natural world that we grasp with our finite understanding, Fichte nonetheless still holds that God is not to be sought “beyond the clouds”; rather, “you can find him everywhere [allenthalben] that you are” (GA I/9: 112). As in the 1798 essay on divine governance that provoked the “Atheism Controversy,” Fichte still holds that God is most fully known in the selfless actions of the conscientious individual. The difference between the active standpoint of “higher ethics” and that of religion is just that the latter, like the theoretical standpoint of science, is “purely contemplative and observational [betrachtend und beschauend], in no way active or practical in itself ” (GA I/9: 112). In other words, of the viewpoints enumerated in §5, religion (along with science) is most properly a viewpoint, as opposed to a way of engaging in the world. Religion, for Fichte, lies in seeing God as manifest most purely in the single-minded, ennobling actions of those who are devoted to “the One [Eine]” amidst the infinity of appearances. Religion is at its most authentic, however, when it is inextricably bound with these actions. It is “not simply brooding over pious thoughts,” but rather the animating awareness that God lives in us as moral agents. After attempting to demonstrate the convergence between religion so understood and what he takes to be the core of Johannine Christianity in §6, Fichte revisits these standpoints from a different angle, focusing not on their conceptual structure but on the characteristic “emotion [Affekt]” of each. It is here that he picks up the thread from his earliest reflections on religion, arguing that “higher ethics” and its accompanying religious outlook bring about a unification of the self beyond that which could be achieved even at the highest pitch of “uprightness [Rechtlichkeit]” in dedication to the moral law. As in his works from the latter part of his time in Jena, Fichte is here arguing that morality, even in the purest form as represented for him by Kant, points beyond itself to something both higher and deeper that overcomes an alienation that lies at the core of being a self-conscious agent. This phase of his account begins with the pointed reminder that the opposite of a “blessed life” lies in “dispersion across the manifold, as opposed to being pulled back and pulled together [Zurückziehung und Zusammenziehung] around the One,” where the latter brings with it a kind of “inner spiritual energy” (GA I/9: 130). Only this energy renders one truly self-sufficient [selbständig] in a conscious way. For the disunited self, on the other hand, one is buffeted about by “lawless and incomprehensible contingency.” Such as person “does not even exist as something real that subsists for himself but rather only as a fleeting natural event” (GA I/9: 130). “Self-sufficiency sharpens the world to a point; its lack to a dull expanse,” where one remains “not at home” as an agent in one’s very conception of the world (Welt-Auffassung), and everything is indifferently mashed together (GA I/9: 131). For Fichte, this is tantamount to having no self at all; the “place [Stelle]” of the self is instead occupied by “blind chance [Ohngefähr]” (GA I/9: 132). This condition of “spiritual non-existence” is, admittedly, an extreme, and none of the viewpoints elaborated in §5 fall to this nadir. Nonetheless, it provides one

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end of a continuum on increasing unification and integrity, each animated by its own distinctive emotional tone [Affekt]. Echoing Spinoza and Jacobi, Fichte conceives of these emotional tones as variations on the “emotion of being [Affekt des Seyns],” a kind of affective conatus guided by a “paradigm [Urbild]” of “hanging together [Sichzusammenhaltens] and sufficing for oneself [Sichtragens]” (GA I/9: 134). Even when “sensible enjoyment” forms the dominant normative orientation for a person’s life, this kind of unification of self is at work. “A dish tastes good to us, a flower smells pleasant to us because it elevates and animates our organic existence” (GA I/9: 134). At a different stage of life, that of “uprightness,” the moral law forms the center of one’s life, while the emotional tone is characterized by the resonance of an unconditional demand or ought in one’s conscience (GA I/9: 136). Recalling a discussion of morality from the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, Fichte characterizes this kind of life as stoicism, here citing Aeschylus’ portrayal of Prometheus. Once again, however, the interest in our own persons as organic beings remains operative, setting the stage for a deep conflict and the potential for a profound, albeit morally motivated, self-contempt (GA I/9: 137). The “emotion [Affekt] of the law” negates inclination, love, and need, and demands that one have contempt for oneself as a natural creature (GA I/9: 138–9). Harkening back to his criticisms of Kant’s formulation of the practical postulates in his introductory lectures from the 1790s, Fichte next argues that it is only on pain of inconsistency that such a view can entertain the idea of God (GA I/9: 139). The only sort of God that could be entertained here is “an arbitrary dispenser of sensuous well-being, whose favor must first be obtained by some means, even if this means were lawful conduct” (GA I/9: 139). For Fichte, to take such a view conflates the true love of God with some supernaturalized version of the ordinary desire for sensuous gratification (GA I/9: 139–40).14 The deep difficulty with this position, however, lies in its conception of freedom as freedom to either obey or disobey the law (GA I/9: 148). Given the utterly indeterminate nature of such freedom, it is only “inclination” that can furnish agency with any sort of direction. In other words, the root of the problem lies in the inevitable conflict between a purely formal conception of freedom and the ineluctable natural determination of desire by our organic nature. Commitment to formal freedom turns out too “one-sided and deficient,” such that the only kind of unification that can be envisioned is that of an “eternally onward flowing life” (GA I/9: 148). By maintaining that one can either will or not will according to an eternal law, one admits that the latter is not the fundamental law of one’s being, and so arises the conception of morality as a categorical imperative demanding the renunciation of one’s sensuous will (GA I/9: 149). For Fichte, true freedom only comes when this insistence on formal freedom is overcome, and one can assert that “the emotion, love, and will of this divine existence has become his own, such that there are indeed no longer two, but rather only one […] and the same will that is all in all” (GA I/9: 149). A paradoxical kind of selfannihilation is thus the entrance into a higher life. But this admission seems contrary to Fichte’s earlier claim that this stance is an authentic or complete self-sufficiency. How does a person become a unified agent by ceasing to be herself at all? Fichte’s burden in the remainder of §§8–9 is to clarify precisely this point. In some ways, this

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issue is not new to Fichte’s thinking in 1806. In the Appeal to the Public of 1799, Fichte characterized the highest aspiration of humanity as the “absolute self-sufficiency [Selbstgenügsamkeit] of reason” (GA I/6: 426). In the Theory of Ethics, published the previous year, Fichte stressed that the individual is one of the “instruments” or “tools” for the realization of this self-sufficiency (e.g., SE 245 [GA I/5: 231]). Elsewhere, he describes “resignation” as the most authentic religious attitude. Turning to §8, Fichte develops another perspective on the nature of these conscious standpoints, considering them as variations of the affective conatus for freedom and self-sufficiency (GA I/9: 146–8). In keeping with his long-maintained position, Fichte takes the “material” view to imply the absence of freedom. The standpoint of “uprightness” does allow for freedom, albeit in what Fichte describes as a purely formal sense. This freedom is the ability to either conform to the moral law or not; it is the key property of an independent self conceived of as a power that stands over against the law. This faculty is intrinsically “directionless,” and must be “bound” either by inclination or by the law (GA I/9: 148). The “point of freedom [Punkt der Freiheit]” is occupied, as it were, by an “I” that subsists on its own, and for this reason such a stance is a “onesided and deficient” way in which the divine life is embodied. The emotional drive of such an I is to assert its own being, which cannot be harmonized with an emotional drive aimed at the divine being as such. Fichte labels this condition that of the “man of law,” who, in acknowledging the equal possibilities of willing or not willing in accord with the eternal will thereby also acknowledges that his predominant inclination is not to will the law as he ought. As he explains elsewhere, it is the presence of this “indifference” toward the eternal will that gives rise to experience of a “categorical imperative” as a compelling obligation.15 The “man of law” thus lives a divided existence that points beyond itself to a higher level of unification, where the “emotion, the love, and the will of this divine existence” is just the same as the person’s own (GA I/9: 149). “As long as a person still desires to be something himself, God does not come to him, for no human being can become God” (GA I/9: 149). By transcending the divided condition of the man of law, a person achieves “a blessedness that is at home [einheimische] in the center of the world” (GA I/9: 150). Of course, one still understands oneself as a living person in a sensible world, but one’s fundamental affective orientation points elsewhere. One’s person, along with all of one’s visible conduct, are means for fulfilling what is demanded by this new orientation, or for doing “the will of God that is revealed within him” (GA I/9: 150). Crucially, rather than demanding the extirpation of natural existence, this standpoint takes life as a whole as a means (GA I/9: 151). Following this account in §8, Fichte turns again to his earlier effort to differentiate “higher ethics” from merely “formal” ethics, observing that “the former is something completely new that creates a truly supersensible world and works it out within the sensible [world] as its sphere; contrariwise, the law of stoicism is merely the law of an ordering within the sensible world” (GA I/9: 154). Such a course of life is not something that could be set forth in detail a priori; rather, one has to live it out (GA I/9: 155). Its content can be negatively characterized in terms of the pursuit of ends and activities whose pursuit and enjoyment transcends all others in intrinsic value, or as ends and activities that are most complete or perfect at a given

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point in time. Positively, Fichte gives the examples of beauty, of the complete dominion of humanity over the whole of nature, of the perfect or ideal state along with the perfect or ideal relations among states, and of science. These are “ideas” in the “strict and genuine sense” of the word. The basic nature of a life dedicated to “higher ethics” can be illustrated by the case of beauty. Perhaps recalling his own youthful contemplations of the scene, Fichte describes a painting of the Annunciation, in which the female form embodies or incarnates an animating “sentiment [Empfindung]” in such a way that the latter, rather than the particular elements of the work are of the most significance (GA I/9: 157). The idea or “sentiment” animates and unifies what would otherwise be a simple collection of material elements. When well executed, there is no sense on the viewer’s part that the latter have been forced together by the hand of the artist. In addition to being capable of artistic representation through a material medium, an idea can be present as a talent that a particular person possesses, e.g., for art, for governing, or for scientific inquiry (GA I/9: 157). Just as an idea can be expressed in paint or marble, so too can it be made manifest in flesh and blood. It is here that the core distinction between the standpoint of “uprightness” and that of “higher ethics” is most clearly apparent. The possession and exercise of a talent is not something that needs to be compelled, and so it lacks the same felt sense of obligation present in the case of a categorical imperative. In this instance, “… all of one’s powers [Kräfte] are directed totally on their own [von selber] toward this object” (GA I/9: 157). The “object” in this case is an activity that is pursued purely for its own sake, something that is intrinsically rewarding or fulfilling. “The enjoyment of a single hour in [pursuit of] art or science animated with joy utterly transcends an entire life full of sensual enjoyments” (GA I/9: 158). While it is true, as in the case of science, that when the pursuit aims at something “supersensible” the latter must be “cloaked” or “veiled” in some sensible shape, this does not mean that the satisfaction present here turns on the contingent availability of sensible material. Instead, the enjoyment lies in the production of this sensible form, and only in a secondary way in the shape itself (GA I/9: 159). The point of view of religion is unmixed with any desire for the products of such activities. Instead, from this point of view, each individual’s vocation is “his peculiar portion [Antheil] of a supersensible being” (GA I/9: 159–60). One’s very biological nature is no longer a separate entity that must be striven against and subdued for the sake of obedience to the moral law, but the manifestation and vehicle of the supersensible. At the highest level of identification one reaches “the prevailing of genius, i.e., of the very shape [Gestalt] that the divine nature assumes in our individuality” (GA I/9: 161). This identification is an act of freedom; indeed, only the individual can accomplish this for herself. At the same time, the fruits of this pursuit depend also upon “the general freedom of the rest of the individuals,” which even God cannot negate or cancel. Thus, the person of “higher ethics,” supported by a religious intuition of her own vocation, earnestly pursues the latter while remaining undisturbed at the thought that its perfection is something that lies beyond her (GA I/9: 162). Instead, one can only strive for the universal appearance of the divine life in the form of each and every rational being, which is the kingdom of God (GA I/9: 163–4).

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The problem of the practical unification of the self—albeit pressed from different directions during different periods in his career—serves as a driving force that propels the direction of Fichte’s thinking about religion. As a young man inspired by Enlightened ideals, Fichte envisioned a religion that unites “understanding” and “heart” while dispensing with arbitrary authority. Following his life-changing encounter with Kant’s Critical philosophy around 1790, Fichte took up the problem  of reconciling pure practical reason and our sensual nature as embodied, social animals. The reconciliation comes in a perspective that operates inseparably along with conscientious action and that opens up a view of oneself as a link in the chain of the “intelligible world.” After his publicly stated views on the nature of faith had cost him his appointment at Jena, and in the dark days of defeat and occupation, Fichte revisited the problem of unifying the self. In 1806’s Guide to the Blessed Life, he characterizes the ways in which successive “points of view [Ansichten]” on the world fail to attain the requisite unity until reaching “higher ethics” and the corresponding contemplative attitude that he calls “religion.” Resolving the practical problem of unifying the self, which Fichte takes to be rooted in the basic drive [Grundtrieb] of humanity, turns out to be the central desideratum of Fichte’s philosophy of religion from his youth up to the final phase of his philosophical life.

Notes 1 For a detailed discussion of Fichte’s development in the 1790s, see Crowe 2013. 2 Hans-Jürgen Verweyen has essayed an overall account of Fichte’s philosophy of religion on two occasions; for the most recent, see Verweyen 2016. An older, but still useful, account is Hirsch 1914. Two informative discussions of the later stages of Fichte’s religious thought are Asmuth 1999 and Schmid 1995. 3 See Crowe 2009 for a more detailed account of how philosophy of religion fits into this overall project. Breazeale 2013 provides a perspicuous overall account of the elements of Fichte’s system. 4 See Crowe 2008. 5 Fichte later picks up this same terminology in a 1796 lecture course on ethics (GA IV/1: 67). Whether or not this is a fair treatment of Stoicism, it is not without precedent; cf. Book IV of Cicero’s de finibus. 6 Numerous passages in the System of Ethics stress that the unity of the self is not a given. For instance, Fichte observes somewhat pessimistically: “What is incomprehensible is how the mutually independent modes of acting of these two can be in harmony with each other and how they could arrive at the same thing, since the intellect does not legislate for nature, and nature does not legislate for the intellect” (SE 126–7 [GA I/5: 127]). 7 A helpful overview of Fichte’s philosophy of religion during the Jena period is Wittekind 1993. 8 For two particularly valuable accounts of Kant’s rational theology see Wood 1978, 25–94 and Grier 2001, 230–62. For a comparison of Kant and Fichte in this regard, see Crowe 2010.

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9 In the later “Recollections, Responses, Questions,” Fichte puts the point quite clearly: “Now, the confession of faith means: I and all rational beings, and our relations to one another, insofar as we differentiate ourselves and raise ourselves to the level of a common intellect, are created by a free, intelligent principle, are sustained by it, and if we do what befits us for the sake of achieving our final end, everything else that does not depend upon us occurs through this principle – without a doubt, and without our involvement” (GA II/5: 169). 10 Consider, for example, this striking passage from the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo lectures of the late 1790s: “Objective validity pertains just as much to our representations of God, morality, right, etc. {— if these are supposed to be true —} as it does to our representations of the world. Both types of representation are based upon feelings, {and consequently they are also true}. The difference between them is that, while our representations of the world are based upon a feeling of our own limitation, our representations of God, etc., are based upon a feeling of our own striving” (WLnm[H] 230). Fichte explicitly remarks on his divergence from Kant on this issue. 11 Thus, also in the Appeal to the Public: “Morality and religion are absolutely one; both are a grasping [Ergreiffen] of the supersensible, the first through action, the second through faith. If it was ever detrimental to humanity to take a philosophical distinction of point of view for a real distinction in the thing, so it is here. Religion without morality is superstition [Aberglaube], which deceives the unfortunate with a false hope and makes him incapable of all improvement” (GA I/5: 428). 12 Like the 1800 Vocation of the Human Being, in which parallel ideas about the nature and role of religion in human life are articulated, the Guide belongs among Fichte’s so-called “popular” writings. Unlike in the former, in Guide Fichte explicitly discusses the nature of such works and their relationship to other, “scientific” treatments of the same ideas, particularly in §2. The status of these works as “popular” does not in any way warrant their dismissal as proper evidence for Fichte’s philosophical positions, any more than the polemical context of many of his works composed during the heat of the “Atheism Controversy” or his tense exchange of letters with Schelling around the turn of the century precludes the value of these latter sources for understanding Fichte’s thinking. For a refreshing treatment of Fichte’s “popular” writings that makes a case for integrating them into his system as a whole, see Oesterreich and Traub 2006. 13 It is not difficult to hear Fichte’s elsewhere-articulated (e.g., in the 1804 lecture cycle) view of the shortcomings of Spinoza (and, by extension, of the Naturphilosophen) in this passage. A purely “formal” or “negative” conception of the Absolute is not able to furnish a consistent account of the fact of experience. 14 Jacobi, too, characterized Kant’s approach to morality and religious belief as guilty of leaving a person hopelessly embroiled in self-contradiction, forced to seek the gratification of desire through its negation. Perhaps this shared concern lies behind Fichte’s oft-repeated claim to align with Jacobi on fundamental issues, a claim that Jacobi, for his part, never accepted. For a discussion of this and other elements of Jacobi’s criticisms of Kant’s ethics, see Crowe 2014. 15 For an excellent discussion of this point and its significance within the German idealist tradition, see Stern 2012.

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Bibliography Asmuth, Christoph. 1999. Das Begreifen des Unbegreiflichen. Philosophie und Religion bei Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1800–1806. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. “The Spirit of the Early Wissenschaftslehre.” In Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes From Fichte’s Early Philosophy, edited by Daniel Breazeale, 96–123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crowe, Benjamin. 2008. “Revisionism and Religion in Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2): 371–92. Crowe, Benjamin. 2009. “Fact and Fiction in Fichte’s Theory of Religion.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (4): 595–617. Crowe, Benjamin. 2010. “Fichte’s Transcendental Theology.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92 (1): 68–88. Crowe, Benjamin. 2013. “Fichte on Faith and Autonomy.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (4): 733–53. Crowe, Benjamin. 2014. “Jacobi on Kant, or Moral Naturalism vs. Idealism.” In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, edited by Matthew Altman, 205–21. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Grier, Michelle. 2001. Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hirsch, Emanuel. 1914. Fichtes Religionsphilosophie in Rahmen der philosophischen Gesamtentwicklung Fichtes. Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht. Oesterreich, Peter L. and Hartmut Traub. 2006. Der ganze Fichte. Die populäre, wissenschaftliche, und metaphilosophische Erschließung der Welt. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Preul, Reiner. 1969. Reflexion und Gefühl. Die Theologie Fichtes in seiner vorkantischen Zeit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Schmid, Dirk. 1995. Religion und Christentum in Fichtes Spätphilosophie 1810–1813. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Stern, Robert. 2012. Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verweyen, Hans-Jürgen. 2016. “Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion.” In The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, edited by David James and Günter Zöller, 273–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittekind, Folkart. 1993. Religion als Bewußtseinsform. Fichtes Religionsphilosophie 1795–1800. Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloh Verlagshaus. Wood, Allen. 1978. Kant’s Rational Theology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Fichte’s Meditations: The Practical Reality of the “Real World” in The Vocation of Man Matthew C. Altman

The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800) is a pivotal piece in Fichte’s philosophical development. Fichte’s claim in 1798 that God is the “moral order” of the universe (DGW 151 [GA I/5:354]) led to the so-called Atheismusstreit (atheism dispute) and his dismissal from the University of Jena. The accusation of atheism is a version of the subjectivism charge that had dogged Fichte for his entire career: he seems to reduce all of reality to consciousness or to make everything—the world, other people, God—into mere representations for the subject. In the Vocation, Fichte responds to these problems by arguing for the existence of both God and the physical world.1 His subsequent work, written while Fichte was at the University of Berlin, is characterized by a focus on Being or God, with subject and object derived from that unitary absolute. Thus, The Vocation of Man marks the transition from the transcendental epistemology of Fichte’s Jena period (1794–1799), which is still very much in the spirit of Kant’s Critical philosophy, to the speculative metaphysics of the Berlin period (1800–1814), which hews closer to Schelling. The accessible style of the book, which was written as a piece of popular philosophy, belies its complexity. Fichte’s contemporaries were generally confused by it, and subsequent historians of philosophy have debated whether he simply abandons idealism in favor of realism. In this chapter, I argue that The Vocation of Man is of a piece with the critical, Kantian idealism of the Jena period, and that Fichte does not adopt a form of empirical realism or reintroduce a more traditional God in order to answer the charges of subjectivism and atheism. I support this position by contrasting the structure and arguments of Fichte’s Vocation of Man with Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. The two books follow an almost identical path from belief to doubt, but they resolve this problem very differently: Descartes appeals to beliefs validated by knowledge of God, and Fichte reveals the limits of what he knows, so he appeals to faith. In our practical lives, we must believe in the existence of the material world so that our willing can be effective, which is required to fulfill our moral vocation. The reality that is necessary for practical agency is very different from the world that is validated by Descartes’s mind-independent God. Fichte is not doing dogmatic metaphysics but Kantian metaphysics, in the sense that both God and the world exist

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as practical postulates, or have practical reality. In this context, Fichte’s appeal to faith is not a renunciation of reason in favor of mysticism, but an affirmation of a certain kind of reason—namely practical as opposed to theoretical reason.

Summary of the Argument The Vocation of Man is divided into three books: “Doubt,” “Knowledge,” and “Faith.” The movement of the three parts is dialectical, in the sense that a position is proposed and collapses because of internal contradictions. Specifically, the dogmatic realism of Book I leads to doubt, which is corrected by a theoretically based form of idealism in Book II. But the world that leaves us with is unsatisfying for the moral agent, instigating a crisis that can only be corrected, in Book III, by an appeal to practical faith. The goal of this dialectical process is to set out the conditions of autonomous agency and to validate them through a transcendental argument. The conception of freedom to which we are committed in our practical lives synthesizes the thesis of realism and the antithesis of idealism: the I is self-determining (idealism), and it effectively transforms a real world (realism) by means of its free activity.

Book I: Doubt There are several steps to the argument in Book I. It begins with the assumption that there are objects that are completely independent of the mind and that affect us through the senses: “I am surrounded by objects which I am constrained to regard as self-subsistent [für sich bestehende] things” (VM 5 [GA I/6:193]). Things are defined by their properties, and their properties must be determinate in order for them to be real. The general category of “tree,” for example, does not exist because it does not have a definite degree of reality or any specific qualities (number of leaves, height, etc.) by which it could be distinguished from other things (VM 6 [GA I/6:193–4]). It is impossible to identify persistent qualities of an object or to distinguish one object from others, however, because physical existence is characterized by “constant change” (VM 6 [GA I/6:194]). Even the substratum to which qualities adhere is never static, and thus there is no determinate state that would allow us to define it as the thing it is: “If I transpose [a substratum] into a state of change, then there is no more determinateness [Bestimmtheit] in it, but rather a transition from one condition into another opposite one, proceeding through indefiniteness [Unbestimmtheit]” (VM 8 [GA I/6:196]). If the state of physical things is one of “indefiniteness,” and if things must be determinate in order to be real (or known to be real), then the existence of physical things, qua distinct entities, is called into question.2 What is determinate and has persistence is the “active force [ausmachende Kraft],” “effective force [wirkende Kraft],” or “formative force [bildende Kraft]” that is the basis of this change and the law or principle by which one event takes place after another (VM 8–9 [GA I/6:196–7]). An event happens because of a prior event, but the reason why a specific event occurs as a result of a prior event is because of the natural law that

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brings a possible event into actuality. What is most real is not physical things, but the causal laws that structure the ever-changing events in nature.3 At this point, the narrator—The Vocation of Man is written in the first person— realizes that, like the rest of nature, he is a physical being and is himself merely “a link in this chain of strict necessity” (VM 11 [GA I/6:199]). The activity that seems to distinguish him from other animals—his thinking activity, or his consciousness in general—is an event in time like any other event, and it is likewise subject to natural law. Fichte distinguishes three basic principles at work in the human being: the formative force, which we share with plants; the motive force, which we share with animals; and the thinking force, which is distinctively human (VM 12 [GA I/6:200]). All these forces express themselves in necessary ways, under the circumstances, which means that the narrator’s character and his actions are determined, freedom is impossible, and what seems to be choice is really just one force winning out over others (VM 17–18 [GA I/6:205–6]). There are two troubling implications of this conclusion: not only are his actions determined, but they are also subsumed under the abstract characteristics of impersonal forces. That is, he can no longer see himself as a unique individual, but as a token of a type: the I, in being determined, is no longer determinate (distinct or separable from others). According to the narrator, the resulting determinism is contrary to his interest. He wants to be self-determining, because without freedom he has no purpose of his own. Nature may have purposes through him, but he has no reason to do anything (VM 19 [GA I/6:207]). His resolutions to act have no effect except insofar as they are also determined by prior causes. One is reminded here of Fichte’s claim that dogmatism is a form of fatalism (IWL 16 [GA I/4:192]; FTP 93, 98 [GA IV/3: 334, 336–7]). The assumption with which he began—that the world consists of mind-independent objects—leads to despair. The narrator faces two contradictory worldviews: one committed to materialism and determinism, and one committed to freedom (and, as we will see, idealism). The first position, as a complete account of reality, assumes that thinking is an epiphenomenon, but it does not demonstrate that it in fact is an effect of material causes (VM 24–5 [GA I/6:212–13]). That is, if we assume that matter is the cause of appearances, and if we assume that consciousness is a kind of appearance, then we conclude that my thinking and the feeling of freedom are the result of natural forces. The conclusion rests on unjustified presuppositions. The other position fares no better, however. The fact that the narrator wants to be free is not evidence of the fact that he is free. Fichte says that “nothing but its mere thinkability [Denkbarkeit] speaks in favor” of it (VM 24 [GA I/6:212]). With no reason to believe the foundational claims of either materialist determinism or idealistic freedom, Book I concludes with uncertainty: “I simply have no sufficient reason for deciding one way or another” (VM 26 [GA I/6:214]).

Book II: Knowledge At this point in the book, there is a stylistic shift, or perhaps even a shift in genre, from philosophical treatise to philosophical dialogue. In the middle of the night, the

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narrator says, “a wondrous shape seemed to pass before me and speak to me” (VM 27 [GA I/6:215]). The “Spirit” challenges the narrator to think along with him, to answer his questions and follow the line of thinking wherever it takes them. Thus begins an extensive dialogue between “I [Ich]” and “Spirit [Geist],” and the emergence from doubt (Book I) to knowledge (Book II). Along with the change in style comes a shift from a scientific, systematic observation of human activity to an account of the subject in the process of interacting with the world. The Spirit has the narrator reflect on what precisely he knows, and the narrator concedes that he has only subjective sensations of which he is conscious. On that basis, he thinks that there are external objects that are causing the sensations. Similarly, when we classify sensations as of a certain kind—red color, rough surface, extended body, and so on—we are actively comparing them and bringing them under concepts that are supplied by consciousness. Fichte takes many pages to explain this, describing color as a mathematical point that we spread over a surface, roughness as spatial changes of the same mathematical point, and extension as temporally received sensations connected over time (VM 32–6 [GA I/6:219–24]). Therefore, Fichte concludes that consciousness, not the object, is primary in any epistemic claim. This is in the spirit of the Critical philosophy: there are subjective conditions for the possibility of experience. Fichte analyzes two elements, or perhaps it is better to call them two moments, of our experience: first, we passively receive sensations, and then we take those sensations to indicate the existence of an object as their cause. We project sensations and properties onto our concept of the object; or, using Fichte’s technical term, we “posit [setzen]” the object as existing for the subject (VM 45 [GA I/6:233]; see also VM 38 [GA I/6:226]; SK 160–4, 182 [GA I/2:324–8, 346–7]). The object—or, speaking strictly, our cognition of an objective representation—depends on consciousness: “Consciousness of the object is only a consciousness of my production of a presentation [or representation, Vorstellung] of the object” (VM 44 [GA I/6:232]; see also VM 59 [GA I/6:246]). In other words, what seems to be a merely passive perception of the object itself is actually an awareness of activity on my part, specifically my taking the sensations to be an objective representation. Awareness of the object is awareness of my positing an object as the cause of sensations. The object depends on the subject; the subject does not depend on the object. And this is the essence of idealism: sacrificing the independence of the thing to the self-sufficiency of the I (IWL 17 [GA I/4:193]). The object seems to be given to me from without—that is, it is “accompanied by a feeling of necessity” (FTP 88–98 [GA IV/3:331–7])—because I posit it “in accordance with an inner law of [my] thought” (VM 45 [GA I/6:233]; see also IWL 26 [GA I/4:200]). The activity of thinking is constrained in certain ways, and objects that seem not to be up to me are the result of my constrained thinking. In that sense, although I posit them, they are not chosen by me, any more than the rules of logic are chosen by me. Furthermore, Fichte says, I am not conscious of the fact that I have posited such objects because my existence as a conscious subject depends on my distinction from the object. That is, I as a finite subject cannot represent the absolute activity that makes both subject and object possible (VM 48 [GA I/6:235–6]; see also SK 103–5, 164, 244 [GA I/2:265–7, 328, 409]).4

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To this point, The Vocation of Man mostly explains idealism as it is described and defended in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The choice between idealism and dogmatism is posed in the First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre, and even there the adoption of idealism is based on one’s interest in being free (IWL 18–20 [GA I/4:194–5]). Absolute activity and the resulting distinction between subject and object, positing the object in opposition to consciousness, and explaining the feeling of necessity with reference to cognitive constraints are all described (in more technical detail) in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, among other places. So, it comes as some surprise that, at the end of Book II of The Vocation of Man, the narrator responds to the Spirit’s idealism—the claim that the object is a representation for consciousness— which seems to be Fichte’s very own position, by saying that, although it affirms his freedom, it does so at great cost, by making the material world into a “mere image”: You absolve me of all dependence by transforming me and everything around me on which I might be dependent into nothing. … According to the above there is, in short, nothing, absolutely nothing but presentations [Vorstellungen], determinations of a consciousness as mere consciousness. But I consider a presentation to be a mere image, only a shadow of a reality. (VM 60 [GA I/6:248])

According to Book II’s idealism, objective representations are the result of positing them as objects. They exist only for consciousness, and thus they are unreal. On this view, the narrator claims, even the I itself is lost. Fichte follows Kant in arguing that the transcendental unity of apperception (the “I think”) must be able to accompany successive representations in order for them to form a unified experience; the coherence among representations is not provided by the representations themselves (VM 63 [GA I/6:250]; cf. CPR 246 [Ak B131–2]). However, he also realizes that this is a formal condition for the possibility of experience rather than a substantive claim about the I’s existence. Indeed, making such an inference, from “I think” to “I am a thinking thing,” leads to what Kant calls a paralogism of pure reason, a logical mistake that, in this case, misapplies the category of substance to a transcendental ground (CPR 411–58 [Ak A341–5/B399–432]). Thus, there is no I (that is, no I in whose existence I am justified in believing), only the activity of thinking: “I might therefore well say; there is thinking. Yet I can hardly even say that. So, more carefully, thought appears: the thought that I feel, intuit, think; but not the thought ‘I feel, intuit, think.’ Only the first is a fact, the second is added by invention” (VM 63 [GA I/6:251]). The activity of thinking takes place, but we cannot talk about the I’s existence except insofar as it is posited by thinking. The I is merely a construct.5

Book III: Faith Under realism, I have no ends; nature has ends through me. Under idealism, there is no I and my seeming accomplishments are “images which do not represent anything, without meaning and purpose” (VM 63 [GA I/6:251]). In either case, I face an existential crisis. Luckily, Fichte has shown that neither of the previous positions is justified. As mentioned earlier, belief in materialism depends on the assumption that

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sensations are produced by things.6 The idealist alternative is thinkable, but there is no reason to believe it is true. Therefore, “bare and pure cognition carried out with logical thoroughness only leads to the insight that we can know nothing” (VM 72 [GA I/6:258]). Our commitment to a particular worldview must have a foundation on which to justify it, and theoretical reason can provide no such foundation. It cannot tell us whether the world is a material thing or the sum total of appearances. To escape these two positions, we must turn to a deeper, practical commitment: the conviction that I must be free. Fichte claims that I have “the immediate feeling of my drive to independent activity” (VM 69 [GA I/6:255]). On that basis, I commit myself to the truth of that feeling as a matter of faith (Glaube). By actively taking on that drive, I transform it into a belief for which I am responsible, I consciously guide my life in accordance with it, and I justify my knowledge of the world and myself by an appeal to faith (VM 73 [GA I/6:258–9]). My ability to act freely on the basis of what I have chosen to value is what Fichte calls, broadly, my vocation (Bestimmung). The distinctive characteristic of humanity is the ability “to act according to your knowledge” (VM 67 [GA I/6:253]), or, in Kantian terms, to pursue ends that we set for ourselves (G 86 [Ak 4:437]; MM 522 [Ak 6:392]). Fichte unpacks this to include two elements: 1. I am absolutely independent, in the sense that my actions are the result of original (i.e., self-originated), undetermined choices (VM 68–9 [GA I/6:253–5]). 2. When I act to achieve my purposes, I cause changes in a world of things, not merely my idea of things. That is, “I ascribe to myself a real effective power of bringing forth being” (VM 69 [GA I/6:255]). The desire for freedom (1) is what originally motivated the narrator to reject the realism proposed in Book I, since it entails determinism, and to adopt the idealism of Book II. With the dissolution of the I into merely the activity of thinking in Book II, idealism also fails to make sense of a free agent (1). In addition, the idealism of Book II fails to satisfy the desire for effectiveness (2), which requires a world of mindindependent objects (in Book III) that had been simply assumed in Book I. In a sense, Book III synthesizes Books I and II, since a material world is reintroduced—I have faith in a world of mind-independent objects—but it is effectively transformed by absolutely free activity. What Book III adds is an I that exists and acts, as opposed to a moment through which nature acts (Book I) or thinking occurs (Book II): “I know that it is neither blind necessity which imposes a certain system of thinking upon me, nor empty chance which plays with my thoughts, but it is I who am thinking” (VM 74 [GA I/6:260]). The remainder of Book III is divided into four parts: part I, on the world as a moral stage in which I perform my duties in relation to other people (VM 75–9 [GA I/6:261–5]); part II, on the political progress of civilization toward the true state and international law (VM 79–91 [GA I/6:265–76]); part III, on the improvement of the natural world and infinite progress in a supernatural world, both unified through the pure will on one side and my actions on the other (VM 91–103 [GA I/6:277–89]);

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and part IV, on the law of the supersensible world that constrains us and unites all rational beings in a moral community of wills within a shared natural world (VM 103–14 [GA I/6:289–99]). Part 4 also introduces a divine force that Fichte calls “the One Eternal Infinite Will [der Eine, ewige unendliche Wille],” which is the source or ground of “supersensible law,” of my ability to act autonomously, of the conscience by which I become aware of my duties, of the unification of all rational individuals in a supersensible whole, and of the material world in which we act (VM 105–11 [GA I/6:291–6]). Fichte concludes the book with a series of rhetorical flourishes about how the preceding ruminations have transformed his life: he is concerned only with his moral duty, reason progresses, the world is “spiritualized,” and the I is eternal (VM 114–23 [GA I/6:300–309]).

Critical Reception of The Vocation of Man Although it is an oversimplification, critical responses to The Vocation of Man fall into two broad categories: those who see it as continuous with the critical idealism of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, and those who see it as a break with the earlier work and a turn to the metaphysics of the absolute that is characteristic of the Berlin period. For years, the latter position was more common. A contemporary of Fichte, F. H. Jacobi, had criticized Fichte’s idealism as a form of speculative nihilism, reducing the world to images in which I accomplish nothing of significance (Jacobi 1994b). All my activity is only an appearance of activity, and the people I affect are nothing but, in the satirical words of Jean Paul, “the dead wax museum of human forms” (Jean Paul 1827, 47). Book II of The Vocation of Man seems to concede to Jacobi that idealism leaves us with nothing but “a system of mere images, without any reality, meaning, and purpose” (VM 65 [GA I/6:252]). And in Book III, Fichte seems to adopt Jacobi’s fideism and his realism. The fact that the book was written in response to the atheism dispute lends support to this interpretation. Fichte’s (in)famous claim in “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” (1798) that “this living and efficaciously acting moral order is itself God” (DGW 151 [GA I/5:354]) precipitated a series of negative responses, most notably from Jacobi (1994b), Johann Kaspar Lavater (GA III/3, no. 413; cf. EPW 437–8 [GA III/3, no. 444]), and the anonymous author of “A Father’s Letter to his Student Son about Fichte’s and Forberg’s Atheism” (GA I/6:121-38). They argued that a living God—a powerful but loving figure who is active in the world through divine providence and active in our lives through faith—could not be replaced with the concept of morality, a purely formal constraint. Fichte’s various claims in Book III of The Vocation of Man seem to reinvest God with personal characteristics and an active involvement in the world that are absent from a “moral order.” Many secondary sources also interpret The Vocation of Man as a turning point in Fichte’s philosophical development. Martial Guéroult was perhaps the first modern critic to claim that the book abandons the self-sufficiency of the I in favor of an infinite will, separate from the I, that is needed to ensure the efficacy of its actions in the sensible

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world (Guéroult 1930, 1:366–80; Guéroult 1974). Both Guéroult and Hansjürgen Verweyen see the Vocation as a wholesale capitulation to Jacobi (Verweyen 2001). Richard Kroner views the book as a rejection of transcendental philosophy in favor of speculative metaphysics (Kroner 1961, 2:67–76). For Daniel Breazeale, the Vocation is not a transition, but an anomaly in Fichte’s career—a mistaken attempt to validate our moral efficacy by appealing to a psychological need rather than transcendental argumentation (Breazeale 2013). Some Fichte scholars argue for the opposite view: that The Vocation of Man is consistent and continuous with the Jena writings. For example, Alexis Philonenko denies that the God of Book III is a separate being on which the I depends, instead claiming that it is the name Fichte gives to the ideal community of wills, united in their rational progress (Philonenko 1984, 106–8). Ives Radrizzani notes the similarities between the Vocation and the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, where Fichte integrates practical and theoretical activity by claiming that knowledge of experience (objective representations) depends on practical reason (Radrizzani 2002). Yolanda Estes argues that the book develops distinctions and reaffirms philosophical assertions that were previously made in Fichte’s supposedly atheistic works, but presented in a form more suitable for the general public (Estes 2013). And Steven Hoeltzel insists that the theistic metaphysical commitments of Book III are consistent with transcendental epistemology, and are in fact rationally but non-epistemically justified by our ethical commitments; we ought to believe in God and the real world even though we cannot know that they exist (Hoeltzel 2014a, 2014b, 2016). Given that The Vocation of Man was meant to be a popular presentation of Fichte’s ideas, free from “the more technical apparatus of philosophy,” it is ironic that historians of philosophy are divided on how to interpret even its most basic claims (VM 1 [GA I/6:189]).

Establishing the World’s Existence: Fichte versus Descartes In what follows, I side with the latter scholars in arguing that The Vocation of Man is an extension of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, and indeed that it remains Kantian in both its method and its practical presuppositions. I focus on Fichte’s claims regarding the material world—how he justifies our ontological commitment to it, and the resulting status of its reality. To explain Fichte’s reasoning, I compare the argumentative arc of Fichte’s Vocation of Man to a similar approach in Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes is what Kant calls a “problematic idealist” (CPR 326 [Ak B274]), meaning that Descartes identifies an epistemic gulf between consciousness and the physical world that must be bridged, and claims that experience cannot validate the existence of a mind-independent world. The problem posed by Descartes echoes throughout German Idealism, from Kant’s attempt to establish objects in space distinct from the mind (a persisting substratum or backdrop) in the Refutation of Idealism (CPR 326–9 [Ak B274–9]) to the post-Kantian idealists’ attempts to find a unitary ground of the subject and object in experience. Given the shadow cast by Descartes over modern philosophy, it is not surprising that Fichte would draw on

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the Meditations, consciously or unconsciously, as a template for how to move from consciousness to the world. Descartes’s Meditations and Fichte’s Vocation are parallel texts, with similar styles, structures, and aims. Both are written in the first person, and both detail the narrator’s emergence from doubt. Both aspire to knowledge and eschew what is simply taught or given to them. Both end up reestablishing theological commitments that had been called into doubt at the beginning.7 The differences between the two books, however, illuminate the ways in which Fichte both reiterates the so-called atheism of the “Divine Governance” essay and remains true to the idealism of the Jena period. While the Meditations purports to justify our knowledge of mind-independent objects, the Vocation establishes the external world as a practical postulate in the Kantian sense.8 Fichte’s appeal to faith is not a form of fideism (à la Jacobi) but an extrapolation of the metaphysical entities to which we must necessarily commit ourselves in our moral lives, with practical rather than theoretical reality. The structure of Descartes’s Meditations is well-known, so I will only summarize it briefly. The First Meditation begins with Descartes’s recognition that his beliefs have changed over time. His goal is to set his beliefs on a firm foundation in order to achieve certainty. Since, he says, “whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses,” he then investigates whether what the senses seem to show can be doubted (Descartes 1984, 12). At this point, Descartes engages in what is best described as a dialogue with himself, with each challenge (up to the final challenge) followed by a reassurance: sometimes the senses are mistaken … but usually they are reliable; some people hallucinate all the time … but I am not insane; I sense all sorts of false things when I dream … but I am not dreaming now; I often think that I am awake when I am really dreaming … but some things, such as mathematical propositions, are true whether I am waking or dreaming; God could be deceiving me about even the most basic truths … but God is good, so God would not deceive me; God is willing for me to be deceived sometimes, so perhaps he deceives me or allows me to be deceived all the time. Descartes concludes that everything he believes could be wrong (Descartes 1984, 12–15). There are many similarities between this line of thinking and the first two books of The Vocation of Man. Fichte grants that we have representations but notes that these images need not be correlated with mind-independent things. Like Descartes, Fichte says that our belief in such things is the result of inferences we make or extrapolations from sense data—what Descartes calls judgment (Descartes 1984, 37–43) and Fichte calls positing. Descartes says that we can doubt the existence of the external world, and our senses’ tracking of that world, because we cannot tell the difference between an illusion and reality; Fichte says that our senses cannot provide the determinacy necessary to know whether our claims about reality are true or false. And eventually Descartes worries that everything he knows may be only a dream, just as Fichte worries (at the end of Book II) that the world has become unreal. Like Descartes, Fichte has been freed from “false knowledge” but has gotten no closer to the truth (VM 64–5 [GA I/6:252]).

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Descartes is concerned that he will fall back into his previous prejudices, specifically his unjustified belief that the senses accurately track a mind-independent reality. To guard against this, he assumes that there is an all-powerful “malicious demon” (or evil genius) who is constantly deceiving him: “I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement” (Descartes 1984, 15). For Descartes, the dream is a world of illusions that exist purely for the senses, with no connection to a real world. Similarly, Fichte arrives at the belief that he only has images, not reality, and that he lacks any knowledge of the external world, even its existence. The dream is the only world that he actually knows—the idealistic world of mind-dependent representations—and it is far from comforting: All reality is transformed into a fabulous dream, without there being any life the dream is about, without there being a mind which dreams; a dream which hangs together in a dream of itself. Intuition is the dream; thought (the source of all being and all reality which I imagine, of my being, my power, my purposes), thought is the dream of this dream. (VM 64 [GA I/6:251])

We start to see the differences between the Meditations and the Vocation in Descartes’s and Fichte’s different plans for how to proceed at this point and their attitudes toward theoretical investigation. The world of images is the starting point for Descartes, from which he then seeks to establish knowledge of the external world. For Fichte, the world of images is the result of the pursuit of knowledge that reveals the limits of theoretical reason. To begin his ascent from doubt to certainty, Descartes first appeals to the cogito (“this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind”), and he derives the existence of a perfect, non-deceiving God from the idea of God that only a perfect being (not I or anything else) could have produced (Descartes 1984, 17). Because God is a non-deceiver, I can achieve certainty when I use my senses rightly and withhold judgment about things that I do not clearly and distinctly perceive. Therefore, I am justified in my commitment to the world of mind-independent objects, which are the objects of geometry made real (primary qualities) rather than the hard-to-define sensations that vary depending on how an individual perceives them (secondary qualities). The steps in Descartes’s arguments are all epistemic claims, including the contested bridge principle that allows him to move from an object of consciousness (the idea of God) to a mind-independent thing (God): “what is more perfect – that is, contains in itself more reality – cannot arise from what is less perfect.” Or, specifically, the cause of an idea must have as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality (Descartes 1984, 28–9). Since the Mediations was published, critics have recognized the uncertainty of this principle, along with the dubiousness of Descartes’s claim that he knows it to be true clearly and distinctly, which leads to the Cartesian circle.9 This entails that he cannot get beyond consciousness and its ideas, given his stringent standard of knowledge as certainty. Fichte reaches this point at the end of Book II: I can only know representations.

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The question is what to do when theoretical reason fails to justify anything outside of consciousness. Two things are notable about Fichte’s predicament and how he sees it, in contrast to Descartes: first, Fichte does not appeal to God as a guarantor of knowledge. The onus of establishing truths rests on the individual subject, and the godlike will of Book III is a conclusion of the argument, after the real world has been established, not a premise in the argument. Second, the reason why Fichte feels compelled to move beyond the world of images is not because of the lack of knowledge, as it is for Descartes. Indeed, Fichte thinks he has achieved knowledge in establishing the ideality of the world. The problem that moves him from Book I’s realism to Book II’s idealism is the practical concern that his actions are determined despite his desire to be free, and the problem that moves him from Book II’s idealism to Book III’s realism—if it is indeed a form of realism—is a different kind of practical concern: that any action would accomplish nothing. Descartes bases his belief in the world on his knowledge that there is a non-deceiving God, but Fichte bases his belief in the world on his commitment to human freedom.10 Fichte’s appeal to faith is not a groundless capitulation to an irrational desire, but a justified response to a practical demand that we be undetermined and capable of rational self-constraint, and that our actions be effective—all of which are conditions of moral agency. This conception of freedom is not new to Fichte. Kant includes these characteristics in his own definition of moral agency. First, Kant says that, in order for a given end to become an incentive to act, I must “incorporate” it into my maxim, by which Kant means that I must take the potential incentive to be something that I have reason to pursue (Rel. 73 [Ak 6:23–4]). Kant calls this practical freedom in the negative sense (G 94 [Ak 4:446]; CPrR 166 [Ak 5:33]; MM 375 [Ak 6:213–14]). Fichte characterizes practical freedom in the following way: “I do not act as I act because something is my purpose, but rather something becomes my purpose because I ought so to act” (VM 80 [GA I/6:266]). Something becomes good for me by my deciding that it is worth pursuing. This is what it means to be a rational end-setter. A second condition of moral agency, for Kant and Fichte, is that my action must not be determined by a prior natural event, yet it must effect change in the world. In short, the will must be an uncaused cause (CPR 484 [Ak A446/B474]; G 94, 100 [Ak 4:446, 453]; CPrR 246 [Ak 5:132]). This is what Kant calls transcendental or cosmological freedom (CPR 533, 676 [Ak A533/B561, A803/B831]; CPrR 139, 162, 217 [Ak 5:3, 29, 96–7]), and it is what Fichte refers to when he says: I ascribe to myself the capacity to originate a concept simply because I originate it, to originate this concept because I originate it in the absolute sovereignty of myself as intelligence. I further ascribe to myself the capacity to exhibit this concept through a real act outside the concept. That is, I ascribe to myself a real effective power of bringing forth being, which is something quite different from the mere capacity for concepts. (VM 69 [GA I/6:255])

If the concept is up to me, and if the concept is “a real effective power,” then the subject, as “an intelligence,” is an uncaused cause of an event in the world. Transcendental freedom constitutes, in part, our moral vocation,11 and Fichte’s

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commitment to transcendental freedom, as Kant defines it, will be especially crucial in Fichte’s argument for what he calls “the real world [die wirkliche Welt]” (VM 79 [GA I/6:265]).12 Breazeale insists that Fichte’s claims about the conditions of moral agency, including his claim that our actions must be effective in a “real world,” are “presupposed without argument,” and he dismisses the conclusions reached in Book III “to be either straightforward errors based on a principle of inference derived from a factual mistake about human psychology or else to be simple instances of ‘wishful thinking’” (Breazeale 2013, 223–4).13 Furthermore, Breazeale says that Fichte has “jumped the transcendental shark” and given us “an unholy mixture of conceptual analysis and psychological observation” (ibid., 215). This falsely characterizes practical faith as a kind of personal bias. Although we may dispute Fichte’s thinking on this point, he is appealing to a conception of freedom that both he and Kant take to be crucial to moral agency. In the Vocation, Fichte attempts to discover the conditions for the possibility of freedom, both practical and transcendental. Given the Kantian pedigree, it is hardly foreign to the Critical philosophy of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. A commitment to moral agency is necessary because of the fact of reason: an immediate sense of moral constraint that demands that I must be free, or must conceive of myself as free from the practical standpoint. Thus, freedom, as a practical postulate, is different from a mere desire to act effectively in the world. Reading The Vocation of Man in light of Kant’s conception of practical and transcendental freedom clarifies some of Fichte’s worries and his goals. If the realism of Book I were true, my actions would be caused by prior events: “my capacity for activity in the sensible world remains in the servitude of nature, is constantly put in motion by the same force which also produced it, and thought is everywhere only a spectator” (VM 23 [GA I/6:211]). I would not have a reflective distance from my desires, which would allow me to choose one thing or another, or that distance would be illusory. Furthermore, if the idealism of Book II were true, there would be no subject to which to attribute the actions, and the actions would not be the cause of other events, since the so-called “events” would be only images of events. To use Kant’s terminology, it would amount to mere wishing rather than willing because it would remain in consciousness rather than effecting change in the world (G 50 [Ak 4:394]). So, the reality of both practical and transcendental freedom are doubtful prior to Book II, and the reality of transcendental freedom is doubtful prior to Book III. In short, if the realism of Book I were true, then I would not be an uncaused cause. And if the idealism of Book II were true, then I would not be an uncaused cause, specifically with regard to a mind-independent reality. By showing that Book I’s realism is not established unless we assume its initial premise, Fichte may believe that he has shown the possibility of indeterminism, but he has not established its reality. Indeed, theoretical reasoning (“a system of knowledge” [VM 65 (GA I/6:252)]), cannot establish the reality of freedom any more than it can for Kant. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant establishes only the possibility of freedom, because the concept of causality is limited to things as they appear and does not apply to things in themselves—a negative claim. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant attempts to justify a positive belief in freedom based on the fact of reason

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(our immediate sense of moral constraint), belief in God based on our need to have happiness distributed in proportion to virtue, and belief in the immortal soul based on our need for infinite moral progress. In each case, Kant claims that something about our moral lives simply would not make sense without taking these things to be the case, even though theoretically none of these three claims is justified or necessary (as conditions for the possibility of experience). Thus, all three of them are “postulates of pure practical reason,” with only “practical reality” (CPrR 246, 178 [Ak 5:132, 48]). They are not objects of knowledge, but objects of “pure practical rational belief [or faith, Glaube]” (CPrR 255, 257 [Ak 5:144, 146]; see also CPrR 241 [Ak 5:126]; CSTP 282 [Ak 8:279]). Fichte says that our belief in the existence of a mind-independent world is also unjustified on theoretical grounds. Even here Fichte is responding to a problem that he inherits from Kant. Kant concedes that theoretical reason is limited in what it can accomplish: it can give us analytic truths, which, as Hume demonstrates, tell us nothing about reality; it can yield truths about the spatiotemporal world of possible experience; and it can structure our thinking regarding things beyond possible experience. On its own, however, it cannot tell us anything about what actually exists. That is, theoretical reason, without sensible intuitions, can give us nature in the formal sense, “as the sum total of the rules to which all appearances must be subject if they are to be thought as connected in one experience,” but not nature in the material sense, “as the sum total of appearances” (Prol. 110–11 [Ak 4:318]). In addition, Jacobi famously claims that Kant cannot justifiably infer the existence of the thing in itself on the basis of sensible intuitions without contradicting himself (Jacobi 1994a, 331–8). As soon as we take the thing in itself to be the cause of appearances, as Kant sometimes seems to do (see, e.g., CPR 435, 512 [Ak A387, A494/ B522]; Prol. 84 [Ak 4:289]; G 98 [Ak 4:451]), we subject it to our laws of thinking and it fails to remain a thing in itself (see, e.g., IWL 67 [GA I/4:235]; EPW 369 [GA III/2, no. 169]). I have argued elsewhere that Fichte’s denial of the thing in itself is not about its existence but about its lack of intelligibility as an object of theoretical commitment (Altman 2014, esp. 323–5). Fichte repeatedly claims in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre that Kant’s thing in itself is an empty concept in the sense that it cannot serve as the basis for explaining representations. Indeed, Fichte reiterates this claim in The Vocation of Man, where he says that the thing in itself is posited as a thought-entity to explain appearances (VM 57 [GA I/6:244–5]). Because it depends on the I’s thinking, it is not really a thing in itself. Theoretical reason cannot give us a world in which freedom is effective, yet Fichte claims that the material world underlying appearances is justified on practical grounds. We can have faith in the mind-independent world because it is morally necessary for transcendental freedom, in the sense that it provides me with real purposes that I bring about through my actions: It is … the necessary belief [Glaube] in our freedom and strength, in the reality of our acting, and in specific laws of human acting that justifies all consciousness of a reality existing outside of us, a consciousness which itself is only a faith [Glaube] since it is based on faith, but a faith which necessarily follows from consciousness.14

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We are compelled to accept that we act at all and that we ought to act in a certain way. We are compelled to accept a certain sphere for this acting. This sphere is the real world, which indeed exists as we encounter it. (VM 79 [GA I/6:264–5])

Fichte’s inimitable style in this passage (and, indeed, throughout the Vocation) works against a clear understanding of what he is doing, but when viewed through the Kantian lens, the differences between Fichte’s position and Jacobi’s irrationalism become apparent (Philonenko 1984, 103–7). Fichte’s faith is, like Kant’s, a practically necessary and thus rational faith or belief (Vernunftglaube) (CPrR 257 [Ak 5:146]), based on what Fichte claims we need in order to conceive of ourselves as moral agents. It is what Hoeltzel calls a nonepistemic justification of a basic cognitive commitment—in this case, a practical justification of the world’s existence (Hoeltzel 2016). Fichte’s argument is, at least structurally, a transcendental argument: acting in and having an effect on a “real world” is a condition for the possibility of moral agency, and we know15 that we are moral agents because of the awareness of our vocation. Consider the preceding passage (VM 79 [GA I/6:264–5]) rephrased using Kant’s more technical terminology, but nonetheless accurate to the original: I have an immediate sense of moral constraint which entails that I am a moral agent, both free to determine my actions – not merely my intentions, but my willing – and capable of achieving the ends that I set for myself. This commitment is not grounded theoretically; it is an object of practical faith. Since moral agency requires a material world in which to act, I must believe in the reality of the material world, at least in a practical sense.

According to Kant, the postulates of pure practical reason, although they are not theoretically justified, do amount to a kind of cognition—namely, “practical cognition [praktische Erkenntnis]” (CJ 331–4 [Ak 5:467–70]; see also CPrR 237 [Ak 5:121]). If the world itself is an object of practical cognition, as Fichte claims it is, then we are justified in believing that it is real. This is not the traditional realism, and especially not the dogmatism that Fichte rejects throughout the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Dogmatism sacrifices the self-sufficiency of the I to the thing, meaning that a substance is used to explain the I (materialism) and its actions (determinism) (IWL 17 [GA I/4:193]). In the Vocation, the thing is still subject to my activity, and indeed it conforms to the rational purposes that I have and share with other members of the moral community. The idea that the world determines us (Book I) or that we affect only images (Book II) are equally irrational given the demands of morality. The immediate sense of moral constraint validates the world “as we encounter it” (VM 79 [GA I/6:264–5]). Book II is not Fichte’s rejection of his own earlier system, but a rejection of what idealism would be if it were a purely theoretical enterprise. Fichte concedes to Jacobi that such a system would lead to nihilism. Yet Book III demonstrates that Fichte’s own idealism can validate the material world as a practically real object of faith rather than an object of knowledge. The mind-independent world exists for practical reason, but it does not exist for theoretical reason. Similarly, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason leaves us

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without freedom, God, and the soul (or, rather, it leaves us with only their possibility), but all three are justified as practical postulates in the Critique of Practical Reason. To better understand the difference between Fichte’s position and traditional realism, it is instructive once again to return to Descartes. After Descartes establishes God’s existence as a non-deceiver, he concludes that the senses are accurate indicators that the world exists in itself and how the world exists, or what exists in that world, provided that we assent to only what is clearly and distinctly perceived, and we correct the senses (when necessary) through rational reflection. The world exists apart from human consciousness as the basis of at least some of our epistemic claims: “an active faculty … which produced or brought about these ideas … is in another substance distinct from me – a substance which contains either formally or eminently all the reality which exists objectively in the ideas produced by this faculty” (Descartes 1984, 55). That is, our knowledge that the world exists follows from the fact that sensations are given to us. For Descartes, the world is “an active faculty.” For Fichte, I am active in shaping the world. Earlier I quoted a passage from The Vocation of Man where Fichte argues for the existence of the external world (VM 79 [GA I/6:264–5]). If we reformulate the line of argument according to Descartes’s reasoning, the resulting summary would sound very different: It is the resulting belief in the general reliability of our senses to perceive reality and the specific laws that govern the world outside of us, based on our knowledge of God’s existence as a non-deceiver, that justifies our belief that a mind-independent reality is the explanatory basis of our perceptions, as their cause. We are compelled to accept this claim because of the indubitable premises that prove there is a material world separate from consciousness.

Note that the form of Descartes’s argument is very different from the form of Fichte’s argument. As Estes says, an objective proof is different from a transcendental proof: an objective proof tries to establish knowledge claims on the basis of contingent features of empirical consciousness—such as Descartes’s inference from the idea of God to God himself—while a transcendental proof moves from a fundamental principle or practical assumption, of which we are immediately conscious, to a knowledge claim that necessarily follows (Estes 2013, 87–8). Descartes proceeds from an assumption about formal and material reality, from which he deduces God’s existence as a perfect being, moving from the effect (the idea of perfection) to the cause (God). Fichte’s proof begins with a practical assumption and derives the conditions for its possibility: one idea (the will’s effectiveness) produces another idea (the real world). Insofar as I am practically committed to the former, I am committed to the practical reality of the latter. Although Descartes claims that we ought to correct the senses through reason, the general trust in the veracity of the senses and the givenness of sense data grounds our ontological commitment to the external world. For Fichte, by contrast, the senses can justify neither realism nor idealism. We can neither affirm nor deny the existence of things based on the senses. We cannot make an inference from appearances to the thing as their cause (realism), and only “thinkability” speaks in favor of idealism

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(VM 24 [GA I/6:212]). Fichte’s position in Book III is neither realism nor idealism, and is certainly not dogmatism, but is what we might call idealistic realism, or, better yet, practical realism. That is, we take there to be a “real world” to satisfy a practical demand of the I, and its status as an existing thing for me depends on the moral function it serves. The resulting world is very different for Fichte than it is for Descartes. As objects of knowledge, Descartes’s world is composed of geometrical objects governed by the laws of physics—a cosmic order grounded in God. For Fichte, however, the world must accord with our moral aims in order to serve its purpose as a practical postulate. This is the part of the Vocation where Fichte’s seeming mysticism comes to the fore. The world that we postulate allows us to subordinate the natural world to our moral ends, and we concurrently postulate a supersensible world in which our dutiful willing is immediately effective (VM 83, 92–3 [GA I/6:268–9, 278–9]; see also ACR 25 [GA I/1:150]). In other words, the moral law governs our activity insofar as we are rational, and even though we are also sensible beings, we must believe that our hope for progress, as both individual and social beings, will be realized in the world.

God and the “One Eternal Infinite Will” The theism of Book III is also deeply informed by Fichte’s practical approach. Although he gives it godlike characteristics, Fichte talks about “the One Eternal Infinite Will,” not God, as the supersensible ground of the sensible world (VM 110 [GA I/6:295]). The pure will is not the external force that Guéroult thinks it is (Guéroult 1930, 1:366–80; Guéroult 1974), and certainly is no God in the traditional sense, any more so than Kant’s divine apportioner. The line of thinking that had precipitated the atheism dispute was Fichte’s claim in the “Divine Governance” essay that God is the “moral order” (DGW 151 [GA I/5:354]). In the Vocation, God is the “law of the supersensible world,” or the moral law that obligates imperfectly rational beings to act rightly (VM 105–6 [GA I/6:291]). As “infinite reason,” it is the source of freedom in the sense that one is autonomous only when one acts rationally (VM 107, 111 [GA I/6:293, 296]). And it is the impetus for free beings to form a rational community, united as end-setters who engage one another through mutual respect—Kant’s kingdom of ends (VM 109 [GA I/6:294–5]; cf. G 83 [Ak 4:433]). As Philonenko says, the God of Book III, as reason or the will, is immanent within consciousness, not a separate, substantial being that makes consciousness possible (Philonenko 1984, 106–8). Fichte’s claim that the will is the creator of the sensible world becomes easier to understand in light of the fact that it is a postulate of pure practical reason. The sensible world serves a moral purpose for finite rational beings: to provide a way for their willing to be effective (ACR 76 [GA I/1:59]). The world depends on practical reason as the basis for us taking it to exist. The will depends on the I as the one who wills, acts, or sets ends in order to fulfill the obligations of morality. And some events in the world depend on free actions as their cause:

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That eternal will is thus surely the creator of the world, in the only way in which it can be and in which alone a creation is required: in finite reason. … There is Nothing anywhere if matter alone is to be something, and everywhere and to all eternity Nothing remains. Only reason is; infinite reason in itself, and finite reason in it and through it. Only in our minds does it create a world, or at least that from which and through which we produce it: the call to duty; and concordant feelings, intuition, and laws of thought. (VM 110–11 [GA I/6:296])

In the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, subject and object are derived from the I’s self-positing. The I posits a Not-I in opposition to consciousness in response to a feeling of limitation (the Anstoss) (see, e.g., SK 189–92 [GA I/2:354–8]). In The Vocation of Man, the I posits a world as a real thing, distinct from representations, in response to a demand that our moral actions be effective. Guéroult makes much of the tension between the ideal ground of our belief in the real world and the real ground of the world itself, and he claims that Fichte resolves that tension by making the real ground into an unknown absolute that can only be grasped through faith (Guéroult 1974). However, the absolute, as pure will, is rationally justified by the feeling of duty. That is, I believe that I am able to act autonomously, free from any natural cause, because of the fact of reason. The pure will thus has practical reality and is absolute—or, more accurately, necessary—in relation to our moral vocation—specifically, by confirming our freedom to affect the world and our hope in moral progress, among other things. It is not a metaphysical claim about the ultimate basis of subject and object—as Radrizzani says, it “exclude[s] any ontological connotation” (Radrizzani 2002, 336)—but is instead a practical commitment that we take on in order to fulfill our vocation. Fichte also follows Kant in claiming that we need to believe in infinite moral progress. According to Kant, this justifies our practical faith in the immortality of the soul (CPrR 238–9 [Ak 5:122–4]). According to Fichte, we must have faith in “constant progress to greater perfection in a straight line which goes on to infinity” (VM 122 [GA I/6:307]), a claim that he also makes in Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (LSV 152 [GA I/3:32]) and The System of Ethics (SE 142–3 [GA I/5:140–1]). He says in the latter work that belief in moral progress commits us to belief in both God and immortality (SE 331 [GA I/5:305]). In the Vocation, Fichte says that my “earthly purpose” in “the sensible world” is ultimately for the sake of “[reason’s] highest purpose” in “a future life” where we can progress by “build[ing] on … the consequences of our good will in the present [life]” (VM 96–7 [GA I/6:281–3]). Although Fichte’s practical approach to the external world diverges from Kant, they have similar moral theologies. The will is also infinite in another, less literal sense. Unlike events in time, the will, as an uncaused cause, is not subject to the forms of sensible intuition. It is practical reason considered in its purity as providing the law for moral agents and the basis for a belief in the reality of the material world. In short, “the One Eternal Infinite Will” is the moral order of the universe (VM 110 [GA I/6:295]). Thus, The Vocation of Man does not abandon the claims in the “Divine Governance” essay that precipitated the atheism dispute. Instead, it shows that Fichte’s idealism, properly extended to include our practical commitments, is theistic and spiritually uplifting, and that it can “powerfully

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move [the reader] from the sensible world to the supersensible”—while still remaining a religion within the boundaries of mere reason (VM 1 [GA I/6:189]).

Conclusion: Jena, not Berlin Although Fichte disagrees with Kant on some points—the approach to the external world is a prime example—he insists that the Wissenschaftslehre is true to the spirit of Kant’s philosophy, meaning that it carries out the implications of the Critical philosophy more consistently than Kant himself (EPW 289, 376 [GA I/3:190; GA III/2, no. 189]; IWL 63–4n [GA I/4:231–2n]). I have defended the thesis that The Vocation of Man is an extension of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre and that it is consistent with Kant’s Critical philosophy, the spirit if not the letter, and specifically his strategy of practical postulation. I take no position here on whether this limited claim entails anything about the Berlin period as a whole. In his later work, Fichte privileges neither our inner conceptual life (idealism) nor the content of our thinking as it seems to be given by a thing in itself (realism), but rather asserts the mutual dependence of being and thinking in the absolute, what Fichte calls the One, light, living, reason, or God, depending on the context. In The Vocation of Man, by contrast, the I remains selfsufficient rather than dependent on God as a being from which both the subject and object are derived. Although Fichte’s Vocation and Descartes’s Meditations begin with skepticism regarding the external world, and both reestablish its existence as well as the existence of the I itself, the methods they adopt and the resulting worlds they arrive at reveal the difference between a theoretical approach dependent on God and a practical approach that discovers the world as a condition for the possibility of practical and theoretical freedom. Unlike Descartes’s argument, which arrives at ontological claims from what are taken to be indubitable premises, Fichte’s argument is regressive, a transcendental argument. Theoretically, the reality of objective representations depends on the I’s positing them in opposition to consciousness. Practically, the reality of the “real world” (distinct from representations) depends on its function for the I as a moral agent. Fichte’s metaphysical commitments in Book III are rationally grounded, but the resulting entities are practically real rather than theoretically justified. Thus, The Vocation of Man remains Kantian in its premises, Kantian in its form of argument, and Fichtean in its non-dogmatic conception of the material world.

Notes 1 I address Fichte’s response to the problem of other minds, and specifically the moral considerability of other people, in Altman, 2018. 2 Kant makes a similar point about objective representations when he describes the need for apperceptive unity. Sensible intuitions alone are incapable of giving us “connection and unity among [our cognitions],” and inner sense is merely a “stream

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of inner appearances” that cannot, based on “empirical data” alone, establish the existence of a “numerically identical” subject (CPR 232 [Ak A107]). Fichte’s reasoning here is similar to what Hegel says in the early parts of the Phenomenology of Spirit, especially “Sensuous-Certainty,” “Perceiving,” and “Force and the Understanding” (PhG 90–165 [GW 9:63–102]). There Hegel shows that any attempt to know things passively through the senses inevitably leads us back to the activity of thinking and consciousness. We go from “this” to pointing to the determinate “thing with properties” to identifying abstract laws, interpreting what we are given through the senses using physics and math. There are increasing levels of mediation by the activity of consciousness. Fichte does say elsewhere that I intellectually intuit absolute activity in the immediacy of self-consciousness (IWL 46–51 [GA I/4:216–21]; FTP 114–15 [GA IV/3:346-7]). Although much of The Vocation of Man is consistent with the other Jena writings, Fichte goes too far in this paragraph on the existence of the I. The I does not have to be “invented” as a thing by thinking. Rather, the I posits itself through its own activity. This is the Tathandlung (fact/act), where the I’s activity simultaneously brings the I into existence as a fact (AR 64 [GA I/2:46]; SK 97 [GA I/2:259]). For an explanation and defense of Fichte’s notion of the I’s self-positing, see Altman 2014, 330–4. Fichte says that a consistent dogmatist must be a fatalist and a materialist (IWL 16, 23 [GA I/4:192, 197]), and that the dogmatist makes the realism of the standpoint of life into the basis of a speculative philosophy (IWL 38 [GA I/4:210n]). So, I use “dogmatism,” “fatalism,” “determinism,” “materialism,” and (sometimes) “realism” to characterize the same system, which is the alternative to idealism. Wayne Martin also briefly compares Fichte’s Vocation and Descartes’s Meditations, but for different philosophical purposes than mine (Martin 2013, 128–9). I am using the word “postulate” here in the traditional Kantian sense of the term. Radrizzani says that both the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo and The Vocation of Man are based on postulates rather than self-evident first principles, in the sense that the thinking there will have value and be comprehensible only for people who think along with Fichte (Radrizzani 2002, 330). Practical postulates in the Kantian sense are different from Radrizzani’s postulated acts of thinking. One could read Descartes as positing himself as a free being—not simply manipulated by the evil genius—in order to attain knowledge of God. So, the practical commitment to freedom is perhaps in Descartes as well as Fichte, even if it is unjustified in the Meditations by any argument or appeal to the fact of reason. Martin says that Fichte’s reversal of Descartes here is that Descartes doubts that he has knowledge of objects and Fichte doubts what he thinks he knows of himself (Martin 2013, 129). Although I agree with the spirit of this sentiment, I would not put it in terms of self-knowledge. It is rather a question of meaning or purpose. The Spirit’s questioning has called into doubt the narrator’s existence as a moral agent, specifically. A third characteristic of moral agency for Kant is the ability to act on the basis of a principle that we give to ourselves through pure practical reason. This is practical freedom in the positive sense (G 94–5 [Ak 4:446–7]; CPrR 166 [Ak 5:33]; MM 375 [Ak 6:213–14]). Although this is not something that Fichte dwells on, he assumes it as part of our vocation.

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12 Clearly, I disagree with Angelica Nuzzo’s claim that Fichte is giving a critique of Kant’s transcendental freedom and replacing it with a moral vocation that determines our actions (Nuzzo 2013). Fichte is invoking and using Kant’s transcendental freedom as a crucial premise in his argument and as part of what it means to have a moral vocation. 13 Breazeale dismisses wishing too lightly. In Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, Fichte says that a wish can justify our belief in the reality of something if the wish is based on pure practical reason: “If a mere wish [Wunsch] is to justify us in assuming the reality of its object, it must be based on the determination of the higher faculty of desire by the moral law, and must have arisen by means of this determination. Assuming the reality of its object must facilitate the exercise of our duties – and not merely this or that duty, but dutiful behavior in general – and it must be possible to show that assuming the contrary would impede this dutiful behavior in the subjects doing the wishing, because only with a wish of this kind are we able to adduce a reason why we want to assume anything at all about the reality of its object instead of dismissing the question about it completely” (ACR 124–5 [GA I/1:105–6]). This is Fichte’s method of justification in the Vocation: the “reality” of the world makes it possible for us effectively to “exercise … our duties.” 14 Rendering Glaube as “faith” rather than “belief ” has an unfortunate effect for English-speakers: it unnecessarily invokes a religious connotation, while I am trying to distance Fichte from Descartes’s reliance on God. 15 In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant says that “freedom … is the only one among all the ideas of pure reason whose object is a fact and which must be counted among the scibilia [things that can be known]” (CJ 333 [Ak 5:468]).

Bibliography Altman, Matthew C. 2014. “Fichte’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense.” In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, edited by Matthew C. Altman, 320–43. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Altman, Matthew C. 2018. “Fichte’s Practical Response to the Problem of Other Minds.” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte. 16, https://journals.openedition.org/ref/859. Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. “Jumping the Transcendental Shark: Fichte’s ‘Argument of Belief ’ in Book III of Die Bestimmung des Menschen and the Transition from the Earlier to the Later Wissenschaftslehre.” In Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 199–224. Albany: State University of New York Press. Descartes, René. 1984. Meditations on First Philosophy. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 3–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Estes, Yolanda. 2013. “J. G. Fichte’s Vocation of Man: An Effort to Communicate.” In Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 79–102. Albany: State University of New York Press. Guéroult, Martial. 1930. L’évolution et la structure de la doctrine de la science. 2 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Guéroult, Martial. 1974. “La destination de l’homme.” In Études sur Fichte, 72–96. Paris: Aubier Montaigne.

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Hoeltzel, Steven. 2014a. “Nonepistemic Justification and Practical Postulation in Fichte.” In Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 293–313. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoeltzel, Steven. 2014b. “Transcendental Idealism and Theistic Commitment in Fichte.” In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, edited by Matthew C. Altman, 364–85. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoeltzel, Steven. 2016. “Fichte, Transcendental Ontology, and the Ethics of Belief.” In Transcendental Inquiry: Its History, Methods, and Critiques, edited by Halla Kim and Steven Hoeltzel, 55–82. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jacobi, F. H. 1994a. David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, a Dialogue. In Jacobi: The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill, translated and edited by George Di Giovanni, 253–338. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press. Jacobi, F. H. 1994b. Jacobi to Fichte. In Jacobi: The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill, translated and edited by George Di Giovanni, 497–536. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press. Jean Paul. 1827. Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberiana. In Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 30, 1–68. Berlin: Reimer. Kroner, Richard. 1961. Von Kant bis Hegel. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Tübingen: Mohr. Martin, Wayne. 2013. “The Dialectic of Judgment and The Vocation of Man.” In Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 127–43. Albany: State University of New York Press. Nuzzo, Angelica. 2013. “Determination and Freedom in Kant and in Fichte’s Bestimmung des Menschen.” In Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 225–39. Albany: State University of New York Press. Philonenko, Alexis. 1984. L’œuvre de Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Radrizzani, Ives. 2002. “The Place of the Vocation of Man in Fichte’s Work.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 317–44. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Verweyen, Hansjürgen. 2001. “In der Falle zwischen Jacobi und Hegel: Fichtes Bestimmung des Menschen.” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 48 (1–3): 381–400.

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The Transcendental Spinozism of Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre George di Giovanni

Something Old, Something New Fichte died in 1814. After his departure from Jena in 1800, he produced several revised versions of the Wissenschaftslehre (WL)—his Science of Knowledge. He presented them to the public solely in oral form, in a series of lectures held at various locations, and transmitted to us in notes only posthumously published. He gave three series of such lectures in 1804, the notes for them normally referred to chronologically as WL 18041, 18042, and 18043.1 They are seminally important, for in them Fichte substantially reformed the method of doing his Science.2 Moreover, since they were close in time to a dispute with Schelling still tacitly ongoing, one can detect in them the immediate motivation for the change.3 It had been necessary for dispelling the impression that, in the dispute, he and Schelling had reached an impasse, for neither could defend his position without at the same time providing the other with the ammunition for attacking it. It seemed that both were metaphysically committed to Spinozism, the only difference being that, whereas Schelling expounded his position positively, as if he could narrate God’s inner life, Fichte presented his negatively, in what might have been a case of theologia negativa. In fact, even as early as his first presentation of the WL, Fichte had already surpassed the standpoint of classical metaphysics of which Spinoza—so Jacobi had claimed—was the most consummate representative. The problem was that, because of the language of subject and subjectivity in which he had presented his idealism, the latter could easily be taken as simply the counterpart of Spinoza’s realism, as if it had not undergone the discipline of Kant’s transcendentalism and did not still operate within its limits. The interest of the 1804 WL lies in that Fichte who, while declaring on the one hand a predilection for realism (92 [GA II/8:173.13–18]) (a radical departure from earlier claims that brought him indeed closer to Spinoza), on the other hand, was intent at the same time at ridding it of what he called its dogmatic “facticity.” This made for a new kind of realism that called for an equally as radical new kind of idealism. To the extent that in 1804 Fichte was committed to any form of Spinozism (as we shall see, in a way he was), such a Spinozism had to be definitely Fichte’s own, in no way only complementary to Schelling’s. It had to be a lived Spinozism, transcendental in form.

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There was something radically new, in other words, that was taking place in the 1804 lectures; equally, however, there was also a pursuit of old themes, for Fichte had not abandoned his early goal of reforming Kant’s idealism by purging it of the “thing in itself,” a vestige of common sense realism that obscured the true nature of its transcendentalism. The opposition between “fact” (Tatsache) and “performance” (Tathandlung) with which he had first announced in 1794 the program of the WL, at the time only in early gestation, came in the lectures into play again, except that Tathandlung was now called “genesis.” This change was more than a matter of semantics. It defined Fichte’s new method in reforming Kant’s transcendental idealism, as well his retrieval of Spinoza, but only by way of that transcendentalism.

The “I think” as Tathandlung But how did Fichte reform Kant’s idealism while at the same time abiding by its transcendental norms? For this we must take our bearings from Kant himself.4 Prior to him, the Locke- or Hume-inspired theories of experience, such as were common in the popular philosophy of the German Enlightenment, consisted in the narratives of physio-psychological events by virtue of which the experience of objects presumably originated. Kant’s innovative move was to differentiate between the physical presence that any such objects have for the mind by virtue of some natural mechanism—this was the presence for which the current theories provided the theoretical narrative—and their meaningful or intelligible presence, that is to say, their formal presence as objects rather than mere physical things. Kant was thus shifting the burden of any theory of experience from issues of physical explanation (be it physiological, psychological, or natural in general) to issues of meaning constitution; or again, in shifting from issues of causal connections to issues of conceptual norms that made the intelligent recognition of such causal connections originally possible. All this famously meant for Kant bringing sense-events that occurred in space/time under categories that, for their part, defined what would count as a recognizable object of experience. These categories had to be a priori, because, as formal constituents of meaning, they could not be reduced to the otherwise merely physical presence of the objects they made meaningful. They were building blocks of a conceptual universe of meaning. By the same token, they could not be taken as defining the content of the supposed “thing in itself.” This last was the critical aspect of Kant’s innovation. This was a shift of perspective not easy for Kant’s contemporaries to understand, as his earliest interpreters demonstrated (famously, K. L. Reinhold, C. C. E. Schmid, and G. E. Schulze).5 They read Kant as if his a priori, rather than defining, conditions of meaning stood instead for a mechanism internal to the mind, indeed of a different quality than the subjective impressions of the senses, yet still continuous with them. When Fichte hinted in 1794 at a different way of understanding Kant that was based, not on supposed “facts [Tatsachen] of consciousness” that could be historically narrated, but, rather, on what he called a primordial Tathandlung—a term he coined— he was simply calling attention to the fact that, for Kant, experience consisted first and foremost in a performance, a deed by which any presupposed reality was not

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just physically represented within the mind (whatever “represented” might possibly mean in that context), but normatively introduced into a universe of meaning. It was understood, in other words, or objectified. Of course, introducing a new term—a cryptic one at that—could do little to clarify the situation. The clarification came only with Fichte’s first published versions of his Science.6 Here Fichte relied on Kant’s fundamental claim that the direct consciousness of an object is not possible without self-consciousness, that is, without the consciousness of being conscious of that object. Kant himself had formalized this reflective structure of consciousness by claiming that every judgment is in principle always accompanied by an “I think.” Or, as we might gloss, when one says “S is P,” the statement can always be unpacked to mean: “I say (subjectively) that S is P, and what I thus say is (objectively) the case.” Retaining unity of the “I think” in the course of experience, or, in other words, retaining throughout it the reflective unity that made it meaningful, was the function of the categories. Their validity as constituting the concept of an object in general was transcendentally justified by discharging precisely this function. There was a possible objection, however, that could prove devastating.7 Although it might well have been the case that, relying on the categories as the fundamental paradigm of an object of experience, it was possible to turn the otherwise scattered content of sense experience into well structured, and hence recognizable, objects, it did not thereby follow that such objects would be more than just figments of the mind, ideal constructs rather than real objects. Kant’s admission that the “thing in itself ” was not known in itself seemed to corroborate the point. This was the problem that confronted Fichte. How was one to re-interpret Kant’s “I think” so that, on the one hand, thought-reflection would retain its normative function, while on the other hand, it would have existential significance, i.e., it would seriously retain the difference in a judgment between the “I say” and the “it is the case.” We know how Fichte dealt with the problem in the earlier versions of the WL. The science had to forego any purely theoretical attitude with respect to its object. It had, rather, to engage its practitioners existentially, as at the same time performers and observers, rather than just simply observers. In fact, this had been a condition essential to transcendental philosophizing from the beginning, since its object no longer was “being per se,” but “being as experienced.” Fichte was now making the condition explicit. Moreover, Kant had restricted his method to an anatomy of experience as already constituted. Fichte, more in keeping with Descartes’s cogito (a personal act) than Kant’s “I think” (a formal function), wanted rather to capture experience reflectively in the moment of constitution. For this reason, he had begun his Science with a command directed at his audience in general, namely, that they think, and, in that act, they at the same time observe how they thereby became aware of the act as their own (IWL, 7 [GA I/4:[§1] 186]). The unavoidable admission was that, although awareness of the act as performed was undeniable, the awareness could nonetheless not be of the act as someone’s act without this someone (the “I,” the performer or subject) finding itself opposed by an other (a “not-I,” a “being” or object), the space for which had been generated precisely by the performance (the Tathandlung). And the more irreducible the presence of that “other,” the more effective the performance. At play was again Kant’s claim about the inextricable connection in experience of

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self-consciousness and direct consciousness, except that Fichte now captured it at the very origin of experience. He was making it, moreover, the foundation for a new kind of radical realism. To be sure, the “I,” the subject, could not be reduced to its other, to “being.” Nonetheless, any narrative determining it as what it was had to be spread, so to speak, across an objective world. And its effectiveness as “I,” as subject, had to be measured precisely by its success in maintaining unity of self-narrative at an existential level of experience. This, of course, is hardly even a first sketch of Fichte’s Science prior to 1800. It is clear, nonetheless, how Fichte had transcended the standpoint of the “facts of consciousness” on which the Enlightenment’s theories of knowledge were based. At issue in the Science was not “any fact” of experience understood materially, according to content. Rather, at issue was the facts’ “facticity” (Fakticität), or, in other words, their appearing in such a manner that their presence in experience would be at once necessary, in the sense of ineluctable, yet in need of explanation, and, in this sense, equally contingent (IWL § 2 [GA I/4:211–12]; also 129 [GA II/8:261.8–9]). In this, Fichte was simply radicalizing, and also expanding upon, Kant’s transcendental method (26 [GA II/8:15.8–10]). The phenomenal character of the objects of experience that Kant had explained from the start, tout court, by simply positing the “thing-in-itself ” behind them, Fichte was now trying to express conceptually in this combination of necessity and contingency, without in any way stepping outside the boundaries of experience. In doing this, he was also referencing Kant, specifically, to his “I think,” now reintroduced in Fichte’s Science, however, as a primordial Tathandlung. It was because of thought’s attempt in experience to think itself that whatever it de facto happened to think needed explaining: it had to be subjected, in other words, to a priori conditions of intelligibility. This was the implication of the “otherness” of the “other” that resisted Fichte’s original command simply to think—for which, nonetheless, the attempt at executing the command produced the space for appearing. Fichte had thus totally sidelined the theory of knowledge of the popular Enlightenment philosophy while adding an extra phenomenological dimension to Kant’s transcendental method. But why would he, in 1804, replace Tathandlung with Genesis? This is the question.

From Tathandlung to Genesis Again we must take our bearings from Kant—from the a priori that was the source of the objectivity of experience, despite the fact that Kant defined it subjectively. This juxtaposition of subjectivity and objectivity especially puzzled his contemporaries. Yet Kant’s position should have been clear. Experience is realized in judgment, that is, in the recognition of the presence of an originally intended object. Kant established conditions for this recognition. That was the work of Critique. And since judgment is a subjective performance, it made sense that he would define such conditions in subjective terms. Nonetheless, no judgment can be completed unless the one performing it is not beholden, at the moment of its resolution, to an evidence which compels per se. Or again, the presence of a thing in experience, unlike any merely

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physical/psychological presence, has to be intelligible, intelligently self-imposing.8 In defining the subjective a priori conditions of experience, Kant was in fact thus only defining the conditions that make for a subjective space within which this intelligible presence can impose itself on its own, independently of the subjectivity of the space. Inasmuch as the transition from the pre-1800 to the 1804 Fichte can be encapsulated in a few words, it consisted in the new insight, very likely gained by Fichte under pressure from his controversy with Schelling,9 that there can be no rationality without reasonableness being presupposed; that rationality means operating immersed in a presupposed light that makes the evidence, the immediate visibility of truth, possible. Subjective appropriation of the truth has to be nestled in this light at the very origin. It is not it, the appropriation, that sets the conditions for the light, but the light of the evidence that makes the reasonableness of the appropriation possible. The insight entailed a revision of the realism earlier based on the Tathandlung. Where it earlier consisted in the irreducibility of a determining “other” for which the “I think” actively created the space, it now consisted rather in a subject’s giving itself over, indeed to an “other,” but one which, instead of determining, rather transcended determination. One did not perform truth: one rather organically grew into it, genetically. This was a realism to which Fichte gave voice in WL 18042 by deliberately getting away from the imagery connected with Tathandlung, replacing it with such other imaginative constructs as “light,” “evidence” (Evidenz),10 “insight,” “reason.” “Intelligible” also occurred in this context.11 But we should let Fichte speak for himself: Along with the necessity that arose from this12 to ascend higher and to master the facts [die Fakta] genetically, we turned our attention to what promised to be most significant here, [namely] to the in-itself, bound to the realistic principle, life in itself:13 and this further determination was the first step we made last week. It turned out that the in-itself manifests itself [einleuchte]14 as an absolute negation of the validity of all seeing directed towards itself:15 that it constructs itself in immediate manifestness [Evidenz] or light: yielding a higher realism which deduces insight and the light themselves, items which the first realism was content to ignore.16 A new idealism attempts to establish itself against this new realism.17 We had to take control of ourselves and struggle energetically to contemplate the in-itself in its meaning.18 So, we believed we realized that this in-itself first appeared as a result of this reflection as simultaneously constructing itself with immediate manifestness [Evidenz] in the light; and that consequently this energy of ours would be the basic principle and first link in the whole matter.19 To this [our higher realism] boldly retorts: That’s how you think, but how do you prove your claim?20 You can adduce nothing more than that you are aware of yourself,21 but you cannot derive thinking genetically in its reality and truthfulness, as you should, from your consciousness in which you report it; but, by contrast, we can derive the very consciousness to which you appeal, and which you make your principle, genetically, since this can only be a modification of insight and light, but light proceeds directly out of the in-itself, manifestness [Evidenz] in immediate manifestness [Evidenz]. (118 [GA II/8:235.37–237.23])

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Once more, there was something old and something new. Inasmuch as the issue was the subjective a priori ground of experience, Fichte still operated within the limits of Kant’s transcendental project. Inasmuch as he sought this ground in a factor prior to conceptualization, he had enlarged the scope of the project. But that was a move he had already made in the early WL. New in 1804 was that, rather than demanding of his auditors to engage in thinking and reflectively trying to grasp such an engagement conceptually, he demanded of them to fix their attention on the truth, the selfimposing in-itself by which they must have already been unconsciously permeated as they found themselves spontaneously accepting in experience, as if driven by nature, a certain position or other. Of course, just as it was the case with Fichte’s earlier attempt at grasping the original Tathandlung, this giving oneself over to the light of evidence entailed transcending the necessarily subjective (hence determinate) limits of the concepts. For the earlier Fichte—that is, from the standpoint of a subject simply bound to its subjectivity—this gave rise to a disconnect between subjective life and objective truth: an area of non-knowing that the early Fichte had famously filled with faith. It was a matter of negotiating the subject/object disconnect by means of a process of ever finite conceptual determinations that in principle extended ad infinitum, yet was at each step supported by immediate certainty.22 Quite different was the situation in 1804, for on Fichte’s new assumption experience would not get underway without truth already manifesting itself in it. Any area of non-knowledge had to be only apparent, the result of failing to recognize that one already de facto lived in the truth. Or to put it another way, whereas in the early WL the coincidence of subjective certainty and objective truth had to be postponed ad infinitum because of presumed lack of evidence, in 1804 it was there from the beginning. It was the superabundance of evidence—its being necessarily already there—that, if anything, stood in the way of its recognition and gave rise to the illusion of non-knowledge. The new standpoint required a new methodology. One can visualize Fichte’s strategy by imagining two circles facing each other in a tridimensional space. One represents the sphere of self-manifesting light, or the One (for truth is “one”); the other, the sphere of conceptually determined experience, or the Many. Now, inasmuch as one tried to connect the two in the medium of the concept, as historically one must begin by doing (Fichte included), the two fell apart, opening up a gap that then posed the problem of how to traverse it. Fichte called it the gap hiatus irrationalis: “irrational,” not just because it could not be traversed discursively as in experience one passes from finite object to finite object, but, more to the point, because its irrationality was itself the product of the rational attempt at both defining and relating the two sides conceptually. For Fichte this gap was, as he also called it, die Lage des Todes, the “place of death”—the abyss of reason23 where, Fichte said, borrowing an image from alchemy, the products of conceptual reflection were precipitated like a corpus mortuum.24 It was in this place that one found all the products of common understanding that indeed deadened experience. Fichte had already encountered this gap in his earlier WL in the form, as we just said, of a disconnect between subjective certainty and objective evidence. But in his case the gap had been generated by the method itself of doing science, still bound as it was to the economy of the concept. And Fichte had strategically accepted it, even welcomed it, for

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the infinite task of crossing it that it posed, and the consequent discipline it demanded. In fact, it validated the moral commitment that had animated his science even at origin. Schelling, for his part, while de facto creating in his science the same conceptual gap, had rather treated it as if it were possible to cross it discursively—or, perhaps more precisely, as if the original assumption that the One is the Many dispensed with even the possibility of the gap. These were the higher kinds of idealism and realism to which Fichte was now intent on opposing his own new realism. The new strategy, as we shall see momentarily, was to methodically retrieve from the pit of the hiatus irrationalis the conceptual products precipitated there in the course of explaining experience— starting indeed with the One and the Many—and to re-think them in such a way that, if one were just attentive enough, one would recognize in them the truth already there, of which they were only the appearances. Attention is the key note here. Where the earlier Fichte demanded of his auditors to perform, the demand now was that they be attentive, for attention required their active subjugation to a transcendent presence that, although transcendent, one found nonetheless immanently encompassing. It was a matter of colluding with it. That was precisely the kind of existential attitude for which insight into evidence called (47–8 [GA II/8:67.13–71.2]). Fichte’s auditors were to practice this attention energetisch. The goal was to progressively whittle away the distance between the two assumed circles until it was shown that the hiatus irrationalis was only an illusion.25

The WL 18042 in sketch Prolegomena: Lectures 1–5 The series consists of twenty-eight lectures in which one can, more or less, clearly distinguish three segments: the prolegomena (1–5); theory of truth or part one (6–15); the theory of phenomenal existence part two (16–28).26 The text is notoriously difficult, and one must ultimately read it for oneself, exactly how Fichte would have wanted.27 One can nonetheless aim at a sketch. One point should be made immediately clear. Fichte was aware that it would be existentially self-defeating to try to capture conceptually, on its own, the pre-conceptual evidence on which the concept depended for its truth. Any such attempt necessarily resulted in the objectification of the intended truth, by that token also a falsification. All science, including the Wissenschaftslehre (as Jacobi had said, but derogatorily)28 had to be a Nachdenken, the artificial construction of an evidence that had to be already present.29 Fichte even displayed impatience with those (who would have included his earlier self) who refused to accept the inevitable fact that the starting point in any process of knowledge had to be factical. It was this refusal that led, if one sought an absolute beginning on the side of the concept, to the infinite regression that made science ultimately a merely subjective affair. Or, alternatively, if one sought it on the side of the conceptual content, it led to the arbitrariness of dogmatism. One rather had to begin with an assumption, a determinate taking of position consistent with the special historical vocation motivating a given process of knowledge. Once the assumption was made, the consequences unfolded

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from it mechanically, according to a conceptual logic that drove the whole process to its conclusion mechanically, as if driving it from behind. For this reason, no “I” in particular could accurately be said to reach the conclusion, but an anonymous “We,” or reason in general. The mistake of past theories of knowledge had been to take this mechanical necessity as the source of the evidence, and consequently to ignore the preconceptual light of evidence in which the conceptual process was nestled and of which it was in fact only a historical expression.30 It was the WL’s vocation to bring attention to this evidence. Fichte’s strategy was to present his auditors with a conceptual construct they would immediately accept on the strength of common sense—if not ordinary common sense, certainly the philosophical common sense of the day. He then led them to draw the consequences that followed from it mechanically, by simple entailment. The real point of the exercise, however, was to have them take note, but only indirectly (as if by a side glance), of the evidence illuminating the process in which they engaged. Consequently, this led them to invest the newly derived constructs with a significance they would not otherwise have. Ultimately it was a matter not of adding or subtracting from his auditors’ common experiences, but of altering their existential attitude toward them. In this spirit, Fichte began with a construct historically associated with both Spinoza and Kant; significantly with both at once.31 He proposed for his auditors this formula as the general schema of experience: A • ⇒ D & S ⇒ x, y, z.

The A was a “no-thing,” but was posited simply as standing for the absolute truth that all experience instinctively assumed. This truth was just as instinctively assumed to consist in a One, but a One that immediately translated itself into a Many. The interplay of this One and its Many was at the core of all experience, and stood, in one way or other, at the basis of all philosophical positions. The • had to be imagined as the point at which the transition (⇒) from the one to the other originated; Being and Thought (D & S, Denken und Sein) were the first multiplicity, an original division that in turn translated itself (⇒) into a more particularized many (x, y, z). All this was, of course, derived from historical reflection. The A stood for both Kant’s “thing in itself ” and Spinoza’s substance; the D & S, for Kant’s a priori/a posteriori and Spinoza’s attributes; the (x, y, z), for the subject-matter of Kant’s three Critiques and Spinoza’s modes. Such historical references, however factically important, were not the essential point. Indeed, Fichte went on to ask of his auditors that they abstract from the content of their knowledge altogether. He wanted them to fix their attention, rather, on what, despite the variety of that knowledge, made it knowledge—at the quality of knowledge as knowledge, in other words; or (to gloss), on the intelligibility in which it was realized (41–2 [GA II/8:53.28ff.]. If his auditors succeeded in this abstraction, they would have already gained a genetic insight into the A of the proposed schema—into the “oneness,” in other words, that underlay Kant’s transcendental system, and no less underlay the dogmatic one of Spinoza. Yet both Spinoza and Kant had simply passed over it in Nachdenken.

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Fichte therefore instructed his auditors to make a further move. He asked them to place themselves in thought at the (•) of the proposed schema, where the transition (⇒) to the first disjunction (D&S) occurred. They had to place themselves at precisely that point, oscillating between oneness and manyness, without resting at either.32 Clearly, Fichte was asking them to abide by Kant’s critical injunction that, in explaining experience, they did not step outside it. That’s what it meant to stay at that (•). What it did not, however, mean was that they would thereby be in position of retrieving the stated transition, still from inside that oscillating movement, either intuitively on the side of the (A), in the manner of dogmatic realism, or reflectively constructed on the side of the (D&S), as in idealism. Either way, the very irrational gap between (A) and (D&S) was generated that, on the contrary, was Fichte’s goal to dissolve as illusionary. Rather, one had to insert the whole transition into the (•), annulling it as anything outside it. Only in this way would his auditors be overtaken by the insight into the true nature of A’s transcendence. When viewed as the factor internally motivating the whole of experience, that transcendence was none other than the self-justifying nature of knowledge itself; the originative evidence that, like light, had nothing but itself as the source of its presence. It was precisely the evidence to which one found oneself already beholden even as one began to reflect on why one accepted something as true. Fichte’s way of making the point (obviously with Kant and his own earlier subjective constructivism in mind) was to say that “truth creates itself by its own power.”33 It is not we who do the knowing or intuiting, but the knowledge and intuiting that work themselves in us. This was Fichte’s way of overcoming the formalism of Kant’s a priorism by reinterpreting it as a form of life, a way of existing normatively.34 The request that his auditors position themselves at the (•) was thus only an exhortation that they take hold of themselves existentially, that they submit themselves to the discipline of attention, where “attention” meant—to repeat—the active letting themselves be absorbed into an evidence that had in fact already taken hold of them existentially.35 This was the postulate behind the whole Science of Knowledge. It now had to be further developed with a theory of truth and a subsequent theory of phenomenal existence.

The Theory of Truth: Lectures 6–15 The new level of constructions required that one focused attention at the (&) of the (D&S) in the already given schema, i.e., at the disjunction defining D and S.36 At a purely factical or analytical level of reflection, “disjunction” required that the two terms occupy a common ground, for without the possibility that they would intrude on one another, there was no point in keeping them apart, whether by distinction, differentiation, or also significant identification. The & thus stands for a qualitative commonality of both D and S, a “what” common to both—one, however, that cannot be realized absolutely, for, if it did, the two would collapse into it and disjunction would lose meaning. The two are indeed that “what” qualitatively, but only, as the scholastics used to say, secumdum quid, in a certain way or to some extent. They overlay each other, but only at a distance—one that they traverse from their respective sides quantitatively, in the form of particular d1, d2, d3, etc., and s1, s2, s3, etc., respectively. Together, moreover, they double their common “what,” the ground of

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their commonality—this too at a distance that corresponds to the distance separating them. To the extent that each is not the other quantitatively, it also is not (qualitatively) the “what” common to both. If one keeps in mind that D and S stand for “thought” and “being,” it is clear that the insight Fichte was trying to retrieve genetically, but could express only factically or analytically, was the one that must have motivated Spinoza’s schema of reality: substance (the transcendent yet common “what”), attributes (thought and extension), modes (the quantification of the attributes). The question for Fichte was whether one could present the synthesis of these elements from “inside out,” so to speak, rather than just at surface—whether, in other words, one could add to it the subjective dimension that all the Romantics had missed in Spinoza, yet could not remedy the lack without falling into subjective idealism. In this, it must be noted, Fichte’s main concern was to keep clear of idealism, which he considered a product of secondhand consciousness, not of Spinoza’s realism that he, on the contrary, accepted while rejecting its dogmatic form. Fichte requested his auditors to reflect on the process by which they had unpacked all that was implied in “disjunction,” and thus become explicitly aware of what in this conceptual unpacking made it compelling: become aware, in other words, of the presupposed principle (Prinzip) that de facto had supported as its consequence (Principiat). It was a matter of adverting, on the one hand, to the source of the intelligibility that had pervaded the process (but only indirectly, of course; again, as if by a side glance), and, on the other hand, of creatively objectifying it precisely as a medium that alone would support the process of disjunction. This was the artistic dimension of the WL. Accordingly, Fichte introduced “image” (Bild) as his new construct. It was significant in that it directly expressed the “doubling”37 that, in the case of “disjunction,” needed conceptual sorting out to be brought to light. An “image” is nothing in itself except what it images; this last is at once an other of it, yet at one with it (cf. 63 [GA II/8:101.38–103.5]). There is no resting in the being of the image as anything by itself; on the contrary, any assumed determination would have had to be already superseded in order for the image to be itself as image. Ordinary thought does not advert to this circumstance, but is rather given to taking image and imaged each by itself, thereby disrupting their “through-one-another” (das Durcheinandern) by which alone the two significantly enter into the process of imaging. This disruption, which amounts to begging the nature of the process, was, according to Fichte, at the source of both subjective idealism and dogmatic realism depending on whether one took either “image” or “imaged” as independent starting points. Fichte had earlier asked his auditors to place themselves at the point (•), oscillating between D and S. The problem was that they might have believed that in this they were the ones responsible for the oscillation, i.e., that Fichte was asking of them that they enact a subjective performance. This was precisely the delusion that the introduction of “image” dispelled. In truth that oscillation was in the image, a movement that had in fact anonymously antedated all their efforts and on which they had depended unaware. Under instruction from Fichte they had only participated in it more energetisch, with due attention. And it was in this recognition that, to use Fichte’s expression, subjective idealism perished at root. However, now that all the terms of the original schema had

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objectively been collapsed into the (•), the further step remained of safeguarding the transcendence of the A despite this collapse. Or, in other words, the absoluteness of Spinoza’s substance had to be transcendentally maintained even though the dogmatic realism associated with it had been made to perish along with the idealism that was its counterpart. For this Fichte introduced four figures that assumed categorical status, namely, “projection” (Projektion),38 “the through” (das Durch),39 “the by” (das Von, “von” in the sense of original authorship),40 and “the through-one-another” (das Durcheinandern).41 The first, “projection,” should not be understood either in the sense of Husserl’s “intention” or Heidegger’s “thrownness.” Fichte was rather still playing on the image of a presence that, like light, expanded outwardly and, in this way, created a lit space where things could visibly appear, yet in this expansion stayed with itself.42 The intelligible space thus created was the condition for the possibility of the “through” and the “by” that, together, parsed out the determinations of the “through-one-another” they in fact presupposed. In brief, the “through” defined the qualitative oneness of the many made up by the “one” and the “other”—a “oneness” that nonetheless still allowed for quantitative differentiation. The “by,” for its part, defined the self-containment of the “throughness” of the “through-one-another” as such, or of the (•) in the original schema, self-contained as this was despite all internal differentiations, whether qualitative or quantitative. Clearly, Fichte’s “through” and “by” only translated the scholastic per se and a se, both defining characteristics of Spinoza’s substance. But, whereas in Spinoza the perseitas and aseitas followed from the substantiality of substance, for Fichte, on the contrary, it was the perseitas and aseitas, such as betokened the self-imposing presence of evidence, that made the substantiality of substance intelligible at source. Because of that presence, in which any individual knower was absorbed unaware from the start, did one look for such starting points in experience as “substances.” The “substance” of dogmatic realism was only a precipitate of that original intelligibility, the caput mortuum of mere facticity. On the face of it, Fichte seemed to have simply piled images upon images, avoiding argumentation altogether. But in fact his method of construction was internally regulated. Granted that the task was to bring to evidence the intelligibility that motivated all experience, Fichte had simply reflectively identified such minimal components of experience that—albeit still factically, but self-consciously so—nonetheless made that intelligibility manifest to anyone existentially ready for it. He had not displayed the Light at its source for itself, or the intuition that presumably went with it. That would have been impossible. But he should have nonetheless succeeded in making his auditors capable of taking note of it—indirectly, of course, or, to repeat, in side-view. And the test of his success lay in the difference of attitude he had instilled in them regarding the content of experience, as if they could now see it with a different eye.43 How to define this new attitude?44 Surely not in terms of any subjective factor on the auditors’ part (that would have been subjective idealism). It had to consist rather in the way the content of experience presented itself to their regard anew, engaged their attention, even absorbed them. It had to present itself precisely as “appearance”—as phenomenal existence. But why so? The simple answer is that, if not already factically

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parsed as “thing” and “appearance thereof ” as in ordinary thinking, “appearance” was the internally fully articulated instance of the doubling of being that all the prior constructs already entailed. What made it different, however, was that in its case this doubling was explicitly presented as leaving no remainder outside the doubling itself, none of the hiatus irrationalis that, like an irreducible surd, haunted common sense, and classical metaphysics no less. Appearance was the medium supporting all the hitherto introduced constructs. It manifested them all at once. Only because Fichte’s auditors had been immersed in the logic of its internal structure from the beginning— unwittingly, of course—had they been able to follow their master’s genetic quest. Positing “appearance” at this point thus constituted the synthetic step by which Fichte could all too naturally mark his transition to the subsequent theory of phenomenal existence. He had genetically deduced the realm of phenomenality that Kant had instead simply assumed at the head of his critical theory of truth. He could therefore legitimately see himself as taking up once more Kant’s transcendental project, but without the common sense facticity that vitiated it. It was a matter now of grounding the fundamental components of experience by genetically deducing them from precisely this thus posited realm of phenomenality in general.

The Theory of Phenomenal Existence: Lectures 16–2845 Fichte duly warned his auditors that the subsequent lectures would be especially difficult, as indeed they still are for the modern reader of his notes. Nonetheless, despite the many obscurities, their line of development is distinctly recognizable. The task was to genetically deduce the five levels of experience Fichte had distinguished in the earlier versions of his Science—the Fünfackheit or “fivefoldness” of experience, as he routinely referred to the levels collectively—namely sense, legality, morality, religion, and science, even though it is not at all clear whether in the lectures he ever went past “sense” and “legality.” What made the task especially difficult was that, whereas hitherto it had been a matter of ascending to general principles abstracting from factically assumed starting points, such as those that gave Fichte’s auditors easy points of reference, it was now a matter of exploring the inner logic of the “appearance” to which the ascent had led—in other words, of descending from an abstract principle to its realization in actual experience.46 The facticity of the previous starting points had to be genetically retrieved from within the abstraction. Facticity itself had to be so derived as itself a fact of reason, not simply admitted as a surd disrupting experience. This was the segment’s overarching theme. Fichte’s first move was to introduce “Soll” (“should”) as the new leading category.47 On the face of it this was counter-intuitive, for the practical part of Fichte’s earlier WL, and equally Kant’s moral theory, had also opened with a “should,” and Fichte might have seemed to be relapsing into older grooves. But nothing could have been further from the truth. The move represented, on the contrary, an implicit criticism of Kant’s idealism and another, more than just implicit, of the “higher” type of idealism that had followed upon it, both of which had opened up an unsurmountable gap between theory and praxis, an irreducible source of irrationality. For the Soll now introduced no longer carried the moral meaning of an “ought” (not at least

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at this point of the lectures). It stood rather for the normativity in which Fichte’s auditors should have been able, at this stage, to recognize the presence of Light in actual experience. The Soll, as introduced at this point, stood as the highest principle of “appearance” (141 [GA II/8:289.21–9]). It explicitly expressed the otherwise factically external play of the D&S disjunction as internal to it. It thus rendered appearance as self-contained, carrying its own norm of development. “In its innermost essence a ‘should’ is itself genesis and demands a genesis” (155 [GA II/8:319.20–30]). A being that should be is one whose presence is effectively already at hand (it cannot be ignored), yet depends for its realization on conditions that, although still undetermined, when determined, must be so from within the norm set by it.48 As parsed by Fichte, the Soll thus resolved itself into two levels of necessity. One was hypothetical, expressed in an “if …, then … ” as the template for a possibly infinite series of realizations of the Soll constituting the determinate content of appearance, its being. The series was the counterpart of the d1, d2, d3, etc., and s1, s2, s3, etc., that quantified the distance separating the D and S in Fichte’s original schema. But the transition from one term to another, from d1 to d2, or s1 to s2, was now internalized to the d’s or s’s: each determination appeared, or evolved, out of the previous as if visibly. Their sequence was a self-contained unfolding that proceeded necessarily. Indeed, the necessity at work was in each case conditional or hypothetical. But just as in the original schema the D&S disjunction, and its quantitative expansion, presupposed a qualitative oneness (the A)49 that transcended both the D and S and their quantifications, so hypotheticalness (as Fichte called it) presupposed the immanent yet ever transcendent presence of a necessity that was categorical. This was the second level of necessity. The combination of categorical and hypothetical necessity—of ineluctable presence yet demand for explanation—was precisely what defined phenomenality internally. What did the Soll then add to the being of appearance? Precisely, it added to it its being as being—as carrying with it, in other words, its own validation. Appearances were not simply there: they carried internal evidence.50 Jacobi had denigrated philosophy as mere “re-construction.” But, as Fichte pointed out, there could not be a “re-construction” without there having been a “construction” in the first place. The idealists had located this original construction in subjective thought. Fichte, for his part, located it in appearance itself determined as a “should-be,” something that came on its own, unannounced, so to speak, but carrying its own validation. It constructed itself. For this reason, Fichte now asked his auditors to actively let themselves be absorbed into this self-construction: “Evidence grips us without any assistance on our part, and carries us away” (148 [GA II/8:303.15–20]). This is what attention required of them at the present stage of their education. Even more significant, however, was the realization that should have dawned on them. Transcending actual experience in order to uncover their genesis was in fact but a return to the immediacy of phenomenal existence in which they had lived their whole lives. They now saw this existence (with a seeing itself inscrutable) as in fact permeated by Light—as carrying this Light’s a se and per se in its very phenomenality, the same Light that in the early lectures they still attributed to it reflectively but was now manifested to them with existential immediacy.51

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Fichte’s other major moves followed as expected. How were his auditors to see themselves as thus absorbed into this self-construction of being in appearance? In brief, they had to recognize this self-construction as exhibited in their lived being (their esse), in the various constructs by which they had hitherto factically parsed their ordinary ways of acting, in effect thus genetically deriving them. The very knowledge that constituted their being (esse) at the moment was itself an appearing—indeed, the first and most immediate instance of Light’s appearance. As they pursued the internal logic of the “if x, then y; but x, etc.,” they were acting out with their very being the interplay of hypotheticalness and categorical necessity that defined appearance as a Soll—or better, the interplay was being acted in their being. They had been hypothetically positing a position about the Soll, as requested to them by Fichte, i.e., they had posited it arbitrarily, with the same contingency that characterizes any appearance. Yet, in so doing, they had been overtaken by the necessity of a presupposition to which they had committed themselves by the very fact of positing their position as requested. They might have believed to be acting arbitrarily. In point of fact, they were displaying a necessity already at work in them. Like an appearance, or, more descriptively, like the Soll that they were thereby deriving genetically (163 [GA II/8:337.21–30]), they were living the interplay of necessity and contingency. This was the structure of their esse precisely as lived. And if the question was raised as to what made the difference between their esse in general and their knowledge, the reply was an extra degree of intensity. The difference was purely existential. It was a matter of being the manifestation of light precisely as appearance. The reflective “as” defined the difference. Fichte’s auditors were knowledge; they could now see themselves as an “I”—an “I” in general, of course, the carrier of all knowledge. The second move thus followed quite naturally. It still remained to be seen how the auditors were Wissenschaftslehre. Indeed, now that knowledge had been brought into play, the warrant was at hand for distinguishing in the process of genetic derivation a knowledge as derived—this constituted the being, or the content, of knowledge—and the genesis thereof. But the distinction inevitably turned into a relative one, such as could be made self-contained only by positing, in contrast to knowledge as being, a knowledge that was rather selfgenerated: by positing the genesis of genesis itself, in other words, or self-genesis. This was Fichte’s second move. It clearly harked back to the “I” (as Tathandlung) which in the early WL established the possibility of the “not-I” (as being). With the idea of self-genesis, however, the distinction between the “ideal” and the “real” also made its appearance and, along with it, the further inclination, which Fichte openly conceded, of being an idealist even despite one’s predilection for realism. But the vocation of the current WL was precisely to mediate idealism and realism—in effect, to neutralize the gap between the two that now reappeared as a version of the earlier factical One/Many gap (157 [GA II/8:323.21–9]). It was clear, therefore, that even the idea of “self-genesis” had to be annulled (168 [GA II/8:325.13–327.13]). This was Fichte’s final move—the most tortuous perhaps, yet its intent was clear. Fichte had been methodically annulling distinctions due to the factical logic of experience by gaining insight into the presuppositions that made them possible. At this point the disjunction at issue was between self-genesis

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and being, the same that unawares, but ab origine nonetheless, had made the One/ Many disjunction governing classical metaphysics possible in the first place. Now, more than ever, the required insight demanded lived, and intense, directness, but by the same token, it more than ever also defied direct verbalization. The best that could be done was to annul Fichte’s very intent in constructing the idea of “self-genesis.” He had last introduced it as one more step in his methodical attempt at manifesting the originariness of Light. In fact, it had played into the hand of subjective idealism. Fichte was now annulling it, along with the idea of self-construction associated with it. Light had no need to construct itself: it was simply there, or better, it always was already there. This was the final insight Fichte’s auditors had to gain. As he said to them (rather cryptically, to be sure), “the positive negation of genesis is an enduring being” (185 [GA II/8:325.13–14]). In other words, the already thereness of Light was manifested extensionally in being, this last experienced precisely as an appearing: as contingent yet ineluctably present in its appearing. Its facticity was thus manifested precisely as facticity. To be the Wissenschaftslehre (not just to construct it, as one nonetheless had to) was to live facticity animated by precisely that insight.

Fichte’s Transcendental Spinozism This was at Lectures 21/22. Fichte had attained the goal that had eluded Kant: that of demonstrating the effective presence of an a priori in experience. In effect, he had relativized the distinction of conceptual form and sense-content that, for Kant, was irreducible. In many ways the lectures that followed were the most interesting, the product of brilliant phenomenological analysis. But we need not dwell on them. More to the point is to return to the issue of Spinozism that had instigated Fichte’s recent controversy with Schelling. By 1804 the situation on the ground looked quite different. Schelling, for his part, had openly adopted a Spinozistic style system of identity. This should not have been surprising. Surprisingly, however, also Fichte seemed to have gone in his lectures the way of Spinoza’s monism. He had begun with the clearly Spinozistic assumption of a One as absolute being, immediately facing up to the One/ Many problematic that the assumption brought in train. Above all, he had accepted Schelling’s realism, radically deconstructing his own earlier idealism. Had Fichte conceded Schelling’s position in the earlier controversy? But any such conclusion would be all too superficial. Fichte’s thought had indeed undergone revolution, but at a much deeper level. He had recognized the inadequacy of seeking the source of the normativity governing experience in a thought-performance (Tathandlung), for the distinctive feature of normativity, now characterized as Light or Evidenz, was that it anteceded any attempt at verbalizing it: one always found oneself already beholden to it. “Attention,” as the active giving of oneself over to a commanding norm, rather than “performance,” had to be the keynote of all experience. Essentially, in this consisted Fichte’s new realism. But that one had given oneself over to the command was manifested in experience only ex post facto, that is, in the acceptance of a position as factically unavoidable.

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Fichte had gone over to Schelling only in the sense that he had recognized that Schelling’s Spinozistic monism, expressed as it was in narrative form, was where one factically had to start in actual experience in order to express the latter’s phenomenal character. But the whole point of science was precisely to deconstruct this facticity, thus to become reflectively aware of its source: of what made it inescapable. And if, on the one hand, this reflective process gave rise to a system, viz., the Wissenschaftslehre, itself the product of conceptual art; on the other hand, the system’s validation depended on the new life-intensity it generated, by virtue of which one became aware that the truth the system expressed was one of which one had been certain in ordinary experience all along—indeed, was one to which one had given onself over unaware from the beginning. The Fichte of 1804 had become a Spinozist only in the sense that he was intent on describing what it was existentially like to live in a world which, when objectively defined, would look very much like Spinoza’s. In this, Fichte was still abiding by the transcendental project of establishing conditions of experience a priori, without, however, overstepping the limits of the latter. His metaphysics, such as it was, did not outstrip phenomenology.

Notes 1 The 18042 series is the one most appropriate to the theme of this paper and the one we shall cite throughout. The notes for it have been transmitted in two parallel sets now available in critical edition, printed on facing pages (GA II/8:1985). The variants in the two sets are not significant for our purposes. The notes are also available in English translation, translated by Walter E. Wright (see SK1804). I shall cite them by the page number of the English translation followed by references to the corresponding German text (GA II/8:page and line numbers as required). 2 That WL 1804 marks a turning point in Fichte’s presentation of his Science is widely recognized in the literature. For instance, Janke 1970, 304–5. For a theological interpretation of WL 1804, see, Barth 2004. For a detailed exposition of the text of WL 18042, see Didier 1964. For the context of WL 18042, especially its religious dimension, and the transition to later versions of the WL, see Asmuth 1999; Franke 2014; Ivaldo 2016. 3 The relevant texts for the dispute are available in English translation by Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (see PRFS). 4 I am following Fichte in this. Cf. 37 [GA II/8:43.30–33]. 5 For a detailed treatment and appropriate references, cf. di Giovanni 2005, 49ff., 91ff. 6 I am not attempting a history of this early period, but only calling to mind some well known facts to set up the stage for Fichte’s later radical break from his past. The same applies for the following references to Kant. 7 Solomon Maimon brought it up. Cf. di Giovanni 2000, 32–6. 8 For Fichte’s use of “intelligible,” see Lecture IX, where Fichte, referring back to WL18041, identifies the concept (Begriff) with the “inner essence of knowing,” and the latter with “the intelligible” 78 [GA II/8:119.2–3]. 9 Cf. Lecture XIV, where Fichte enters a digression criticizing Schelling precisely where he deals with the issue of realism/idealism, 109–10 [GA II/8:215.14ff.].

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10 The English translators render Evidenz as “manifestness,” a descriptively accurate translation. Its flaw, however, is that it drops the image of “seeable” (cf. the Latin video) that would have been obvious to any German intellectual using the Latinate Evidenz, and is directly connected with the image of Light. 11 Cf. “intelligibly, or in reason,” 117 [GA II/8:233, 18–19]. 12 Viz., the subjectivism and the realism that stand opposed to each other, and cannot be defined without each implicating the other. This “realism” is for Fichte only a form of objectivism. Cf. 109 [GA II/8:215.3–15]. 13 In this summary, Fichte has already identified the “in-itself ” with being as selfcontained or as esse in actu—not in relation to not-being, i.e the determining “other” actively generated by the “I think.” Cf. 116 [GA II/8:231.1–17]. 14 Note the Leucht (light: a noun) in the einleuchte (a verb). 15 This would be subjective consciousness. 16 Hence its dogmatism. 17 This would be a critical type of idealism, with a subjective a priori. 18 That is, as meaningful, discursively. 19 This is a good description of Fichte’s own effort at getting his early WL in motion. 20 I have altered the English translation, making it more transparent. 21 Fichte has already rejected the witness of immediate consciousness: “The science of knowing denies the validity of immediate consciousness’s testimony absolutely as such and for this exact reason: that it is this [i.e. the idealism just rejected by Fichte]” 106 [GA II/8:119.2–3] 22 Fichte had earlier referred to this certainty as “intellectual intuition.” But he had conceded that it took moral conviction to be able to justify the otherwise dogmatic belief, from which Science starts, that we do have such an intuition. Cf. IWL, 49 [GA I/4: [§5], 219.10–23]. 23 The allusion is to Kant. Cf. CPR B641. Fichte’s point was that Kant had been responsible for creating this abyss, the irrationality that affected his system. 24 Corpus mortuum was the term used in alchemy for the precipitate resulting from a reaction. 25 “The gap [hiatus] which as a result of the absolute insight is in essence nothing at all, exists only with respect of the We” 123 [GA II/8:247.35–6]. Also, “The irrational gap … whose validity we have denied” 124 [GA II/8:249.20–1]. 26 These divisions are drawn from the text, not typographically indicated, and the transitions are not as neat as one would wish. 27 Cf. 29 [GA II/8:23.17–27]. The difficulty in citing Fichte’s text is that his technical terms progressively alter in meaning; any fixed quote might prove misleading. 28 Jacobi 2009, 511–12. 29 “The science of knowledge is not a lesson to be learned by heart, but rather an art. Presenting it, too, is not without art” 65 [GA II/8:341.24–6]. But see the rest of the page. 30 This theme is developed in Lecture IV. 31 The whole of Lecture III is relevant. 32 For the use of Schweben in the early Fichte, see Henrich 2003, 212. The term has two equally important senses. On the other hand it denotes the freedom of one who schwebt, the freedom from any fixed point. On the other hand, it denotes a double inclination, a wavering between two directions. 33 48 [GA II/8:69.33–4]. But both what precedes and follows are important.

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34 “To put it simply, oneness cannot in any way consist in what we see or conceive as the science of knowing, because that would be something objective; rather it consists in what we are, and pursue, and live” 56 [GA II/8:87.14–17]. 35 For key texts, see 60, 71 [GA II/8:95.14–97.9; 121.9–34]. 36 From now on especially the exposition is necessarily all too sketchy. 37 Cf. 117 [GA II/8:233.31–235.17]. The “doubling” is lost in the English translation. 38 Projektion occurs in many contexts. For a representative text, see 119 [GA II/8:237.28–34]. 39 For a representative text, 87–8 [GA II.8, 161]. 40 The English transaction has “from.” I prefer “by.” For a representative text, 130 [GA II/8:307.33–4]. 41 For a representative text, 64 [GA II/8:105.28–31]. 42 This is based on Lecture XVII. 43 Cf. 28 [GA II/8:19.35–6]. But Spinoza would also have said as much. 44 This is Lecture XVII. 45 This second part fell into three sub-sections, which Fichte, however, did not advertise until Lecture XXII. The first, from Lecture XVI to XIX, derived “experience”; the second, Lectures XX and XXI, did the same for knowledge; and the third, Lectures XXIII to the end, did it for the WL itself. These divisions are tentative. Fichte himself is not very specific. 46 “Now, a major portion of our task is to demonstrate the genetic principle for this irrational gap [of which facticity is a precipitate] which so far we have presented only factically, whose validity we have denied, but without being able to dispense with it” 124 [GA II/8:249.19–22]. 47 This is Lecture XVI. 48 The following is only an attempt at summing up in a sentence Fichte’s otherwise intricate exposition. 49 For Light as at qualitative oneness, cf. 145 [GA II./.8:297-26-299.4]. 50 Lecture XX. See especially 147–8 [GA II/8:301–4]. 51 For two relevant texts, cf. 146 and 167 [GA II/8:299.15–33; 345.35–347.21].

Bibliography Asmuth, Christoph. 1999. Das Begreifen des Unbegreiflichen: Philosophie und Religion bei Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1800-1806. Bad Cannstatt, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. Barth, Roderich. 2004. Absolute Wahrheit und endliches Wahrheitsbewußtsein. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. Didier, Julia. 1964. La Question de l’Homme et le Fondement de la Philosophie. Paris: Aubier Montaigne. Di Giovanni, George, ed., tr. 2000. Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism (2nd ed.). Indianapolis/Cambride: Hackett. Di Giovanni, George. 2005. Freedom and Religion in Kant and His Immediate Successors: The Vocation of Humankind, 1774–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Di Giovanni, George. 2009. “The Unfinished Philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi.” In The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill (2nd ed.), edited by George Di Giovanni, 1–67. Montréal: McGill-Queen University Press.

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Franke, William. 2014. A Philosophy of the Unsayable. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Henrich, Dieter. 2003. Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism, edited by David S. Pacini. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ivaldo, Marco. 2016. “The Doctrine of Manifestation in Fichte’s Principien,” translated from the Italian by Garth Green, Laval théologique et philosophique 72(2): 35–64. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. 2009. “Jacobi to Fichte (1799).” In The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill (2nd ed.), translated by George Di Giovanni, 497–536. Montréal: McGill-Queen University Press. Janke, Wolfgang. 1970. Sein und Reflexion – Grundlagen der kritischen Vernunft. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Down by Law: On the Structure of Fichte’s 1805 Wissenschaftslehre Emiliano Acosta

In the present chapter1 I offer an introductory study of Fichte’s 1805 Wissenschaftslehre, namely the lectures Fichte held in 1805 at the University of Erlangen about his philosophical system (from now on WL-1805). In doing so, I aim to shed some light on the period of the historical development of the doctrine of science after Jena. The common interpretation considers the doctrine of science after Jena or, more specifically, between 1804 and 1805 as an idealist philosophy of the absolute that abandons or betrays the initial commitment of Fichte to the principles of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. In contrast, I will advance the thesis that the WL-1805 represents a variation only in the way Fichte presents the central ideas of his philosophy, since this variation does not imply that kind of radical transformation, which would lead us to the idea of the existence of at least two different philosophical projects in the doctrine of science: one initiated in Jena and another initiated after, or originated by, the Atheism Dispute. In order to substantiate my thesis, I will show that the WL-1805 remains loyal to the central motives of the original project of the doctrine of science, such as the primacy of practical reason, the postulate of absolute immanence, the primacy of acting above objective being and of normativity above acting, the moral law as a principle of the structure and transformative dynamics of the world, and, last but not least, the identification of God or the absolute with the (moral) law. The chapter is structured in three parts. I will begin with a description of the historical context of these lectures, particularly Fichte’s appointment at the University of Erlangen in 1805. Then, I will discuss three interpretations of the structure of the WL-1805 (Joachim Widmann, Jiménez Redondo, and Günter Zöller). In the third and last section I will offer an alternative way of understanding the structure of these lectures. I will suggest that, although the twenty-nine lectures composing the WL-1805 do not follow a specific and concrete plan (Jiménez Redondo’s thesis) and, in this regard, the WL-1805 has no clear structure and its development is not linear, Fichte knows from the very beginning of the lectures the main idea he wants to make clear, namely the postulate of an imperative, the ought (Soll), as the principle that teleologically structures self-conscious life and explains the necessity of the irremediable duality between knowledge and being or the absolute.

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Historical Context In April 1805, exactly six years after Fichte’s controversial dismissal from the University of Jena as a consequence of the so-called Atheism Dispute, Fichte officially returns to academic life. This time it is not the University of Jena, where he taught until April 1799, but the University of Erlangen that is interested in appointing him. The philosophical landscape in the German speaking world has changed. Fichte is not a representative of the new and revolutionary philosophy anymore. Schelling seems to have occupied his place. The “Messiah of pure reason,” as Jacobi called him, is now merely a thinker, whose philosophical talent is “even respected by his adversaries” and “whose reputation can be put at least on the same level as the reputation of professor Schelling,” as we read in the letter that Baron Karl August von Hardenberg (Privy State, War and Cabinet Minister of Prussia) wrote to convince King Friedrich Wilhelm III to appoint Fichte in Erlangen (GA III/5:292 fn.). From 1799 to 1805 Fichte survived in Berlin as a kind of freelance philosopher, living from his savings, his private lectures, and the publishing of his books: two books in 1800, The Vocation of Man and The Closed Commercial State, and three in 1801, A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand; Fr. Nicolai’s Life and Remarkable Opinions; and J. G. Fichte’s Reply Letter to Professor Reinhold (Fuchs 2009, 243). As we read in the draft of the letter to Fichte by the Franconian Department, responsible for the appointment, dated on April 11, 1805, and signed by Baron von Hardenberg (GA III/5: 291–5), the appointment at Erlangen University was initially planned only for a semester and as an interim professor for the chair in speculative philosophy (GA III/5:291–2). The short-term character of the vacancy is not the only difference between Fichte’s appointments in Jena and Erlangen. On the one hand, in Jena Fichte came to replace Reinhold, who in 1794 decided to move to Kiel, whereas in Erlangen Fichte does not substitute anyone, since the mentioned chair did not exist at this university before. On the other hand, whereas in Jena Fichte had very little or nothing to do with the decision by which he was appointed, in the case of Erlangen Fichte was very active in trying to get the job. As soon as Fichte knew that the University of Erlangen was planning to create a chair for speculative philosophy, he unofficially expressed to Baron Karl August von Hardenberg, a very influential person in the Prussia of Friedrich Wilhelm III, his interest in obtaining this academic position (GA III/9:290). During the summer semester of 1805, from May to September, Fichte taught three courses in Erlangen: Institutiones omnis philosophiae, which is an introduction to philosophy including lectures on logics and metaphysics; Intima scientiae fundamenta, namely the lectures about his own system, now known as the Wissenschaftslehre 1805; and, as he did at the beginning of his academic activity in Jena, a series of public lectures about the mission of scholars: “de moribus eruditorum.”2 Of these three courses Fichte published only the last one, under the title On the Essence of the Scholar and its Appearance in the Realm of Freedom in 1806.

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The precariousness of the job offer, a short-term contract without any mention of a possible renewal (GA III/5:292–5), does not seem to have been a problem for Fichte. This should not surprise us, if we take into account that his financial situation since April 1799 had been very unstable. In this regard, we can assume that, at that very critical moment of his life, Fichte would have accepted any kind of work in the academy and that the temporary character of the vacancy was of no importance at all to him. Although this might be true, it does not seem to be the whole truth. A letter of Fichte from April 26, 1805 (GA III/5:297–8), whose addressee cannot be identified, shows that Fichte does not consider this short-term vacancy merely as better than nothing, but actually as something positive and very convenient for him, first of all because the appointment at the University of Erlangen would not represent an obstacle for his real project in these years: building a career in Berlin. In this regard, the temporary character of the appointment seems to have been the best possible solution for merging his financial needs with his own projects. Fichte was thus initially not interested in a long-term appointment at the University of Erlangen. Moreover, as we can read in the above-mentioned letter, Fichte had already programmed his return to Berlin for September of the same year. In other words, before beginning his lectures he had already decided to go back to Berlin as soon as the semester finished. So, the short-term academic position without any concrete perspectives of becoming a permanent one seems to have been, at least at the very beginning of the Erlangen chapter in Fichte’s life, a win-win situation for both Fichte and the University of Erlangen. After a couple of weeks, however, Fichte changes his mind. A manuscript with some thoughts for his inaugural speech at the University of Erlangen, presumably written at the end of May, bears witness of Fichte’s optimism about this new period in his academic career. Fichte considers his new appointment a kind of resurrection: “I begin a new life … I stand at the grave of my hopes, on the ruins of rejected aspirations. A new day begins … fresh new light of life” (GA II/9:23). On June 1, three weeks after having begun his lectures Institutiones omnis philosophiae and a little more than two weeks before beginning his lectures on his doctrine of science, Fichte confesses in a letter to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer that, although he cannot yet say anything about the success of his courses at the University of Erlangen, “until now things go better than what I expected.” He suggests in the same letter that, if at the end of the semester he is satisfied with his stay in Erlangen, he would not have any problem in repeating this experience the next summer semester (GA III/5:306). In another letter, dated June 6 and apparently addressed to Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (GA III/5:307–11), Fichte tells us that he is now considering the pros and the cons of teaching in Erlangen every summer semester and remaining the rest of the year in Berlin. However, moving to Erlangen was for Fichte totally out of the question. He considered that this would be “a kind of triumph for [his] adversaries in Berlin,” namely for the Berliner intellectuals, Friedrich Nicolai and Johann Erich Biester (among other personalities of the Berliner Aufklärung), who had publicly attacked and caricaturized him since his appointment in Jena and blocked Fichte’s nomination as a member of the Berliner Academy in 1804 (Fuchs 2009, 244).

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In a letter dated March 9, 1806, Fichte officially asks Minister Baron von Hardenberg to change his interim status into a permanent position (Fuchs 2009, 263). His petition is accepted. However, Fichte will never come back to Erlangen. After receiving the confirmation of the appointment as regular professor, he requests in a letter of April 5 to the Baron von Hardenberg a one-semester academic leave for elaborating some ideas concerning the organization of the Erlangen University and “for finalizing a philosophical writing” (GA III/5:342–3).3 At the end of the academic leave, on September 19, 1806, and due to the fact that the French army was approaching Jena, Fichte asks in a letter to King Friedrich Wilhelm III to remain in Berlin until the Prussian army can guarantee “safety” and “order” in Erlangen (GA III/5:366–7). Accordingly, Fichte’s academic leave is extended up to “Easter of next year” (GA III/5:369–70). But then his plan of returning to Erlangen has become impossible: as a consequence of the defeat of Prussia in 1806 against Napoleon’s army in Jena and Auerstedt, both Erlangen and its university fell under the control of the French government.

On the Structure of the Wissenschaftslehre 1805: Three Interpretations There is no doubt that the reading of the Wissenschaftslehre (WL-1805) can, even for Fichte-scholars, result in a kind of despair, since a clear (systematic) structure of the whole exposition is difficult—if not impossible—to identify. The manuscript of these lectures shows that Fichte, when writing them, did not have a well-defined idea of what he would discuss in each lecture. Some of the divisions between the twentynine lectures composing this course have been annotated by Fichte retroactively (GA II/9:175). Another problem for the reader of the WL-1805 is the terminological and conceptual obscurity that dominates from the very beginning Fichte’s first—and last—course about his own philosophy at the University of Erlangen. Despite these difficulties, scholars have tried to decipher the inner logic of the WL-1805.

Widmann and the Wonderful Symmetric Structure of the WL-1805 Contrary to the first negative impression these lectures give us about their systematic configuration, Joachim Widmann has claimed that the “thirty lectures [sic]” of the WL-1805 present “a wonderful symmetric structure” (Widmann 1981, 149) basically consisting of six parts, each one involving five lectures. Widmann’s interpretation is based on the presupposition that Fichte structures his WL-1805 according to his concept of quintuplicity, which basically refers to the essential form and dynamics that ideal or real multiplicity adopts when it is systematically conceived from the point of view of unity. Widmann suggests that the six sets of lectures (6×5) are divided in two groups: the first five lectures serve as an introduction to the system, whereas the other twenty-five lectures form a thematic quintuplicity of quintuplicities (five sets of five lectures each) that must be read as a new version of the very well-known twenty-five moments of Fichte’s WL-18042. The center of union of the WL-1805 is according to

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Widmann Fichte’s doctrine of God, which he situates in the passage from lecture 15 to lecture 16 (Widmann 1981, 150). So, the WL-1805 eventually results in a sevenfold structure composed by an introduction, a thematic quintuplicity and a conceptual core represented by Fichte’s theory of God. Given the fact of the relevance of the concept of quintuplicity in Fichte’s philosophy, Widmann’s hypothesis of the existence of an underlying quintuplicity in the WL-1805 should not surprise us. In fact, it is a hypothesis that never should be absent when we attempt to interpret the presentations of Fichte’s doctrine of science, since according to Fichte the organization of a system, a concept, and/or a synthesis essentially consists of a fivefold schema. Although the term quintuplicity (Fünffachheit) sensu stricto belongs to the terminology of the doctrine of science after 1800, Fichte’s applying of the scheme of quintuplicity can be traced back to his Jena period. His Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge, for instance, provides us with many examples of this. The doctrine of science develops in this work into a fivefold system: three axioms (absolute selfpositing of the I, absolute opposition of a Not-I to the I, and reciprocal limitation of I and Not-I in and through the I) and mainly two theorems (the theorem of Theoretical Knowledge and the theorem of Practical Knowledge, both deduced from the third axiom) (Acosta 2016, 113). The concept of self-consciousness presented in §3 of this work consists also of five elements: on the one hand, the triple inner structure of self-consciousness, I, and Not-I limiting each other in the I, and, on the other, the transcendental outside of the mentioned structure composed by the absolute I and the absolute Not-I as the elements needed to be presupposed for explaining the ceaseless dynamics of self-consciousness (GA I/2:270–2). Finally, the deduction of the categories in the Foundations of the Entire Doctrine of Science results in a quintuplicity as well: a first moment, the category of determination, followed by a double negative moment, the categories of causality and substantiality, a unifying moment of the former two categories in the category of reciprocal determination, and a fifth and last moment consisting in the synthesis of the four first elements into a closed totality opposed to the I and the Not-I considered respectively as independent activity and impulse (Anstoβ) (GA I/2:302, 356). Moreover, Janke observes that Fichte’s system of the philosophical sciences in the Jena period reflects a quintuple structure: a science of sciences (the doctrine of science as philosophia prima) and four particular sciences, namely, philosophy of religion, philosophy of nature, ethics, and philosophy of law (Janke 1977, 102).4 Concerning the WL-1805 in particular, the concept of quintuplicity explicitly appears only in the last lecture (GA II/9:310), where Fichte tries to show that realistic and idealistic philosophies are not self-sufficient, but they are only partial views of the existence of the absolute. The true philosophical experience of the existence of the absolute consists of a fivefold totality composed by realism and idealism as necessarily incomplete ideal configurations of reality, the realistic and the idealistic I as the principles of each of these philosophies, and the I “in its own unity” as “principle of both ways of self-understanding.” So, for Fichte, nothing is wrong with realism and idealism in themselves, namely considered as elements within a fivefold relation. In a certain regard, they are necessary moments in the ascension of the philosophical

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reflection to the highest point of view of the doctrine of science, namely the I “in its own unity.” Precisely the necessity of the realist and the idealist point of view is one of the things Fichte tries to prove in the introduction of the fivefold schema for explaining realism and idealism. The problem with both worldviews lies, according to the doctrine of science, on the false belief that one of them is, or must be, the true one, namely in overlooking or neglecting the underlying quintuplicity and its real principle. Fichte calls this quintuplicity “the known quintuplicity of the synthesis” (GA II/9:310). With the term “known” I do not think that Fichte is referring, as Widmann suggests (Widmann 1981, 150), to some information about the fivefold structure of the whole course that has been orally given during these lectures. I am rather tempted to suggest that Fichte is actually referring to the quintuplicity that he presented the week before in his other course: Institutio omnis philosophiae. The quintuplicity is “known” to the audience because the assistants to his lectures on the doctrine of science, or at least the majority of them, also attended to that introductory course. In the last part of the manuscript of his Institutio, corresponding with a lecture held during the last week of August, Fichte mentions this quintuplicity. After giving two examples of the worldviews including in the quintuplicity, namely “world and ethics,” he interrupts the explanation and proposes to discuss this topic “in the lectures of next week” (GA II/9:168). The “next week” is the first week of September and the last lecture of the WL-1805, in which the expression “the known quintuplicity” appears, and took place on Tuesday September 3. Hence, we cannot discard the possibility of this reference between both courses. Moreover, not only the link Widmann proposes between “the known quintuplicity” and the quintuplicity of quintuplicities he sees in the structure of the WL-1805, but also the link between the former and the fivefold quintuplicity Fichte deduces at the end of his WL-18042, is problematic. This is because in 1804 Fichte does not refer to the structure of the lectures, but to the inner fivefold differentiation of each element of the main quintuplicity of worldviews (GA II/8:419–21). The parallelism Widmann suggests remains thus merely a numerical issue. But let’s now take a closer look at the difficulties Widmann’s interpretation presents. The first problem of this ambitious interpretation, with cabalistic, biblical, and mason connotations, namely his emphasis on the numeric symmetry and the symbolic meanings of the numbers seven and five (Widmann 1981, 150, 152 n. 47), is that the WL-1805 actually consists of twenty-nine lectures. At the beginning of the twenty-ninth lecture, which is the last one, Fichte wrongly annotates the number “30” (GA II/9:308). Widmann, however, presupposes that they were indeed thirty and consequently the pages corresponding to the last two lectures should be read, according to Widmann, as the content of lectures 28, 29, and 30 (Widmann 1981, 152 n. 43). Nevertheless, even if we do not pay attention to these kinds of details, it remains very difficult to identify in the text of the WL-1805 the symmetry Widmann sees in these lectures. For instance, the division he proposes between an introduction, composed by the first five lectures, and the rest of the course is already problematic. Since, as Bertinetto rightly affirms, the WL-1805, unlike Fichte’s expositions of his

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system in 1804, has neither an introduction nor prolegomena (Bertinetto 2007, 525). Indeed: the first lines of the WL-1805 consist precisely of an explanation of why Fichte considers that for his lectures in Erlangen, an introduction is not necessary at all: his audience is not only familiar with the philosophical debate of the time but also with Fichte’s philosophy, as it has been presented in his Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge (GA II/9:179). Moreover, in the first five lectures Fichte has already begun with the clarification of the content of one of the central propositions of these lectures, presented in the third lecture as an axiom: “Knowledge is existence” (GA II/9:189). Besides, it seems very likely that Fichte’s decision to begin his WL-1805 without any prolegomena or introduction is not only because of the intellectual level of the audience, but also because he has already offered such an introduction in the first part of his Instutiones omnis philosophicae, namely the Propaedeutic (GA II/9:35–56), taught from May 13 to June 10, hence before the beginning of the lectures of the WL-1805 on June 18. Whereas Widmann defends his interpretation by analyzing another possible inconsistency between his reading of the WL-1805 and some hints Fichte himself gives about the structure of the lectures, namely that the “theory of the form” does not begin in lecture 20, but in lecture 19 (Widmann 1981, 150), he does not say anything about the difficulties of considering the first five lectures as an introduction. Although it must be acknowledged that Widmann is right in considering the relevance of Fichte’s theory of God for deciphering the inner logic of the WL-1805, there are two main impediments for accepting Widmann’s interpretation. First, there is no evidence that demonstrates that Fichte had this structure in mind when giving these lectures. Widmann admits it, when he confesses that “in the manuscript we have at our disposal Fichte does not say anything about this architectural plan of the Erlangen cycle.” However, Widmann suggests that the quintuplicity he presented corresponds with the above-quoted passage of the last lecture of the WL-1805 about a “known quintuplicity.” He reads these words as a kind of message we cannot understand, because it refers to some content of the WL-1805 that has only been orally communicated (Widmann 1981, 150). But, as said above, this passage seems to refer to the specific quintuplicity in the worldviews that leads to the quintuplicity of the ought (Soll) or duties that structure the multiplicity of rational beings in time and space. So, contrary to Widmann’s interpretation, there is apparently nothing esoteric in this sentence. Second, the WL-1805 offers evidence that, contrary to Widmann’s thesis, in these lectures Fichte is not following any detailed plan of the content of each lecture, designed in advance, nor trying to structure the lectures according to a preconceived fivefold system. At the end of the fourth lecture, for instance, Fichte acknowledges that “through the lecture of Schelling” he has “now a plan for the next lectures” (GA II/9:197, emphasis added). Moreover, the sixth lecture seems not to be originally planned, but prepared and written after Fichte realized that his audience did not understand the difference between facticity (existent, not absolute, being) and existence (the interdependence of subjectivity and objectivity in knowledge) nor the identification between existence and knowledge (GA II/9:203–4). Accordingly, no reader of the WL-1805 should be surprised to have the impression that the sixth lecture consists of a kind of repetition of the fifth lecture.

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Jiménez Redondo: The WL-1805 as a Fivefold Attempt at Conceiving Absolute Existence as Existence of God Maybe the first lines of the seventh lecture are actually the most evident testimony that the structure of the WL-1805 does not reflect a teaching plan designed in advance: at the beginning of this lecture, Fichte directly and straightforwardly proposes to take “a shortcut” for arriving “at the genuine and highest point of view of our science” (GA II/9:209). As Jiménez Redondo emphasizes, a considerable number of recurrences, interruptions, new-beginnings, vague inner references to what, at least to Fichte’s view, has been scientifically deduced, and the aporetic character of some moments of the exposition, make evident that Fichte is teaching without having ever thought of a plan or structure for his WL-1805 (Jiménez Redondo 2009, 463). Nevertheless, according to Jiménez Redondo, the WL-1805 presents a certain structure, which, although it is not linear, permits one to understand the inner logics of these lectures. Jiménez Redondo suggests that the WL-1805 can be reconstructed following a fivefold schema. According to him, the WL-1805 consists of a first part about the conception of knowledge in itself as existence, lectures 1 to 6, and five attempts at demonstrating that the absolute existence is the existence of God (Jiménez Redondo 2009, 465), lectures 7 to 29. Although Jiménez Redondo’s schema partially resembles Widmann’s thesis (1 + 5), the former does not consider the first part of the WL-1805 as an introduction nor suggests that the quintuplicity gathering the rest of the lectures corresponds with a deliberate decision of Fichte. Jiménez Redondo seems precisely to try to argue in the opposite direction: this quintuplicity results from the lack of a concrete plan for the lectures, since each attempt is a consequence of the failure of the former. According to Jiménez Redondo, each attempt highlights a different aspect of absolute knowledge or, in other words, existence in its inherent, but unconceivable, relation to the absolute: (1) lectures 7 to 10 show that universal, namely supraindividual, self-consciousness exclusively considered as action, which Fichte in these lectures calls light, is only an apparent absolute; (2) lectures 11 to 13 focus on the absolute as appearing in the element of faith or belief; (3) lectures 14–18 introduce the problem of conceiving God or the absolute, namely of conceiving the inconceivable, and postulate the identification of the absolute existence with an act that consists in nothing but acting, namely factum fiens or I as Thathandlung; (4) lectures 21 to 25 are meant to demonstrate that the absolute existence necessarily understands itself as nothingness, when this self-knowledge observes itself in opposition to the absolute; and, finally, (5) lectures 26 to 29 show that freedom and law are two sides of the same experience of the liaison of absolute knowledge with the absolute. The failure of each attempt lies, according to Jiménez Redondo, in the presupposition that the respective outcome coincides with the real demonstration that absolute knowledge is the existence of the absolute. Consequently, each new attempt means Fichte’s implicit or explicit acknowledgment that the former attempt was not the answer for which the WL-1805 had to provide. Consequently, Fichte’s final attempt, lectures 26 to 29, must be considered as the last word of the WL-1805 about the meaning of the axiom (Grundsatz) or main proposition (Hauptsatz) that structures these lectures, namely that: absolute knowledge or absolute existence is existence of the absolute.

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Jiménez Redondo succeeds, to my view, in giving a detailed analysis of the inner logic of the WL-1805 as well as in identifying the above-mentioned axiom as effectively guiding Fichte’s presentation of his system. Nevertheless, I do not agree with his argument that the corroboration of Fichte’s lack of a clear idea for the concrete development of his lectures allows us to conclude that Fichte in general terms did not have a main idea for this new presentation of his philosophy in 1805. Jiménez Redondo seems to have concluded without having exhaustively surveyed the context of the WL1805 in Fichte’s corpus. For instance, he does not discuss the possibility of identifying the main idea or plan of the WL-1805 by means of analyzing the link between the WL1805, Fichte’s Berliner lectures of 1804 and the manuscripts Fichte wrote some weeks before the beginning of his Erlangen lectures on the doctrine of science.

Zöller and the Relevance of the Berliner Lectures for Understanding the WL-1805 As Günter Zöller points out, the title Fichte gives to the manuscript of these lectures, namely “4th series of lectures of the doctrine of science” (4ter Vortrag der Wissenschaftslehre), shows that Fichte considers his WL-1805 as a continuation of the three Berliner expositions of the doctrine of science in 1804 (Zöller 2009, 205). Moreover, as Zöller rightly observes, the Erlangen doctrine of science is not merely a continuation of the Berliner presentations, but a critical one, since Fichte aims with these lectures at reconsidering the relation between the absolute and the knowledge as explained in the three expositions of 1804. Whereas this relation in the presentations of 1804 is dissociative and transcendent (between the absolute and the knowledge as its manifestation there is a hiatus irrationalis or an abyss), the WL1805 attempts at conceiving this relation in terms of integration and immanence (the unconceivable root of knowledge, namely the absolute, is to be found in the knowledge itself) (Zöller 2009, 208). Nevertheless, the WL-1805 is, according to Zöller, not only a continuation of the Berliner presentations of the doctrine of science, but also of Fichte’s lectures of 1804 on The principles of the doctrines of God, Morals and Law (Zöller 2009, 205). Zöller’s claim is based on his reading of Fichte’s annotations After Finishing the Lectures [on the Principles of the doctrines of God, Morals and Law] (GA II/9:5) and New Considerations Connected with the Last Berliner Thoughts (GA II/9:7–17). The manuscripts are dated April and May of 1805, some weeks before the beginning of his Erlangen lectures on the doctrine of science. These manuscripts, as I will show in the following section, provide us with evidence that Fichte at that time already knew that the content or main message of the WL-1805 should be that the absolute reveals in knowledge as law and as such it structures the totality of existence: on the one hand, nature and the multiplicity of existent rational beings, and on the other the self-conscious knowledge of both mentioned realms of existence, namely the doctrine of science. Accordingly, both manuscripts serve not only as a source for a better understanding of some concepts of the WL-1805, but also as a kind of compass that can orient the reading of the WL-1805, because they make the structure Fichte planned for his WL-1805 visible. Zöller, however, concentrates only on the passages of these manuscripts where Fichte’s discussion of the relationship

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between being/absolute and knowledge is connected to Fichte’s concept of “image” and “belief ” or “faith” (Zöller 2009: 210–19) and does not discuss the possibility that these manuscripts also disclose the inner logic of the WL-1805 or even the idea that guides these lectures. The absence of this last issue in Zöller’s analysis of Fichte’s notations from April and May of 1805 may be only due to the specific goal of Zöller’s article, which was to give a detailed examination of the particularity of the concept of belief in the WL-1805.

On the Structure of the WL: An Alternative Interpretation Fichte’s manuscript After Finishing the Lectures, no longer than twenty lines, can be considered as an outline of the WL-1805. It is structured in three points. The first one concerns the existence of the absolute in its basic duplicity, namely, as existing reality (absolute knowledge) and as doctrine of science (absolute knowledge that knows about its own nature). The second point is about the two transcendental outsides of existence, namely on the one hand the unconceivable infinitude represented by the totality of the eternal material (das ganze ewige Materiale) and on the other God. The third and last topic refers to the concrete task Fichte wanted to accomplish during his lectures on the doctrine of science: demonstrating not only the connection of rational activity with the absolute ought, but also the connection of the factual being with the absolute being (GA II/9:5).

The Outline of the WL-1805 The first point of this outline states that everything is already posited through “the mere existence of the absolute” (GA II/9:5). Everything does not only mean the multiplicity of existence, but the totality of what ideally and/or really exists: the ought (das Soll), the intuition, and the intellectual activity and the totality of its laws. In the WL-1805, this positing of everything is represented by the axiom the existence or the  absolute knowledge is the existence of the absolute. There is no real outside or outside in itself for the WL-1805. As we read in the other manuscript, New Considerations Connected with the Last Berliner Thoughts: “we do not go out of knowledge” (GA II/9:9). Accordingly, the absolute is not a transcendent being, but the absolute the existence refers to. So, from the very beginning, the transcendental philosophical principle of immanence is active in the WL-1805. Fichte distinguishes between a material and a qualitative ought. This distinction seems to correspond with the distinction he explains in the last lecture of the WL-1805 between a “pure ought” and an “ought of the factual unity.” These two aspects of the ought are actually its main forms, since they make possible, as I will show below, both the further expansion of the ought to a quintuplicity of ought-forms and the genesis of a second fivefold series of the ought, namely the quintuplicity of the worldviews (GA II/9:311). Fichte describes the existence of the absolute, considered exclusively as a positing, as the “original genesis,” the conception of which is represented by the doctrine of science (GA II/9:5). This primary genesis is, however, neither a being nor an

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action, but a positing as hypothesis that as such essentially has a normative character. This is the reason why Fichte, in the manuscript New Considerations, considers the ought as the still not performed action that has to become a genesis, specifically the “primordial genesis [Urgenesis]” (GA II/9:7). Fichte’s explanation of this first point of the outline in both manuscripts refers to the beginning and the end of the WL1805 and, consequently, shows that there is no hazard in the fact that the WL-1805 begins with the analysis of the content of the proposition “knowledge is existence of the absolute” nor with the fact that these lectures lead to the conception of the ought as the last explanation of this proposition. The second point of the outline concerns both external sides of knowledge as existence: the unconceivable materiality of objective being as such and the unconceivable nature of God. As Fichte affirms in his New Considerations, objectivity emerges through the self-understanding of knowledge only as a part of reality (GA II/9:7). This kind of self-reflection that produces a non-identity between knowledge and existent object corresponds with the concept of no-consequence in the WL-1805. Therefore, objectivity and objective being is only possible due to the self-consciousness that constitutes subjectivity (GA II/9:209). Three main conclusions can be drawn from the concept of no-consequence. First, a traditional modern materialist or nature-scientific explanation of the genesis of the object is unconceivable within the limits of the doctrine of science. Accordingly, Schelling’s philosophy of nature does not represent a better or amended version of the doctrine of science or the Kantian transcendental philosophy (GA II/9:219). Second, the no-consequence mainly consists of the impossibility of subjectivity as such of recognizing itself in the object that appears as an external existent being. This impossibility is, however, constitutive for both sides of knowledge: subjectivity and objectivity. So, without consciousness of an object there is no possible selfconsciousness. Therefore, the original, and as such irremediable, duplicity between subjectivity and objectivity is a moment of the absolute knowledge. Third, when dealing in the manuscript New Considerations with the genesis of objectivity as related to the alienation (Entfremdung) of knowledge, Fichte writes, “this seems to be surely a brand-new thought” (GA II/9:7). The novelty of the thought, however, does not lie on the immanent character of the genesis of objectivity, but on the connection of this genesis with the ought, since Fichte’s argument is not that the no-consequence is possible, but that it is necessary, and this necessity is expressed in the law that orders how subjectivity and objectivity must emerge (ibid.). The conception of objectivity as mainly linked to the realm of the ought or the imperative is, for Fichte, connected with the other transcendental externality of knowledge, namely God, since for Fichte the crucial question to be answered is “to what extent is God itself the ground of the quality of the object” (GA II/9:5). Fichte considers this question crucial, because the victory in his personal strife against Schelling’s philosophy of nature depends of the answer to this question (ibid.). The third point of the outline is connected to the argument about objectivity and law I mentioned above. Fichte considers that the doctrine of science must demonstrate that the factual being is related to the absolute ought in order to show the necessity of both existent ideality and reality. Fichte observes that there is a similarity between the

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dynamics of objective existent being and the concept of goal (Zweckbegriff) and that, consequently, an existent being has to be conceived as an “ought that lives” and as such must have a certain liaison with the absolute ought (GA II/9:5). The WL-1805 must attempt at demonstrating that the totality of existence, namely absolute knowledge in itself and in its realization as a reciprocal determination between subjectivity and objectivity, can only be explained by means of deducing it from the absolute ought or imperative. As Fichte says at the end of his After Finishing the Lectures: “this is the task I specially want to accomplish” (ibid.).

The Three Main Moments of the WL-1805 The three points of the outline shed light on the basic threefold structure of the WL1805. The first part (lectures 1 to 17) consists of an analysis of the axiom absolute knowledge is existence of the absolute, which is, as I mentioned above, an immanentist declaration of principles. The analysis focuses on the elements constituting knowledge, understood as existence of the absolute: self-reflectivity in actu, namely the effective self-positing of the I as an I (Fichte calls it the “as” or “the relation”), self-reflectivity in potentia, namely this self-positing but considered exclusively as a condition of possibility of self-consciousness and knowing in general (“light”), co-constitution of subjectivity and objectivity in terms of reciprocal implication and exclusion (postulate of the no-consequence of the existence), belief and unbelief as realizations of the free relation between the individually situated existence and the absolute, the real, pure and practical I as an existential form of God, namely as Thathandlung or factum fiens, the concept as the essence of objectivity and the impossibility of objectivizing the being. Fichte’s terminology of the WL-1805 does not totally exclude the vocabulary of the doctrine of science of Jena. In the WL-1805, Fichte refers to central terms of his Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge such as I, Not-I, and Thathandlung to make his point even clearer for an audience that know his philosophy from having read his book from 1794/95. But the resemblances do not remain on a superficial level, since, for instance, Fichte’s schema of the “concept of the absolute” (GA II/9:250), namely of the self-knowing knowledge of the absolute, structurally repeats the abovementioned fivefold structure of self-consciousness in Fichte’s Foundations (see above). The core of this fivefold concept of the WL-1805 that depicts the theoretical moment of absolute knowledge consists of three elements: (1) existence as subject, (2) existence as predicate or object, and (3) light and “as” understood respectively as the possibility and the effective reality of the relation of identity and difference between subject and object. This threefold unity presupposes two transcendental, not transcendent, outsides: the absolute and the unconceivable existent being as such, namely an existent being to be placed outside any relation of dependence or interdependence with subjectivity. The first of these outsides eventually reveals in the WL-1805 as ought or law, and in this regard corresponds with Fichte’s consideration of the absolute I in §3 of his Foundations as the demand (Forderung) that there be a synthesis between I and Not-I (GA I/2:270). The second outside can and must only be presupposed: this negativity that Fichte does not hesitate to call “Not-I” “ought to independently exist” (GA II/9:274). The resemblance between Jena and Erlangen,

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however, does not imply that there are no differences between both schemas. The most important difference does not consist of a redefinition of self-consciousness in pre-critical or transcendent terms, but, on the contrary, of a radicalization of the transcendental philosophical principle of immanence. Indeed, unlike the explanation of the Foundations, the schema offered in WL-1805 makes clearer the conviction Fichte already had in Jena, but he could not put in well-defined terms, maybe due to the undesired connotations of Fichte’s concept of impulse (Anstoss), namely: that for transcendental philosophy there is not outside in itself, that the unconceivable outside of self-consciousness is actually produced by the original reflection that constitutes self-consciousness. The second part (lectures 18 to 27) is essentially the “doctrine of the form [Formlehre],” which Fichte announces in lecture 18 (GA II/9:263) and discusses from lecture 19 onwards. This doctrine is, on the one hand, an analysis of that particularity of existence that can only be grasped when we oppose the existence to the absolute, on the other, a deduction of the definitive conception of the alienated or externalized absolute as the absolute law or Urgenesis. Fichte’s analysis results, firstly, in the demonstration not only of the nothingness but also of the necessity of existence. By means of understanding this opposition, the existence reveals to itself as a nihility. Within this nothingness, Fichte distinguishes an active and a passive element: the creative activity (pure understanding) and the creation (objectivity in general) respectively. Therefore, Fichte does not conceive of creation as esse ex nihilo nor as simply nihil ex nihilo, but in terms of a nihil nihilo atque ex nihilo: a nothingness created by and out of nothingness. The nothingness of both the creation and its creator, which is not God, but knowledge considered as pure understanding (GA II/9:288), consists in existing solely as a form, which is lacking an absolute being as the substrate of existence. According to Fichte, when existence turns inwardly, it does not find a substrate, but simply a sign, the reference to the absolute being as the only being stricto sensu. This reference is what the genitive “of ” means in Fichte’s expression existence of the absolute. But this genitive must be read, according to Fichte, in two directions, namely not merely as expressing the dependence of exclusively one of the elements to the other in the relation, since the existence is the only possible exteriorization or revelation of the absolute. The existence is thus as necessary as the absolute. This argument about the necessity of both sides of the unconceivable relation between the absolute and its existence reveals the transcendental philosophical character of the doctrine of science after Jena. Within the limits of mere reason, namely the realm of the doctrine of science as transcendental philosophy, the absolute appears as nothing but a presupposition or limiting concept (Grenzbegriff) that serves for understanding the real nature of existence as existence of the absolute. Without the existence, there is no absolute. This interdependence becomes clearer in the light of a passage of Fichte’s Erlangen introductory lectures, the Institutio, corresponding with the part dedicated to Fichte’s logic. Like in the above-quoted case of the “known quintuplicity,” these introductory lectures serve once again to explain another obscurity of the WL-1805: the real meaning of “form” in the expression “doctrine of form.” In his lectures on logic, Fichte affirms that the absolute in itself does not exist, since existence basically consists in the negation of absolute simplicity. Therefore, if it exists, it can only exist

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in a form different to the in-itself-form, namely in the form of existence as knowledge or “divine life.” “This doctrine is not new,” comments Fichte in this passage and then adds, “see the beginning of John’s Gospel and translate λόγος into my language: form” (GA II/9:112). In John’s Gospel, we do not find the idea of a transcendent God or of a God that can be conceived without its revelation, the Word. Both God and the λόγος are eternal and necessary (Jn. 1:1–2). Nor do we find the idea of God as creator of the universe, since everything has been created through the λόγος (Jn. 1:3). So, life has the same substrate as a word expressed by somebody: it has no being, but only the reference to what really exists. In this regard, the above-quoted passage of the Institutio makes clear why Fichte by the term “doctrine of form” means a deduction of both the nothingness and necessity of existence as resulting from the opposition to the absolute. But as I said above, self-knowledge in Fichte’s philosophy always creates a difference, an outside. In this regard, the absolute opposed to the Creation is not the absolute in itself, but the absolute as “merely pure law” (GA II/9:287). Self-knowing knowledge finds in its own interiority a sign, which is a law, an imperative. Accordingly, the WL-1805 considers not only that above existent being there is the activity that creates objectivity, but also that there is still a higher instance that serves as the principle for action in general: the law. After the Atheism Dispute, Fichte is aware of the necessity of integrating the religious question in his system. Fichte admits that he now wants “to do justice to Religion,” but “without belittling the dignity of morals” (GA III/5:305). This integration, however, does not essentially differ from his point of view about the same issue during and before the Atheism Dispute. The solution he offers in the WL-1805 for a conciliation of religion and morals resembles the one he gave in 1798 when he published his On the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World-Governance, the essay that motivated the Atheism Controversy: God is nothing but the idea of a moral world order (GA I/5:354). So, in 1805 Fichte is not modifying his so-called atheism, but actually repeating the same provocative gesture. Last but not least, the identification of God with the law in 1798 and 1805 is essentially connected to Fichte’s reformulation of the Kantian categorical imperative in his Foundations (GA I/2:396 fn.) as the law that explains the necessity of the Not-I (its impossibility of being absolutely integrated in the I) as the negativity needed for the striving of the I toward the accomplishment of its own ideal. In the WL-1805, the necessity of the multiplicity of the existence becomes visible through the discovering of the unity incarnated by a law that merely orders a “that”: that there be existence and, accordingly, that existence structures in a specific (fivefold) way (GA II/9:287). This structure is the topic of the last part, which consists in the descending from the principle of the absolute as law to the multiplicity ordered according to the model of the quintuplicity. The third and last section of the WL-1805 (lectures 28 and 29) departs from the conception of the absolute as the law that commands that there be existence for deducing the quintuplicity of both the worldviews and the duties or ought-forms that structure the existence of the multiplicity of rational beings. As Fichte declares in his Institutio, “the legislation [that we find] in self-understanding,” namely in the activity

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of recognizing the nothingness of existence as the essential character of existence, results in “a quintuplicity” (GA II/9:168). At the end of the WL-1805 and as the definitive conclusion of these lectures, Fichte presents this quintuplicity as a “step-ladder of oughts [Stuffenleiter von Sollen]” (GA II/9:311), in which the third ought or imperative (c) creates a new quintuplicity consisting in five different ways of considering the world in broader sense. So, unlike the fivefold quintuplicity of the WL-18042, the quintuplicity of the WL-1805 is twofold. Fichte proposes the following schema for understanding both quintuplicities (GA II/9:311): Table 11.1  First level: Relation of the factual I (B) to the Absolute as absolute law or ought (A). Second level: Quintuplicity of ought-forms (a-e). Third level: Quintuplicity of worldviews (e-a). A–B abcde e cd ab

Table 11.1 shows the two quintuplicities that emerge from the relation of the factual I to the absolute conceived as law. The first one consists of a horizontal series, the second one describes a pyramid. The first fivefold series of ought-forms (the horizontal series of the table) describes the different realizations of the relation of the factual or effective I, individual free subjectivity (B), to the absolute (A), which “as principle is in itself the reflection-law of freedom” (ibid.). The first imperative (a) is a “pure ought” that expresses the form of the law in general. The second one (b) refers to the “essential unity” of the existence that is implied in the third ought (c), namely “the ought of the factual unity” (ibid.). Unlike the first two forms of the ought, which seem to be only necessary presuppositions, the third one can be effectively experienced in the empirical self-consciousness. According to Fichte the knowledge of the second ought depends on the third one, and the knowledge of the first one depends on the second one (GA II/9:310). Put in Kantian terms: whereas the pure ought is ratio essendi of the ought of the essential unity and this one is ratio essendi of the ought of the factual unity, in terms of knowledge we find this hierarchy inverted, since the third ought is ratio cognoscendi of the second one, and the second one of the first ought. The third ought-form corresponds with the facticity of the imperative and incarnates as such in the actions of the individualized free existence, the empirical  rational being, which as individual presupposes a multiplicity of rational beings (GA I/3:347). Following the imperative of the ought as factual unity (c), the activity of the multiplicity of rational beings is structured in a new quintuplicity: the fivefold series of worldviews (the pyramidal series of the table). These five ways of experiencing the world, already

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presented at the end of the WL-18042 and discussed more in detail in his The Way Towards the Blessed Life of 1806 (DR [GA I/9:50, 106-13]), are: (a) the experience of the world as nature or immediate reality, (b) the experience of the world as governed by objective legality and the categorical imperative, (c) the experience of creative freedom or genuine ethics transforming the world, (d) the belief that the world reflects the existence of God, and (e) the knowledge that the world is existence of the absolute. The last two ought-forms of the first quintuplicity (d and e of the horizontal series in the table) refer to the quintuplicity of worldviews that emerged from the third ought. The unity of the five world-perspectives is, according to Fichte, commanded by the fourth ought. The fifth ought-form commands the realization of this unity as a “factual infinite world in the understanding” (GA II/9:311). With the exposition of the two fivefold series, Fichte accomplishes not only the task the Erlangen doctrine of science must undertake according to the manuscript After Finishing the Lectures, but also the task Fichte announces at the very beginning of the WL-1805: demonstrating that the doctrine of science is a necessary moment in the total realization of the existence of the absolute as commanded by a “regulative law” that eventually refers to the exteriorization of the absolute in the element of the law (GA II/9:181–2). *** The reconstruction I presented of the structure of the WL-1805, based on the indications of the two manuscripts elaborated before the beginning of the Erlangen lectures on the doctrine of science, basically sheds light on the thematic core of these lectures. The WL-1805 is not an explanation of the absolute but of the existence of the absolute understood as absolute knowledge in its two necessary forms of existence: as in itself and as reconstructed in the element of a doctrine of science. Besides, it shows that the WL-1805 follows the sequence Fichte suggests in the WL-18042 (GA II/8:421): ascending from given multiplicity (absolute knowledge is existence) to unity (the absolute law) and descending from this unity to the quintuplicity of existence (fivefold structure of ought-forms and fivefold structure of worldviews). In doing this, the WL-1805 postulates that the basic relation of individual subjectivity to the absolute is a relation to the law as the principle of conscious experience of the world. The whole dynamics of the WL-1805 reflects the active presence even after Jena of the primacy of practical reason in the doctrine of science. The doctrine of science bears witness of its fidelity to this Kantian motive by subordinating the theoretical knowledge to the practical one, or the theory to the praxis. The WL-1805, as I tried to show, is not an exception: the existent being refers to the concept, the concept to activity, activity to freedom, and freedom to law. In this regard, the theoretical discussion in the WL-1805 about the relation between the absolute and its revelation, namely absolute knowledge as existence of the absolute, must always be considered as Fichte’s strategy for arriving at the practical core of absolute knowledge: the revelation of God as regulative law.

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Notes 1 I would like to thank Ms. Sofie Avery for proofreading this chapter. 2 Later in 1811, appointed as professor at the recently founded University of Berlin, Fichte will offer for the third and last time his lectures on the mission of the scholar (Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, GA II/12:309–63). 3 We do not know if Fichte means his On the Essence of the Scholar and its Appearance in the Realm of Freedom or his The Way Towards the Blessed Life; or, the Doctrine of Religion, both published in 1806, or, as the editors of the volume GA III/5 suggest, his Report on the concept of the doctrine of science and its hitherto fortune (GA III/5:342 n. 3). 4 On the fivefold structure of Fichte’s system of philosophical sciences in Jena, see also Philonenko 1999, 98–100.

Bibliography Acosta, Emiliano. 2016. “La transformación de la tabla kantiana de las categorías en el Fundamento de toda la doctrina de J. G. Fichte de 1794/95.” Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, 33(1): 103–35. Bertinetto, Alessandro. 2007. “Genèse et récursivité: la déduction des catégories dans la Doctrine de la science de 1805 de J. G. Fichte.” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 56(4): 521–53. Fuchs, Erich. 2009. “Fichte in Erlangen: Historische Umstände und Bedeutung seiner Berufung.” Fichte-Studien 34: 235–69. Janke, Wolfgang. 1977. Historische Dialektik. Destruktion dialektischer Grundformen von Kant bis Marx. Berlin: De Gruyter. Jiménez Redondo, Manuel. 2009. “L’exposé de la Doctrine de la Science de 1805.” Archives de Philosophie 72 (3): 463–81. Philonenko, Alexis. 1999. La liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Widmann, Joachim. 1981. “Das Problem der veränderten Vortragsformen von Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre – am Beispiel der Texte von 18042 und 1805.” In Der transzendentale Gedanke: Die gegenwärtige Darstellung der Philosophie Fichtes, edited by Klaus Hammacher, 143–54. Hamburg: Meiner. Zöller, Günter. 2009. “‘Einsicht im Glauben.’ Der dunkle Grund des Wissens in der Wissenschaftslehre 1805.” Fichte-Studien 34: 203–19.

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Systematic and Doctrinal Differences of Fichte’s Early and Late Wissenschaftslehre: From the I as Tathandlung to God as Schema Rainer Schäfer

Introduction A comparison of Fichte’s early and late Wissenschaftslehre (WL) (usually translated as the Science of Knowledge) implies that both versions have some essential features in common (brilliantly compared by Stolzenberg 2006 and Janke 1970). In this chapter, I will elaborate on the thoughts, which carried on from early to late WL notwithstanding that several arguments and elements changed. In Fichte research, it is not controversial that doctrinal and methodical changes occur in Fichte’s seventeen different presentations of the Science of Knowledge. From the deductive system starting with the “absolute I” or “Tathandlung” in the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge (1794/95), to the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (between 1796 and 1799)—the title indicating the methodical shift—where Fichte starts with the concrete I, to the WL version from 1801, with its antinomical structure of realism vs. idealism, to the later version from 1804, where Fichte uses a dialectica ascendence, the so-called way of truth, and a dialectica descendence, the way of appearance (sometimes also called the way of phenomenology), it is obvious that Fichte changed his doctrinal method.1 In the WL 1804, Fichte argues that in order to “reach” pure being knowledge has to destroy itself. Fichte determines pure being as a being enclosed in itself, as well as a “we,” the synthesis of spirits. The controversy concerns the systematic content of the Science of Knowledge. It is well known that the early Fichte from around 1792 on develops a transcendental “egology”—mainly remaining within the critical restrictions of theoretical and practical philosophy built by Kant (cf. Zöller 2002). Later, starting from around 1800, Fichte stressed that God is prior to the idealism of the I, for the I is “only” an image of God. Often Fichte avoids the term God and simply calls this sphere of priority to the I the Absolute, being, life, or the One. Even if the title Science of Knowledge is unchanged for his scientific and non-popular philosophy, this forms a fundamental systematic difference of early and late Fichte.

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This difference could be interpreted in different ways. One can say (1) that the hiatus gives evidence that Fichte’s project fails (that is what Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and Schelling said) (cf. SSW I/7: 25), or (2) that late Fichte’s different and new philosophy composes a well justified shift, for his earlier, too narrow conception needs a basis in ontology/henology. In parallel to Heidegger’s understanding of Schelling’s later philosophy as completion of idealism in his Freedom Essay, this position could signal that Fichte advances from transcendental idealism to henologic ontology (Henrich 2008, 263–76). Another reading is the claim (3) that the whole philosophy of Fichte forms a continuous transcendental development from I-philosophy to the absolute being without a fundamental difference, making different parts of the whole intelligible area of transcendental thinking (cf. Zöller 2001 and Asmuth 2007). There is also a position that (4) holds that the late version is a necessary clarification of what Fichte said in his early period. The Absolute is just another name for the absolute I.2 Therefore, two different interpretations of continuity and discontinuity are possible. Similar problems arise in the interpretation of early and late Wittgenstein, as well as Heidegger before and after his famous turn. The dispute in Fichte research has a serious cause. On the one hand, Fichte claims self-sufficiency for the I and self-consciousness in his early versions of the Science of Knowledge. On the other hand, in his later versions it seems that the I, which to be sure still plays a crucial role, becomes dependent on or is at least essentially related to the absolute being. The I is now “only” an image of the Absolute. Furthermore, reflective knowledge has to destroy itself at the Absolute. This presents a serious systematic problem not only in Fichte-scholastics, but for philosophy in general, because the nucleus of the problem is this: Does the unity of subjectivity presuppose Oneness, or vice versa? If Oneness is a (ontological) fundament for the unity of subjectivity, the next question is this: Which kind of ontology is required to determine Oneness? If it holds “no entity without Oneness,” Oneness could not be an entity. Naturalism, materialism, and realism do not work here, since Oneness seems to be an intelligible determination, and as Fichte’s early work showed, evidently nature, matter, and reality presuppose constitutive acts of subjectivity. Another important question is: Why did Fichte change his mind? Or if one claims the continuity thesis in regard to (4): Why did Fichte start to use such a different terminology? Or in regard to (3): Why did Fichte not mention the Absolute as crucial precondition for the I in his earlier WL? The latter question is uneasy for the third interpretation, for if this interpretation is correct and the Absolute in Fichte’s later WL is still a critical transcendental principle, how could Fichte miss such an important determination in his earlier WL? The consequence would be that his earlier versions are essentially incomplete transcendental philosophy and that they do not form a system. Therefore, to hold that the early versions of a consequent “egology” form a complete transcendental idealism implies that Fichte embarks with God to a new topic from around 1800. Namely, to a non-egological basis and ontological precondition of the I and of self-consciousness. This non-egological fundament is unity and Oneness. The question now regards whether this Oneness/the Absolute is justified within a transcendental idealism or needs external justification beyond transcendental idealism

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and metaphysical realism. One can observe that Fichte’s philosophy becomes stricter and stricter regarding Oneness/the Absolute in the period after 1800 and that he was still on the way to a justification of Oneness beyond idealism and realism, culminating in his late Berlin period. This is the reason why I will compare in this paper the early version of the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge (1794) and the latest complete version of the WL from 1812.3 The answer often presented is that the atheism controversy made Fichte change his conception of philosophy and forced him to introduce God as precondition for the I. Looking at it superficially, this seems to be the case: Around 1799 the accusation of atheism began and around 1800 the aforementioned development started. However, this is only a superficial explanation because it is just a biographic reason, not a philosophical one. The role of God as foundation of the I as well as the determination of God (a self-contained being, the One) are not a withdrawal from the position Fichte held around 1799/1800, but rather it is a radicalization. Fichte’s idea of God as the One drifts further and further away from Christianity, coming closer to a Neoplatonic version like that in Plotinus or Proclus (cf. Baumgartner 1980 and Crüsgen 2003). Fichte quite often emphasizes that his and Spinoza’s conception of the One, being, God are the same, just that Spinoza did not accurately understand what that means. But Spinoza, at least in the perspective of the persons impeaching Fichte for atheism, is an atheist. Therefore, it would be a Pyrrhic victory if Fichte were to change his mind in order to get away from atheism accusations by arguing for his version of an updated Spinozism. There must be a philosophical reason why Fichte introduces the One, God, or the Absolute as a precondition of the I. I believe that the philosophical argument consists in the insight that the Tathandlung (“deed-act”) of the “I = I” in the first paragraph of the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge presupposes a unity of a higher order. The I reaches a unity or oneness in the Tathandlung, i.e., in the act of positing itself, which is a being only related to itself. That pro-position “I am I” is not being in general, it is “only” self-referential being and it is “only” the foundation for more complicated and more imparted versions of self-reference. Being in general is more fundamental and more comprehensive than self-referential being.

The Self-Created Being of the Absolute I In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues in §15 of the transcendental deduction in the B version that the elements of knowledge are manifold and synthesis of the manifold (cf. B 130). Furthermore, in order to synthesize the manifold, a unity is necessary; a synthesis as combination or connection is only possible if a unity exists prior to the moments that are to be connected. Therefore, synthesis presupposes unity. This unity is neither the quantitative category of unity nor the quantitative logical judgment function of singularity. Both are already a kind of synthesis. It would create circular reasoning if synthesis in general were explained or grounded by a particular kind of synthesis, namely quantitative synthesis. The unity that makes synthesis possible must be a unity of a higher order than all kinds of unity produced by spontaneous synthesis. It must be the unity included in spontaneous

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synthesis. Kant gives a hint to a “qualitative” unity (cf. CPR B131).4 But insofar as categorial quality (reality, negation, limitation) is also a type of synthesis, and the qualitative logical judgment function is a type of synthesis, both presuppose unity. These two kinds of qualitative unity would form the same circular reasoning as the quantitative determinations. The unity Kant has in mind must be of a higher order: it is the transcendental unity of apperception. Fichte tries to explain this unity in his early Science of Knowledge by the positing and self-positing of the I, and in his later versions he tries to show that prior to the self-posited being of the I, being as unity or Oneness is necessary. In §1 of the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge, the I posits itself absolutely, i.e., unconditioned. Even the logical proposition of identity “A = A” is only a propaedeutic aid to lead to the fundamental principle, for in order to posit the first “A,” the second “A” and the unity of both—namely the “=”—requires and presupposes an identical subject that posits all three logical elements (cf. SK 94–7 [GA I/2:256–60]). This positing and identical I is the ratio essendi for the logical identity within “A = A”; the logical identity is the ratio cognoscendi for the “I = I.” Since “no entity without identity” is true and identity of entities implies positing of identity, the positing I is necessary in each possible world for all entities. “No identity without positing; no positing without I.” This I is the unity Kant was talking about in §15 of the transcendental deduction. The grounding I, Fichte explains, has two different moments, namely on the one side it is meant noematically, it is a matter of fact if we observe the I as posited; and on the other side it is meant noetically, it is the act of (self-) positing unity. The noematic self-identity presupposes the act of noetic self-identity, and the latter is what Fichte means by Tathandlung (deed-act). Each mental human activity implies that a noematic content is identical with itself, and therefore the positing self-identity is (at least latent and hidden, but sometimes also more thematically) included in each mental representation. The Tathandlung permeates each mental activity and is spread out through all consciousness as a www or as the “unity of the theme in a play.” That is the reason why the positing I is fundamental and grounding, since each mental activity is only possible under this condition of “I = I.” The self in the first sense, and that in the second, are supposed to be absolutely equivalent. Hence one can also reverse the above proposition and say: the self posits itself simply because it exists. It posits itself by merely existing and exists by merely being posited. And this now makes it perfectly clear in what sense we are using the word “I” in this context, and leads us to an exact account of the self as absolute subject. That whose being or essence consists simply in the fact that it posits itself as existing, is the self as absolute subject. As it posits itself, so it is; and as it is, so it posits itself; and hence the self is absolute and necessary for the self. What does not exist for itself is not a self. (SK 98 [GA I/2:259–60])

This kind of actively self-posited being is the ground of all activity (and—as will be shown in all further deductions within the WL—of all passivity, too). This being is the ground and fundamental structure of all self-related being; to be more precise, of all immediate (intuitive) and mediated (conceptual) self-related being in theoretical

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and practical regard. To the absolute I, no being could be prior, for to be means being identical to it- or one-self. The “I = I” proposition is therefore regarding its content and regarding its form unconditioned in the literal sense, namely nothing could be the condition for the I to be posited, except itself. The Tathandlung of “I = I” is the ground of all determinations and all possible predications; therefore, itself it is not specifically determined and includes no determinations; that is why it could be the ground for all determinations. Only now, in virtue of the concept thus established [i.e., after the Not-I and the reciprocal determination of I and Not-I is posited too, namely limitation], can it be said of both that they are something. The absolute self of the first principle is not something (it has, and can have, no predicate); it is simply what it is, and this can be explained no further. (SK 109 [GA I/2:271])

It would fabricate a circular reasoning if the absolute could be determined, since it is the reason of all determination. That is the reason why the absolute I is a pre-reflective being that could only be articulated in the form of an active co-production by other egos (e.g., the reader of the WL), which have to have the transcendental knowledge that they are the same subject-object as that which is the absolute I. The absence of predicative determinacy is the price for the absoluteness of this kind of fundamental spontaneity. In regard to the absolute self it does not follow: If it is not something, it must be nothing. The absolute self is the previous reason of being something. The predicative indeterminacy should not be misunderstood as imperfection or as a simple lack, because the absolute self is even prior to imperfection, since imperfection presupposes predicative determination. The absolute subject is no dogmatic or metaphysical bias, for it is co-present and included in all further forms of meaningful determinacy, and that is the reason why it is a transcendental construction: it explains experience and knowledge. The starting point is present in the further progress and that makes its transcendental justification, which is, to be sure, a retroactive justification for the absolute spontaneity in the beginning.

Being and Image/Schema Fichte’s 1812 Science of Knowledge is the last complete version, taught in the form of a lecture at the University of Berlin. From December 1810 until his death in January 1814, Fichte read the WL five times in this Berlin period.5 The version from 1812 is a kind of consummation of his philosophy after a development of nearly twenty years (cf. the brilliant explanations of Fichte’s WL 1812 from Furlani 2004 and Hoffmann 2016). Similar to all late WL versions, this one contains in its first part a theory of the Absolute—as mentioned earlier, sometimes Fichte also calls it God, the One, life, or being—which forms an image. The imaging procedure of the Absolute is connected to appearance, knowledge, sight, schema, and the five-fold synthesis. Since the Absolute is self-sufficient, it is not influenced or grounded by something external. Therefore, the image formed by the Absolute is not an external “picture”; it must be an image or better

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internal paradigm of the Absolute. Knowledge also must be seen as an image. Since it is possible to develop a theory of knowledge, knowledge itself must be formed into an image, into something on which we can reflect and which appears to us. That is why the image has such a crucial role in the Science of Knowledge from 1812. The image mediates between the Absolute, which appears, and the appearance of knowledge. The first step of the later WL consists in an introduction [cf. GA II/13:43–69] that explains the goal (evidence of knowledge and freedom) and method (deduction and reflection of schematism), as well as a contextualization regarding other thinkers (Spinoza, Kant, Jacobi, Schelling). The main difference between Fichte and Spinoza is that both begin their system with an absolute being/One, but Spinoza simply identifies (his) thinking and this being. According to Fichte, the absolute being appears in our thinking, and the being appears in an image. It would be dogmatic metaphysics to identify our thinking and the absolute being in a simple way. Therefore, our way to grasp the concept of the absolute being should be neither superficially external nor completely ignored. It has to be a thought-image, which is an appearance that is produced by thinking, i.e., by a subjectivity that is able to produce an image or schema by the reflection of a given being. “This is the basic concept of reflection: the visualisation of beings as image” (GA II/13:100). Therefore, being is given to us firstly as a fact, as a matter of fact. But transcendental analysis of an image of being proves that each fact includes in it a concrete presence that is for us given in the form of a manifold, and this is produced by a synthesis. If a thought thinks being or beings it schematizes, meaning it forms a structure of relational determinations included in the content of the thought. I attribute just a schematised life to it [= being/God], whereby it becomes a being and is persistent, how it casts a copy for itself. In the same way as I attributed before such a life to the Absolute itself, whereby it did not change its being, but copies it for us, the same principle holds for the image of the Absolute. (GA II/13:70)

A determined, schematized life and an image do not change the Absolute itself. They are only its manifestations for us. The imaging process of the Absolute is misunderstood if it is thought of in categories of causality: God as cause, image as effect. It is rather a direct manifestation and an immediate expression. The schematization happens from two different starting points: on one side it is the Absolute itself that structures itself (it then is described in terms of paradigm, persistence, being, perfection), and on the other side our thinking schematizes within the image of the Absolute, in order to grasp it (it is then described in terms of appearance, copy-image, a being). The schema is—in the beginning of the Science of Knowledge—in opposition to absolute being, otherwise we would fall back into dogmatic metaphysics, claiming that we have immediate “contact” to things in themselves, like the absolute being. But, since yje absolute being is everything which is, the existence of the image and its schematization are the chief problems for the WL. “Thus—external to the Absolute there is, because it is there, its image. This is the absolute positive proposition of the WL, from which it starts out: its original soul” (GA II/13:58).

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This composes the chief problem, because external to the absolute being there is nothing, but how could nothing form an image or appearance? It is true: ex nihilo nihil fit. The image of the Absolute must be the Absolute itself but in a schematized form. The image of the Absolute is (1) formed by it and (2) formed by us. Fichte distinguishes—coming quite close to the later Schelling after the Freedom Essay—the internal essence of the Absolute and the imagery of the Absolute. Fichte promises, at the end of the WL, that it will be evident that the image of the Absolute is a Platonic form, an eternal, unchangeable, no manifold containing simplicity, an absolute One, equal only to itself, a paradigm [cf. GA II/13:58,70]. The image formed by our thought is a finite unity. It sounds exactly like Heidegger when Fichte distinguishes being (“Sein”) and being-there, existence (“Dasein”) as the mode of being for the image/appearance (cf. [GA II/13:59–69] and Janke 1993, 122). The finitude of our thought-image as an appearance of the Absolute is simply a given fact. The appearance cannot appear to the Absolute, since that is enclosed in itself. Therefore, the appearance can only appear to the appearance; not to something else, because there is nothing else than absolute being, nothingness and appearance. Neither to the Absolute in itself nor to nothingness could something appear. The factuality (“givenness”) is evident and generalizable, since in all our thoughts and images we gain only a certain finitude. Each of our images is finite because it contains a manifold in distinction and ordering combination; i.e., a schema. A manifold in distinction and combination implies negation and negation is nothing one could attribute to the Absolute, because it is simply position without any negation. The goal of the WL is to show that the image of the Absolute—which is external to the Absolute itself as a thing in itself—is actually not external to the Absolute as a being of which we can think. In this regard, there is a fundamental methodical similarity to the early Fichte, because in his early versions of the WL he already had the idea that a deduction succeeds in cases where a contradiction could be solved. In regard to the content of the WL, the difference is obvious, for the absolute, completely unconditioned I from the Foundation is not the same as an image or schema of the Absolute/God. The late WL is an internal analysis or deduction of the elements of an image, schema, or appearance, giving evidence that there is a unifying law internal in image, schema, or appearance that makes it a One, similar to the Oneness of the Absolute. The exclusion of the image from the Absolute is how it, in itself, makes its law. For example, if the Absolute is simple perfection and simple position, we have to attribute negation, manifold, and limitation to the image. Because the absolute being is One, there could be nothing for the One (being related to something different would destroy the simplicity and the Oneness), but an appearance appears to us, therefore the appearance is for someone, and since we are only an image/appearance too, the appearance appears to the appearance. This includes the “reflectibility” of the appearance. If one reflects on what an appearance is, the appearance appears. That the appearance appears as itself is not just a kind of self-confirmation; rather, it shows that, within the facticity of an appearance as a produced consciousness, a producing consciousness is necessary. In our factual and intentional consciousness of appearances, we only see

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intended objects. Yet we are blind to the activity and productivity that is necessary for the appearance to appear. This genetic view shows the subjective activity included in our concrete and factual given appearances. Here, in this genetic destruction of the “myth of the given,” or better in this reconstruction of the preconditions of simple facticity of our consciousness and its appearances, is the particular place of the earlier Science of Knowledge, which was a pure theory of the I and its activities. “Thereby the WL maintains its simplicity and clarity, vaunted sometimes. Already Kant saw the advantage to summarize the task of philosophy in one question: that’s it. … It is the I, the reflective form of appearance” (GA II/13:63). Furthermore, each image is an image of something, and has therefore a kind of intentionality. An image is not just for someone, it is of something, too. If the Absolute is unchangeable, so within the facticity of the image a changeability is included.

Conclusion I suggest differentiating two different components in Fichte’s late Science of Knowledge: a Science of Knowledge in the broader sense, including the doctrine of God and the doctrine of God’s image, and a Science of Knowledge in the strict sense, which covers the I as image and the transcendental doctrine of schematization. The latter is more or less identical to the early versions of Fichte’s transcendental philosophy—that Fichte ascribes to schema and image such a crucial role in this I-philosophy marks just a terminological difference. The former of these WL in the broader sense obviously differs from the pure transcendental doctrine. Fichte oscillates when he describes that on the one hand nothing could be external to the being/Absolute and on the other hand, if the image of the Absolute is nothing within the Absolute itself, then it must be external.6 This philosophical theology is not a relapse to dogmatic metaphysics because the Absolute is justified as a precondition of the transcendental subjectivity. Fichte does not conceptualize this God/One as an entity or a substance or as cause, he only implies that the unity of subjectivity presupposes the unity and oneness of being. Since Fichte oscillates between the I as an image (or schema) that is internal or external to God, it is possible to interpret that he constructs an onto-theo-heno-logical precondition of the subject, external to it (the I is external to God) or to interpret that, since it is impossible for us to transcend our own being, the whole knowledge and subjectivity as image of God is still self-sufficient and the Science of Knowledge is only one unified transcendental argument (the I is internal to God’s image). However, it is obvious that the content of the Science of Knowledge changed over the years. The early and late Fichte are separated by the role of God and the absoluteness of the I. It does not mean that the early Fichte was atheistic; it only means that God did not play a crucial role in the early versions of the WL, and it does not mean that the late Fichte was anti-transcendentalist, for the intelligible One/being could be understood as a henologic parallel to the absolute I, which also has no predicative determinations. The continuity of Fichte’s thinking consists in his search for an indeterminate reason of determinacy.

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Notes 1 That Fichte changed his terminology could already be seen during his early Jena period. In the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge he does not mention “intellectual intuition”; instead he creates the terminus technicus “Tathandlung” for the absolute I. However, in all writings around the Foundation he highlights “intellectual intuition” as the crucial term to describe absolute subjectivity. 2 This interpretation is the least convincing, because in his late WL besides God and the Absolute the I also appears and plays a crucial role after the doctrine of God and God’s image is developed. If God were only a different name for the I, Fichte would have said this and should not used “I” in different meanings: the one “I” means a spontaneous and self-sufficient absolute I and the other a somewhat subordinate image of God. 3 For the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge I use the translation SK. For Fichte’s Science of Knowledge from 1812 no English translation exists; therefore, all translations from this WL are my own. 4 The situation is complicated, since Kant refers in CPR §15 (B 131) to §12 (B 114), where he explains the role of medieval transcendentals (unum, verum, bonum) in transcendental philosophy. The “qualitative unity” (unum) is meant as “only” a logical subjective unity of the thinker of thoughts, “as, say, the unity of the theme in a play, a speech, or a fable” (B 114). One can only guess that Kant had in mind that categories form the synthesis of parts, scenes, and dialogues in a play and that “qualitative unity” forms the all parts underlying sense of a play, which is prior to the more particular scenes. 5 During the winter semester of 1811–12 Schopenhauer listened to Fichte’s WL lecture in Berlin, but he was not amused and did not manage to find any knowledge in the Science of Knowledge, making the pun that it is not “Wissenschaftslehre” but “Wissenschaftsleere,” in English brilliantly translated by Christopher Janaway as “Science of Nulledge.” Cf. Cartwright 2010, 160, and Schopenhauer 1985, 43, where Schopenhauer also mentions that he was so annoyed by Fichte’s deductions that he wanted to put a gun on his chest in order to make him confess what he really wants. 6 Particularly clear is this oscillating position in Fichte’s summary of the WL 1813 in §1, (GA II/10:696): God “does not change or determine Himself from within, and He cannot transform Himself to another being; for through His being all of His being and all possible being is given, and neither could originate new being in Him nor external to Him. If knowledge is supposed to be, and if it is not supposed to be God himself, so could it, since nothing else is than God, be only God himself, but external to Him; God’s being external to His being; His expression in which he is completely as He is, yet remaining in Himself completely as He is. But such an expression is an image or schema.”

Bibliography Asmuth, Christoph. 2007. “Transzendentalphilosophie oder absolute Metaphysik? Grundsätzliche Fragen an Fichtes Spätphilosophie.” Fichte-Studien 31: 45–58. Baumgartner, Hans Michael. 1980. “Die Bestimmung des Absoluten. Ein Strukturvergleich der Reflexionsformen bei J.G. Fichte und Plotin.” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 34: 321–42.

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Cartwright, David E. 2010. Schopenhauer: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crüsgen, Dirk. 2003. “Die Unbegreiflichkeit des Absoluten. Zur neuplatonischen Henologie und ihrer Wirksamkeit im Denken Fichtes.” In Platonismus im Idealismus. Die platonische Tradition in der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, edited by Burkhard Mojsisch and Orrin F. Summerell, 91–109. Leipzig: K. G. Saur. Furlani, Simone. 2004. L’ultimo Fichte. Il sistema della Dottrina della scienza negli anni 1810–1814. Milano: Guerini e Associati. Henrich, Dieter. 2008. Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hoffmann, Thomas Sören. 2016. Johann Gottlieb Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre von 1812. Vermächtnis und Herausforderung des transzendentalen Idealismus. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Janke, Wolfgang. 1970. Fichte: Sein und Reflexion – Grundlagen der kritischen Vernunft. Berlin: De Gruyter. Janke, Wolfgang. 1993. Vom Bilde des Absoluten. Grundzüge der Phänomenologie Fichtes. Berlin: De Gruyter. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1985. Handschriftlicher Nachlass, edited by Arthur Hübscher. München: Verlag Waldemar Kramer. Stolzenberg, Jürgen. 2006. “Fichtes Deduktionen des Ich 1804 und 1794 im Vergleich.” Fichte-Studien 30: 1–13. Zöller, Günter. 2001. “Leben und Wissen. Der Stand der Wissenschaftslehre beim letzten Fichte.” In Der transzendental-philosophische Zugang zur Wirklichkeit, edited by Erich Fuchs et al., 307–30. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Zöller, Günter. 2002. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Fichte’s Cosmopolitan Nationalism David James

In Patriotism and its Opposite (Der Patriotismus, und sein Gegentheil), written shortly before the more famous Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) from 1807–8, Fichte explains his understanding of the relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Nationalism is a form of cosmopolitanism, in that the true patriot seeks to realize the highest ends of humanity within the nation of which he or she is a member, as he or she must do if the cosmopolitan will is to be active: “Cosmopolitanism [Kosmopolitismus] is the dominate will to achieve the end of the human race’s existence in the human race. Patriotism is the will to achieve this end first of all in the nation of which we ourselves are members, and that from this nation the result shall spread to the whole human race” (GA II/9: 399). Patriotism, when understood in this way, is the immediate form that cosmopolitanism must take, given how human agency is subject to spatial and temporal limitations that include membership of a nation that occupies a specific geographical location and has been shaped by a particular history. Patriotism does not, therefore, exclude the possibility that the members of a particular nation will strive to realize goals that are of importance to humanity as a whole. Rather, genuine patriotism consists in seeking to realize such goals in the nation of which one is a member, in the hope of providing not only the members of one’s own nation but also the members of other nations with an example of how these goals can be realized. Thus, “in real life cosmopolitanism must necessarily become patriotism” (GA II/9: 399), and the cosmopolitan must accordingly become a patriot (GA II/9: 340). From such statements we may conclude that nationalism and the patriotic disposition associated with it are, for Fichte, not only compatible with cosmopolitanism but also conditions of it, in that they represent necessary stages in the establishment of a cosmopolitan order in which the final ends of humanity are achieved or, at the very least, are being achieved. The idea of a synthesis of cosmopolitanism and nationalism opens the way for a reading of such texts as the Addresses to the German Nation that avoids focusing excessively on Fichte’s German nationalism (see Radrizzani 1990).1 Yet how are we to make sense of this synthesis of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, when, as we shall see, in the Addresses to the German Nation Fichte appeals to the unique character of the Germans and describes national differences in oppositional

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terms? And in what ways are nationalism and patriotism necessary conditions of the establishment of a cosmopolitan order that is itself a condition of the realization of the ultimate ends of the human race? In what follows, I set out to explain and evaluate Fichte’s answers to these questions. First, though, I shall look at Herder’s account of the role of national cultures in history because it enables us to begin to make sense of the idea of cosmopolitan nationalism. I shall show that Herder affirms the value of different national cultures in opposition to the dominance of a single culture, at the same time as he situates different nations in an account of human progress toward the goal of “humanity.” This position will then be shown to generate certain challenges that are relevant to Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation.

Herder’s Cosmopolitan Nationalism In his essay This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity (Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit), Herder, exploiting the various meanings of the German word Bildung, describes a process through which humankind is formed in the course of its history in such a way that it gradually approaches the end or goal of humanity, which consists in the full development of all human forces, and thus the complete manifestation of humanity in its many-sidedness. During this process a series of distinctive national cultures emerges, ranging from the culture of a God-fearing, pastoral, and patriarchal age, through those of the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Christian Europe, to the culture of modern enlightened Europe. Each national culture is shaped and determined by the specific needs of the members of the nation. These needs are themselves the result of natural factors such as climate and geography. Except for the first member in the series of national cultures, each national culture is dependent on the previous one, upon whose achievements it builds, while making its own distinctive contribution to human progress measured in terms of the full development of human forces in their many-sidedness. Thus, the stage of development of human forces represented by a later national culture would not have been possible without the contributions made by earlier national cultures. How does this suggest the idea of cosmopolitan nationalism? I think that it does so in the following way. Each national culture, whether it comes earlier or later in the historical process described above, must be thought to deserve equal recognition by virtue of the essential and distinctive role that it plays in this process. Each national culture in this regard represents a condition of the realization of the goal of humanity. What is more, the way in which different human powers and other aspects of humanity had to develop in different nations—each of which possesses its own distinctive ethical norms; material, intellectual, and artistic culture; religion; and political system—is, for Herder, something necessary, as opposed to a contingent matter that concerns how human forces and culture merely happened to develop: “Is not the good on the earth strewn about? Because one form of humanity [Gestalt der Menschheit] and one region of the earth could not grasp it, it got distributed into a thousand forms, it roams forth – an eternal Proteus! – through all parts of the world and all centuries”

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(Herder 1994, 40/Herder 2002, 298). Here, we encounter the claim that each nation not only plays an essential and distinctive role in history in so far as it concerns progress toward the goal of humanity, but also had to play this role, given that this goal can only be partially realized in different nations and cannot, or so it is implied, be completely realized by only one nation, which would then be entitled to consider itself superior to all other nations. From this it can be held to follow that each nation and its culture is equally valuable when viewed from the standpoint of history as a whole, and that for this reason each nation’s existence, independence, and distinctiveness ought to be acknowledged and respected. At the same time, each nation forms part of a single whole that it helps to realize, namely, humanity. The nations that contribute toward the realization of the end of humanity are not, therefore, to be viewed only as distinct, particular entities that lack any essential relation to one another. The person who adopts the right perspective when interpreting history will accordingly acknowledge the essential unity of all nations—or that which Herder calls “the larger context of the universal connection between time periods and peoples” (Herder 1994, 27/Herder 2002, 287)—and in this respect, he or she can be viewed as a cosmopolitan. At the same time, however, he or she will recognize and value the uniqueness of each nation and its culture. This would include valuing and taking pride in the uniqueness of his or her own nation and the national culture that has shaped him or her, and that forms the immediate context in which he or she thinks and acts. Thus, the same person can be viewed as a type of nationalist. Herder opposes this way of interpreting history to the one favored by his enlightened contemporaries, whom he castigates for judging other, earlier national cultures in terms of modern standards. This is to fail to judge each national culture in its own terms and with a view to the specific needs of its members while recognizing the vital contribution that each national culture has made to the gradual realization of the goal of humanity, a goal that enlightened modern culture presumptuously identifies as its concern alone (see Herder 1994, 18–19/Herder 2002, 278–80 and Herder 1994, 22–3/Herder 2002, 282–3). Herder provides us with a way of understanding not only how cosmopolitanism and nationalism are compatible, but also how the relation between them might figure in an account of the realization of a higher end. Nevertheless, his idea of a historical series, in which each national culture builds on the achievements of previous ones at the same time as it makes its own distinctive contribution to the realization of the goal of humanity, invites certain questions. To begin with, what exactly is the status of those nations that have performed their historical role but have now entered a period of decline? Is this status not in some sense inferior to the status possessed by later nations that have managed to build on the achievements of earlier ones while drawing closer to the final end of humanity? The example of a team that wins a relay race can be used to show how one can avoid answering the second question in the affirmative. Each member of the relay team passes on the baton to the next member of the team, but it is only the final runner who crosses the finishing line to win the race. Yet, assuming that the final runner’s performance is not significantly different from that of the other members of the relay team, it cannot be said that being the member of the team to cross the finishing line means that the final runner played a greater part in the team’s

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victory, thereby making him or her superior to the other members of the team. The victory is instead the work of the whole team and it is irrelevant which of its members crossed the finishing line to win the race, or which member ran the penultimate stretch of the race, and so on. Perhaps this is the type of model that Herder has in mind, and if so, it reinforces the idea that each nation is of equal value and significance, regardless of its actual place in the historical series. This formal response conceals a further difficulty, however, since in the case of national cultures, unlike the members of the winning team in a relay race, there are aspects of its culture that are unlikely to play any significant role in the gradual achievement of the goal of humanity. Rather, the next national culture can, and perhaps must, dispense with these aspects of an earlier national culture, of which it has no need. This is suggested by Herder himself: “The Greek makes as much his own from the Egyptian, the Roman as much from the Greek, as he needs for himself; he is sated, the rest falls by the wayside and he does not strive for it!” (Herder 1994, 39/Herder 2002, 297). Moreover, what if certain aspects of an earlier national culture prove to be incompatible with the concept of humanity as it has subsequently developed? For example, the narrowness of earlier cultures, which Herder himself acknowledges, would be incompatible with the cosmopolitanism that consists in acknowledging the value and respecting the status of other national cultures. Finally, what if a nation that was able to encompass all significant previous developments within itself were to emerge and was, furthermore, in a unique position when it came to bringing about the full realization of humanity at some point in the future? Would not this nation have to be classed as superior to all other ones? Herder rejects the premise on which the idea of a possibility of this kind rests: “The human container is capable of no full perfection all at once; it must always leave behind in moving further on” (Herder 1994, 29/Herder 2002, 288); “shortcoming and virtue always dwell together in one human hut” (Herder 1994, 37/Herder 2002, 295). In This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity, Herder in fact criticizes modern Enlightenment culture not only for judging past cultures in terms of later ideas and values that are alien to these cultures, but also for seeking to achieve world dominance on the basis of its view of itself as a superior, universal culture.2 This view of itself threatens to result in the gradual replacement of a variety of cultures by a single, onesidedly intellectual culture, whose other essential characteristics include a mechanistic and formal world view that is subservient to the needs of absolute monarchs. This development would be incompatible with the goal of humanity, which requires the complete expression of all human powers in their many-sidedness. According to this Enlightenment culture, moreover, there is no longer any need for patriotism and the idea of a fatherland to which human beings belong, nor even the need for different languages. Herder associates this leveling tendency with the dominance of French culture and the French language in modern Europe: With us, God be praised!, all national characters have been extinguished! We love all of us, or rather no one needs to love the other. We socialize with each other; are completely each other’s like – ethically proper, polite, blissful!; indeed have no fatherland, no our-people for whom we live, but are friends of humanity

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[Menschenfreunde] and citizens of the world [Weltbürger]. Already now all of Europe’s regents do so, and soon we will all speak the French language! And then – bliss! – the Golden Age begins again “when everyone in the world had one tongue and language!, there will arise a single flock and a single shepherd!” (Herder 1994, 75/Herder 2002, 329)

Fichte is likewise critical of the dominant culture and its values, which he traces back to the Enlightenment in the collection of lectures entitled The Fundamental Characteristics of the Present Age (Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters) (see James 2016, 29–32), which appeared a couple of years before the series of public lectures that comprise the Addresses to the German Nation, in the first of which Fichte locates the present age with reference to the series of ages that he describes in the earlier series of lectures (AGN 9 [GA I/10: 104]).3 At the same time, Fichte suggests that in the case of the Germans full human perfection can potentially be achieved within a historically situated collective entity that can be classed as a nation. This requires, however, developing essential human forces, which Fichte identifies with clarity of the cognitive powers and purity of will (AGN 38–9 [GA I/10: 135]), by means of a German national education, whose ultimate aim is to form a nation whose members are free of any cognitive or moral shortcomings. The Germans are therefore capable of beginning a new age and serving as a precursor and model for the rest of the human race (AGN 42–3 [GA I/10: 139]). The role and the status that Fichte accords to the German nation poses a threat to the idea of cosmopolitan nationalism, if we understand this idea in the manner described above with reference to Herder. For they might be thought to imply the desirability, and even the necessity, of the assimilation of other nations to this single, morally and intellectually superior nation, which provides the model to which these nations ought to conform, and does not, moreover, appear to owe anything to other nations. Nevertheless, even in the Addresses to the German Nation we encounter statements that echo the views on the relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism expressed in Patriotism and its Opposite. According to Fichte, German statecraft (deutsche Staatskunst) would aim to educate and cultivate all its citizens in such a way as to emulate the statecraft of the Greeks in terms of its form. Yet this German statecraft will differ from the Greek one in terms of its content, because “it will be imbued with a spirit not narrow-minded and exclusive, but universal and cosmopolitan [weltbürgerlich]” (AGN 90–1 [GA I/10: 188–9]). The “noble man,” who identifies himself with the distinctive life of the people to which he belongs and acts to ensure its continuation, is said to be subject to a “love for his people” that constitutes “the bond that connects him most intimately with his nation first of all and then, through his nation, the whole human race” (AGN 103–4 [GA I/10: 201–2]). Later on, Fichte opposes a situation in which particular national characters are given the freedom to develop and to express themselves to a situation in which there is a “universal monarchy” with leveling and stultifying effects (AGN 171–2 [GA I/10: 273]). In the next section, I shall argue that Fichte’s account of what ultimately defines a nation leaves room for the idea of cosmopolitan nationalism, in that the role and status that he accords to the Germans can be extended to other nations while some space is

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left for each nation to develop in its own particular way. This account of what ultimately defines a nation nevertheless implies that at least some nations have developed in a such way that their world view is incompatible with the idea that humankind has achieved, or is in the process of achieving, its final end. I shall accordingly argue that this view of these other nations sets definite limits to a cosmopolitan nationalism that not only appeals to such a final end, but also regards each nation as possessing equal value insofar as it helps to realize this end, rather than, as here, posing a threat to its realization.

The Question of the Compatibility of Cosmopolitan and Nationalism in the Addresses to the German Nation Language Defines a Nation In the Addresses to the German Nation, Fichte implies that the borders between states ought first and foremost to be linguistic ones, even if historically this has not been the case. This is because a common natural language is ultimately what binds individuals together to form a single whole, that is to say, a nation: [T]he first, original and truly natural frontiers of states are undoubtedly their inner frontiers. Those who speak the same language are already, before all human art, joined together by mere nature with a multitude of invisible ties; they understand one another and are able to communicate ever more clearly; they belong together and are naturally one, an indivisible whole. No other nation of a different descent and language can desire to absorb and assimilate such a people without, at least temporarily, becoming confused and profoundly disturbing the steady progress of its own culture. The external limits of territories only follow as a consequence of this inner frontier, drawn by man’s spiritual nature itself. (AGN 166 [GA I/10: 267])

It should be noted that in this passage Fichte does not exclude the possibility of nations that speak different languages merging, despite the disruption and difficulties that this would cause a nation that seeks to assimilate a nation that speaks a different language. The idea of one nation assimilating another one suggests some form of domination through which one nation loses its identity by adapting itself to the norms, culture, and values of another nation. The merging of nations in the weaker sense of some form of close cooperation and even political union, as with a federation of states, would not, however, necessarily exclude the existence of different nations with distinctive cultures, provided that each nation continued to speak its own language and thereby required its own borders within which it could maintain and develop its unique culture. Assimilation might then require only the ability of different nations to understand one another and to communicate with one another in relation to fundamental human concerns that they have in common. Yet, in order to communicate with one another, these nations would have to speak a language that they all understand. Thus, the question of which language they all should speak arises.

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The real threat, then, is the subordination of one linguistic community to another one and how this would pose a threat to the maintenance and further development of a distinctive national character, when, as we shall see, Fichte claims that national character follows from the fact that a nation speaks a language of a certain type. Fichte’s statements concerning the historical destiny of the Germans and the (potentially) exemplary character of the German nation suggest that the common language would be the German language, and thus that other nations would become the linguistic subjects, so to speak, of the German nation. I shall return to this potential tension between Fichte’s views on the historical role of the German nation and his commitment to some form of cosmopolitan nationalism. First, however, we need to gain a better understanding of how assimilation, even in the weaker sense indicated above, can occur, given how Fichte’s theory of language entails that there are limits to the extent to which assimilation of this kind is possible at all. The borders of the German nation are drawn not by just any type of language but by an “original” language (eine ursprüngliche Sprache or Ursprache). What is more, certain moral characteristics are held to follow from the fact that the Germans speak an original language. Fichte states that the German language is a language that, from the moment its first sound broke forth in the same people, has developed uninterruptedly out of the actual common life of that people; a language that admitted no element that did not express an intuition actually experienced by this people, an intuition that coheres with all the others in an interlocking system. (AGN 53 [GA 1/10: 150])

This statement reflects Fichte’s claim that an original language undergoes a necessary development, beginning with the designation of objects of immediate sensory perception. A sound designates an object in a manner that is analogous to how objects are represented by the organs of sensory perception as having a particular shape, color, and so on. The sound is therefore determined by the nature of the object that it designates and that forms an object of common experience. It is in this sense that the word expresses an intuition that has been experienced by the people who speak the language. The necessity that language initially exhibits—a necessity that it would lack if it were purely a matter of human convention—consists in the way in which the physical organization of the human organs of speech and the physical properties of objects of sensory experience together determine the particular sounds used to designate objects of this type of experience. In this way, Fichte appears to entertain the possibility of an archetypal natural language that the whole human race would have spoken if all things had remained equal. The existence of different natural languages therefore needs to be explained. Fichte’s explanation involves attributing variations either to local conditions or to contingent events and other developments. In the first case, climatic or geographical conditions may have played a role in shaping the organization of the vocal organs, thus determining the sounds of which they are capable. One possible example of what Fichte means by this claim is that in a mountainous area isolated communities may have communicated with one another by one person shouting from the side

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of a mountain over to someone else standing on the side of an opposing mountain, resulting in the gradual strengthening of each speaker’s vocal organs, whereas this would not have been necessary, or even possible, in the case of nomadic peoples living on desolate plains. In time, a language may undergo further variations in such a way as to become independent of the natural environment in which it first developed and any physical effects that this environment may have had upon the speakers of the language, and through them on the language itself. As regards the influence of contingent historical events and other developments, Fichte has particularly in mind how “the succession of the observed and designated objects” determined “the succession of designations” (AGN 50 [GA 1/10: 146]). The idea here appears to be that the order in which people encountered objects of sensory perception and then designated them by means of spoken language cannot be assumed to have been the same in each and every linguistic community. Yet it is far from evident how this difference in the order in which objects of sensory perception were encountered can explain differences in the sounds used to designate these objects. Fichte also fails to offer any plausible explanation of how the words that designate objects of sensory perception came to be syntactically combined to form meaningful sentences in different ways in different linguistic communities. Fichte then turns to language that relates to supersensory objects. He claims, plausibly enough, that, when speaking of supersensory objects, human beings are ultimately dependent on the resources provided by the language that they use to describe their sensory experience of the world. This dependence on sensory knowledge and the language used to express it is evident from how metaphorical and symbolic language is typically employed to refer to, and to describe, supersensory objects, and how human beings, at a certain stage of cultural and intellectual development, are conscious that they are employing language in this way and expect others to be conscious of this fact.4 Thus, an essential relation exists between language based on sensory experience of the world, which develops first, and language used to designate or to describe supersensory objects, which develops, or rather ought to develop, only later. The extension of sensory meaning then becomes part of the spoken language and provides the basis for further designation and description of supersensory objects. From this set of claims it follows that the poverty or the richness, the obscurity or the clarity of the language used to designate or to describe sensory objects will determine the capacity of a natural language to designate or to describe supersensory objects: “all designation of the supersensuous conforms to the extent and clarity of the sensuous knowledge of him who designates” (AGN 52 [GA 1/10: 149]). The successful designation of supersensory objects and, we may assume, any act of communicating this supersensory knowledge effectively to others, will, in fact, depend on the congruence of the two forms of language. Otherwise, the speakers of one natural language would be exposed to terms that designate a supersensory knowledge and its objects at the same time as they lack the corresponding experience and knowledge that finds expression in the sensory part of language. The result would then be a situation in which the language employed to designate or to describe supersensory objects would not “express an intuition actually experienced by this people” (AGN 53 [GA 1/10: 150]). In the case of an “original” language, in contrast,

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the language used to express knowledge of supersensory objects proceeds in tandem with the development of the language used to express knowledge of sensory objects. We are now in the position to identify the main condition that must be met if the speakers of different languages, who occupy a stage in human history at which knowledge of supersensory objects is not only possible but also needs to be communicated to others, are to understand one another when speaking of such objects. On both sides the development of the language used to express this form of knowledge must have proceeded in tandem with the development of the part of a language used to express knowledge of sensory experience and its objects. The possibility of one nation communicating knowledge of supersensory objects to another nation therefore requires that more than one nation speaks an original language. Although Fichte singles out the German language as an example of an original language, he does not rule out the possibility of other nations, which speak a different natural language to German, also speaking an original language. He allows that Greek is an original language of “the same rank” as German (AGN 58 [GA 1/10: 154]). There is, moreover, no reason that the Slavic peoples, for example, could not be classed as the speakers of such a language, given that Fichte does not commit himself to making any definite claims with regard to them. He claims only that they “seem not to have developed so clearly from the rest of Europe that a definite portrait of them would be possible” (AGN 47 [GA 1/10: 143]). If the possibility of more than one nation speaking an original language is acknowledged, as it surely must be, the moral superiority of the Germans would also disappear. This is because Fichte’s “deduction” of the moral characteristics exhibited by the German nation aims to show that these characteristics necessarily follow from the fact that the Germans speak an original language and from the essential properties of such a language. These moral characteristics include loyalty (Treue), integrity (Biederkeit), honor (Ehre), and simplicity (Einfalt) (AGN 82 [GA 1/10: 180]). Fichte also speaks of German seriousness (Ernst), German thoroughness (Gründlichkeit), and German good-heartedness (Gutmüthigkeit) (AGN 78–9 [GA 1/10: 176]). He claims, moreover, that a language that has developed without interruption according to the law that language obeys when it pursues its natural course “has the power to intervene directly in life and to stimulate it” (AGN 53 [GA 1/10: 149]). The idea appears to be that when a language undergoes a natural development of the kind described above, it will necessarily possess the power to motivate the individuals who speak it to act in certain ways, and it thereby favors the performance of certain actions and the production of certain outcomes. Given that Fichte associates the Germans qua speakers of an original language with what he regards as morally positive characteristics (one might here speak of virtues), the assumption is that these actions and outcomes will be morally good ones, and that the motivation to perform such actions and bring about such outcomes is ever-present and sufficiently strong in the case of the Germans. If, however, there are nations other than the German nation that speak an original language, and the positive moral characteristics described above necessarily follow from the fact that a nation speaks such a language, then these other nations would have to possess the same essential moral characteristics as the German nation and thus be its moral equals. Consequently, there do not appear to be any grounds for claiming that nations that enter into communication with one another, and can do so by virtue of how each of

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them speaks an original language, ought to speak German instead of one of the other original languages. The dominance of any one of these languages and the culture of its speakers would thus lack any compelling justification. At best, this dominance might be justified on the basis of certain practical considerations. At the same time, these nations’ ability to communicate with one another and their possession of shared moral characteristics, together with the motivation to change the world for the better, provide them with a common ground and shared set of values, thus allowing them collectively to pursue the final end of humanity. To this extent, the idea of some form of cosmopolitan nationalism remains possible. If there is a problem when it comes to upholding such an idea, it concerns the claim that the possession of positive national characteristics necessarily follows from the fact that a nation speaks an original language. For it then looks as if all the nations that speak an original language but different natural languages would possess essentially the same national character. Uniformity would therefore prevail in such a way as to leave little room for significant national differences. At most, these nations might exhibit local variations of the same national character. Fichte himself appears partially to draw the correct conclusion when he states that Those who believe in spirituality and in the freedom of this spirituality, who desire the eternal progress of this spirituality through freedom – wherever they were born and whichever language they speak – are of our race, they belong to us and they will join with us. Those who believe in stagnation, retrogression and circularity, or who even set a dead nature at the helm of world government – wherever they were born and whichever language they speak – are un-German [undeutsch] and strangers to us, and the sooner they completely sever their ties with us the better. (AGN 97 [GA I/10: 195–6])

Here, it may seem that Fichte has altogether forgotten his theory of an original language and its alleged implications with regard to national character, in that the possession of certain beliefs and desires are sufficient to assimilate other nations to the German nation. Yet, as we have seen, the “whichever language they speak” is not altogether mistaken, provided the language in question is an original language. In this connection, we might accuse Fichte of introducing an ambiguity into the Addresses to the German Nation by using the term “German” to designate the speakers of an original language, whichever one it may be, whereas it is elsewhere employed to designate the speakers of the German language in particular. He certainly goes too far not only when he states that nations “whichever language they speak” can be excluded from the German nation in the extended sense intended in the passage quoted above, but also when he suggests that any nation, regardless of the natural language that it speaks, may be part of the German nation. In the first case, Fichte goes too far because the speakers of an original language would necessarily have the beliefs and desires that would characterize them as members of the German nation, given how national character follows from the fact that a nation speaks a language of this kind. Thus, the speakers of any such language would automatically be members of the German nation in the extended sense. In the second case, any nation that did not speak an original

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language would, conversely, necessarily lack the right national character and, we must suppose, the relevant beliefs and desires. It would therefore have to be excluded from the German nation in the extended sense. I shall now turn to Fichte’s account of a nation that must suffer such exclusion precisely because its members speak a nonoriginal language, so as to identify clear limits to his cosmopolitan nationalism.

Exclusion: The Speakers of a Non-original Language As we have seen, in the case of an original language, the relation between the sensory part of language and its supersensory part is one in which these parts of language and the knowledge that each of them expresses proceed in tandem. It is possible, however, that this condition is not met, because a language develops in such a way that a rupture occurs between the two parts of the language and the knowledge that each of them expresses. The supersensory part of language would then be detached from its basis in the sensory part of language and it would thus lack any corresponding intuition that is common to the people who speak the language, making this supersensory part of their language essentially unintelligible to them. The speakers of a language that has suffered a rupture of this kind will instead encounter “images which for them are neither immediately clear nor a vital stimulus, but which must seem to them as entirely arbitrary as the sensuous part of language” (AGN 54 [GA 1/10: 151]).5 This is the case for the speakers of what Fichte terms a “neo-Latin” language. Fichte appeals to the historical fact that some Germanic tribes left their original homeland and came into contact with the speakers of a different language, namely Latin. This was a language whose development and, as a consequence, the relation between the part of it concerned with sensory experience and the part of it concerned with supersensory objects, did not correspond to the development of the languages spoken by these tribes. Rather, although for the Romans themselves the language used to express knowledge of supersensory objects was rooted in the sensory part of language and the knowledge expressed by means of it, this supersensory knowledge exceeded the intuitions that had so far been experienced by these tribes and provided the basis for the languages that they spoke. In this way, language became “dead and cut off from its living root by the admittance of the new sphere of intuitions and the abruption of the old” (AGN 55 [GA I/10: 151]). From this claim we can see that the change of location is of secondary importance. What really mattered was that the Germanic tribes in question came to speak a language that, in terms of its supersensory content, remained unintelligible to them, whereas the development of the language spoken by other Germanic tribes did not suffer the same rupture. Thus, the issue is not “the prior ancestry [Abstammung] of those who continue to speak an original language, but only the fact that this language continues to be spoken without interruption, for men are formed by language far more than language is by men” (AGN 49 [GA I/10: 145]). As we might expect from Fichte’s claim that the possession of distinct moral characteristics follows from how a nation speaks an original language, the fact that some Germanic tribes came to speak a language that had suffered a rupture between the part of the language concerned with supersensory objects and the part of it concerned with the existing intuitions of the members of these tribes had further consequences.

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These tribes came to develop characteristics that were more or less the opposite of the ones exhibited by the Germanic tribes whose language did not suffer the same fate. In the case of a people that has come to speak a neo-Latin language, the following national characteristics emerge: (1) “spiritual culture” does not intervene in life; (2)  there exists “a dividing wall between the cultivated classes and the people”; (3) unlike the speakers of a “living” language, who exhibit “diligence and earnestness and effort in all things,” a people that speaks a neo-Latin language “looks upon intellectual activity more as an ingenious game and lets itself be guided by its happy nature”; and (4), instead of proceeding from “a vital need that must be satisfied,” inquiry is for this people “nothing more than a way of whiling away time in a manner that is agreeable and appropriate to their sense of the beautiful” (AGN 67 [GA 1/10: 165]). The speakers of a neo-Latin language are, in short, viewed as the members of a nation that is capable  of only a dubious moral culture and a superficial intellectual one, and at the basis of these forms of culture rests an unbridgeable gulf between the masses, that is, the people, and the privileged classes. Any attempt on the part of such a nation to claim a moral and cultural hegemony that is cloaked in abstract, universalist language would, therefore, pose a threat to the realization of the final end of humanity. Fichte in fact singles out the term “humanity” (Humanität) as one of the Latin-derived words that for the speakers of a neo-Latin language lacks a corresponding “living” intuition of the supersensory object designated by this word. The object designated by this word transcends sensory experience by virtue of being a universal term that applies to all instances of humanity. Its referent cannot, therefore, be equated with any particular set of moral or other properties that could form the direct object of sensory experience. The German is in a better position, however, since in the German language there is an equivalent to the Latin-derived word Humanität that does not lack a corresponding living intuition. This is the German word Menschlichkeit, which both adequately explains the meaning of the word Humanität and reveals the limitations of the concept designated by this word. On the one hand, the word Menschlichkeit expresses the idea of humanity, which, by abstracting from any determinate properties that characterize particular human beings and serve to distinguish them from one another, transcends experience. In this respect, it designates a supersensory object. On the other hand, even if the term “humanity,” or its German equivalent Humanität, expresses the idea that human beings are somehow essentially different from non-human animals, “to say one is a human being [Mensch] and not a wild animal is to say very little” (AGN 55 [GA 1/10: 152]). The word Menschlichkeit, in contrast, is able to express something that the term “humanity” is unable to express, in that the concept of a Menschheit in general “has remained only a sensuous concept … and has never, as it did with the Romans, become the symbol of a supersensuous idea” (AGN 55 [GA 1/10: 152]). In short, the German word Menschlichkeit has not lost contact with the sensory part of language and the living intuitions that are expressed by means of it. Rather, it contains within itself accumulated layers of meaning that have been generated by the interpenetration of, and gradual increase in, the living intuitions experienced by one and the same people. This is because the term “Menschlichkeit” not only expresses the idea of some human essence but also identifies this essence with a determinate set of human virtues that have formed the object of sensory experience in the past and may continue to do so in

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the case of the Germans. These virtues are ones that, in the course of human history and the progressive development of humanity’s own consciousness of itself, have come to be regarded as distinctively human characteristics, and which the Germans had designated in a symbolic manner (that is, by using the sensory part of language to refer to a supersensory object) “long before they thought of bringing them together in a single unifying concept designed to serve as a contrast with animal nature” (AGN 55 [GA 1/10: 152]). The German word Menschlichkeit has consequently come to possess both a sensory and a supersensory meaning. This word unites into a single concept certain moral qualities or virtues that have formed the object of human sensory experience in the course of history. Therefore, despite being rooted in a living intuition, the word designates something that, by virtue of its generality, cannot itself form a direct object of experience in the shape of a single, particular sensory object that unites within itself all these moral qualities or virtues. From this we must conclude that the speakers of a neo-Latin language are not even capable of understanding what the goal of history ought to be, whereas the Germans, for whom this goal is something concrete, are in the position to understand what it is and what must be done to achieve it. The Germans are therefore able to comprehend the teleology of Fichte’s cosmopolitan nationalism and to help bring about its final end. The speakers of a neo-Latin language, in contrast, are unable do so. They will instead mistakenly identify the ultimate end of history with an abstract universalism that cloaks the domination, social division, and moral corruption that underlie a purely formal culture. This is because, for the speakers of such a language, the Latin-derived word Humanität can express only an abstract concept whose particular attributes remain unspecified.6 This renders the word highly indeterminate with respect to its actual meaning. This indeterminacy of meaning makes it possible to employ this finesounding word to conceal the fundamental division between the greater part of the people and the privileged classes, and to cloak morally suspect views and actions: “a language at bottom dead and unintelligible also lends itself very easily to perversion and misuse in white-washing human corruption, something that is impossible in a language that has never become extinct” (AGN 55 [GA 1/10: 151]). Individuals may even come to act immorally as a result of the mistaken belief that “such a lofty sound must also signify something lofty” (AGN 55 [GA 1/10: 152]). Ultimately, then, there are clear limits to Fichte’s cosmopolitan nationalism. These limits concern the existence of a type of language which, by its very nature, makes any nation that speaks it unfit to comprehend the cosmopolitan end of a humanity made up of individual nations that share certain fundamental characteristics, goals, and values that enable them to participate in the collective realization of this end. The contingent fact that the ancestors of the speakers of such a language left their homeland and came into contact with the speakers of another language, the supersensory part of which had undergone a development that relied on intuitions that exceeded their own ones, resulted in a fatal interruption in the natural development of their language. This interruption appears to exclude forever the speakers of a language of this kind from playing an effective role in the historical task of realizing the concrete idea of humanity, because this task requires comprehension of this final end and the ethical disposition needed to bring it about. In the case of nations that have not suffered

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such an interruption in the natural development of the language that they speak, comprehension of this final end remains possible and the speakers of an “original” language will necessarily possess the moral beliefs and characteristics that will enable them to play an active role in the realization of this end. Yet even here it is possible to identify a limit to Fichte’s cosmopolitan nationalism, for if possession of these beliefs and characteristics necessarily follows from the fact that a nation speaks an original language, all nations that speak a language of this kind will share the same national characteristics, and so the distinctiveness and uniqueness of each nation becomes difficult to explain. To insist on the distinctiveness and uniqueness of the German nation, Fichte would have to modify his claims concerning the necessity with which certain characteristics follow from the fact that a people speaks an original language, or explain how significant local variation is nevertheless possible, or show that the Germans are the only possible speakers of a language of the relevant kind.7

Notes 1 For accounts that focus on Fichte’s nationalism in general or on particular themes connected with it, see Abizadeh 2005; Engelbrecht1933; Kedourie 1993; Kohn 1949; Martyn 1997; Reiss 2006; Schottky 1990; Viroli 1995. 2 This is not to say that this enlightened culture does not in some way represent an advance toward the goal of humanity. Indeed, to claim that it lacks any virtues whatsoever would be hard to square with Herder’s theory of history. One of these virtues appears to be how this enlightened culture has resulted in a greater interconnectedness of the nations of the world, and this is something that would not have been possible had culture remained narrowly national (see, for example, Herder 1994, 70/Herder 2002, 325). This increase in extension has come at the price of a loss of intensity, however, and the cosmopolitanism to which enlightened culture has given rise is accordingly regarded by Herder as a superficial one that conceals forms of domination. 3 For a fuller account of Fichte’s philosophy of history in this period, see James 2015, Ch. 4. 4 Hence Fichte’s claim that language can only present “a sensuous image of the supersensuous and merely remarks that it is such an image” (AGN 51 [GA 1/10: 147]). 5 It may appear strange that Fichte here speaks of the sensory part of language as arbitrary, given that he seeks to portray this part of language as undergoing its own natural, law-governed development. Shortly before, however, he talks about the way in which a language can be learned as if the words used to designate objects of sensory experience were arbitrary, as indeed they essentially are for the person learning the language, but not with respect to the development of the language itself. 6 For the Romans themselves, in contrast, a corresponding intuition may well have existed. In the case of the concept of humanity, the corresponding intuition was possibly supplied by the Roman citizen’s experience of being treated as identical to others of the same general type by virtue of his possession of the common status of Roman citizen, which requires treating each person as an abstract entity in the sense of disregarding all social and national differences. This is not to say that the use of the term “humanity” did not here conceal fundamental divisions. The abstract nature

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of the concept of humanity allows its content to be specified in terms of arbitrary features that allow certain individuals or groups to regard themselves as the only members of humanity, or as privileged members thereof, while denying the same status to others. This is what the Romans themselves did by treating some people as citizens with equal legal status and rights while other human beings were treated as slaves or subject peoples. 7 In the Sixth Address, Fichte appeals to German history, particularly the Reformation, German philosophy, and the achievements of the free imperial cities in order to show that the national characteristics that he attributes to the Germans qua speakers of an original language have indeed manifested themselves in this nation’s deeds, but he does not thereby exclude the possibility of other nations having manifested the same characteristics in their histories.

Bibliography Abizadeh, Arash 2005. “Was Fichte an Ethnic Nationalist? On Cultural Nationalism and its Double.” History of Political Thought 26 (2): 334–59. Engelbrecht, H. C. 1933. Johann Gottlieb Fichte: A Study of his Political Writings with Special Reference to his Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Herder, Johann Gottfried von. 1994. Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. In Johann Gottfried Herder Werke in zehn Bänden, Vol. 4: Schriften zu Philosophie, Literatur, Kunst und Altertum, edited by Jürgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher, 9–107. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Herder, Johann Gottfried von. 2002. Philosophical Writings. Translated and edited by Michael N. Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, David. 2015. Fichte’s Republic: Idealism, Nationalism and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. James, David. 2016. “Enlightenment and the Unconditional Good: From Fichte to the Frankfurt School.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (1): 26–44. Kedourie, Elie. 1993. Nationalism, 4th edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Kohn, Hans. 1949. “The Paradox of Fichte’s Nationalism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 10 (3): 319–43. Martyn, David. 1997. “Borrowed Fatherland: Nationalism and Language Purism in Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation.” The Germanic Review 72 (4): 303–15. Radrizzani, Ives. 1990. “Ist Fichtes Modell des Kosmopolitismus pluralistich?” FichteStudien 2: 7–19. Reiss, Stefan. 2006. Fichtes “Reden an die deutsche Nation”, oder, vom Ich zum Wir. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Schottky, Richard. 1990. “Fichtes Nationalstaatsgedanke auf der Grundlage unveröffentlicher Manuskripte von 1807.” Fichte-Studien (2): 111–37. Viroli, Maurizio. 1995. For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Freedom, Right, and Law. Fichte’s Late Political Philosophy Günter Zöller

There is a realm Where all is pure. It also has a name: Realm of the dead. Richard Strauss, Ariadne on Naxos, Aria of Ariadne (Hofmannsthal 1943, 118; my own translation) This contribution features a group of Fichte’s late works in political philosophy that have remained virtually unknown to his English-language readership. The works in question date from 1813 and chiefly comprise an extensive lecture course on political matters. They were published posthumously in 1820 under the title “The Doctrine of the State, or on the Relation of the Original State to the Realm of Reason” (Die Staatslehre, oder über das Verhältniß des Urstaates zum Vernunftreiche), a title given to the work by its anonymous editors, whom many speculate to be a group of former students who had attended the original lecture course. The work was subsequently re-edited by Fichte’s son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, as part of J. G. Fichte’s Complete Works, which appeared in eight volumes in 1845–6 (SW 4:367–600). Also included in the son’s mid-nineteenth-century edition were a number of “Political Fragments,” some dated to 1807, but the majority attributed to 1813 (SW 7:519–613). Recently the entire corpus of Fichte’s political texts from 1813 has been edited in final form in the Complete Edition (Gesamtausgabe) of Fichte’s works undertaken by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1962–2012), with the Doctrine of the State reprinted in its first published form (GA II/16:13–177). The original manuscript has been long lost. The Political Fragments were restored to their original context in an extensive three-part working diary (Diarium I, II, III; 1813–14), where they served to prepare Fichte’s ongoing work on what became the Doctrine of the State (Diarium I, GA II/15:201–414). Fichte’s late political philosophy, as contained in the texts from 1813, is of philosophical interest for a number of reasons. For one, the political works from 1813 document Fichte’s final thoughts on the origin, possibilities, and limits of the

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political life form—a topic that had been the focus of Fichte’s thinking throughout his philosophical career, from his early publication on the French Revolution (Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment on the French Revolution, 1793–4) through his popular lectures calling for Germany’s cultural and political renewal (Addresses to the German Nation, 1807–8) to his treatment of political matters in his late legal philosophy (Doctrine of Right, 1812). Moreover, the political works from 1813 are distinctive because of their occasional basis in contemporary political events, viz., the military and paramilitary uprising of French-occupied Prussia against Napoleon in the wake of the latter’s defeat in Russia (1812), a popular movement that furnished Fichte with illustrative material for rethinking the relation between prince and people and the shape and form of a future, post-monarchical political order. Finally, the political works from 1813, in particular the Doctrine of the State, undertake to integrate Fichte’s sustained reflection on the past, present, and future of political community into his contemporaneous sustained thinking about the nature of knowledge in terms of the latter’s ultimate reality (“the absolute”) and its essentially practical purpose under the guise of post-Kantian transcendental philosophy (Doctrine of Science, Wissenschaftslehre; see Zöller 2013). In order to present and elucidate Fichte’s politico-philosophical works from 1813 in their historical and systematic context, this contribution proceeds in three sections. Section 1 addresses the overall practical orientation of Fichte’s philosophy by tracing its essential oscillation between knowledge (or science) and worldly wisdom. Section 2 features the prominent place of politics in Fichte’s works by investigating the principal distinction between (juridical) law and ethics as well as the precarious balance of (proto-)liberalism and (proto-)socialism in Fichte’s political philosophy with its dual focus on law and liberty. Section 3 examines the eschatological dimension of a future, radically free and absolutely egalitarian state of law and right in late Fichte. The contribution places Fichte’s late political thought in the twofold context of his own earlier works and of modern political thought in general. It is the contribution’s overall thesis that Fichte’s political philosophy, while being built—like his entire philosophy— on the idea of freedom, focuses on civic liberty under the rule of law at the expense of political liberty under the guise of popular participation in political rule. In particular, the outlines of the future, “free” civil society that emerge from Fichte’s politicophilosophical opus postumum reveal not a modern, liberal polity but a society ruled by pure reason under the custody of self-appointed philosopher-kings. While the Doctrine of the State recently has been translated into French and Italian (Fichte 2006, Fichte 2013), there is no English translation available yet, nor is there one of the supplementary contemporaneous material. Scholarship on Fichte’s late political philosophy in general and on the Doctrine of the State in particular is quite limited in extent, mostly confined to work in German, French, and Italian and often forming part of studies on Fichte’s earlier political and legal writings (De Pascale 2003, Goddard and Maesschalck 2003, Ivaldo 1997, James 2016, Verweyen 1975, Zöller 2011, Zöller 2013, Zöller 2013a). Under those circumstances the present contribution assumes an introductory character designed to provide an overall orientation about this neglected body of work and an initial indication of its politico-philosophical significance.

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Philosophy and Life Fichte’s philosophical profile joins speculative rigor and practical verve. On the one hand, his philosophical works, especially the more than a dozen extensive presentations of his own brand of post-Kantian transcendental philosophy, termed “Science of Knowledge” (Wissenschaftslehre), dating from 1794 through 1814, exhibit an arid argumentation that exceeds even the intellectual challenges of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophical prose. On the other hand, Fichte’s philosophy aims at action throughout and seeks to obtain an immediate effect, if not in the world then on his readers and listeners and their own effective engagement with the natural and social world, as inspired and initiated by Fichte’s pronouncements. Moreover, on Fichte’s understanding of the matter, thinking and doing, theory and practice, speculation and life are intrinsically related. In general, thinking is to inform doing, and doing is to follow thinking. Furthermore, on Fichte’s eminently practical outlook, thinking is already a form of doing under the guise of absolute spontaneity, and the world of cognition is but the external sphere of efficacy for an essentially practical activity (see Zöller 1998). Given the primacy it grants to the practical over the theoretical, Fichte’s whole philosophy is based on and centered around the spontaneity of doing and the freedom of acting, resulting in an entire “system of freedom” (GA III/2:298, 300; see Zöller 2014). To be sure, the absolute spontaneity and the radical freedom invoked by Fichte are not lawless and unordered. But rather than following the deterministic laws of nature, spontaneity in thinking and freedom in doing, for Fichte, follow their own, non-natural, “spiritual” laws, which Fichte traces back to reason in its twin shape as cognitive or theoretical reason and volitional or practical reason and their joint site in (human) generic, “transcendental” subjectivity as such (“the I”) (GA I/2:257, 271; see Zöller 1998). Moreover, for Fichte, the self-conscious, spontaneous, and free subject thus placed at the center of all knowledge and of the latter’s essential extension into doing is intrinsically social (intersubjectivity) and essentially exists as one among several, even numerous and many such beings that share the same (natural) world as the common sphere of objects for their efficacy and influence on them as well as on each other. Yet while the sphere of causal efficacy for Fichte is made up of the natural world as encountered and acted upon by plural practical subjects, the origin as well the destination of the lawful employment of spontaneity and freedom is supposed to lie outside of the natural order altogether. Building on Kant’s transcendental idealism, which tracks seemingly independently existing objects in space and time to representational products of the fundamental human cognitive forms and functions (space, time, and the categories), Fichte considers things of all kinds as being introduced into the arena of possible cognition (“positing”; GA I/2:255) on the basis of some inscrutable material input (“check”; GA I/2:355) and in accordance with the laws of objective thinking. But unlike Kant, who maintains a strict separation between idealistically conceived nature standing under natural laws and the realm of freedom considered under moral laws, thereby severing the natural world from the moral world, Fichte joins the two

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worlds in a unified conception of theoretical and practical interaction. The (empirical) world of sense is to provide the material input for the (non-empirical) moral world, just as inversely the moral world is to furnish some further form to be imposed on the material world. On Fichte’s primarily practical outlook on self and world, the natural world is not so much an array of obstacles to the reign of freedom but the material basis for the increased cultivation of the world and its gradual development from mere mindless matter into an environment conducive to the sustained spread of reason. In the process, the natural world is to be transformed into the actual realm of reason—an essentially practical reason—and, inversely, the virtual realm of reason is to achieve its eventual actualization in the real world. On Fichte’s post-Kantian outlook, the world as such is originally, primarily, and ultimately an ideal world of the mind’s or spirit’s own making, with the latter being considered both individually as well as socially active and even creative (see Zöller 2018a). The primarily practical character of self and world in Fichte also affects the philosophical knowledge to be achieved about them. In labeling his core philosophy “Doctrine of Science” or “Doctrine of Knowledge” (Wissenschaftslehre), Fichte declares his goal to be absolutely certain (meta-)cognition about the grounds and bounds of any and all cognition along with the latter’s objects. Yet given the practical, actiongeared nature of knowledge in Fichte, the philosophical super-science sought by Fichte does not teach knowledge for its own sake but provides the cognition of the essential ends that are to orient and motivate the ameliorative action to be taken by individuals as well as social formations in the world and on the world. To be sure, given his fundamental faith in freedom, the practical knowledge taught by Fichte’s philosophy cannot consist in instruction and indoctrination. Rather, Fichte’s foremost practical philosophy is intent on instilling a mindset of independent, responsible, “free” thinking that is to prepare the listeners to his lectures and the readers of his writings for their own, autonomous, individual, and social action. Fichte’s traditional term for the preparation that philosophy affords for leading a life in accordance with reason is “wisdom” (GA II/12:299). In aiming at a doctrine of wisdom, the Wissenschaftslehre qua Doctrine of Knowledge, while itself operating according to strict intellectual standards, displays an eminently practical, action-geared character. While the intrinsic connection of cognition and volition and the fundamental preponderance of freedom over nature pertains to Fichte’s entire work, from the Jena university years (1794–1799) through the privatizing middle years in Berlin (1800–1809) to the late Berlin university years (1810–1814), the bent toward action and application is especially prominent in the late Political Fragments and in the Doctrine of the State from 1813. Previously, Fichte had tied the business of philosophy’s actual application to two domains. For one, early on Fichte recognized the need for an inner-philosophical transition from the Wissenschaftslehre in general, understood as a latter-day, transcendental-idealist version of first philosophy, to area-specific forms of philosophical knowledge, chiefly among them (juridical) law, construed as transcendentally grounded natural law (Foundation of Natural Law, 1796–7), and ethics, construed as a transcendentally grounded doctrine of duties (System of Ethics,

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1798). Furthermore, almost as early and equally lasting was Fichte’s recognition that philosophy as such, including the Wissenschaftslehre in all its forms and extensions, is specifically different from actual life, including life based on the insights of philosophy, and hence in need of an explicit application that involves philosophy’s going-over into something other than itself, viz., life as it is actually lived by concrete human beings. The latter insight is first featured in the second presentation of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre (New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre, 1797/8), especially in the latter’s extensive introductory texts (GA I/4:186–270). In Fichte’s later work in general, and in the Doctrine of the State, along with its associated works, in particular, yet a third type of transition from theory to practice and still a further area of application accrues to foundational philosophy or the Wissenschaftslehre. Rather than involving the application of general philosophical principles to the specific philosophical fields of law and ethics or consisting in those principles’ existential introduction into actual life, this third extension of theory into practice takes place with regard to human history, especially in view of recent and current political history. The enactment of thinking in doing thereby brought into view concerns neither the institutional nor the individual implementation of previously established principles but the socially situated, culturally conditioned, and politically shaped character of human life in a concrete place and at a specific time, as assessed in light of philosophy’s constitutive concern with freedom. The extent of innovation to be found in the third and final form of application in late Fichte, which essentially runs from principles to peoples and from law to politics, draws on history past, present, and future as the domain of human development over space and time. Moreover, the historical dimension that enters into principles and precepts in Fichte’s late political philosophy, while focusing on law’s relation to politics, also involves a readjustment of law’s relation to ethics, with the latter being no longer simply a relation of conceptual distinction and specific differentiation but becoming dynamical due to the developmentally structured and historically mediated function that law is to exercise, over time and throughout space, for the thorough spread of ethically enhanced human life.

Freedom and History From its earliest stages, Fichte’s philosophy features law and ethics as twin spheres for the individual and social realization of freedom. Inspired by Kant, but independent of Kant’s roughly contemporaneous substantial publication in the area (The Metaphysics of Morals, 1797), Fichte’s Jena philosophy of right and ethics (Foundation of Natural Law, 1796–97; The System of Ethics, 1798) departs in significant ways from Kant’s treatment of the matter. For Kant, (juridical) law and ethics constitute two parallel forms of reason-based laws governing the use of freedom, with law qua right (Recht) involving the rational legislation of the outwardly manifest use of one’s freedom of “choice” (Willkür) in actions and ethics that of the inwardly operative freedom exercised in the adoption of general reasons for action (“maxims”) (MM 379–80 [Ak 6:225f.]).

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Moreover, for Kant, law prescribes (or proscribes) actions based on their compatibility, or incompatibility, with the equal freedom of everyone else forming part of the legal community in question. By contrast, ethics commands or prohibits the adoption of motivational principles based on their suitability, or unsuitability, for sustaining a universal ethical community of persons, each of whom is never to be treated as a mere means only but always also as a human being with inviolable dignity (“end in itself ”; G 78 [Ak 4:428]). Accordingly, law qua right in Kant commands and sanctions the outward conformity of actions to juridical law (“legality”), regardless of the agent’s motivation, while ethics commands the agent’s inward intention to follow the moral law for its own sake (“morality”) (MM 383–85 [Ak 6:218–21]). Their different modes of legislation (“outer,” “inner”) notwithstanding, law and ethics in Kant both involve the practical form of an unconditional command (“categorical imperative”) (MM 379–80 [Ak 6:225]). In particular, (juridical) law involves the absolute requirement to limit the exercise of one’s outer freedom such that it is compatible with everyone else’s equal freedom, and to do this by means of “universal laws” (MM 386f. [Ak 6:230f.]). Ethics in turn is based on the obligation to follow only those maxims that are conducive to establishing and maintaining an ethical community of self-determined, “free” moral agents. But in spite of their formal and functional similarities, legal and ethical obligations (“duties”), for Kant, cannot be reduced to each other. In particular, juridical laws and the institutional forms of their public enactment through politics are not to be confused with narrowly moral, ethical considerations, which may have a bearing on public life but no legally enforceable claim on citizens’ allegiance or obedience. While Fichte agrees with Kant’s systematic severing of law, along with politics, from ethics, together with religion, he goes further yet in distinguishing between the claims of ethics, which he, like Kant, regards as absolutely binding, and the demands of law, which he regards, unlike Kant, as conditioned by function and circumstance. In particular, for Fichte, (juridical) law and its political institutionalization through the (modern) state are not absolute necessities or unconditional practical norms to be adopted under all circumstances, but devices designed for a purpose that they are to serve. The latter lies, generally speaking, in the prudent preparation of life in human society. In particular, Fichte stresses the conditional character of civic association by social contract, which may be abandoned by individuals or groups, effectively releasing them from previously imposed or contracted obligations. On the whole, then, Fichte’s philosophy of law and politics, especially in his early, Jena period work, focuses on state-sanctioned rights as entitlements to actions on the part of independent, “free” individuals under contingent contractual conditions. In that regard, Fichte’s account of right can be placed in the tradition of modern liberal thinking about juridical law and the political state as instrumental institutions in the service of the fundamentally free, self-determined individual. By contrast, Fichte’s ethics even exceeds Kant’s in imposing uniform and universal acting on human agents on the basis of their identical constitution as rational will-endowed beings operating under purely rational principles (“moral law”). In that perspective, Fichte’s liberal philosophy of right goes together with an absolutist ethics that identifies ethical freedom with strict obedience to the moral law.

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Yet the essentially instrumental conception of law and politics in Fichte, in addition to sharply distinguishing legal from ethical obligation, also prepares and even invites broadly moral and specifically ethical considerations in the institutional arrangements of the state of right and law, as envisioned by Fichte. In particular, the seemingly individualistic, liberal outlook on the state in Fichte goes together with the latter’s conception under a largely ethical perspective that stresses equality as much as liberty and social justice as much as personal entitlement—in a word, socialism as much as liberalism. Given their instrumental nature, juridical law and state politics in Fichte lend themselves to ulterior integration into a context outside of law and politics narrowly conceived. While the deployment of law and politics as means to an end in Fichte does not amount to the reduction of law to ethics and of legality to morality, it opens the legal and political sphere to further forms and norms of social life that are ethically informed and morally shaped. A prime instance of the socio-ethical enhancement of the legal and political sphere in Fichte is to be found in his politico-economic treatise The Closed Commercial State (1800), presented as a separate appendix to his previously published philosophy of (natural) law (see Zöller 2018). While the work’s argument for everyone’s economic self-subsistence is not overtly ethical in nature, it poses principal limits on the economic freedom of its citizens, especially on international trade and commerce, by grounding the institution of property not on individual pre-civil entitlements (“natural right”), as in Locke and Kant, but on the civico-political state first investing individuals with property that remains subject to control and regulation through stately authority. In particular, the state qua commercial state is conceived by Fichte as aiming at economic self-sufficiency in the interest of its peaceful isolationist coexistence alongside other such commercially self-contained (“closed”) states. To that effect, and based on the generally state-based nature of private property, the state in Fichte may—and ought to—seize control of all foreign dealings and increasingly reduce their volume, in the end completely controlling the production and trading activity of its citizenry. An analogous extension of originally liberal, entitlement-based law into illiberal, directive-driven state politics occurs in Fichte’s closure of the state as a socially and civically unified people (“nation”), advocated in the Addresses to the German Nation held as public lectures in 1807–8 and first published in book form in 1808. In the work Fichte maintains that the basis for the civic identity of a people—in the case at hand that of the German people—resides in its unifying socio-political culture, including its language and literature. While Fichte does not advocate the closure of the nation state from international relations of exchange and cooperation, he stresses the heterogeneity of different nation states based on their divergent cultural traditions along with the latters’ political ramifications. In addition to stressing the specific socio-political identity of a people constituting a nation state, Fichte advocates state-governed general education as a means to assure the cultural cohesion of a given nation state—in this case the German nation, which at the time was without a unifying political identity and fragmented into politically independent territories. To be sure, Fichte’s criterion for national identity in general and for that of the German nation in particular is not specifically ethnic, much less racial. Rather it is historico-cultural and attuned to distinctions that are said to

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have arisen, over time, within an originally homogenous set of peoples (“common nation”; GA I/10:168) through processes of migration and colonization. Moreover, the exclusivist character of the (German) nation, as envisioned and advocated by Fichte, is a polemical rejoinder to the recent occupation of parts of Germany, including Fichte’s adopted homeland, Prussia, by Napoleon’s expansionist military politics, which Fichte seeks to combat with the call for a culturally renewed and politically united Germany as a future free nation state (see Zöller 2008). The wider context and the philosophical background for Fichte’s political program of the nationalization of both economy and education, as well as the associated far-reaching regulation of civic life in the modern state, is his critical diagnosis of contemporary Europe, as contained in The Fundamental Characteristics of the Present Age, another work first presented in lectures (1804–5) and subsequently brought to book publication (1806). Ostensibly a portrayal of the malaise of modern culture, Basic Characteristics places the contemporary condition of European religion, literature, and philosophy, gathered under the appellation “Enlightenment,” into the framework of a universal history of humankind, from primitive beginnings, in which reason rules human conduct instinctually, through the presentist rule of unfettered freedom lacking in reason to the future reign of reason-ruled freedom (“world plan”; GA I/8:197). The specific angle of Fichte’s progressive philosophy of history is the development of law and its institutional bearer, the state, in a trajectory that reaches from the despotic regimes of the ancient Near East through the development of the rule of law and civic freedom in democratic Athens and republican Rome to the equal dignity of all human beings achieved in modern, Christian Europe. While the course of history tracked in the text is cast in the Protestant religious terminology of “innocence,” “sin,” and “justification” (GA I/8:201), the conceptual content is juridical in nature and political in substance. In particular, Fichte’s juridico-political philosophy of history traces a twofold successive advance: first to the achievement of civic equality before the law, to be found in the Greco-Roman world (“equality of right”), and then to the equal enjoyment of the laws (“equality of rights”), first found in the modern world under the guise of the originally Christian recognition of universal human dignity (GA I/8:313). Fichte’s reconstruction of universal human history in primarily legal terms, while focusing on the incremental institution of freedom and equality for the individual, ultimately aims at the overall development of humanity and is concerned with the “life of the species” (GA I/8:309). On Fichte’s philosophical account, the purpose of political progress over the course of history is the freely embraced and exercised rule of reason, which is to extend human life beyond purely personal preferences and merely individual intentions, however broadly conceived and comprehensively pursued the latter might be. Accordingly, the primary arena for the overall development of the human being is the state as the institutional framework and the chief authority for the progressive preparation and preservation of law and right. For Fichte a sufficiently strong state (“absolute state”; GA I/8:37) informed by the principles of freedom and equality, far from infringing upon individuals’ freedom, first secures them their rights, which—while being rationally justified and to that extent “natural”—are in need of favorable civic conditions for also being generally recognized and consistently respected.

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Politics and Meta-Politics Fichte’s final work in political and legal philosophy, the Doctrine of the State from 1813, continues the previous twin focus on the historical development of right with regard to freedom and equality and on the political character of history as the history of political rule in general and of the rule of law in particular. This work from Fichte’s very last philosophical phase also continues both Fichte’s earlier concern with closely tying philosophy to the present political situation and his ambition to philosophically forge the future of human civic life. Moreover, this posthumous piece of political philosophy and philosophical politics adds a distinctly religious mode of presentation to Fichte’s final thoughts on the status and function of the state past, present, and future. The concrete context for the Doctrine of the State is the uprising of French-occupied Prussia against Napoleon following the latter’s defeat and retreat in the Russian campaign. Under the impression of the rapidly unfolding political and military events of 1813, Fichte abandons his earlier plan to hold a lecture course on the state of art of his first philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) (see Zöller 2014a and Zöller 2016) in favor of unspecified “lectures of various content from applied philosophy” (GA II/16:15)—an open title that permits him to combine the remains of the originally planned lecture course under the guise of a substantial introductory part with a freshly developed series of sections devoted to the present political situation and placed in the historical and systematic context of the overall history of rightful order and stately rule. In moving from more general philosophical matters to current concerns, the lectures address first the juridico-political character of the emerging Prussian anti-Napoleonic revolt as a “popular war” (GA II/15:211, 213) waged against a foreign oppressor, as opposed to a war lead by one dynastic ruler against another, and further feature the future republican framework of the radically reformed state, with the privileges and prerogatives of ruling princes and noble families revoked (“republic of the Germans”; GA II/10:409). To be sure, the Doctrine of the State’s references to Prussia’s (and Germany’s) postdynastic and post-aristocratic future are more general and indirect, which is not surprising, given the work’s origin in public university lectures subject to censorial control. But the radical, if not revolutionary, scope and intent of Fichte’s late politicophilosophical assessments and predictions is amply evident from the preserved preparatory material for the lectures. Read in connection with the more outspoken material not planned for publication, the late Doctrine of the State emerges as a piece of radical political philosophy—fiercely republican and aggressively egalitarian—that matches Fichte’s generally revolutionary and specifically egalitarian previous work in political philosophy, starting with the early defense of the freedom of thought and endorsement of the right to political revolution from two decades earlier. The main axis around which the historical and juridical material featured in the Doctrine of the State is organized turns on the twin concepts of the “state” (Staat) and the “realm” (Reich) (GA II/16:48). In particular, the Doctrine of the State is concerned with the historical and systematic relation between the “originary” or “proto-state” (Urstaat) and the “realm of reason” (Vernunftreich) (GA II/16:3). While the former

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term marks the historical heritage of the state as the site of coercive law, the latter designates the eventual ending of political history in a civil society that functions without force and operates without violence. On Fichte’s account, the course of political history philosophically considered runs from comprehensive coercion through increasing independence to absolute freedom. Accordingly, for Fichte the “coercive state” (Zwangsstaat) is supposed to be increasingly supplanted by the free realm (GA II/16:176). In choosing the term “state” to designate the main juridico-political organizational entity throughout history, Fichte draws on a modern technical term, derived in Renaissance times from the Italian word for “state” in the sense of “condition,” “lo stato.” By contrast, the alternative term “realm,” as adduced by Fichte, is derived from the Latin word for “rule” (regnum) and linked, semantically as well as etymologically, to the Latin word for “government” (regimen). To be sure, the customary English translation of Latin “regnum” and German “Reich” as “kingdom”—to be found, e.g., in the standard Kantian phrase “kingdom of ends” (Reich der Zwecke; G 83 [Ak 4:433])— insinuates a monarchical constitution, which is absent from the terms themselves and, moreover, unsuited for rendering the republican commitments of Fichte’s state-afterthe-state. In addition to drawing on its prior philosophical usage in Kant (“realm of ends”) and in Leibniz (“realm of nature,” “realm of grace”), the term “realm,” as employed in Fichte’s Doctrine of the State, harks back to its juridico-political origin, where it typically denotes not so much a political power relation of subordination and surpraordination as the communal tie that links the members of a political community, typically under some civico-political authority. In the specific context of contemporary Germany, the term as employed by Fichte also alludes to the former common constitution of much of the German lands as part of an ancient “realm” founded in nominal succession to the vanished (West) Roman Empire (“Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”). To be sure, the old and obsolete German Empire had ceased to exist a few years earlier, having been forced into self-dissolution by Napoleon. While the Doctrine of the State does not mention the defunct Germanic Realm (Imperium sacrum) specifically, the associated unpublished texts (Political Fragments) spell out the historical and (almost) contemporary basis of the notion of “realm” in the immediate political past of the German lands (GA II/15:207f.). Fichte’s reconstructive recourse to an ancient realm that had just vanished from Europe’s political map forms part of his effort to anticipate an alternative realm yet to be erected that is to draw on the anti-monarchical and decentralized organization of the defunct realm. While formally headed by an Emperor (Kaiser, from the Latin family name “Caesar”) in the tradition of post-Republican, Imperial Rome, the medieval and early modern GermanicoRoman Empire was in essence a loosely knit federation of largely independent political entities under an elected figurehead, comprising princely ruled member states of vastly varying size as well as ecclesiastical territories small and large and a good number of self-ruled, “free” Imperial towns. For Fichte the political profile of a realm, as opposed to a state, in general, and that of the ancient Germanico-Roman realm or “Empire,” as opposed to any of its member states, in particular, serves as a model for the future deliberate association of equally

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free members to form a genuinely and generally free state. Moreover, Fichte explicitly cites the fragmented condition of contemporary Germany, with its characteristic lack of any central, much less absolute, political authority as a suitable starting point for a juridico-political union that is not to be established from above, through the exercise of princely power, but from below, through the ties (“political bond”; GA II/15:245) established and the commitments created by the free and equal citizens-to-be of the new civico-social order (GA II/15:262). In the Doctrine of the State Fichte renders the prominent position of the realm as the “bond of the free” (GA II/15:208), situated as it is at the very end of human political history, in religiously inspired language identifying the post-political stateless state with the “heavenly realm” (Himmelreich) (GA II/16:131). The posthumous editors of the work have increased the theological overtones by supplying specific references to scripture at numerous points in Fichte’s text, thus making it seem that the work is citing biblical sources in interpreting the course and the closure of human history. For the work’s critical re-edition in the Bavarian Academy’s Complete Edition, the biblical references were removed again from the presentation of Fichte’s text and gathered together, for documentary purposes, in an editorial appendix (GA II/16:178–204). In the Doctrine of the State, as elsewhere in his vast work, Fichte is not subordinating philosophical discourse to religious references. For Fichte, philosophy is primary throughout. But he also considers philosophy well advised to avail itself of religious terminology and conceptuality in an effort to achieve effect and influence on the traditional religious mindset of the listeners to his lectures and the readers of his books. In the Doctrine of the State Fichte also takes great pains to control and curtail the overtly religious and explicitly theological traits of his juridico-political philosophy of history. In particular, he stresses that the “heavenly realm” is a “realm of freedom” and a “realm of right” located in the here and now (GA II/16:53f.). The final form of socio-civic existence, as envisioned by the Doctrine of the State turned Doctrine of the Realm, is not a future life, much less an afterlife, but an emended earthly existence as finite, even flawed human beings, subsequent to improvement through their own intellectual and moral efforts (“realm of heaven on earth”; GA II/16:164). To be sure, according to Fichte, the thoroughgoing self-reliance deemed necessary and sufficient for human (political) progress is not operative at the level of the singular individual. For Fichte, human self-improvement, while turning on the extraordinary insights and achievements of individuals, is socially based and civically conditioned; it takes a state to create a realm. While Fichte is not specific on the institutional and organizational structure of the realm of right, he discusses in detail the transitional politics required for the (self-) transformation of the lawfully functioning state into the post-historical realm. In particular, the Doctrine of the State distinguishes between the state and the realm in terms of the presence and absence of “coercion” (Zwang) (GA II/15, 55, 290; II/16:64). On the traditional legalist account, the state’s rightful power includes the employment of forceful means to assure compliance and to sanction non-compliance with the law.  In fact, on some accounts, such as Kant’s, right qua political right is outright defined as coercive right, based on the definition of a person’s right as that person’s (legal) ability to hinder anyone from hindering the first person in exercising that

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right (MM 388–89 [Ak 6:232]). Under conditions of the civil state and its institution of public justice, the enforcement of coercive rights is delegated to the executive and judiciary systems of law enforcement and lawful punishment. In the Doctrine of the State, as well as in the informal and unofficial texts surrounding it, Fichte comes to see the existence and exercise of civic coercion as basically incompatible with true freedom on the part of citizen subjects (GA II/15:255, 290; GA II/16:64–6). While retaining the notion that the constitutive power of the state as such includes the use of force, Fichte conceives of a political community under the radically transformed shape of a quasi-, super-, or post-state, viz., the realm (of equal law or right), which is ruled by (just) laws without having to take recourse to coercive means for assuring citizens’ compliance with the law. In the absence of politically available ethical or religious means for effectuating a radical change of hearts that would obviate coercion and constraint, Fichte considers education in general and civic education in particular the suitable as well as sufficient means for ensuring voluntarily free obedience to the (juridical) law on the part of everyone. According to Fichte, the civic conditioning of the citizens to freely lawful conduct is to take place outside of the family in public, state-funded educational institutions (GA II/16:100). In particular, the citizens-under-education are made to understand, appreciate, and internalize the primary purpose and foremost function of the law as the means for assuring the equal freedom of each and every one (“freedom of all from the freedom of all”; GA II/16:48). In his confidence that basic legal knowledge will lead to lawful conduct even in the absence of the threat of punishment, Fichte follows Socrates’ position on the sufficiently motivating role of correct cognition for correct conduct, though replacing Socrates’ concern with ethical action grounded in virtue through the juridico-political concern with conformity to law. In the political pedagogy of the Fichtean realm, the originally coercive character of civic rule is replaced by the latter’s own motivationally sufficient effect and inspirational influence on the citizens’ legal mindset. The resulting voluntary, “free” compliance with law, while being confined to matters of law and right, is more than outward obedience or mere “legality,” on Kant’s understanding of the term. To be sure, the law in question is still juridical law and not the “moral law” (Sittengesetz) in a narrowly ethical sense. Neither is the law followed, or to be followed, for its own sake—simply because it is the law, as in the case of the moral law in Kant’s and Fichte’s ethics. Still unlike in the case of sheer legality or mere conformity to the law, as required by Kant, Fichte’s “realm” involves motivation, as provided by the citizens’ knowledge of why there is law and what is at stake in heeding its commands. The quasi-morality involved in freely chosen compliance, foreseen by Fichte, could be considered a civic ethics on the ancient, republican model of convinced and committed citizenship, though detached from the notions of sacrifice and heroism originally associated with it. While the educationally inculcated civic ethos of conformity to the law anticipated in the Doctrine of the State is to render legal coercion superfluous, the road to reliably civic conduct is still marked by acts of further and final coercion. In particular Fichte has the ruler conjoin coercion with education. Drawing on Rousseau’s paradoxical formula for the transition from the state of nature to the civil state, according to which the citizen-to-be has to be “forced to be free,” Fichte’s

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future citizens of the “realm of the free and equal” can be seen as having to be coerced into getting beyond the very need for coercion. Drawing on the ancient, Roman Republican institution of the dictator—an office conferred for a limited time span in a situation of political emergency—Fichte designates the authority exercising absolute stately rule with the German term “Zwingherr,” literally meaning “coercive lord” (GA II/16:66f., also “coercor” [Zwinger; GA II/15:292] and “subjugator” [Unterjocher; GA II/15:301]), a term that was already antiquated at the time. In particular, Fichte distinguishes such an overlord’s instrumental and temporary exercise of coercion from the coercion exercised for its own sake through a tyrannical regime (GA II/15:232). Moreover, Fichte leaves it open whether the office of overlord is exercised by a natural person or by an entire group of civic leaders (GA II/15:299f.). In Fichte’s renewed use of the term, the civic overlord, who leads the way from the state to the realm, is, at once, the citizens’ “educator” (Erzieher; GA II/16:67), who guides them to a civico-political condition, viz., the realm, in which the very office and service of an overlord is no longer needed. The politico-pedagogical measures to be taken for reaching the realm, as outlined in the Doctrine of the State, are far from benign though. Fichte advocates the dissolution of the family as a nuclear educational unit in favor of compulsory collective education, the steered selection of the population for positions and responsibilities in civil society according to ability, along with further stately interventions reminiscent of the measures elaborated in Plato’s Republic, a work approvingly invoked by Fichte himself in that context (GA II/15:299f.; GA II/16:79, 82; see Zöller 2015). As Fichte also shares Plato’s communal conception of property, there are three key features to the realm, all of them negative with regard to the corresponding arrangements in the state: no coercion, no property, no family (GA II/15:405, II/16:100). While the coercive measures deemed essential for the transformation of the state into the realm are expected to fall away eventually, like the state itself, civic life in the totally liberated realm of the free and equal is far from free by the standards of a specifically modern, liberal, and pluralist outlook on life in the polity. According to Fichte, the rule of the realm lies in the hands of individuals with superior intellect, in essence, philosophers, who merge science and wisdom with politics and power, as advocated already in the personal fusion of philosophers and rulers in Plato’s Republic (GA II/16:82). Fichte considers the members of the politicophilosophical realm “a self-appointed aristocracy” (GA II/15:222). Faced with the modern conception of popular political participation, as championed by Rousseau and introduced by the American and French Revolutions, Fichte sharply distinguishes between “civic freedom” (bürgerliche Freiheit), consisting in every citizen’s free and equal status before the law, which is the aim of the state to be realized in the realm, and “political freedom” (politische Freiheit), consisting in popular political participation, which Fichte rejects in order to assure the untroubled rule of reason, as explained and executed by the latter’s professional practitioners, the Platonico-Fichtean philosopherrulers (GA II/15:210, 228; GA II/16:68). The extent of authoritarian rule—based on the authority of reason, as Fichte and Fichteans might hasten to add—to be found in the realm outlined in the Doctrine of the State becomes strikingly clear through the politico-theological discourse adopted

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toward the end of the work, when Fichte terms the realm’s rule a “theocracy” (GA II/16:165; see Zöller 2013). To be sure, unlike in ancient theocratic regimes based on superstition and prejudice (“blind faith”), the theocratic credentials of right’s realm are to be grounded on genuine cognition (“clear insight”) (GA II/16:165). Yet no further details about the contents of purely rational civic rule are provided. Nor does Fichte seem to share the Kantian strictly formal, merely procedural understanding of rationally based right as limited to the rules required for rendering everyone’s freedom compatible with that of everyone else. Instead, Fichte’s logocratic conception of civic life in the realm, as adumbrated in the Doctrine of the State, when taken together with his overall instrumentalist view of (juridical) law, points beyond the juridico-political sphere of the realm of (legal) right to an altogether different domain in which the freely law-abiding citizens, ensured as they are of their free and equal rights, are to fulfill their further, unconditional obligations in a specifically ethical regard. In that perspective, the main function of the realm of right is to furnish the “external condition of moral freedom” (GA II/16:28f.). Yet the ethical lives to be led by the civically liberated individuals under the praeter-political rule of the moral law, as outlined in Fichte’s slightly earlier System of Ethics (1812), remain equally open and undetermined. In essence, the ethical system to be erected on the basis of right’s realm consists in the injunction to the essentially identical ethical conduct of all under the supreme principle of absolute independence (“freedom”)—a condition that is to be sought for its own sake—and in the equivalent instruction to completely reduce individual reason and will, affected as they are by the contingencies of nature and culture, to (the conditions of) universal reason and will. In the Fichtean realm, external coercion under juridical law has been abolished successfully only to give room to internal or self-coercion under the moral law.

Bibliography De Pascale, Carla. 2003. Die Vernunft ist praktisch. Fichtes Ethik und Rechtslehre im System. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 2006. La doctrine de l‘État 1813: Leçons sur des contenus variés de philosophie appliquée, edited and translated by Jean-Christophe Goddard, introduced by Marc Maesschalck. Paris: Vrin. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 2013. La dottrina dello Stato ovvero sulla relazione dello Stato originario con il Regno della ragione, translated and edited by Antonio Carrano. Rome: Edizione Accademia Vivarium Novum. Goddard, Jean-Christophe, and Maesschalck, Marc (Eds.). 2003. Fichte. La Philosophie de la maturité 1804–1814: Reflexivité, phénomenologie et philosophie. Paris: Vrin. Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. 1943. Ariadne auf Naxos. Opera in One Act and a Prelude. New Revision. Music by Richard Strauss. Op. 60. Arrangement by Otto Singer. Complete Piano Reduction with German Text. London, New York, Sydney, Toronto, Johannesburg, Paris: Boosey & Hawkes. Ivaldo, Marco. 1997. “Politik, Geschichte und Religion in der Staatslehre von 1813.” FichteStudien 11: 209–27.

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James, David. 2016. “The Political Theology of Fichte’s Staatslehre: Immanence and Transcendence.” British Journal for The History of Philosophy 24: 1157–75. Verweyen, Hansjürgen. 1975. Recht und Sittlichkeit in J. G. Fichtes Gesellschaftslehre. Freiburg i. Br. and Munich: Alber. Zöller, Günter. 1998. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zöller, Günter. 2008. “Politische Hermeneutik: Die philosophische Auslegung der Geschichte in Fichtes Reden an die deutsche Nation.” Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik 7: 219–43. Zöller, Günter. 2011. “Der Staat und das Reich. Fichtes politische Geschichtsphilosophie.” In Der Staat als Mittel zum Zweck. Fichte über Freiheit, Recht und Gesetz, edited by Günter Zöller, 189–205. Baden Baden: Nomos. Zöller, Günter. 2013. “‘… die wahre πολιτεία ist nur im Himmel.’ Politische Geschichtsphilosophie im Spätwerk Fichtes und Schellings.” Schelling-Studien 1: 51–71. Zöller, Günter. 2013a. Fichte lesen. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Zöller, Günter. 2014 “A Philosophy of Freedom. Fichte’s Philosophical Achievement.” In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, edited by Matthew Altman, 286–99. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Zöller, Günter. 2014a. “‘Life into Which an Eye Has Been Inserted.’ Fichte on the Fusion of Vitality and Vision.” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 69: 601–17. Zöller, Günter. 2015. Res Publica. Plato’s “Republic” in Classical German Philosophy. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press; Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Zöller, Günter. 2016. “Fichte’s Later Presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre.” In The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, edited by David James and Günter Zöller, 139–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zöller, Günter. 2018. “Von der Nationalökonomie zum ökonomischen Nationalismus. Fichtes Politikkonzeption im Geschloßnen Handelsstaat.” In J. G. Fichtes “Der geschloßne Handelsstaat”: Eine koopperative Kommentierung, edited by Thomas S. Hoffmann, 153–69. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Zöller, Günter. 2018a. “Action, Interaction and Inaction. Post-Kantian Accounts of Thinking, Willing and Doing in Fichte and Schopenhauer.” In Philosophical Accounts of Action from Suarez to Davidson, edited by Constantine Sandis, 108–21. Oxford: Routledge.

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The fundamental thesis of transcendental philosophy as conceived by Fichte is that “all consciousness is nothing but self-consciousness” (WLnm / FTP 381 [GA IV/3: 481]). The task of the foundational part of the system is to provide “a genetic demonstration that – and how – the sort of consciousness with which we are ordinarily familiar flows from our consciousness of ourselves” (ibid.). If we admit hypothetically that transcendental philosophy achieves this task, it will then have shown that, for example, nature, as far as we are conscious of it (and outside of this consciousness it is nothing for us), is a product of this consciousness. Anticipating the objection: “If nature is your own product, then how is it that you are nevertheless able to learn things from nature?”, Fichte replies that “here we do no more than learn about ourselves and employ our faculty of judgement to analyze what is posited by the imagination” (WLnm / FTP 404 [GA IV/3: 490]). Now, the place attributed by Fichte to the history has some analogy with that of the physics. In Lecture 9 of The Characteristics of the Present Age, which is dedicated to the determination of the essence of history, Fichte says that “history is itself a part of knowledge, and ranks with physics as the second part of empiricism” (CPA 142 [GA I/8: 295]). In virtue of its analogy with physics, history must also be nothing other than a study to “learn about ourselves.” But history as the investigation of the free interventions performed by men in the course of time implies freedom, which cannot as such be deduced. This thesis leads to a serious difficulty: If history is effectively only a study to learn about ourselves, how does it permit objective awareness of free and therefore non-deducible acts, which according to the common point of view are thought to be the result of free beings outside of us and therefore not dependent on the exercise of our own liberty? If all consciousness flows from the consciousness of self, how can we be conscious of the non-deducible acts of the others? If historical knowledge is to be possible, it must be able to be attached to the rest of the system of knowledge.1 It must be able to be deduced, indeed, even in its nondeduceability itself. This entirely original requirement is closely tied to the Fichtean conception of knowledge. Knowledge is not an aggregate of isolated propositions pulled from this or that experience, but rather it forms a system, an organic whole, in which every element can be deduced from the first principle and can return to it. History cannot have priviledged status within this system, nor can it constitute a completely separate and autonomous whole. Because of its principle of coherence, the

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transcendental system must be able to integrate history into the genetic deduction of what is produced in consciousness. Fichte’s transcendental approach to history centers on three points: (1) the deduction of being-in-history as a transcendental condition of consciousness; (2) the deduction of objectivity of history as an a posteriori science applying itself to facts which, by their essence, are non-deducible; and (3) the deduction of the universal plan of history, which determines the meaning of the study of the past in each period, and the principles that necessarily guide human action in the production of history, on the way to the “system of freedom.” Fichte first envisioned such a philosophy of history in Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794) (cf. LSV 170 ff. [GA I/3: 52 ff.]) and eventually presented it in The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806).

Being-in-History as a Transcendental Condition of Consciousness All demonstration consists of “transfer[ing] the truth of some previously known proposition to another one” (WLnm / FTP 108 [GA IV/3: 343]). To be able to demonstrate something to someone, it is necessary that this person admit a truth that is itself indemonstrable, a “postulate,” which secures a required base of minimal agreement, without which systematic philosophy is impossible. This postulate, which Fichte invites his interlocutor to discover in the course of the experience of intellectual intuition, is the fact of consciousness. Once the postulate is realized, it must be possible to “deduce,” that is to say to derive one thing from another by bringing to light the conditions that must be united to realize this postulate. Deduction assumes the following form: A is posited, but no A without B, no B without C, and so on. Consequently, the deduction of historicity returns to show that historicity is a transcendental condition of consciousness. It will not be necessary here to reconstruct the whole chain of the conditions established in the thread of the deduction. It suffices to briefly recall the deduction of intersubjectivity, which is closely linked to the deduction of historicity, since the response to the summons, the act by which the individual posits himself as an individual in relation to another, coincides with the entry into history. In accordance with the absoluteness of the principle of the system, the I can only posit itself as free. To posit itself as free, it must find itself as free. But it can only find itself as free if it already has had, in fact, the experience of freedom. Now, it cannot have such an experience without elaborating the concept of a free action. But it cannot elaborate such a concept if it has not already had the experience of a free action. We can leave this circle only by admitting an “original limitation of the will.” As the I can be limited only as far as it attributes such a limitation to itself, “the original limitation of the will can signify nothing but a task for the I: the task of limiting its own will” (WLnm / FTP, 343 [GA IV/3: 464 ff.]). This limitation cannot be produced by me, for I am able to produce [it] only in accordance with a concept of the same – which I do not possess in this case. Consequently, [it] would have to have been externally produced. In that case, however, it would not exist for me at all; it would be a thing in itself. (WLnm / FTP 323 [GA IV/3: 455])

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It is possible to explain consciousness of the self only by admitting that I have knowledge of the task of free self-determination without having myself produced that knowledge in me, since I alone cannot form a concept of it. This concept must therefore have come from the exterior; it must have been suggested to me by someone who has already had the experience of free self-determination and who can communicate the concept of such a free self-determination to me. We must therefore admit that “we ourselves do not form the first concept, but we receive it” (WLnm / FTP 352 [GA IV/3: 469; cf. GA IV/2: 177]). In this way, “no individual is able to account for himself.” (WLnm / FTP 352 [GA IV/3: 469]). I can only posit myself on the condition that a “summons” to determine myself was addressed to me  and that I embraced it as such. Further, if a summons must be able to be addressed to me, it must be able to be perceived. Nature, as it must be structured in a way to convey a summons, is not, therefore, controlled only by natural laws. It must also be the sphere of the interaction of freedoms, the scene of history. Thanks to the double play of the deduction and of the perception of the summons, the I finds itself in a society constituted by a number of subjects who find themselves in a relation of inter-summoning. Through the summons, I am joined to the chain of humanity and I enter into history. Now, as the summons is a condition of the possibility of consciousness of the self, the fact of entering history is equally such a condition. If one examines more closely the act by which the I enters history, it turns out that the process of individuation that the summons makes possible is simultaneously free and determined, both formally and materially. This apparent paradox results from the fact that the foundation of my causality lies, at the same time, both outside and inside of me. It lies outside of me because, if a being outside of me did not act causally on me and did not address a summons to me, in a general way, I would not be able to undertake an action. Moreover, my action is also determined materially, for through the summons, the general sphere of my action is indicated to me. As Masullo writes: “In the procession of history, the encounter with others decides my individual destiny” (Masullo 1965, 135). But inside the sphere that is indicated to him through the summons, the subject has freely chosen; it has absolutely given to itself the nearest determination of its own activity; and the ground of this latter determination of the subject’s efficacy lies entirely within the subject alone. (WLnm / FNR 40 [GA I/3: 349]) “Someone summons me”: this means that I am supposed to attach something to a given series of acting. The other person initiates [this series] and proceeds to a certain point, and this is the point where I have to begin. (WLnm / FTP 455 [GA IV/3: 513])

The fact that I have joined a series of acting does not depend upon me, in that I am joined. But as the summons is a summons to an active freedom, the way that I respond is not conditioned, in that I am free.

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The acting of several rational beings [in the sensible world] constitutes one single, [large] chain, … [but as] … this is not a chain of physical necessity, for we are here dealing with rational beings, [and when rational beings act, they act freely. For this reason, the movement of transition from one link of] this chain [to another] always occurs in leaps …. Freedom consists in this: of all that is possible, only a portion of the same is attached to the chain. (FTP 455 ff. [GA IV/3: 513; cf. GA IV/2: 254])

As a consequence, every moment of history is certainly determined, but not conditioned by the preceding moments.

History as “Analysis by the Faculty of Judgement of What is Posited by the Imagination” From what has been said, it seems the entry into history is determined by the existence of free beings outside of the I, who are the source of the summons and who, through this summons, exercise a determinate (yet unconditioned) influence on the I. However, in virtue of the principle of the transcendental system, this cannot be. And, if it is true that the individual who attains consciousness cannot explain his own awakening to consciousness without admitting the existence of such individuals outside of itself (since both being-summoned-by-another and being-situated-inhistory are transcendental conditions of consciousness), transcendental philosophy has the task of transcendentally rendering an account of the genesis of such a mode of explanation. In keeping with the fundamental proposition that consciousness derives from consciousness of the self, transcendental philosophy is unable to accomodate the ontological affirmation of the existence of individuals outside of the I. It cannot admit that something outisde of consciousness may act on the I without thereby renouncing its principle and lapsing into dogmatism. Consequently, transcendental philosophy must complete its deduction of the nesessity of being-in-history by the demonstration that such a deduction is tied to no ontological affirmation, to no dogmatic proposition regarding something outside of consciousness. The task comes back to demonstrate that it is possible to give an account, in a purely internal way, of the passage from pure willing to empirical consciousness, that it is possible to explain, in making the economy of all external interventions, the genesis of an I positing itself as a determined individual within society to which it is joined by the chain of history. As I am not able to present here this unusually complex genesis, of which the doctrine of the categories, and thus the doctrine of the productive imgination, constitutes the key,2 I will admit hypothetically that Fichte fulfilled the task that he proposed and we content ourselves with examining the implications that follow for the philosophy of history. At the end of the genesis, it turns out that history (as space, time, body, soul, nature, and society) is a construction of the subject. More precisely, “we do no more than learn about ourselves and employ our faculty of judgment to analyze what is posited by the imagination.”3

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History as an “Empirical Science” According to what has been said, it appears that in the transcendental system, history can only be a construction of the subject, or more precisely, to use Fichte’s terminology, that history is a “product of the imagination.” This point, which is tricky to comprehend and which can easily lead to misunderstanding, demands some clarifications and requires that we take up the problem of the objectivity of historical knowledge. Let us begin by defining our vocabulary. The term rendered in English as “imagination” is “Einbildungskraft,” which is literally “the faculty of production of images,” and can be neatly distinguished from “Phantasie,” which is a production of fictional images, of images that are “not true,” that is, which do not correspond to a state in the feeling subject. Imagination is the fundamental power of synthesis that permits the data that are always flowing from the senses to be stabilized into steady images. Fantasy is, so to speak, the imagination that is not bound by reality and that wanders in an unbrided fashion. To make history a product of the imagination does not imply that history is reduced to a gigantic spectacle that consciousness organizes for itself according to rules that please itself, nor that history will be only a fiction or an illusory fantasy. To say, from the transcendental point of view, that the I is not in history but that it thinks itself solely as being in history does not imply at all that it would be able to think itself as not being in history. On the contrary, as has been precisely demonstrated, the engagement in history is a transcendental condition of consciousness. Therefore, I am not free to think myself as able or not to engage in history. As surely as I am endowed with consciousness, I always find myself engaged in history. On the other hand, I am certainly free to construct history as I wish. According to my tastes, I am able to make people coexist who lived in different epochs, to invent fantastical events, to alter the course of a fight to which I wished a different conclusion, and to remodel the ages to my taste. I must necessarily be free to produce all conceivable alternative histories, for if I do not have this freedom, it would be a fatal infringement on the absoluteness of the principle of the system. However, I am not free to arbitrarily construct history in this or that fashion, if it is supposed to have an objective validity corresponding to reality, that is, if it rests upon the state of feeling. History can only assume objective validity if there is a harmony between the state of the feeling subject and the image produced by the imagination. All objective historical knowledge must therefore rest upon a present perception. The evidence of facts proceeds in the following manner: First of all, there is a fact which has come down to our own time, – which may be seen with our eyes, heard with our ears, and felt with our hands. This can be understood only on the supposition of an earlier fact no longer perceptible to us. Hence such an earlier fact is admitted as having been once perceptible. This rule, that we can accept as proved only so much of the earlier fact as is absolutely necessary for the comprehension of the now-existing fact, is to be taken strictly; for it is only in the understanding, and by no means to the fantasy, that we can concede any value in historical evidence (CPA 151 [GA I/8: 301]).

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A fact is only that which falls under one or the other of the human senses. History consists in the transmission of such impressions of sense to other people whose senses have not been affected by this fact. To my mind, the only fact demonstrated historically is that without which another fact which falls under our sense could not at all be such as it is. To my mind, all facts to which this condition does not apply are indemonstrable, and I will never support the least affirmation on this fact, neither for nor against. To my mind, all facts which would have the consequence that something which falls under my senses cannot be such as it effectively is, are proven to be false.4

If historical knowledge must always rest upon presently perceptible facts, it is because of the impossibility of deducing a priori the actual course of history, which depends on the use that men make of their freedom—it is because the chain of freedom always progresses “by leaps.” Thus, historical knowledge can only be knowledge a posteriori and history can only be an empirical science based on proven facts.

The Practical Stakes of Historical Research As purely factual knowledge, history is devoid of meaning in two ways. On the one hand, far from being capable of restoring the chain of determinations of freedom having influence on my own historical engagement, it only delivers brute facts, linked only by choronological succession. Without leaving the sphere of facts, it cannot rise to knowledge of the motive explaining this chronological succession. It faced the chain of freedom in a relationship of radical exteriority. In effect, because of the finitude of human reason, freedom cannot be immediately perceived but may solely be inferred, conjectured from certain phenomena. Now, history, which claims to be strictly confined to the facts, is prohibited from making such an inference, which arises from interpretation. As a purely factual science, history is condemned to be only a catalogue of facts that it does not comprehend. It is no longer able to accord greater importance to one fact than to another, without leaving its neutrality. The mere collector of facts … has absolutely no support, no guide, no fixed point, except the mere outward succession of years and centuries, wholly irrespective of their significance …. He is an annalist. … In each of these epochs … the most diverse elements are in immediate contact and intermixture …. The merely empirical historian has to collect faithfully all these elements just as he finds them. (CPA 155 [GA I/8: 304 ff.])

On the other hand, not only the elements of this catalogue are devoid of meaning. The very enterprise of assembling such a catalogue, which by nature is indefinitely extendible, is also senseless. At every moment the present is swallowed in the past, which grows endlessly rich with new facts to accumulate. In each age, the limits of investigation are incessantly pushed back by the discovery of new facts. A veritable

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Sisyphean task, historical science is infinitely incapable of knowing its object and transforms itself into an enterprise not only discouraging but absurd, “as counting little peas,” to recall the famous jest of Fichte.5 Far from permitting the expected chance to “learn about ourselves,” historical science harbors a principle of absolute dispersion. But is it legitimate to pose the question of meaning? To clarify this point, we do well to return to the response to the summons, which coincides with the engagement in history. To understand the summons is to understand that a “du sollst” is addressed to me, that in the concept of a free being outside of me, one counts on my freedom. If the summons is understood, I must respond, even by a non-response, depending on the use I decide to make of my freedom. In responding to the “Soll” that is addressed to me, I engage myself freely in a process of self-determination, of the limitation of my freedom. This freely consented limitation cannot be a limitation by a being, in which case there would be exterior constraint, but only by “a law I make for myself,” a “law of willing,” the “ethical law” (WLnm / FTP 338 [GA IV/3: 462]). Now, in the measure that the entry into history consists in a moral limitation of my possibilities of action, history is immediately invested with an ethical dimension and is tied to the question of meaning. Therefore, the question of meaning is not exterior to history. It is not introduced in a suspect manner by philosophy; rather, it is always already implied. Therefore, as surely as we are conscious beings, we find ourselves situated in a sphere of interpersonal relations and are invested with historical responsibility. This is equally the case with the historian. In wanting to detach history from the ethical and to reduce history to a series of facts, in the name of a perfectly legitimate scientific ideal, the historian abstracts an essential dimension from history. Such an abstraction is always unrealizable and the ideal of neutrality is chimeric. Purely factual history—which can claim no utility since it could be useful only in terms of objectives exterior to it, which cannot edify us since it could only edify us in terms of a meaning radically heterogeneous, and which can be no more than a science, paradoxically, teaching us nothing—is a simple view of the mind. All the efforts that the historian can deploy to play the role of an observer absolutely uninvolved in his material and without a point of view, contemplating earthly events as from a God’s eye view, are in vain. As surely as the historian is raised to consciousness, he is engaged in history, he has a perspective of the world, and his investigation necessarily has a point of view. According to a famous formula, the historian is a son of his time. The historian who is not conscious of the necessarily subjective character of his investigation naively borrows from his age all the conceptual apparatus that he puts in his work, without carving out the origin of his concepts and without doubting the perspective that commands his approach to the problems or the ideology it conveys.

The Responsibility of Philosophy vis-à-vis History Even if the historian is no longer obsessed with the ideal of objectivity and is aware of the inevitable subjectivity of his approach, he remains incapable of truly judging the meaning of events. To make history a product of his time introduces an appearance of meaning into history. But as this meaning is relative to the age, and as every age produces

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its own values and finds itself motivated by a different interest in its investigation of the past, making history a product of its time results in the dissipation of historical truth into a multiplicity of partial appproaches, with each being apparently equally legitimate since the historian has no criteria to judge the validity of each approach independent of the age. The historian is not armed to fight against the historicist dissolution of history if he is not supported by philosophy or if he is not a philosopher. We now come to the third aspect of the philosophical deduction in relation to history. On the side of the deduction of the fundamental historicity of consciousness and the deduction of the necessary non-deducibility of the actual course of history, it must be equally possible, according to Fichte, to produce an a priori deduction of the stages through which humanity must pass to reach the system of freedom, which it has as its goal from the time it engaged in the dialectic of freedoom. The thesis is that, even if it is not possible to deduce a priori the actual course that history will follow (to do so would imply the abolition of freedom, the supreme condition of the consciousness of the self), it is at least possible to trace a priori the course that history would have to follow to attain the purpose of reason. This presupposes that history, as the context of the dialectic of freedom and independent of unforeseeable human actions, possesses a fundamental structure that is tied to the structure of reason and is therefore deducible a priori.6 For the “philosopher treating history as a philosopher,” this a priori course of the “universal plan” must be “clearly independent of all history” (CPA 155 [GA I/8: 304]). The a priori course of the universal plan is the formal context to which the actual course of history joins. Deducing such a plan shows that in virtue of the laws of reason, humanity must proceed phase by phase to reach the ends of reason. But it is necessary to carefully distinguish this a priori plan from the actual course of history. It is impossible to deduce a priori how much time humanity will need to pass from one phase to another. It is impossible to deduce a priori if humanity, after having passed from phase one to phase two, will continue its progress toward phase three or will return to phase one. It is impossible to deduce a priori if humanity will ever attain phases four and five. “Now this development of the human race does not take place at once, as the philosopher pictures it to himself in thought, but, disturbed by foreign powers, it takes place gradually, at different times, in different places, and under particular circumstances” (CPA 154 [GA I/8: 304]). As the motor of history is freedom, we must always count on the possibility of a catastrophic reversal. Nothing established is definitive; all progress is reversible and all freedom entails a risk. By the use he makes of his freedom, man shapes history in the image of the purpose he fixes. This purpose is not necessarily that of duty, for were it so, his freedom would be sacrified and there would no longer be a place for the ethical. Fichte sketches the picture of this universal plan in The Characteristics of the Present Age. Humanity, in its historic progress, is considered to be placed between two Paradises: the lost Paradise in which life was ruled by instinct, and the Paradise that humanity reconstructs after the image of the first one. At the end of its journey humanity has to attain again its point of origin, simply that, resting on its own strength, it has to “bring itself back to that state in which it was once before without its own cooperation” (CPA 10 [GA I/8: 201]). Thus freedom is indeed the propelling power in such a conception of history, and the diverse ages that we can deduce a priori are so

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many stages in this process of liberation. History itself, which takes place between the ahistoric moment of the first stage characterized by the relentless reign of instinct, and the meta-historic moment of the last stage characterized by the triumph of freedom and reason, consists of three stages. The liberation from instinct cannot be accomplished all at once, but begins by certain individuals who take advantage of their superiority to establish an unequal system and an authoritarian regime to maintain these disparities. The following stage consists in a liberation from any shape of authority and of an exaltation of a purely formal, equal freedom for all. This third Age, “the Age of the empty freedom,” according to the interpretation developed in this work, corresponds to the current time. The reign of the formal freedom requires in turn a correction, which is the matter of science. The task of the latter is to determine theoretically the means to rationally correct the individualistic drift of the system of the generalized egoism, led by the purely formal use of the freedom. At this stage, it is no more a question of liberating itself at all costs from whatever obstacle, but of understanding the distinction between “empty” and “real” freedom and working consciously on the promotion of the aim of reason (cf. CPA 19 ff., 41, 156 ff. [GA I/8: 209, 223, 306]). Finally, the fifth and last stage, which seals the end of history, consists in the practical application of the knowledge acquired at the previous stage. Independent of the course of history and of the part of rationality guiding man in his actions, the universal plan gives a “synoptic view” of the possible progress of humanity, and serves as a standard for evaluating the respective contribution of each age. It is only in the light of such a plan that events take on meaning, as an illustration of the progress or retreat of humanity in relation to the pursuit of its ends. The use which [the philosopher] makes of history is not to prove anything by it, for his principles are already proved independently of history; but only to illustrate and make good in the actual world of history, that which is already understood without its aid. Throughout the whole course of events, therefore, he selects only the instances in which humanity really advances towards the true end of its being, and appeals only to these instances – laying aside and rejecting everything else; as he does not intend to prove historically that humanity has to pursue this course, having already proved it philosophically, he only points out, for the purposes of illustration, the occasions on which this has been visible in history. (CPA 154 ff. [GA I/8: 304])

But this universal plan does not only orient the study of the past, give sense to the facts merely juxtaposed by the chronicler, and consider these facts from the interior by emphasizing the “profound spirit” of the ages. This dialectic of liberty, of which history forms the context, must equally serve to guide the rational construction of the future and the engagement in the practical realm (cf. CPA 155 [GA I/8: 305]). It is here that one sees the fundamentally activist and revolutionary dimension of the Fichtean approach to history. Fortified by its knowledge of the subsequent stages through which humanity must pass to reach its goal, philosophy has two tasks. On the one hand, in all domains of human activity (science, law, politics, morality, religion, education, etc.), philosophy must exercise a critical function to reveal the principles

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upon which its age rests, to identify the diverse positions clashing within the age, and to assign to each its place in relation to the universal plan. On the other hand, in each of these domains, philosophy must trace the path to be followed in the subsequent stages. It must engage in combat against all forms of social injustice and all political, moral, or religious swerving, which will last as long as the rule of law has not been realized and the purpose of reason has not been attained. It must try to exercise the largest possible influence by its actions and draw the most diverse people into its combat.

Transcendental Philosophy and the Concrete Field of History How can the philosopher exercise the critical task devolved to him? Up to here, we were interested in the transcendental structure of history. But it falls to the philosopher, as in general to every human being, to engage himself concretely in history. There the transcendental approach finds its limit, because the concrete engagement implies a judgment on the real course of history; it implies taking into account the dimension of the a posteriori. Except by failing in his mission of engagement in history, the philosopher cannot remain quietly installed in the a priori, which is his own domain. He must leave the transcendental level where he tried to assume a comfortable, rational control and must incur the risk of making his hands dirty by opening himself to the world of life to which he has to assign a place in his system but which lies beyond the limits of his discipline. What the philosopher can deduce a priori is the general knowledge of what history should be. But a double limit forbids him to subjugate the real under the control of the rational. The first obstacle is that the reading of history depends partially on empirical knowledge which, because of the human finiteness, cannot be gathered all at once in a single “observer of the world and the men.” It entails thus, inevitably, a risk of error, because the philosopher can make a mistake in identifying the factions in presence. It also contains an element of instability, because the chain of the observed historic facts is not closed and the relation between the diverse factions is susceptible to evolution. It means that in the name of the same principles, which are “scientifically” deduced in the central part of the system, the philosopher can be brought by the evolution of his observations to subscribe to diverse causes. And the cause that he endorses is the one that seems to him, on the base of his cognition of the universal plan, the best compatible with his principles. The second obstacle is that the knowledge of the means to approach the moral destination, which is given to humanity with the awakening of consciousness, supposes a controllable progress of the chain of the free actions. Under this supposition, the philosophers were then supposed to have a knowledge regarding the future similar to that of the historian regarding the past. Just as the historian, he too would deny freedom and consider series of facts only in terms of dependency (the causal chain). The “progress by leaps” in the chain of freedom makes impossible the calculation of the technico-pratical criteria for action geared to the final goal pursued. There is, furthermore, an asserted discontinuity between the intention (which only stands under my control) and the act (which, as far as it joins in the sensible world, obeys the

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laws governing it and escapes me), which has the consequence that “we know at no moment what can favor the realization of the goal” (VM 438 [GA I/6: 278], translation modified). Thus, the pursuit of the final goal of humanity escapes any attempt of instrumentalization. It follows that the Fichtean philosophy is a philosophy of the tragic, because, invested as we are of a historic responsibility, we are somehow condemned to engage ourselves always more in action, in spite of the double limitation on our knowledge and on our power that makes impossible our will of rational control of the real. It is a philosophy of the finiteness, because we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. It is finally a philosophy of risk, because in the implementation of our mission it is necessary for us to act without knowing what is going to result from it. The Fichtean philosophy, being faithful to the spirit of Critical philosophy, emphasizes on finiteness and is opposed to any attempt that removes all opacity and crudity from the world of life. This explains why the task of the philosopher is infinite: although the transcendental philosophy presents a closed system of principles describing the structure of consciousness and elucidating the structure of reality, it requires infinite updating in its application to the concrete, which is by nature not controllable.

The Search for Criteria for the Concrete Engagement in History— Illustration with a Particular Case After the description of the transcendental structure of the history and the evocation of the difficulties connected to the mediation between the transcendental level and the world of life, I want finally to examine a particular case of the difficulties met by Fichte in his concrete engagement in history. How was Fichte the pro-revolutionist able to become a henchman of the Prussian Monarchy? This question is in the center of his political action and of the reflections that he develops in particular in The Characteristics of the Present Age, the Addresses to the German Nation and The Doctrine of the State. What are the criteria that guide Fichte’s choices? On what tangible signs can the philosopher lean to direct his action? It deserves to be underlined that Fichte’s adhesion to the Revolution was always subordinated to his adhesion to another philosophic revolution that is infinitly more important for him—the critical revolution committed by Kant, which he uses as reference authority, critical tool, and regulative principle. His role as engaged philosopher consists in securing this relation of subordination by remaining attentive to the events and by showing vigilance: the Revolution is and has to be a lesson of applied transcendantalism. The recourse to the famous distinction between the de jure and the de facto question at the beginning of the Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment of the French Revolution (1793)7 indicates the gap painfully felt by Fichte between the compelling idea underlying the Revolution and its realization, the Terror, which he was at no time ready to support. The Contribution was written at a time when a large part of the German public, which initially admired the principles of the Revolution, was turning away from it. This work addresses the German public and invites them not to judge the French Revolution by the deplorable facts but by the

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principles that justify it. It addresses also indirectly the revolutionaries. These would indeed have received a “warning” of their own misfortune and that of the others. It intended to bring them back “tardily” to “wisdom” and to “justice,” and they would be well-advised to hear it. Otherwise the “big drama” that they had proposed would have only served to bring even worse trouble, and the people would have to escape “from the dungeon of the despot only to murder each other with the ruins of their broken chains” (GA I/1: 203). It appears that even in Fichte’s most pro-revolutionary years his admiration for France is accompanied by severe reservation, which is concerned not only with the way the Revolution was carried out, but more radically with the choice of the revolutionary path itself. France is for him neither the pinnacle of culture, nor that of science or philosophy.8 It is doubtless on the good path,9 but it would be well-advised to strengthen its revolutionary experiences by a scientific revolution. Why does Fichte choose the French camp during his Jena period despite the grave reluctance he feels toward the revolutionary practices?10 Fichte lives in a cruel dilemma. When in May 1799 he gets in touch with French people with the aim of a nomination in Mainz, he tells his correspondent of the hesitations that torment him: Although no reasonable person can dispute that the principles, on which the French Republic and the republics formed after its model rest, are the single ones compatible with human dignity, it was also obvious until now that because of the inconsequence on both sides, the practices of both opposite parties were completely similar, and the republican practices often seemed even worse. In such a situation, I had to deem it a daring venture to confide myself to the Republic without utmost necessity.11

In the letter Fichte indicates the criterion that he needs so urgently to align with a party: the murder of the French Plenipotentiaries by Austrian hussars to Rastadt, on April 28th, 1799. The atrocities perpetrated to Rastadt completely modified my vision of things …. It is clear that from now on, only the French Republic can constitute the homeland of the fair man …; from now on, indeed, it is not only the precious hopes of humanity but its existence that is bound up with the victory of the Republic. … It is a war of principles. Only the awfulest superiority can bring peace to the Republic and protect its existence. (GA III/3: 348 ff.)

This letter is quite remarkable for studying the structure of the concrete engagement in history. To motivate its support to a party, Fichte needs a criterion; yet, when the atrocities committed by both parts balance each other, the de jure superiority of the republican principles does not seem to him sufficient to allow a decision. Is the anarchizing barbarism of the republicans really preferable to the authoritarian barbarism of the European princely systems? Fichte feels some difficulty in conceiving it. Thus it is necessary, by scrutinizing the field of history, to discover a barbaric act considered qualitatively even graver to break the deadlock

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and allow one to believe again in a war of principles. The concrete engagement in history involves a reading of the history, always susceptible to being modified by the consideration of new events. When Fichte stops advocation for France and transfers his support to Germany, this occurs as a result of his interpretation of a specific event: the capturing of the power by Napoleon, which he considered to be treason to the cause of the Revolution. This reading of the singular historic event allows Fichte to make his engagement once more, now for Germany, a matter of principle and precisely in the name of his attachment to the republican ideal. After the collapse of Prussia in Jena and Auerstedt, Fichte engages actively for the German cause. He collaborates in the launch of the review Vesta, a political firebrand intended to maintain the patriotic flame of the Prussians, published by people in exile who had close ties to the government in exile and to which he assigns the mission “to intervene powerfully on the wheel of time.”12 He is strongly interested in Machiavelli’s figure and dreams of himself being a councillor to the prince. He counts among his auditors numerous officials of the Prussian State, means to give them advice, and goes as far as writing to King Frederik William III of Prussia. He believes in his duty to follow the Prussian government in exile, and then, refusing to bow before the winners, he undertakes a strange expedition that brings him to Denmark. He returns to Berlin to pronounce his famous Addresses to the German Nation, in defiance of an apparent real danger. In the face of the troops of Napoleon, as a modern variant of the barbaric flood that threatened the Italy of the Medici, he recommends a moral resistance that he hopes to obtain through an education of the people, inspired by the pedagogic ideas of Pestalozzi, which he mobilizes in the service of the Doctrine of the Science. He develops a project to prepare for the scientific revival necessary for the welfare of Germany: the plan for a university to be created in Berlin. To understand what, in Fichte’s opinion, is at stake with the German war for independence, we should return to the frame of history proposed in The Characteristics of the Present Age. The French Revolution was clearly associated with the third Age. Fichte tells us at the beginning of the Addresses to the German Nation that this age is over: “In those lectures [in The Characteristics of the Present Age] I showed that our age lies in the third principal epoch of world history …. Witihin the three years that have passed since my interpretation of the current epoch, it has at some point run its course and come to an end” (AGN, 9 [GA I/10: 104]). Humanity was thus at the threshold of a new age, and the question is which one. Napoleon’s treason to the republican ideal means for Fichte the danger of a return to the second Age, and that means the resurgence of an authoritarian model and an eradication of the progresses carried out by European civilization. Either humanity is going to find strength under the leadership of Germany—which is then raised to the rank of the ultimate guard of culture—to mount to the following stage of the “science of the reason”—the fourth Age—in the universal plan of history, or it is going to sink into inhumanity due to a lack of sufficient moral energy. The institution of a republic remains Fichte’s ideal up to the end; so we can read in the Diarium of 1813 that “The real goal is something infinite which we can only approach. It is the matter of a constitution which follows the current evolution. An idea of freedom … Such has to be the goal: the republic and not the arbitrary.”13

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Fichte could support the Prussian government only as long as the cause of this regime became identical to that of the German people, that is, as long as the war against France could be considered as a “war of the people” (Volkskrieg) and not as a war in the service of a ruling caste pursuing only its own arbitrary interests. The nature of the popular war, in the way Fichte means it, is precisely oriented to the realization of the republic, even if it has to go through an infinite process of approximation. Thus, the war against France finds its legitimacy only as long as it may be subsumed under this regulating principle. Fichte is not going to change camp again, but he becomes seriously disenchanted. Academically disappointed by the rejection of his plan for the university of Berlin, disappointed by the wild way the war is led, and disappointed by the misappropriation of the popular victory for the benefit of monarchies that become “less bearable” in proportion to their recovery, Fichte is far from adhering without reservation to the camp that he chose to support. We see his hesitations reappear between the lines, accompanying his engagement for France in the Jena period. While the republican ideal seems to be betrayed again and horrors reappear in both camps, how to steer his engagement according to principles becomes a dilemma that must have tormented Fichte in his last years, as proven by his numerous deliberations in his Diarium. Fichte was neither a pro-French revolutionary devotee nor the faithful servant of the Prussian monarchy one might want to see in him. But, solidly anchored on transcendental ground, he always endeavors to “ac[t] powerfully on the wheel of time,” to say it with his terms, by engaging concretely in the field of history, adhering to the party that appeared to him to be momentarily the most convenient for promoting the republican ideal in concurrence with his principles. That is what brought him, in the agitated time he experienced, to alternate between the revolutionary France and the resistant Prussia without ever adhering blindly to a cause and to remain watchful, measuring the events constantly by his principles. The question of whether his interpretation of the events was correct is precisely a question of interpretation and cannot be clarified by principles only.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

I wish to express my gratitude to Daniel Morrison and Chiu Yui Plato Tse for their great help with translation of this chapter. On Fichte’s approach to history, see also Hammacher 1962, Lauth 1976, and Ivaldo 1982. For a detailed discussion of this topic, cf. Radrizzani 1993, 165–75. WLnm / FTP 404 (GA IV/3: 490), where the formula is applied to physics. Letter of June 10, 1800, to Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, GA III/4, no. 543: 265. This jest is reported by Friedrich Schlegel in his letter to Körner of September 21, 1796. See: Fuchs 1987, 1: 375, no. 446. This deduction is exposed in particular in the first two Lectures of The Characteristics of the Present Age.

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7 See GA I/1: 210: “Nothing throws more confusion in our judgments … as if we want to judge without really knowing from which viewpoint we judge; as if we we refer with certain facts to laws, to general truths, without knowing if we check the fact by the law, or the law by the fact.” 8 Cf. the draft of Fichte’s letter to an unknown addressee of April/May 1795: “the French Nation, which begins to be interested … in the art and in the science” (GA III/2: 298, no. 282a). 9 Cf. for example Fichte’s letter to Jung of September 5th (?), 1799: “It is only justice to consider me a lover of the political freedom and the nation which promises to propagate it. I am also firmly convinced that we obtain much more results by men who possess the political freedom, who are equal to all their fellow countrymen, and who, of birth, are neither the Lords, nor the slaves of anybody, that by such people who is paralyzed in this noble part of the human force” (GA III/3: 138, no. 384). 10 Cf. Fichte’s letter to Reinhold of May 22nd, 1799: “It will be difficult to find somebody which have worst opinion than me of the French people and republican Germans” (GA III/3: 358, no. 447). 11 Fichte’s letter to Jung of May 10th, 1799 (GA III/3: 348, no. 445a). 12 Cf. the prologue, which remained unpublished, that Fichte wrote for the review Vesta. See GA II/10: 284. 13 Fichte, Diarium I, Note from April 5th, 1813. Published in GA II/15: 211 ff.

Bibliography Fuchs, Erich. 1987. Fichte im Gespräch. Berichte der Zeitgenossen. 7 vols. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Hammacher, Klaus. 1962. “Comment Fichte accède à l’histoire.” Archives de Philosophie 25 (3–4): 388–440. Ivaldo, Marco. 1982. “L’approccio die Fichte alla storia.” In Storicismo ed Epistemologia, 127–36. Padova: Gregoriana Libreria Editrice. Lauth, Reinhard. 1976. “L’action historique d’après la philosophie transcendantale.” Bulletin de la société française de Philosophie 70 (2): 41–84. Masullo, Aldo. 1965. La communità come fondamento. Napoli: Libreria Scientifica Editrice. Radrizzani, Ives. 1993. Vers la fondation de l’intersubjectivité chez Fichte – Des Principes à la Doctrine de la Science Nova Methodo. Paris: Vrin.

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Fichte’s Conception of Bildung and His Proposal for University Reform Marina F. Bykova

This chapter examines Fichte’s thought from the perspective of the development of the so-called “Neohumanism” that transformed German intellectual life in the late eighteenth century and became a central concern for German idealists and other thinkers influenced by this philosophical tradition. A complex phenomenon, acting through scholarship, education, philosophy, and literature, the Neohumanism shifted attention from the world and natural reality to the human being and his distinctly human relations to the world. This shift in perspective stimulated a genuine interest in the dynamics of human development, both individually and socially. The most important question came to be the question of man’s1 “formation,” which takes place through different forms of human interaction with culture and the historical world. This, however, is never merely a process of conditioning through environmental stimuli, or the mere accumulation of information presented by experience. Instead, this is fundamentally an inner, self-directed activity. This process of self-cultivation coined as Bildung became the defining inspiration of the modern German literary and philosophical tradition at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the philosophical and intellectual discourse of that period centered on the theme of Bildung. It was a kind of joint project, and many of the epoch’s thinkers contributed to its success. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was not an exception. While Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first to systematically introduce the notion of Bildung, Fichte contributed greatly to its development. Through his many lectures and plans for a higher education institution for Berlin in 1807, he elaborated on a conception of Bildung that eventually paved the way for a unique understanding of education and its role in personal and societal progress. In this chapter, I address two issues: first, I will discuss the place and role of the conception of Bildung in Fichte’s philosophical system, particularly its role for the realization of man’s vocation and goals, granting him the power to shape the new world; second, I will comment on Fichte’s proposal for a new university in Berlin. I will argue that his proposal reflects his own Bildung-ideal and provides a valuable contribution

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to the theory of Bildung, which Fichte develops in a number of his writings. Here I will mostly focus on two of Fichte’s texts in which he elaborates his conception of Bildung and proposes his plan for an institution of higher education: Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794) and “Deduced Plan of a Higher Institute of Education to be Erected in Berlin” (1807), respectively. To fully appreciate the importance of Bildung in Fichte’s philosophical system and the role it played in his conception of an institution of higher education in Berlin, we must first attempt to comprehend the notion of Bildung. Thus, in what follows I will begin with a brief excursus into the term’s origin and meaning. Then I will explore how the concept of Bildung is understood by Fichte and, finally, I will examine Fichte’s university proposal and place it into context of his own discussion of the project of Bildung.

Bildung: On the Term’s Origin and Meaning In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the German public developed a substantial interest in questions of personal development and education, the topic to which nearly every thinker of note in this period has contributed. This interest was informed by a deep concern with individual self-cultivation in a society marked by an increasing division of labor and by questions about the status and unity of (scientific) knowledge that were posed by Kantian epistemology. In this context the theme and concept of Bildung came to the forefront of discussions, giving a voice to the intellectual discourse of the late Enlightenment. Interestingly, however, while Bildung came into fashion only closer to the end of the eighteenth century, this neologism has ancient roots. Etymologically, the term combines two different ideas that are expressed by two pairs of Latin words: forma – formatio and imago – imitatio. The former emphasizes the activity of producing or giving shape to a concrete object, and the latter points to a relationship between the original image (Vorbild or Bild) and its reproduction (Abbild), which imitates or resembles the original. Thus Bildung means two things: first, a forming (bilden), in the sense of shaping a certain object according to specific rules or an arrangement that gives rise to a form, and, second, an imprinting (ab-bilden) by an image (Bild), i.e., an imprinting in a manner that the anticipated resultant product closely resembles the original model endowed with an absolute value. Such a double-meaning reveals the complexity of the concept of Bildung. It should be understood not only as the idea of formation or shaping a whole into a living whole, so that it is organized according to rules which are proper to life, in particular to a physical life. It also includes the idea of forming by a model, which should be reproduced and imitated in a certain type of form that can closely match the valuable Vorbild. The complex relationship between the model and its copy, between the original and its reproduction, introduces a crucial element into the concept of Bildung. Not only does it bring an important dynamicity into Bildung, but it also grafts an idea of perfection onto it. The latter becomes a main criterion to measure how the resultant image corresponds to the model and also serves as an ultimate goal of the process of “forming,” which is progressing toward perfection.

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The landscape that surrounds the concept of Bildung in the German humanism tradition is rich and varied: from the pre-Romantic and Romantic cults of sensibility and genius to German historicism and political Romanticism, and to German ethical and aesthetical idealism and beyond. Despite the different contexts and varying forms that the concept of Bildung had taken in the German intellectual tradition since its introduction at the end of the eighteenth century, the discourse of Bildung has remained largely the same. It emphasizes a special type of awareness that assumes the organic intertwining of the self and its symbolic-historical world. This is the awareness of culture and tradition that leads to a deeper and more profound awareness of oneself, a self-awareness that is eventually manifest in one’s judgments and actions. In scholarly literature, Bildung is often explained in terms of “education” as merely the development of human potentials and capacities, or even schooling, which largely misrepresents the concept and place of Bildung in the nineteenth-century German philosophical tradition. In the German idealist tradition, Bildung is understood as a world-encountering that is a necessary condition of human self-development. The core dimension of Bildung is neither the world as such nor the individual itself, but the specific interplay between the self and the world. The world in question is a universal and ideal realm that transcends every particular environment, everything that is factually given. Therefore, Bildung does not imply simply getting beyond the present and the particular or just adapting oneself to a specific (new) culture. It rather involves acquiring transcultural views and developing universalistic norms and principles. This world-relatedness of Bildung is that which grounds its difference from the concepts of learning and narrowly understood education, which focuses on the individuals’ interactions with their specific environments, and not with the world as such. While the world-relatedness central to Bildung assumes a universal attitude, “education” is always tied to something particular (a situation, conditions, local practices or surroundings). Furthermore, education is mostly concerned with the cultivation of human capabilities at the individual level, the development of a singular personality. The semantic structure of Bildung, however, points to a radically distinct connotation. Bildung does not simply mean the constitution and development of a self, but it rather displays this process of development and crucial transformation as inherently interwoven with the opening of a world-horizon by and for the self. This essential link between an individual’s self-development and encountering of the world, thought as a universal entity transcending cultural and contextual divides and combining them into a singular overarching concept of the whole, is what makes Bildung unique. Since the world in question is a living and human world, the interplay between the self and the world inevitably includes the complex interactions among the active selves. Not only are these intersubjective interactions governed by universal (transcultural, cosmopolitan) norms and principles, but their development is regulated by the idea of the intrinsic worth and universal value of humanity. This is why the proper understanding of individual self-cultivation in terms of Bildung is its understanding as the “self-cultivation of man toward humanity.” It is precisely this meaning of Bildung that Fichte and other post-Kantian German thinkers actively elaborated in their works.

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On Fichte’s Conception of Bildung Fichte was firmly rooted in the Neohumanist tradition of Bildung and engaged in the discussions associated with this discourse, as is indicated by a number of writings focusing on man’s vocation and various pedagogical concepts.2 From the beginning of his philosophical career, Bildung is a focus of his practical philosophy. It does not emerge from nowhere simply as a need of community for (equal) education (as it appears in the humanists Rousseau and Pestalozzi) or a moral necessity (like in Kant). It is derived directly from the vocation of man. The notion of man stands at the foundation of Fichte’s entire philosophy. His main concern is the question of man (der Mensch)3 and how to understand and realize man’s real vocation. Bildung is a concrete response to this inquiry. Fichte’s conception of Bildung gives answers to such questions as what man really is, what he ought to be, and how he can become this. In this sense, Bildung emerges as one of the central topics of Fichte’s writings. It plays an especially prominent role in the Vocation of Man (VM) and Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (LSV), which together offer a well-developed account of Bildung. Here Fichte provides a thematization of Bildung as self-cultivation toward one’s self-awareness necessary for an individual’s development. Yet Bildung is not limited to questions about the ways in which one becomes an individual. This notion captures a process of human formation at both the individual level and the societal level. While in Some Lectures and other relevant works Fichte discusses Bildung in terms of an individual’s formation, in the Addresses to the German Nation (AGN) he is rather concerned with Bildung at a broader social level, in the context of a developing community and nation. Emphasizing that man’s universal goal is not a merely arbitrary choice, but is rather determined by the very essence of man, his vocation, Fichte distinguishes between the vocation of man “merely according to the concept of man as such” (LSV 146 [GA I/3: 28])4 at the individual level, and the vocation of man at the social and communal level. Both, he says, are crucial, and only if both are achieved does man become complete. In this sense, the goal of man’s development is nothing else but fulfilling his true vocation. Here it is important to clarify in what sense Fichte uses the word “Bestimmung” (German original for “vocation”), which has multiple meanings in German. The most common interpretation of “Bestimmung” is to associate it with the Latin word determinatio, meaning “logically assigning a distinction to a notion” (Regenbogen and Meyer 1998). As such, it is conceived purely theoretically in the sense of a distinctive mark or sign. But at the same time, “Bestimmung” is also understood as a task or goal. Taken in this connotation it has a practical meaning. According to Fichte, if one asks about the vocation of man (Bestimmung des Menschen), both meanings necessarily coincide, for the theoretical question of what man is can only be given a practical answer. Furthermore, Fichte promotes the idea of the “whole man,” who is the result of self-cultivation in both an individual and a communal sense. Thus, not only is the concept of Bildung grounded in his practical philosophy, but its etymology is as well. For Fichte, man’s vocation is not a mere transcendental ideal, but rather a concrete regulative principle of practical reason. Man’s vocation is not just to be perfect, but to

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“perfect himself without end” (LSV 152 [GA I/3:32]; see also LSV 160 [GA I/3:41]).5 Man “exists in order to become constantly better in an ethical sense, in order to make all that surrounds him better sensuously (sinnlich) and – insofar as we consider him in relation to society – ethically (sittlich) as well, and thereby to make himself even happier” (LSV 152 [GA I/3:32]). Here Fichte not only notices the significance of society for man in achieving his vocation qua man, but already points to another important vocation of man: his vocation as a communal being, or as a people. The process of Bildung is a continuous undertaking, an end within the means, and one characteristic feature of it is that it must be self-initiated and self-performed. It is an active process of self-cultivation that one pursues and builds through interaction with others, rather than as an atomic individual or a solo agent. The process of selfcultivation is about man cultivating his abilities and talents, including “the skill of giving, or affecting others as free beings, and the capacity for receiving, or for making the most of the effect which others have upon us” (LSV 160 [GA I/3:41]). Not just these abilities are to be cultivated, however: all of man’s capacities “ought to be cultivated to the highest possible degree of perfection” (LSV 163 [GA I/3:43]; cf. LSV 170 [GA I/3:50]), and this is where the ingrained idea of perfection becomes evident. The Bildung process involves an ability to learn the customs, morality, and culture of a society, and then make one’s own values within that. In other words, it involves an internalizing of the culture of a society followed by the knowledge and ability to make it one’s own (AGN 18). This must be understood in the context of Fichte’s time, a time of Neohumanism and a novel appreciation of individual growth. Individuals and humanity were viewed as having the ultimate goal of moving toward perfection, which is their vocation, a term that I will later elaborate further. The method by which to do this was the ultimate question Fichte wanted to answer; one of the ways in which an individual can do this both for himself and for one another, Fichte argued, is through working on his own Bildung. Fichte had an optimistic view of a new world in which moral ills and political corruption are cured, and cultivating Bildung in man is what he believed would most help create this world (LSV 175–6 [GA I/3:57–8]; cf. LSV 151–2 [GA I/3:32]). Bildung is the vocation of man, which Fichte says is “complete harmony with himself ” (LSV 150 [GA I/3:30]; cf. LSV 151, 152 [GA I/3:30–1, 31]). While Fichte does not think man can ever reach perfection, he argues that there is a practical significance to pursuing perfection. Perfection, according to Fichte, is a total agreement of man with himself. It involves striving to perfect all of man’s powers and abilities, as opposed to training certain marketable (and thus useful) skills or crafts. This endless striving comes about because of the inability of man to be satisfied with the world, and man subsequently responds by striving for perfection. While this perfection is man’s ultimate goal, it is separate from man’s vocation because absolute perfection can never be reached (LSV 152 [GA I/3:31]). This vocation instead is the striving toward perfection. In other words, while man’s vocation is striving toward perfection, absolute perfection (man’s ultimate goal) cannot be reached. Fichte posits the former as a law, one of pursuing absolute harmony, which demands that an individual must develop or cultivate all his talents equally and universally (Bykova 2012, 408).

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While many theories and discussions of Bildung in Fichte’s time were more focused on Bildung as an interpersonal process, Fichte also discussed this concept as the Bildung of a society (nation); in other words, he suggested that people work toward an ideal at the community level (i.e., striving toward perfection as a community, rather than just at a personal level). To him, one of the ways that man must strive toward perfection and thus work on his Bildung is through interaction with other humans. In doing so, a man contributes to the Bildung of others. As humanity aids in one another’s enculturation, it grows as a society. As I have shown elsewhere, Fichte does not suggest this social focus (i.e., practical involvement with the world) as just one of the ways in which man cultivates his Bildung, but rather the only way (Bykova 2012, 409–13). Through this process, we encounter diversity, contradiction, and challenge—these altogether bring us closer to our absolute, rational, and perfect self. In other words, by attempting to straighten out a “wiggly” world, we grow. The mechanism by which this occurs is simple: in a society, man improves upon the Bildung of others by sharing his knowledge with them, and in turn they do the same. Acting upon our urges to socialize, Fichte suggests, is necessary for this process to occur in an impactful way (LSV 152 [GA I/3:32]).6 This social and community-centered focus becomes important later in this chapter when I will discuss the applications of Bildung in Fichte’s proposal for a new university in Berlin. Bildung has moral relevance as well. Indeed, Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation was intended to be part of an attempt to solve “social inequality, moral corruption, and war” (Schmidt 2013, 163). As the most important tool in Fichte’s system man may use to fulfill his vocation, if it is his moral duty to live in society, then a process by which he develops himself and others is essential. Cultivating moral knowledge in oneself, in this case, means to further one’s moral education, moving oneself and society toward one that is morally cultivated, equal as far as man’s nature, and grounded in reason: “He exists in order to become constantly better in an ethical sense, in order to make all what surrounds him better sensuously and – insofar as we consider him in relation to society – ethically as well” (LSV 152 [GA I/3:32]). Fichte posits this duty toward personal and societal growth as a fundamental law that emphasizes Bildung. To follow this law of moving toward self-harmony, while helping others to do the same, is the vocation of man (Schmidt 2013, 166). This moral dimension of Bildung is intended to be important for cultivation of the self: by cultivating moral knowledge in himself in addition to his other abilities, man is developing the content of what is to come by moralizing society around him. Like a gardener filling a bucket of water to hydrate the plants around him, man is able to share the moral knowledge he cultivates with his community. The Germany of the turn of the eighteenth century held its universities in relatively low regard, and most of them were underfunded and lacking in resources (McClelland 1980, 101–50). Many doubted the ability of existing universities to produce morally and practically effective students and thus began to call for their reform. A call was made for proposals to form a new university in Berlin, and there were three major proposals made in response: one by Fichte himself (in 1807), another by Friedrich Schleiermacher (in 1808), and a third by Wilhelm von Humboldt (in 1809). Schleiermacher’s was a conservative proposal, advocating for maintaining

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the German universities the way that they were (Schleiermacher 1998), while Fichte’s and Humboldt’s were liberal and focused on a new iteration of German universities (see Crouter 2005, 140–68). Each proposal was different from the other, especially Fichte’s and Schleiermacher’s, which bore sharp contrasts; however, every proposal had a focus on “self-directed pursuit in a constant exchange within a community of equals” rather than for vocational knowledge (Schmidt 2013, 173).7 While Humboldt’s was eventually accepted, the parallels between Fichte’s conceptualization of Bildung and his proposal are of interest. Fichte argued in Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation that for one to be given the supreme responsibility of fostering progress in humanity, he ought to be the “ethically best man of his time” (Schmidt 2013, 167). He maintained that we can move as a society toward a moral and just world by assigning the scholarly class the role of being the moral arbiters of society, as students going through formal education would be morally and ethically improved. Through pursuing formal education, students would embody their vocation and work on their Bildung—moving toward self-harmony and thus becoming encultured, morally educated, and closer to their best and reasonable selves. Not only is this interesting because of the way in which the Bildung of the individual student is represented, but also because of how it represents society’s Bildung (in other words, the term is applicable at the societal level rather than just the individual level). Fichte’s proposed new institution would have given students a space to grow, to become part of the morally educated and encultured scholarly class, and then be tools or arbiters of moral progress for the Bildung of society as a whole. The term clearly involves more than just a narrow understanding of education or even moral education, but rather a universal pursuit toward perfection (universal in the sense of encompassing all talents and skills). While the vocation of man was to perfect himself without end, according to Fichte, the vocation of the scholar, or the academically educated, was “the supreme supervision of the actual progress of the human race in general and the unceasing promotion of this progress” (LSV 172 [GA I/3:56]). In other words, universities created a class of ethically educated individuals morally responsible for the progress of humankind. Like a rock falling in a pond sending ripples around it, universities would echo out progress to the surrounding society. In this way, universities and individuals working on their Bildung journey through them would craft the future of humankind through progress in ethics and philosophy.

Fichte’s Proposal for a New University Let me now turn to Fichte’s proposal and see how it is connected to his conception of Bildung. One of the conditions Fichte proposes is integral to the aforementioned purposes: that students should not have any kind of concern regarding their livelihood (DP [GA II/11:96]). This is similar to Fichte’s idea of Bildung at the societal level removing any social inequalities, which were a major concern of Fichte’s. In a class system, lower classes frequently lack the privilege of not worrying about their livelihood. They may instead have to focus on acquiring enough resources to survive. As students, they may worry about being able to pay for their education. Fichte suggested that at the university

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level, strict conditions on student life would have the result of lessening the impact of these inequalities (Schmidt 2013, 169). By mandating that students wear uniforms and separate themselves from traditional concerns about work and livelihood, they would fully dedicate themselves to learning (DP [GA II/11:93-6]). This is because they would separate themselves from those outside of the scholarly classes, and socioeconomic differences would be invisible, encouraging a focus on merit and academics instead (DP [GA II/11:145ff.]). Uniforms would contribute to, at least in terms of appearance, equality (DP [GA II/11:122]). Rather than pursuing education for selfish reasons (i.e., to get a job), another concern of Fichte’s, a passion and love for learning would be fostered and encouraged in students (AGN). In his system, students would not be able to tell, for example, who among them are being schooled because of money from their families and who because of government support (DP [GA II/11:93-6]; see also Schmidt 2013, 170). Because Fichte proposed that the scholarly class, or educated people, that arises out of universities would serve as a moral compass and provide guidance to society, one of the outcomes of this is that inequalities would be mended. Inequalities of class, according to Fichte, were moral inequalities, and a morally trained scholarly class would be able to directly work on improving these inequalities in society. As this scholarly class has their morality cultivated through, in part, schooling, they are also in an environment where inequalities are mended through changes like a mandate of uniforms—a model of what an equal society could be like. Bildung is cultivated at the societal level as a result, as it becomes more morally perfect. Fichte writes in Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation that the knowledge of the wants and abilities of man are meaningless without the means to improve upon them, and his proposal for a new university aims to give these means to all based on merit (see LSV 163–4 [GA I/3:44]). In this way, his concept of Bildung informs his understanding of some of the potential impacts of university education and is ingrained into the very conditions that he considers integral to fulfilling its purpose. By recreating the conditions that would be ideal in a morally correct world (namely, inequalities being removed) at the university level, the final level of man’s schooling, man contributes to his own enculturation and is then able to use his lessons and experiences as the scholarly class. He can then give and receive from the experiences of others, cultivating his own and their Bildungs as a result, free from the worries and challenges that come from an unequal society. The initial question Fichte had to ponder when writing his proposal for a new university was whether he thought universities should serve the purpose of teaching technical and occupational skills or crafts, or another purpose altogether. He argued that the purpose should instead be to teach students the art of using knowledge creatively.8 He believed that the approach to higher education of learning (or purchasing) professional skills was ineffective when it came to progressive social and moral reform. This was a novel and unique view at the time, also shared by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Schelling, given that the traditional approach had always been the opposite. These thinkers, especially Fichte, challenged the tradition by arguing that universities should instead produce an educated class of people to guide the moral and political direction of society. This aligns very closely with, and was likely motivated by, Fichte’s conception of Bildung as being about more than just practical, utilitarian skills, an idea adopted by Humboldt’s proposal as well (Schmidt 2013, 173). Fichte stressed

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that Bildung was not just about gaining practical skills, per se, but rather growing as a person, becoming enculturated, and having personality fostered. Man would learn more than just a useful (practical or cultural) skill but would also improve upon their knowledge and values. In this way, Bildung was incredibly relevant in his proposal: just as Fichte disapproved of the traditional focus in higher education on occupational or vocational skills as such, he equally disapproved of the notion that Bildung should only be relevant in terms of skillsets. However, it is easy to here misinterpret Fichte’s understanding of Bildung as being only about education. Interestingly enough, Fichte also disagreed that Bildung was only about the education of the student through the input of a teacher, and rather argued that it was about “the way of man’s existence in society” (Bykova 2012, 411). Knowledge is merely a branch of human culture, according to Fichte in Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (see LSV 172–3 [GA I/3: 56–7]), and thus the process of Bildung or enculturation will certainly touch on knowledge as a result of schooling, despite that not being the only aspect of human culture that it encompasses. Another important component of Fichte’s proposal involved a free exchange of ideas between teacher and student (Schmidt 2013, 170). This meant that students and teachers would participate in an “expressive Socratic dialogue,” exchanging ideas back and forth in a reciprocal and questioning manner. Dialogues between a few people would contribute to a dialogue at a higher, more broad level—in other words, students in Fichte’s proposed university would be self-guided in their learning and learn by communicating with one another freely and constantly, thus participating in a permanent “invisible dialogue which characterizes academic life as a whole” (DP [GA II/11:90]). This connects very clearly with Fichte’s concept of Bildung having a social nature mentioned previously. According to Fichte, man works on his own Bildung by aiding the Bildung of others. Because Fichte believed that man is a social species (LSV 156–60 [GA I/3:36-41]), his concept of Bildung had a strong social component to it. It was, he argued, improved most strongly by interaction with other people. Fichte believed that man needed to be interacting with other people in order to fulfill his vocation. This is because Fichte argued against a self that does not exist without interactions with other individuals (or, that identity is found in interaction with others). Intersubjectivity, or interactions with other individuals striving for their selfrealization, Fichte argued, is necessary for there to be a self. Indeed, he wrote of man that “[o]ne who lives in isolation is not a complete human being; [h]e contradicts his own self ” (LSV 156 [GA I/3:36]). Naturally, one would expect that Fichte’s university proposal would also feature a strong community-centered component to facilitate this dynamic between beings, and indeed a free and continuous dialogue between students is an essential component of his proposal. The community that is built at the university level, one with a broad dialogue rooted in its structure, becomes a way in which individuals improve upon their Bildung. The community-centered, social nature of Bildung is ingrained in Fichte’s proposal, and students and teachers both work on each other’s Bildung as a result: “One must make a particular effort to maintain ... the capacity ... for making the most of the effect which others have upon us ... [along with] the skill of ... affecting others as free beings, ... for otherwise one remains stationary and thus regresses” (LSV 160 [GA I/3:40]).

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Another important and relevant focus of Fichte’s proposal is on self-directed learning. Universities, according to Fichte, should foster a drive for knowledge and personal growth in their students. His second condition for achieving the purpose that universities set out to meet is, in fact, that students had to entirely dedicate themselves to their studies, implying a drive to study and cultivate oneself. This drive should be selfdirected. Students should cultivate their ability to direct their own learning in order to meet the vision Fichte set out for universities, that is, to teach students to appropriate and transform knowledge creatively (DP [GA II/11:95-6]; see also Schmidt 2013, 168). By directing their own learning, students acquire the necessary skills to move on and be self-guided in their duties as moral compasses for the rest of society. This connects immediately with Fichte’s conception of Bildung which, as I have shown elsewhere, also has a strong self-directed component to it: according to his conception of Bildung, man must actively pursue working on both his Bildung and those of others (Bykova 2012, 413). By practicing being self-guided in formal schooling, the scholarly class is learning to be self-guided through improving upon their Bildung. This active interest is essential for it to happen, according to Fichte. He believed this so strongly that he challenged and called all men to push the boundaries of their knowledge as soon as they came near it—to constantly be improving and striving to become better versions of themselves (LSV 152 [GA I/3: 31]; cf. LSV 184 [GA I/3: 68]). Just as man must actively work on his Bildung, so must the scholar actively pursue his own education. Interestingly, this model for a higher education institution and its connections to the concept of Bildung remains important and relevant in contemporary contexts as well. I would argue the skills-heavy concerns that Fichte and Humboldt resisted are still present today in universities in the US and elsewhere. Many contemporary universities (most of them ironically influenced by Humboldt’s accepted proposal) have changed their focus away from a broad, holistic education, and into a system where technical degrees and training skills for work are more valued. A vocational focus is favored, not in Fichte’s sense of vocation, but rather in the sense of a marketable skills focus (for use in a career, rather than focusing on knowledge as such). In both STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and humanities programs, students are trained into adopting certain useful skills. They learn the “what” rather than the “how” and “why” that enable them to contribute to society. The “human” side of education becomes invisible. Rather than being taught to think for themselves, students are instead mechanically taught to memorize and regurgitate information. This stands in stark contrast to an education with Bildung in mind, which lacks this fragmentation and instead introduces students to culture and the real world, poses challenging questions about ethics and morality and social progress, and is vital for teaching young people to become arbiters of moral and social progress in society. An appreciation and practice of Bildung exposes students (and teachers) to a wide variety of different perspectives, much aligned with Fichte’s view that universities should encourage this dynamic. It enables students to internalize lessons from history, philosophy, and culture—to turn them into one’s own values, and subsequently question them, build upon them, and then share them with others (thus appreciating and contributing to culture). Students are not, then, packaged products programmed with skills and content but instead human beings with the knowledge necessary to contribute to the moral progress of

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society. As Fichte argued, this emphasis is placed on university education to enable it to produce highly cultivated students who are both well-versed in their discipline(s) while also being morally educated and culturally aware individuals. Students in a university rooted in Bildung would participate in dialogue daily, trained by professionals who, like their students, come from different walks of life and have since learned to navigate the richness of culture. This process of mutually passing on wisdom and cultural knowledge from instructors to students teaches students to critically think for themselves and question the ethical implications of their careers and life choices, thus empowering them to improve the humanity of the world around them. It is a way of building one’s own character, personality, open-mindedness, and cultural development; of acquiring lessons through sharing dialogue and lived experiences with other students and scholars. This renewed focus on the impact that the encultured individual can have in society, and the role that universities should play in encouraging this, trains students to be arbiters of moral change in the world.

Conclusion In a national climate under which Germans were eager for social and political change, the aforementioned lack of confidence in universities (especially regarding the moral outcomes of scholars) made them realize how important it was that university reform emphasize moral, social, and values-based education. Applying the Bildung-ideals to higher education became a social urgency: Germans needed to know that the scholarly class would have students educated with regard to culture, customs, and sociability for national morale to improve. Fichte’s proposal offered this solution, with suggestions of a university education moving man toward a common goal and appreciation of equality, freedom, and a commitment to the common good. Fichtean university was conceived as the core of the renewal of human society, both at the state level and at large (DP [GA II/11:169-70]). His focus on humanitarian ideals and animosity toward selfishness aligned strongly with his idea of Bildung. Fichte’s proposal of a new university is, in essence, an objectification of the idea of Bildung. All the major components of Bildung, including moral progress, the cultivation of skills universally, and the recognition of the importance of man’s social nature are manifested in his proposal. Free and open dialogue is encouraged; moral and values-based education is at its core; and practical, vocational skills are not as relevant. Fichte’s idea of Bildung played an important role in the foundation for his proposal for the self-cultivation of man in higher education, as many of the major components of Bildung were objectified and made central to it. Some of the themes essential to Bildung, like the inherent sociability of humankind and moral assessments of inequalities, are applicable and visible in his proposal, for example. In this chapter, I discussed some aspects of Fichte’s proposal for a new institution of higher education and suggested several ways in which his conception of Bildung is relevant to this proposal. Further areas of research could focus on ways in which the other two proposals (those of Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt) aligned with Fichte’s ideals of Bildung, and how, if at all, each of them influenced his own proposal.

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Notes 1 In this chapter, I am using the word “man” as gender neutral to refer to “human being” or “person” regardless of their sex. This usage of the word is consistent with Fichte’s own understanding of the term. Here it should be sufficient to recall that one of his key works is titled Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800), translated into English as The Vocation of Man (VM [GA I/6]). The German noun “der Mensch” that appears in the title of Fichte’s work is traditionally used with the primary sense of “person” or “human being.” 2 See, for example, Diary Concerning the Most Noteworthy Educational Errors that have Come to My Attention (1788), Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794), The Vocation of Man (1800). 3 On the sense in which the word “man” is used here, see note 1. 4 Fichte explains that man as such or “simply qua man” is “man isolated and considered apart from all the associations which are not necessarily included in the concept of man” (LSV 146 [GA I/3: 28]). 5 Similar ideas are also expressed in the Addresses to the German Nation. Cf. AGN 103, 136, 185, 195. 6 Fichte associates the attainment of this goal with the efficacy of humans’ social drive, which he defines as “the drive to interact with other free, rational beings and to interact with them qua free, rational beings” (LSV 163 [GA I/3:44]). He explains that “included within the social drive … are the following two drives: the drive to communicate, that is, the the drive to cultivate in other persons that aspect of personality in which we ourselves are especially strong and … also the drive to receive, that is, the drive to allow others to cultivate in us that aspect in which they are especially strong and we are especially weak” (LSV 163–4 [GA I/3:44]). These two drives are not only manifestation of human freedom, but also of reason. Through these drives reason allows “distribution of the desired education among the individual members of society,” the cultivation that individuals obtain through social interactions and culture and which they cannot receive “directly from nature” (LSV 164 [GA I/3:44]). The process of this cultivation is what Fichte discusses in terms of Bildung. For more about Fichte’s usage of term Bildung in LSV see Daniel Breazeale’s footnote 17 in EPW 163. 7 For more details about the proposals for a new university in Berlin see Crouter 2005, 140–68. 8 Arguing toward this end, Fichte concluded that the proper title for the proposed institution would be “a school of the art of the scientific use of reason” (DP [GA II/11:87]).

Bibliography Bruch, Rüdiger von. 2001. “Zur Gründung der Berliner Universität im Kontext der deutschen Universitätslandschaft um 1800.” In Die Universität Jena: Tradition und Innovation um 1800, edited by Gerhard Müller, Klaus Ries, and Paul Ziche, 63–77. Stuttgart: Steiner. Bykova, Marina F. 2012. “Fichte: Bildung as a True Vocation of Man,” Fichte-Studien 36: 403–15. Collins, Randall. 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies. A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Cambridge University Press. (Esp. pp. 618–87.)

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Crouter, Richard. 2005. Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eichler, Martin. 2012. “Die Wahrheit des Mythos Humboldt.” Historische Zeitschrift 294: 59–78. McClelland, Charles E. 1980. State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Menze, Clemens. 1991. “Wilhelm von Humboldt und die deutsche Universität.” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik 67: 471–84. Müller, Ernst (ed.). 1990. Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten von J. J. Engel, J. B. Erhard, F. A. Wolf, J. G. Fichte, F. D. E. Schleiermacher, W. v. Humboldt, G. F. W. Hegel. Leipzig: Reclam-Verlag. Regenbogen, Arnim and Meyer, Uwe (eds.). 1998. “Bestimmung.” In Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe. The edition was started by Friedrich Kircher and Carl Michaelis, continued by Johannes Hoffmeister, and newly published as a a complete edition. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1998. “Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn. Nebst einem Anhang über eine neu zu errichtende.” In Kritische Gesamtausgabe, I.6, edited by. D. Schmidt, 18–100. Berlin: de Gruyter. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 2002. Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, edited by R. B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, Alexander. 2013. “Self-cultivation (Bildung) and Sociability between Mankind and the Nation: Fichte and Schleiermacher on Higher Education.” In Ideas of Education: Philosophy and Politics from Plato to Dewey, edited by Christopher Brooke and Elizabeth Frazer, 160–77. London/New York: Routledge. Tenorth, Heinz-Elmar. 2010. “Wilhelm von Humboldts (1767–1835) Universitätskonzept und die Reform in Berlin: eine Tradition jenseits des Mythos.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik 20 (1): 15–28. Vincent, Andrew. 2013. “Idealism and Education.” In Ideas of Education: Philosophy and Politics from Plato to Dewey, edited by Christopher Brooke and Elizabeth Frazer, 237–51. London/New York: Routledge.

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Wissenschaftslehre Emiliano Acosta

The Birth of a Word The term Wissenschaftslehre (literally, doctrine of science) is a neologism Fichte coined when giving a name to his own philosophy. It is quite probable that the first time Fichte publicly used this term was during the first lectures about his philosophy, which he held in Zürich from February to April of 1794, known as the Zurich Lectures on the Concept of Doctrine of Science. In the notes taken during these lectures by Johan Kaspar Lavater (GA IV/3:19–41), we read that Fichte defines Wissenschaftslehre as “the science of the science in general” (GA IV/3:22), namely the science that “has to lay the foundations of the principal axiom of all possible sciences” (GA IV/3:23). According to Fichte, these foundations mainly refer to the pre-conscious rational actions or, as Fichte calls them in these lectures, the “Thathandlungen” (GA IV/3:24) that constitute subjectivity and therefore the scientific knowledge (the sciences in general) this subjectivity produces. The task of the Wissenschaftslehre, however, does not consist merely of identifying these primary actions. On the one hand, the Wissenschaftslehre must deduce these actions from one and the same axiom (Grundsatz), since Wissenschaftslehre is not merely philosophy, but philosophy that has become a science of the sciences. This means that it has developed into a system based on self-evident principles (GA IV/3:19). On the other, the development of a system of sciences by means of deducing from this axiom the principles of the particular sciences is also a task of the Wissenschaftslehre, since Wissenschaftslehre is a science of the sciences. In the Zürich lectures, which partially consists of a draft of Concerning the Concept of the Doctrine of Science, published in 1794, besides giving a definition of the term Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte also explains the reason why he thinks that not merely a neologism, but a German neologism, is needed for something one actually would call, without further considerations, just philosophy. The term “philosophy,” according to Fichte, cannot express the scientific character one expects of a theory that should provide the foundations of all sciences. This is the reason why Fichte confesses to his audience in Zürich that “we cannot retain the word philosophy anymore. This word will become useless” (GA IV/3:22).

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The need for renaming philosophy is not only due to the Kantian event, but also to the development of the sciences as well as of the notions of certainty and system at the end of the nineteenth century. Once Fichte makes clear why we have to discard the term “philosophy,” he gives the argument of why the new term must be a German one: “the nation that discovers the science par excellence, will have the right of naming it” (ibid.). So, according to Fichte, “Wissenschaftslehre” is not simply a translation of “philosophy”—in this regard, Fichte is not following the German academic trend, initiated among others by Christian Wolff, of translating philosophy from Latin into German—but primarily a term for something new, his philosophical discovery. And the act of naming it in German is not essentially based on scientific or objective reasons, but it is rather a cultural and political move: Germany has the same right the Greeks once had, when baptizing their discovery “philosophy.” The property right of the Greeks can be seen in the fact that, as Diogenes Laertius asserts, “philosophy” cannot be translated into any language (Laertius 1925, 7). Concerning Fichte’s neologism, we find a similar argument in Breazeale’s proposal of not translating Wissenschaftslehre: far from being a translation of “philosophy,” this word has become “a term of art” exclusively referring to a very specific way of thinking (FTP 54). The fundamental idea underlying Fichte’s conviction of replacing the term “philosophy” with the German term Wissenschaftslehre is that languages express the intellectual development of nations. As Fichte affirms in his article On the Linguistic Capacity and the Origin of Language of 1795, the evolution of a language follows the evolution of the scientific and philosophical progress of the nation that speaks this language. New ideas, discoveries, and inventions transform not only reality, but also the way of describing it, since the intellectual progress of a nation produces changes in the language by creating new words for new things or ideas and, consequently, makes some other words obsolete (GA I/3:114). Although we cannot locate the exact date of Fichte’s invention of the term Wissenschaftslehre, it is very probable that it occurred between January and February of 1794. Fichte uses this term in the first hour of his Zürich lectures, on February 24, 1794 (GA IV/3:22). We know that between November and December 1793 Fichte was already occupied with the elaboration of a philosophical system based on the axiom of the absolute identity of the I (GA III/3:18, letter to Johann Friedrich Flatt), but we have to wait until January 1794 to find evidence concerning Fichte’s awareness of the necessity of creating new German words for expressing his philosophical discoveries. In a letter sent on January 15, 1794, to Anna Henriette Schütz, Fichte confesses that “For some time now, I have been thinking a lot about giving the philosophy (which does not deserve such an inappropriate name anymore) a suppler and especially German [theutsche] jargon” (GA III/2:50). Wissenschaftslehre is not the only term in Fichte’s proposal of a German jargon for philosophy. In his Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge, published between 1794 and 1795, we find also the well-known neologisms Thathandlung (literally actaction) and Not-I (Nicht-Ich). The latter consisted, like Wissenschaftslehre, of a new combination of existing words, whereas the former was an existing word, whose original meaning (a violent act) Fichte altered. In both cases, Fichte refers to structural places in thought that were unknown to his predecessors and contemporaries.

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Thathandlung does not refer to the agency of the subject of representation nor to the Kantian pure apperception sensu stricto, but to an inconceivable activity expressing a kind of self-reflexivity that does not imply negation at all, since it is an action, in which we cannot differentiate subject and object (GA I/2:259). Not-I does not refer first and foremost to an object nor to the Kantian Ding an sich, but to the inconceivable activity that creates a structural place in consciousness for negation and objectivity in general (GA I/2:267, see also Acosta 2010). Both activities cannot be an object of thinking, for they are not facts of consciousness, since they constitute self-consciousness and consciousness as such. Both neologisms shed light on the novelty of the Wissenschaftslehre: it is neither a philosophy of representation (Reinhold) nor a transcendental philosophical critique of knowledge (Kant), but a scientific approach to the pre-conscious activity of reason that provides the foundations for transcendental philosophy, the faculty of representation, and the sciences in general. Its objects are not concepts, but the synthetic, the antithetic, and the thetic or absolutely positing actions of reason we have to presuppose for explaining the reality of conscious and self-conscious rational life. Accordingly, the Wissenschaftslehre is a transcendental philosophical reconstruction of the genesis of self-conscious rational life or, as Fichte, paraphrasing Platner, writes: it is a “pragmatic history of the human mind” (GA I/2:365). According to Fichte, if reason is essentially practical, then reason is essentially nothing but acting. Fichte’s originality essentially resides in the radicalization of the Kantian motive of the primacy of practical reason. Fichte’s radical move consists of subordinating the theoretical use of reason to its practical use. Accordingly, knowledge and the theoretical faculties of the transcendental subject must be genetically deduced as a result of the primary actions of reason. Surely, this is a very un-Kantian move, since Fichte is actually trying to merge precisely that which Kant tried to separate. Nevertheless, Fichte is convinced not only that this is the only way to elevate philosophy to the status of science, but also that his proposal of reunifying the theoretical and the practical realms by establishing a causality from the latter to the former corresponds with the very spirit of the Kantian philosophy. Despite all the differences among the presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre from 1794 to 1814, Fichte always reserves in his lectures and books some lines for confessing that the Wissenschaftslehre is nothing but a further development of the ideas upon which the Kantian philosophy is based, but which Kant never took into account. It is in this sense that we have to read Fichte’s Latin naming of his lectures from 1796 to 1799, now known as the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, as “fundamenta philosophiae transscendentalis” (GA IV/3:312). According to Fichte’s radical move, the concepts a priori and a posteriori, which Kant conceived as transcendental philosophical distinctions of the constitutive moments of representation, originally refer to a causality between actions, the a priori, and their products, the a posteriori. In the context of the Wissenschaftslehre, the Kantian question “quid juris?” expresses the search for the action of reason by means of which something given in the representation has been produced (GA IV/3:36). Moreover, the categorical imperative addressed to the rational individual is, according to Fichte, the manifestation of a more original imperative addressed to the pre-conscious I that commands the I to make absolute identity a reality (GA I/2:395). Radicalizing Kant’s

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leitmotiv of the primacy of practical reason, Fichte arrives at the conclusion that the principle cannot be a being or a substrate, but only a law that explains the practical nature of reason and, therefore, the necessity of the existence of a world as the material for accomplishing the order of realizing absolute identity. “I am I” is, therefore, not an enunciate that describes a being, but rather both an ideal and an imperative that commands the impossible task of solving the Kantian problem of the antinomy between freedom and nature. Accordingly, reason consists of a ceaseless striving (the goal will be necessarily never reached) toward the absolute unity of reason, namely that which Fichte calls absolute freedom. Although Fichte’s radicalization of the Kantian notion of the primacy of practical reason can scandalize a Kantian scholar, it must be acknowledged that, in doing so, Fichte actually follows a typical Kantian argumentative strategy, namely: from facts (given reality) to actions, then from actions to faculties or powers (possibility), and, finally, from faculties to rules or to the law that explains the necessity of the link between faculties, activity, and facts. Fichte’s philosophical discovery appeared revolutionary and influenced an entire generation in German philosophy. However, as we see in the historical development of German Romanticism and German idealism, the name Wissenschaftslehre never succeeded in replacing the term “philosophy.” Indeed, it has rather remained exclusively associated with Fichte’s philosophy, becoming a concept that, due to its very specific intension or content, exclusively refers to one thing and, therefore, extends only to itself.

The Presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre: Identity and Differences When examining the different presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre from 1794 to 1814, the unity of Fichte’s philosophy does not seem, however, to be self-evident. There is indeed something as attractive as it is exasperating in the study of the historical development of Fichte’s philosophy: Fichte, throughout all these years, constantly reworked and rewrote his system. This kind of repetition compulsion does not reflect homogeneity in its symptoms, but results in at least thirteen different versions of the doctrine of science (Zöller 2003: 253, fn.2). Accordingly, far from being simply a reiteration of the same, Fichte’s compulsion to repeat (Goddard 2012) crystallizes in a multiplicity of different attempts at explaining that which can be expressed or appears (the reciprocal determination between subjectivity and objectivity) by means of deducing it as opposed to that which per definitionem cannot be expressed: absolute identity, an identity that does not imply differences at all and therefore cannot be conceptually apprehended. The postulate of such an identity without any kind of mediation acquires different names. In Jena, for instance, Fichte calls it the absolute I, acting-act (Thathandlung), or agility (Agilität), whereas after 1800 Fichte chooses less subjectivist formulations such as the absolute or the Latin infinitive form vivere. In doing this, Fichte tries to avoid any hint that could

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lead to the idea of the necessity of presupposing a subjective substrate as a condition of possibility for action. In this regard, we can observe a certain parallelism between the dialectical dynamics Fichte ascribes in all versions of his doctrine of science to the main object of his system, namely to pure activity, and his own compulsion to repeat. Both are mechanisms that produce differences by means of striving toward (and longing for) an unknown primary identity. It has been long taken for granted that the differences among the presentations of the doctrine of science are irreconcilable: whereas Fichte in Jena (1794–1799) presents a system of transcendental philosophy, Fichte’s doctrine of science after 1800 becomes a philosophy of the absolute with neo-platonic, religious, and even mystical connotations. This interpretation is essentially based on a very particular, if not selective, way of reading Fichte’s Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge (1794/95), his The Vocation of Man (1801), and the second series of lectures on the doctrine of science of 1804. Terms Fichte uses after Jena such as “light,” “absolute,” “God,” and “belief ” or “faith” (Glauben or Glaube) can easily mislead any scholar to the idea many contemporaries of Fichte shared: that as a consequence of the atheism dispute, Fichte abandoned his Kantian conviction and looked for refuge in the element of religious and pre-Critical philosophy. Moreover, it can lead to the common academic opinion that, on the one hand, Fichte’s terminological and allegedly conceptual and methodological change bears witness to the failure of the initial transcendental philosophical project of the doctrine of science, offering a scientific explanation of the foundations of Kant’s philosophy, and, on the other, that Fichte’s ceaseless reworking of his system between 1801 and 1814 and his rejection of publishing any new version of the Wissenschaftslehre show nothing but Fichte’s failure in trying to accomplish his new project after Jena, namely developing a non-transcendental idealist philosophy of the absolute. This narrative about the tragedy of German philosophy after Kant structurally needs, of course, a Theseus. The tale does not need to be told again: Hegel will rescue German philosophy from the labyrinth of abstract subjectivism (Fichte) and objectivism (Schelling). But, as already said, this is only a story, as consistent and useful as every myth as long as there is no evidence against it, and as fragile and useless as every myth as soon as there is evidence that unmasks the impostor. In the last years and due to the publication of all the manuscripts of Fichte by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the thesis of the lack of unity of Fichte’s doctrine of science has been questioned in the Fichte-scholarship. Although there are significant differences among the presentations of the doctrine of science from 1794 to 1814, a close reading of all Fichte’s lectures after Jena shows that these differences are not as radical as to affirm that there is no unity in the whole intellectual development of Fichte’s philosophy. In this regard, we have to take more seriously Fichte’s statements after Jena about the unity and continuity of his philosophical project initiated in 1794. In his The Way Towards the Blessed Life of 1806, for instance, he says that, although it is possible that he has changed his mind about some issues, his early view about what philosophy should be “has not changed in any way” (DR [GA I/9:47]). So, evidence has shown the inconsistency of talking about a transcendental philosophical Fichte before 1800 and a mystical or pre-critical idealistic Fichte after

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1800. Nevertheless, there is still no consensus in the Fichte-scholarship about how the unity of the different presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre must be interpreted. This question has hitherto been answered in at least four different ways. According to the first interpretation, the unity of Fichte’s philosophy does not lie in the specific content of the presentations, but in the fact that they all express the attempt of one and the same person at disclosing the foundations of the unity of thinking and life or knowledge and belief. Thus, it is the person of Fichte who gives unity to the project of the Wissenschaftslehre (Oesterreich 1999). A second interpretation proposes to reconstruct the unity of the Wissenschaftslehre by means of identifying in the WL1804 main concepts of Fichte’s version of his system in the Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge of 1794/95 in order to show the compatibility of the two versions of the Wissenschaftslehre commonly considered to be totally opposed (Girndt 1997, 1999, 2006). The third way of reading the different presentations of Fichte’s philosophy as a unity suggests that the historical development of the Wissenschaftslehre reveals a dynamic of progress or improvement. According to Hartmut Traub, there are considerable conceptual differences between Fichte’s philosophy before and after Jena. These differences, however, result from Fichte’s attempt at shedding light on issues he did not clarify in the Jena presentations of his philosophy. So, the Wissenschaftslehre after Jena does not represent Fichte’s “modified doctrine,” but is complementary to the original project of 1794, since “it is rather a further development of early ideas” in which there is an integration of old and new motives, and there is no change at all in the meaning of the concepts (Traub 1999, 48). The integration Traub suggests does not concern only the presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre but also the popular works of Fichte after Jena. They must be considered as a further development of Fichte’s idea of the necessary link between philosophy and life (Traub 1999, 55). According to Traub, from 1800 on Fichte, far from developing a new philosophy, actually deepens the results of his Jena Wissenschaftslehre, aiming at establishing the foundations of that which many of his contemporaries had understood as the first principle of Fichte’s philosophy, namely the activity of the I (Traub 1999, 49). Fichte’s seeking of the foundations of the I does not imply, according to Traub, a shift from an immanent and transcendental philosophy to a transcendent metaphysics, since Fichte, for instance, places the absolute within the pre-conscious structure of the I he already described in his former presentations of Jena (Traub 1999, 50). Moreover, the presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre after Jena, which, unlike the former presentations, deal with the relation between the absolute and subjectivity, do not neglect the central function freedom has in the Wissenschaftslehre of Jena, since freedom in the later presentations of Fichte’s philosophy plays a crucial role in the postulate addressed to the I of becoming the appearance of the absolute (Traub 1999, 51). The fourth and last interpretation has been suggested by Günter Zöller (2016). Contrary to Traub, he proposes a non-teleological reading of the historical development of the doctrine of science (namely disconnecting the hypothesis of a progress or a regression). This development has to be considered as a series of variations of the same motive. Following Zöller’s non-teleological postulate, no version of the

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Wissenschaftslehre can be considered the definitive one. Zöller distinguishes three periods in Fichte’s intellectual development: Jena 1794–9, Berlin/Erlangen 1800–5, and Königsberg/Berlin 1807–14. The divergences among the three periods of the doctrine of science do not make these groups of lectures incompatible. For there is no new beginning or radical change in the idea of what the doctrine of science must accomplish. According to Zöller, the differences mainly consist of or emerge from the fact that the leading concept or idea that structures the respective presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre is, in each period, a different one: in Jena Fichte focuses on the absolute I, in the second period Fichte foregrounds the being or the absolute being, and, finally, in the third period of Königsberg and Berlin the focus lies on the notion of absolute life. Zöller also considers that there are terminological and systematic similarities between the first and the third period of the doctrine of science: in both periods, Fichte uses Kantian terminology and is engaged with the outlining of a system of philosophical sciences. Accordingly, Zöller proposes to read the third period of the doctrine of science as Fichte’s return to the Jena version of his project (Zöller 2016; cf. 2003). The threefold historical display of the doctrine of science must be, therefore, read as a kind of dialectical sequence: ABA or ABA’ (Zöller 2016), where the second A is consequently not simply identical with the first one, but implies a certain transformation as a result of incorporating some central concepts developed in 1804 and 1805: for instance, God, absolute, and appearance.

Final Remarks Although all the four mentioned possible interpretations shed some light on what the unity of the Wissenschaftslehre consists of, Traub and Zöller’s interpretations seem to be more adequate, not only for grasping the real content of this unity, but also for understanding the inconsistency of the usual criticisms leveled against the Wissenschaftslehre. Unlike the first two interpretations, Traub’s and Zöller’s theses are based on an exhaustive analysis of the whole Fichtean corpus. As a final remark, I would like to mention some aspects of the Wissenschaftslehre that are absent in the mentioned interpretations and, nevertheless, can contribute to the thesis of the unity of Fichte’s philosophy. Moreover, these aspects can help us obtain a clearer view not only of the conceptual, but also of the methodological unity of Fichte’s philosophical project. The first aspect concerns Fichte’s understanding of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system of philosophical sciences. The last goal of Fichte’s philosophical project of the Wissenschaftslehre consists, as Janke rightly affirms, in the development of a fivefold system of sciences: the Wissenschaftslehre as philosophia prima, the philosophy of right, the philosophy of nature, and the ethics and the philosophy of religion (Janke 1977, 102). Nevertheless, Fichte never effectively accomplished this fivefold system of sciences, since, although we can reconstruct his philosophy of nature, there is no specific essay nor lectures on philosophy of nature in Fichte’s work. Although it is true

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that, as Zöller affirms, it was only in Jena and in his last years in Berlin that Fichte effectively taught about the philosophical sciences of the Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte’s manuscripts of the years 1804 and 1805 show that Fichte never abandoned the idea of developing such a system. The WL-18042, for instance, ends with an outline of the quintuplicity of worldviews (natural, legal, ethical, religious, and philosophical) and the corresponding scientific realms (philosophy of nature, philosophy of law, ethics, philosophy of religion, and Wissenschaftslehre as such) (GA II/8:417–21). Moreover, at the beginning of the manuscript The Principles of the Doctrine of God, Ethics and Law of 1805, Fichte offers a very synthetic deduction of the five mentioned scientific realms (GA II/7:379–81). Last but not least, we see similar remarks of Fichte in his teaching activity in 1805 at the University of Erlangen. In his lectures on logic, Fichte discusses the systematic connection between the principle of the Wissenschaftslehre and the principles of the doctrines of law and morals (GA II/9:118–19). So, it is very likely that the particular academic situation of Fichte between 1800 and 1805 is the only reason Fichte does not offer any lecture in these years about the particular philosophical sciences of the Wissenschaftslehre. The second point concerns the method and structure in the Wissenschaftslehre. The unity of Fichte’s philosophy can be seen, on the one hand, in the fact that in all the different versions of his philosophy Fichte follows the same basic method of construction and genetic deduction and makes use of apagogic arguments for justifying the need of the intellectual intuition in order to obtain evidence about the object of the Wissenschaftslehre. Moreover, Fichte always departs from axioms or postulates. For instance, in 1794/95, the postulate reads: “I posit in the I a divisible Not-I opposed to the divisible I” (GA I/2:272); in the lectures between 1796 and 1799, Fichte asks everyone in the audience to think of the concept of the I and to think at the same time of himself when doing it (GA IV/3:345); the WL-1805 develops from the axiom “knowledge is the existence of the absolute” (GA II/9:185); and in 1810 Fichte formulates the postulate as follows: “Let us presuppose that there is appearance of what absolutely exists: how must this appearance be?” (GA II/11:293). But the similarities can also be found in the way Fichte concludes the presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre. In most of the versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte ends his lectures with the conception of the principle as the law or absolute imperative that structures the totality of reality. Last but not least, most of his lectures from 1796 on present the same structure: from the multiplicity of reality to the unity of the principle and then from this unity to the quintuplicity considered as the result of systematizing multiplicity. In his lectures of 1811, Fichte says, “WissenschaftsLehre: the name speaks [der name redet]” (GA II/12:143). Although this is true, namely that the very name embodies the idea of Fichte’s philosophy, Wissenschaftslehre is a word, the definition of which, doctrine of science, actually does not say too much. Maybe this is the reason why Fichte, at the beginning of his presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre, always says to his readers or audience that a genuine definition of his philosophy can only be achieved after having gone through all the conceptual (and in our case all the historical) determinations implied by this term.

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Note

I would like to thank Ms. Sofie Avery for proofreading this text.

Bibliography Acosta, Emiliano. 2010. “Vier Bestimmungen des Nicht-Ich in der Jenenser Periode der Fichteschen Wissenschaftslehre.” In Das Selbst und sein Anderes. Festschrift für Erich Kaehler, edited by M. Pfeifer & S. Rapic, 98–108. Freiburg: Alber. Girndt, Helmut. 1997. “Das Ich des ersten Grundsatzes in der Sicht der Wissenschaftslehre von 1804.” Fichte-Studien 10: 319–33. Girndt, Helmut. 1999. “Die Nova Methodo. Zwischen der Grundlage von 1794 und der Wissenschaftslehre von 1804.” Fichte-Studien 16: 57–68. Girndt, Helmut. 2006. “Die Wissenschaftslehre 1807. Eine Zusammenfassung ihres Gedankengangs.” Fichte-Studien 26: 11–31. Goddard, Jean-Christophe. 2012. “Fichte, o la revolución aborigen permanente.” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte 4, http://journals.openedition.org/ref/294. Janke, Wolfgang. 1977. Historische Dialektik. Destruktion dialektischer Grundformen von Kant bis Marx. Berlin: De Gruyter. Laertius, Diogenes. 1925. Life of Eminent Philosophers. Volume I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Oesterreich, Peter. 1999. “Die Einheit der Lehre ist der Gelehrte selbst.” Fichte-Studien 16: 1–18. Traub, Harmut. 1999. “Transzendentales Ich und abolutes Sein. Überlegungen zu Fichtes ‘veränderter Lehre’.” Fichte Studien 16: 39–56. Zöller, Günter. 2003. “‘On revient toujours …’: Die Transzendentale Theorie des Wissens beim letzten Fichte.” Fichte-Studien 20: 253–66. Zöller, Günter. 2016. “Sistema y Vida: El legado filosófico de Fichte.” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte 12, http://journals.openedition.org/ref/669.

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Fichte’s First Principle: Self-Positing and Gambit Normativity Wayne M. Martin

On the Alleged Need for a First Principle Even before he arrived to begin his brief and tumultuous tenure at Jena, Fichte published a prospectus for the new philosophical system, or Wissenschaftslehre, that he proposed to develop (EPW 94–135 [GA I/2: 107–63]). Fichte’s point of departure in the prospectus was an elaboration of a point on which, remarkably, he thinks all parties agree: “Philosophy is a science” (EPW 101 [GA I/2: 112]). The German term Wissenschaft has a broader range of meaning than the English word “science” as it is in use today. A Wissenschaft can be any systematic body of knowledge; hence history or even certain forms of theology might be described as Wissenschaften, even though no one would think to describe these as a sciences in the modern English sense of the word. But if the concept of Wissenschaft might in one sense be rather permissive, Fichte’s own conception of science is notoriously demanding. Science must possess systematic form, and scientific judgments must admit of being known with complete certainty. (The two claims were in fact related, according to Fichte: it is, he claims, precisely the systematic form of a science that conveys certainty from one proposition to another.) But there is, above all, one hallmark that Fichte associates with a science, and with his own “science of science” in particular: “[I]n each science there can be only one proposition that is certain and established prior to the connection between the propositions” (EPW 103 [GA I/2: 115]). Fichte dubs this proposition the Grundsatz—the first principle or “ground principle”—of a science. If philosophy is indeed to be a science, as Kant had hoped and Fichte promised, then it would need its own Grundsatz.1 There is a clear rationalist lineage to claims such as these, although Fichte characteristically presses the point to its most extreme version. Spinoza’s Ethics, for example (and in particular), is celebrated for its use of a rigorous more geometrico, constructing a philosophical edifice on the basis of purportedly self-evident axioms. But even Spinoza did not begin with just one principle but with several; so, for that matter, did Euclid and Newton and (in a later period) Frege and Russell and

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Whitehead. Of course it would not be hard to transform a multiplicity of axioms into a single Grundsatz through the strategic use of conjunction. But this might seem to make Fichte’s demand for a unitary first principle all the more arbitrary. Whether the demand is met or not looks to be largely a matter of orthography. In his prospectus, Fichte does offer an argument in support of his demand for a single first principle in philosophy, but it is not a particularly compelling one. Suppose that there were not one but two principles that passed the test of certainty. In that case the two would either be deductively related (such that one was certain if the other was), or else they would not be deductively related (with neither entailing the other). In the former case they would form part of a single science, but only one would merit the title of Grundsatz; the second would be a theorem. In the latter case they would form the basis for two distinct sciences (EPW 103 [GA I/2: 115]). But the argument is fallacious: it fails to take into account the possibility that two deductively independent principles might jointly form the basis of a single science. As it turned out, Fichte’s own philosophical system arguably exhibited just such a character.2 But while Fichte’s insistent demand for a single first principle in philosophy is at best weakly warranted, his attempt to provide such a first principle would prove enormously fertile. His early prospectus provided a first clue as to his strategy. No proposition is possible without both content and form. … It follows that the initial proposition of the entire Wissenschaftslehre must have both content and form. Since this proposition is supposed to be certain immediately and through itself, this can only mean that its content determines its form and its form determines its content. This particular form can fit only this particular content, and this content can fit only this form. (EPW 109 [GA I/2: 121–2])

If the first principle of the Wissenschaftslehre is to be both certain and first, then it clearly cannot derive its certainty from some other proposition. It must somehow be certain “immediately and through itself.” Fichte’s suggestion is that this immediate certainty derives from a distinctive and exclusive match between the form and the content of the proposition. Within his prospectus, Fichte says nothing about which proposition could possibly meet this standard, and indeed his immediate readers might well have found the very suggestion incoherent. The logic of Fichte’s day distinguished sharply between the form and the content of a proposition. The propositions “All men are mortal” and “All horses are mammals” have the same form but different content. The propositions “All men are mortal” and “Some men are mortal” have the same content but different form. But the form and content of a proposition were understood to be utterly heterogenous: the form was the logical “shape” of the proposition while the content comprised the pair of concepts that “filled” that shape.3 The logical form of a proposition was accordingly understood to be wholly independent of its content. The very idea of a match between form and content – much less an exclusive match – therefore makes no sense within this framework. What proposition could Fichte possibly have in mind?

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Two Pieces of Historical Context Before trying to address that question directly, it will help to equip ourselves with two key elements of the broader intellectual context that gave shape to Fichte’s quest for his first principle. The first piece of context that is relevant here concerns Fichte’s predecessor at Jena, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. Reinhold was an early and very effective promoter of Kant’s Critical philosophy, helping to build a broad audience for what was, by any measure, a forbidding corpus of work. By the early 1790s, however, Reinhold’s contributions went well beyond simply promoting Kant’s ideas; he also aspired to systematize them. The architectonic of the Critique of Pure Reason in particular is highly complex, so Reinhold set about the task of developing a more orderly and systematic presentation of the Kantian position. He referred to this project as his Elementarphilosophie—Philosophy of the Elements.4 In this systematizing project, Reinhold also proposed to begin from a single first principle; he dubbed it “the principle of consciousness.” “In consciousness, the representation is distinguished by the subject from the subject and the object and is related to both” (Reinhold 1790, 1:167). Reinhold held that the principle of consciousness provided a suitable first principle for the new Kantian philosophy, in part because it gave expression to a fact about consciousness that any person could verify for himself. The fact that Reinhold had in mind is a variant of what is nowadays described as the intentional character of consciousness. The contents of our conscious lives are not mere bits of sensory data; consciousness comprises mental contents with a representational character. Consider for example my thought that Socrates is a man. That representation is both related to and distinguished from a subject: it is my thought, but it is not me. It is also related to and distinguished from its object: it is about Socrates, but it is not Socrates. In this doubly double intentional structure Reinhold claimed to have identified the fundamental fact about our conscious existence. His ambitious (not to say quixotic) program was to derive the principal results of the Critique of Pure Reason from this first principle, thereby bringing order to the Kantian system and certainty to its foundations. Fichte’s ambition to find his own first principle of philosophy was certainly shaped in part by his ambition to outdo his predecessor at Jena. Reinhold had the Elementarphilosophie with its Principle of Consciousness; Fichte would have the Wissenschaftslehre with its own, even more fundamental first principle. Already in an early review of one of Reinhold’s critics, Fichte signaled his conviction that the fact from which Reinhold began must itself be seen as rooted in something more fundamental: “This reviewer, at least, has convinced himself that it [the principle of consciousness] is a theorem that is based on another principle, but that it can be strictly deduced  from that principle, a priori and independently of all experience” (EPW 64 [GA I/2: 46]). Once again, Fichte declines to tell us what this other principle might be. But he does provide us with another important clue, which itself functions as a constraint on any adequate interpretation. Reinhold understood his principle to be a fact about conscious experience, but Fichte here indicates that his first principle is to be a priori. Later, in the Wissenschaftslehre itself, he would underline this point.

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“Philosophy has to display the basis of foundation of all experience. Consequently, philosophy’s object must necessarily lie outside of all experience” (IWL 9 [GA I/4: 187]). The second piece of context worth introducing here concerns the framing of the question or questions that a philosophical system is intended to answer. Kant had framed the Critique of Pure Reason as an answer to his question about the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. But he had also framed a set of three questions that philosophical inquiry more broadly was called to address: (1) What can I know? (2) What ought I to do? (3) What may I hope? (CPR A804–5/B833). On occasion Kant went on to add that the three questions, taken together, could be expressed as a single, overarching question: What is man? (Ak 9:25). Fichte, for his part, also framed a formal technical question that his philosophical system was intended to answer: “[W]hat is the basis of the system of those representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity, and what is the basis of this feeling of necessity itself?” (IWL 8 [GA I/4: 186]). But he followed Kant in also framing a broader, overarching philosophical question: What is the vocation of man?5 Fichte himself addressed these two questions in different texts, addressed to different audiences, using radically different literary and rhetorical forms. But it is clear that the first principle of his Wissenschaftslehre was intended to provide the basis for answering both questions. His underlying conviction seems to be that there is a fundamental principle to be discovered that will serve both as the basis for a new technical theory of representation and as the basis for a new understanding of human nature, and of the human project itself.

Two Related Linguistic Oddities As we start to zero in on the actual content of Fichte’s first principle, it will help to be attuned to two linguistic idiosyncrasies that are closely associated with it. The first concerns Fichte’s distinctive use of the word “I” (Ich). In ordinary discourse, “I” is of course a pronoun in the nominative case; it is also what is known as an indexical expression (like “now” and “here”), whose referent varies with the context of use. But in elaborating his first principle, Fichte’s use of Ich departs from these norms. Fichte uses Ich with the definite article and with third personal verbs—hence not Ich bin … (“I am … ”) but Das Ich ist … (“The I is … ”). It should therefore be clear that the word “I” does not have its usual meaning within the technical context of the Wissenschaftslehre: it doesn’t function to refer indexically to the speaker who utters or inscribes it, but to some kind of structure at work in self-conscious human experience and human nature. Particularly in the earliest versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, the first principle is also associated with a second linguistic oddity: the term Tathandlung. This term has no English equivalent, nor any ordinary German meaning; it is a neologism that Fichte invented specifically in elaborating on his first principle. The opening lines of the 1794–5 Wissenschaftslehre introduce it: Our task is to seek out the absolutely first, utterly unconditioned first principle of all human knowledge. This can be neither proved nor defined, if it is to be an

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absolutely primary principle. It is intended to express that Tathandlung which does not and cannot appear among the empirical states of our consciousness, but rather lies at the basis of all consciousness and alone makes it possible. (SK 93 [GA I/2: 255]; translation altered)

The term Tathandlung (also written as Thathandlung) is a synthesis of two ordinary German words. Tat is a nominalized form of the verb tun: to do; we might translate it as “deed” (i.e., something that has been done).6 Handlung is a nominalized form of the verb handeln, to act. It is one of several German words that might be translated as “action.” So what is a Tathandlung? If we are faithful to the etymology we would have to say that it is some kind of deed-action. Philosophically, a Tathandlung is a distinctive exercise of agency. In ordinary actions we can generally distinguish between the action itself (e.g., building a house) and the product of the action (the house). In a Tathandlung the two wholly coincide: the action or activity is the deed. These two linguistic oddities are themselves closely related. For Fichte, the I (in his distinctive sense) is the product of Tathandlung, and the Tathandlung itself can only yield one product: the I. Note the consequence: If we could find a principle whose form was expressive of a Tathandlung and whose content was the I, then the form of such a principle would match its content and its content would match its form.

Understanding Self-Positing: An Imperfect Imperial Analogy We need at last to turn to Fichte’s own preferred formulations of his first principle. Alas, Fichte himself never settled on a single canonical statement of the principle.7 Even within any particular presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre, it not always straightforward to identify his preferred formal statement of the principle. Some of the leading candidates include: “The I posits itself absolutely and unconditionally” (SK 99 [GA I/2: 261]);8 “The I posits itself absolutely as positing itself ” (IWL 113 [GA I/4: 276]);9 “The I posits itself as self-positing” (FTL 119; [GA, IV/2: 32]).10 What is common to all three formulations is Fichte’s reliance on the reflexive verb, “to selfposit” (sich setzen), which is a term that Fichte uses with great frequency but never defines. If we are going to come to terms with Fichte’s first principle then we will need to come to terms with this concept. I propose to approach it with an analogy. In December 1804, Napoleon crowned himself emperor in Notre Dame cathedral. The pope, who had traveled from Rome for the occasion, and who would normally be expected to place the crown on the head of a new monarch, was left as little more than an onlooker. Fichte himself hated Napoleon’s politics and military adventurism. But the episode in Notre Dame provides a useful model for thinking about what Fichte has in mind by “self-positing.” In Fichtean terminology, we can describe Napoleon’s action in  Notre Dame as a self-directed or a “self-reverting” activity. Moreover, there is a sense in which that self-reverting activity brought into existence something that simply did not exist before: a self-crowned emperor. Third, there is a very tight connection between the form of Napoleon’s self-reverting activity and its product. A self-crowned emperor can only be produced in one way: through an act of imperial self-coronation.

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And correlatively, there is only one kind of thing that can be produced through an act of that form: a self-crowned emperor. Finally, suppose that someone were to ask: “What was the self-crowned emperor before the act of self-coronation?” The proper response would be to refuse the question: before that first act of self-coronation, there simply was not, and could not be, a self-crowned emperor. Analogies can be useful, but they also risk misunderstanding. Napoleon’s act of self-coronation is an identifiable, dated event (Frimaire 11th, Year XIII, on the French Revolutionary Calendar); it was also a determinate intentional action undertaken by an individual who was already self-conscious. Fichtean self-positing, by contrast, is not dated; it is not an event; it is not an intentional action. And in some sense that is difficult to pin down exactly, it either produces or is the self-conscious subject. But with these disanalogies held firmly in mind, we can note that each of the four features of Napoleon’s self-coronation corresponds to elements of Fichtean self-positing. Selfpositing is a “self-reverting activity”; it brings into existence something that had not existed before; there is a tight connection between the activity and its product (it is a Tathandlung); and there is no intelligible answer to the question: “What was the I prior to its self-positing?” So in Fichtean terms, we might well say that Napoleon posited himself as emperor. There is one further point to extract from our analogy. In Fichtean terminology, we can say that Napoleon’s imperial self-positing was absolute and unconditioned. No one granted Napoleon the authority to crown himself emperor; if someone had then the validity of the coronation would be conditional on the validity of the authority of the one who authorized it. But Napoleon deferred to no such authority; to do so would have been self-defeating. So in his act of self-coronation he simply asserted his authority to engage in such an act, and in so doing staked his claim to the status of emperor. Something analogous is true of the self-positing at work in Fichtean subjectivity as well. It is also the staking of a claim to a status—in this case to the status of a self-positing subject. And as with Napoleonic self-positing, the staking of that claim is without ground or warrant: it is unconditioned and in that sense absolute.

Self-Positing and Gambit Normativity A gambit is a move in chess in which one player deliberately offers an unprotected piece to be taken—typically for a positional advantage to be exploited in the sequel. There is a distinctive normative texture to our experience in situations where gambits are involved; call it gambit normativity. Three structural elements are worth distinguishing: (1) Gambit Temporality: To find oneself in a context structured by a gambit involves finding oneself in a distinctive temporal in-between. The risk itself has already been taken; the potential gain has yet to be realized. (2) Uncertainty: To find oneself in this temporal in-between is to find oneself unsure about whether the promise of the gambit will be fulfilled or not. (3) Work: Unlike a pure gamble, where one simply waits upon chance to resolve that uncertainty, under gambit normativity the denouement is at least in part up to me. Because of this, gambit normativity sets

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up and calls for a specific sort of response: the task is in one way or another to work in order to resolve the uncertainty and to fulfil the promise of the gambit. The first principle of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is best understood as expressing a distinctive gambit that lies implicitly and a priori in the background of the explicit activities of self-conscious human subjects. Whenever I am engaged in an act of judgment or practical action (the two central explicit expressions of self-conscious rational subjectivity for Fichte), I have always already laid claim to a status for myself—a status as judge, or as agent, and in either case as an autonomous, self-determining subject, i.e., as an I. I do not simply figure as one more cog in the machinery of nature; I am (also) the determinant of my own judgments and actions. This self-positing is, according to Fichte’s first principle, constitutive of self-conscious subjectivity as such. But it is also a gambit. (For Napoleon, it is not enough to declare oneself emperor; that act of self-positing must be vindicated by what follows—specifically by transforming the world into an empire that conforms to an imperial will. If he fails at that task then his gambit is lost.) Fichtean self-positing has the structure of a gambit, insofar as the claim to the status of free, self-determining subject is one that is constantly under threat, and subject to doubt. The concrete human being, as a locus of self-positing, is also subject to heteronomous determination by something other. Fichtean selfpositing, and Fichtean freedom, is therefore best understood not as a metaphysical fact about human organisms but as a task or telos to be pursued through endless human endeavor.11

Notes 1 For a debates as to whether Fichte’s position is aptly described as “foundationalist,” see Rockmore 1994 and Breazeale 1994. For a broader discussion of the post-Kantian insistence on first principles, see Franks 2005. 2 For a discussion of the first three principles of the 1794–5 Wissenschaftslehre, and the relationship among them, see Stephen Hoeltzel’s contribution to this volume. 3 We find one elaboration of this logical treatment of propositions (or “judgments”) in Kant’s famous table of judgment forms. CPR A70/B95. 4 Reinhold’s most concise statement of the Elementarphilosophie is found in Reinhold 1790; for analysis see Breazeale 1982 and Beiser 1987. 5 “Vocation” here translates Bestimmung, which might also be translated as “determination” or “determinate nature” or even “essence.” For a discussion of the resonances of this term, and its connection with the root Stimme (voice), see Zöller 2013. 6 The word famously figures in the scene from Goethe’s Faust where Faust retranslates the first line of the Gospel of St John: Am Anfang war die Tat (“In the beginning was the deed”). 7 This is a matter that Dieter Henrich long ago documented in detail in an influential paper. See Henrich, 1966/1983. 8 I have followed Lachterman’s translation of this important but difficult-to-translate sentence (see Lachterman’s translation of Henrich 1966/1983). Fichte’s original reads: “Das Ich setzt ursprünglich schlechthin sein eigenes Seyn.” A more literal translation

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might be: “The I originally and absolutely posits its own being.” For a simplified version of this formula see SK 99 (GA I/2: 409): “Das Ich setzt sich selbst schlechthin.” 9 This is Henrich’s rather free paraphrase of a passage from Chapter 1 of the aborted 1797 Wissenschaftslehre. “Die Anschauung, von welcher hier die Rede ist, ist ein sich Setzen als setzend (irgend ein Objectives, welches auch ich selbst, als blosses Object, seyn kann), keineswegs aber etwa ein blosses Setzen.” 10 “[M]an setzt sich als sich setzend.” In a note added to an 1802 reprint, Fichte proposed yet another formulation: “The I is the necessary identity of subject and object, a subject-object, and is so absolutely, without further mediation” (SK 99n [GA I/2: 261n]). For an earlier use of a variant of this formula, see EPW 328 [GA I/3: 259]. 11 For more on this aspect of Fichtean self-positing, see Martin 2016, Martin 2018 and Martin 2019.

Bibliography Beiser, Frederick. 1987. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Breazeale, Daniel. 1982. “Between Kant and Fichte: Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s ‘Elementary Philosophy’.” Review of Metaphysics 35 (4): 785–821. Breazeale, Daniel. 1994. “Circles and Grounds in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre.” In Fichte: Historical Contexts, Contemporary Controversies. Edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 43–70. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Franks, Paul. 2005. All Or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Henrich, Dieter. 1966/1983. “Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht.” in Subjektivität und Metaphysik: Festschrift für Wolfgang Cramer. Edited by Henrich and Wagner, 188–232. Frankfurt: Klostermann. English translation by David Lachterman in D. Christensen (ed.). 1982. Contemporary German Philosophy, volume 1: 15–53. College Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Martin, Wayne. 2016. “Fichte’s Transcendental Deduction of Private Property.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide. Editd by Gabe Gottlieb, 157–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martin, Wayne. 2018. “Fichte’s Creuzer Review and the Transformation of the Free Will Problem.” European Journal of Philosophy 26(2): 717–29. Martin, Wayne. 2019. “Fichte on Freedom.” In The Palgrave Fichte Handbook. Edited by Steven Hoeltzel, 285–306. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Reinhold, Karl Leonhard. 1790. Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen, Volume I. Jena: Mauke. Rockmore, Tom. 1994. “Antifoundationalism, Circularity, and the Spirit of Fichte.” In Fichte: Historical Contexts, Contemporary Controversies, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 96–112. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Zöller, Günter. 2013. “An Other and Better World: Fichte’s The Vocation of Man as a Theologico-Political Treatise.” In Fichte’s Vocation of Man. New Interpretive and Critical Essays, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 19–32. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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The Three Basic Principles (drei Grundsätze) Steven H. Hoeltzel

In a December 1793 letter, Fichte contends that “Kant’s philosophy, as such, is correct – but only in its results and not in its reasons” (EPW 371 [GA III/2, no.171]). Not quite two years later, in the 1794/95 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, he sets forth three basic principles (Grundsätze) as the founding claims of a “theory of science” that should decisively vindicate and radically integrate the theoretical and practical essentials of the Critical philosophy. These principles are: 1.  “The I originally absolutely posits its own being” (SK 99 [GA I/2:261]).1 2. “A not-I is absolutely opposed to the I” (SK 104 [GA I/2:266]); ergo, “opposition in general is absolutely posited by the I” (SK 103 [GA I/2:266]). 3.  “In the I, the I opposes a divisible Not-I to the divisible I” (SK 110 [GA I/2:272]). Below, I explore the ways in which these principles both structure Fichte’s own postKantian position and seek to neutralize some important criticisms of the broader Kantian project. These principles, I argue, draw upon a distinctively Kantian conception of pure-rational activity as the autonomous origination and instatement of pure order-inducing forms: non-sensory notions that inform all truth-apt cognition, and affect-independent norms that orient all autonomous volition.2 Accordingly, the principle “the I originally absolutely posits its own being” describes the transcendentally most basic instance of such activity: that pure-rational act upon which all other such acts—ergo, all articulate cognition and all principled agency— ultimately depend. For Fichte, this is an act in which the I conceptually positions rational activity as such, in its strict purity and unmitigated autonomy, as both essentially constitutive of and unconditionally normative for its own existence. Thus, the first principle of Fichte’s system figures the most basic pure-rational act as both theoretically determinative and practically legislative—with the consequence that even our most basic cognitive accomplishments depend upon a broadly ethical vocation intrinsic to rationality itself.

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The First, “Absolutely Unconditioned” Principle Prior to Kant, the term “posit” (setzen, or its Latin equivalent, ponere) figured prominently in post-Leibnizian rationalism, where something is said to be posited insofar as its properties or predicates are determined for a reason: fixed by some logical entailment or ontological ground.3 In order to critique rationalism’s conflation of logic and ontology, Kant appropriates and reworks the notion. For Kant, to posit something in the “absolute” sense is not to determine what predicates the thing has; it is simply to affirm that the thing, with all of its predicates, exists. Fichte follows Kant in this—but in addition, and importantly, his technical conception of positing also draws heavily on the nontechnical sense of setzen: simply to put or to place. Thus, to posit something is not only to affirm its existence; it is also, so to say, to position the thing within one’s broader picture of what there is—to “put it on the map” within a more comprehensive conception of how things hang together. The three basic principles of the 1794/95 Foundation should therefore describe the most fundamental such positionings: those that establish the basic organization of our overall “scheme of things.” Most fundamentally, “the I originally absolutely posits its own being.” This act, according to Fichte, “does not and cannot occur among the empirical determinations of our consciousness, but rather lies at the basis of all consciousness and alone makes it possible” (SK 93 [GA I/2:255]). As such statements suggest, “the I” is Fichte’s term for the pre-personal, pure-rational locus of intellectual agency by which fully fledged, empirically qualified consciousness is abstractly ordered and endowed.4 Relative to this type of “I,” the concrete characteristics of our empirical selves are adventitious incidentals, markers of pure-rational activity’s entanglement with accidental “limitations of sensibility” (IWL 100 [GA I/4:266]). The I, by contrast, is the principle of pure mental activity over against which all that is merely empirical— all content not wrought through self-initiated conceptual activity—adventitiously appears. Moreover, the I does not exist outside of mental activity as its ontologically prior basis—more “it” than “I.” Instead, the being of the I is principally and initially accomplished in the rational act that posits said being. The I cannot exist qua I without being aware of its own being (without positing: “I am”)—but for the reasons indicated above, this type of awareness cannot be empirically delivered and therefore must be conceptually achieved. Here, therefore, “action [Handlung] and product [Tat] are one and the same; hence the ‘I am’ is the expression of a fact-act [Tathandlung] … the only one possible” (SK 97 [GA I/2:259]). The I posits itself into being—it “is through its merely being-posited” (SK 98 [GA I/2:259])—but not in any sense of “being” that would be irreducible to pure-rational acting. The latter is the way of existing proper to the I, and the I’s positing of its own being is the most elementary instance of such acting—the prime mover, so to say, within all cognition and volition. Considered as the “original” act of the I, this act comes first transcendentally, not temporally. It is not the earliest occurrence in a developmental sequence that spans time. Instead, it is the most basic a priori element within any rationally articulated representation of reality—which representation, viewed synchronically and as a whole, will comprise additional, analytically separable strata, distinguished by their increasing

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content and complexity, with each “higher” stratum reflecting some transcendentally “later” (that is, informationally or organizationally richer) accomplishment of the I. And because it is the transcendentally basic pure-rational act, the act in which the I posits its own being must be doubly unconditioned: there can be no more basic rational accomplishment that would “formally” condition this act by compelling its performance, or that would “materially” condition it by controlling for its content. Notably, this is the real point of Fichte’s rather stronger-sounding characterization of the Foundation’s first principle as “absolutely unconditioned” (SK 93 [GA I/2:255]). Those negative claims have important positive implications. For one, insofar as it is formally unconditioned, this act must be spontaneously performed: as the original rational act, it cannot be one that responds to a rational requirement already established by some prior act. (We might still speculate that the act results from a causal compulsion originating outside the mind, but as we will see below, Fichte’s principles are supposed to undermine that idea.) Moreover, the essential content of this act is the (posited) being of the I, and, as we have seen, the I’s “being” consists essentially in a special sort of “doing”: self-initiated, order-inducing mental activity. Accordingly, the I’s most elementary act must be the purest possible cognizing of that kind of doing—and the simplest possible doing of that kind of cognizing. Roughly, then, this is spontaneous, non-sensory self-identification on the part of free, form-giving mental activity. More precisely, it is the self-initiated abstract positioning of self-initiated abstract positioning. This makes the act materially unconditioned: its essential content does not derive from some precursor, but originates in and through the act itself. Thus, the transcendentally most basic rational act is that act in which the I affirms its own existence in such a way as to first “put itself on the map,” specifically by pinpointing its own pure-rational activity as the basic reference-point within its representation of reality. As noted above, in describing the first principle as “absolutely unconditioned,” Fichte is not claiming that there are no limits or conditions on the act just described. He argues later in the Foundation (and more pointedly insists elsewhere) that there must be “an original limitation” that “conditions my positing of myself ” (IWL 74 [GA I/4:242]), by contextualizing and qualifying the latter in a way that makes possible the I’s (minimally) determinate positing/positioning of itself as pure-rational activity over against something that limits or conditions it. Consequently, consciousness must contain something “not immediately posited through the I’s own positing of itself ” (SK 130 [GA I/2:293])—“a difference originally in the I as such … something heterogeneous, alien, and to be distinguished from itself ” (SK 240 [GA I/2:405]). This role is played by “simple sensation” (SK 272 [GA I/2:437]): qualitatively concrete contents of consciousness (colors, tastes, tones, etc.) that are present in the mind without having been thought or willed into place. For Fichte, these are the paradigmatically empirical determinations of consciousness, but in a sense of “empirical” that denotes only non-rational, not extra-mental genesis: they are intra-subjective determinations of arational origin. Accordingly, the I originally positions itself by identifying itself with “the pure character of activity in itself, apart from the activity’s particular empirical conditions” (SK 97 [GA I/2:259]). Here, the I’s own existence as pure-rational activity is “posited by intellectual intuition” (EPW 65 [GA I/2:48])—located in and through intellectual

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activity’s constitutive self-transparency. Thus this act simultaneously authors, instantiates, and instates (that is, puts in place, “puts on the map”) the simplest and purest of rationality’s self-wrought ordering forms: the non-sensory notion of the I itself as pure-rational activity.

The Second, Materially Conditioned Principle “A not-I is absolutely opposed [entgegengesetzt] to the I” (SK 104 [GA I/2:266]). In other words, an extra-subjective entity is “positioned opposite” or “set against” the I by the I. This act authors and instates the non-sensory notion of an object ontologically independent of the subject. Said notion must be rationally authored, because it cannot be empirically delivered: “the senses merely provide us with something subjective” (SK 275 [GA I/2:440]). And the notion is rationally instated insofar as the I henceforth takes it that there exists a mind-independent or extra-subjective bearer of sensed qualities. “This determination of yourself, you straightaway transfer to something outside you” (ibid.). This “transfer” transmutes (1) the already-achieved, intrasubjective demarcation of rational activity from empirical manifestation into (2) the metaphysically ampliative affirmation of an I–it or mind–world differentiation– relation, first made thinkable through the non-sensory notion of the not-I. This act is materially conditioned, meaning that its content is constrained by its transcendental predecessor: what is posited in this case must be precisely “opposited” to the already-posited I—ergo, a not-I, understood as a sensible thing simply subsisting “out there,” the exact opposite of the thinking and willing purposively unfolding “in here.” Interestingly, Fichte also figures this act as formally unconditioned, meaning that it is not epistemically compulsory simply in consequence of the I’s prior positing of its own being. I revisit this important point in the next section. Fichte’s project has an important prototype in the work of K. L. Reinhold, who undertook to upgrade the Critical philosophy by deriving its key claims from a single, supposedly undeniable proposition: “In consciousness, the representation is distinguished by the subject from the subject and the object and related to both” (Reinhold 1790, vol. 1, 167; my translation). Initially impressed by Reinhold’s proposal, Fichte soon became persuaded of that principle’s unsuitability as a first principle for all philosophy, largely owing to various skeptical criticisms leveled against it by G. E. Schulze. These include the observations (1) that Reinhold’s supposed first principle would still be subject to the basic laws of logic, and—especially provocatively for Fichte—(2) that it cannot describe the most basic fact concerning consciousness, because it presupposes more basic sorts of awareness: the subject’s consciousness of itself, of the object as something other than itself, etc. Fichte’s rejoinder to Schulze, the 1794 “Review of Aenesidemus,” foreshadows the 1794/95 Foundation. For example: “Subject and object do indeed have to be thought of as preceding representation …. The absolute subject, the I, is not given by empirical intuition; it is, instead, posited by intellectual intuition. And the absolute object, the not-I, is that which is posited in opposition to the I” (EPW 65 [GA I/2:48]). Such passages clarify something that later presentations may obscure, viz., that Fichte takes

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the basic principles to be justified because they name the necessary conditions for the subject–object differentiation–relation by which experience as such is abstractly organized: the formal structure described but not explained by Reinhold’s first principle.5 In the Foundation, Fichte offers a different sort of argument, premised on the manifest incontrovertibility of the most basic logical laws (of identity, noncontradiction, etc.). Said incontrovertibility, he suggests, derives from the most elementary prerepresentational acts of the I (its absolute positing of itself, of something other than itself, etc.)—acts by which consciousness as such is abstractly organized, such that its variable empirical contents invariably conform to logic’s formal principles. Presumably one aim of such arguments is to outmaneuver Schulze again, this time by showing that the laws of logic actually depend for their superlative certainty upon the still more basic principles of the Wissenschaftslehre. In any case, in order fully to understand the post-Kantian pedigree and transcendental credentials of Fichte’s basic principles, one must also consult the 1794 “Review.”

Absolute Self-positing and Categorical End-setting As we have seen, Fichte describes the second basic principle as formally unconditioned, which means that the indicated act, whereby a not-I is first positioned opposite the I, is not epistemically compulsory in light of the I’s prior positing of its own being (as purerational activity over against empirical manifestation). This provides an important clue to the meaning of Fichte’s first principle, because the success of his broader project—that of accounting for the invariant organizing structures of experience based upon “the fundamental laws of the intellect” (IWL 27 [GA I/4:201])—requires that the (op)positing of a not-I be rationally mandated, despite not being epistemically required, by the I’s prior positing of its own being. If absolute self-positing established no such rational mandate, then the I’s (op)positing of a not-I could not be construed as a reason-responsive accomplishment. Instead, it would have to hinge upon some rationally inscrutable factor—“completely lawless acting” (IWL 27 [GA I/4:200])—and this would signal the failure of Fichte’s attempt to account for the organizing structures of experience systematically and on the basis of pure rational activity. Now, if the (op)positing of a not-I is rationally (albeit not epistemically) required, then that act must somehow advance a pre-given rational goal that is not narrowly epistemic in nature. And given the transcendental context, that goal can only have been given to the I by the rational content of the act in which it “originally absolutely posits its own being.” As we saw above, that content just is rational activity in its radical autonomy and unmitigated purity. Accordingly, Fichte’s first principle should be understood to describe not only (1) the I’s non-sensory singling-out of itself as rational activity in its essential autonomy and purity, over against the rationally unbidden qualitative contents of sensory consciousness, but also (2) the I’s affect-independent legislation to itself of an ideal of unconditioned or “absolute” rational activity: pure, self-initiated, order-inducing mental activity that is neither confronted nor qualified by anything not authored by itself.

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The I demands that it encompass all reality and fill the infinite … Here the meaning of the principle, the I posits itself absolutely, first becomes fully clear. This makes no mention of the I given in actual consciousness, for that is never absolute, but its condition is always … based on something apart from the I. This speaks rather of an Idea of the I, which must necessarily be based on its practical, infinite demand, but which is inaccessible to our consciousness and so can never appear immediately therein (although it can of course appear mediately, in philosophical reflection). (SK 244 [GA I/2:409])

Absolute self-positing therefore involves not only the application of the most basic pure-rational form, but also the inauguration of the highest pure-rational norm. The act in which the I “originally absolutely posits its own being” is simultaneously productive of descriptive differentiation and normative orientation—ergo, equiprimordially “theoretical” and “practical”—in prescribing the I’s endless endeavor to make itself actually what it posits itself as essentially: pure-rational activity in its absolutely uncompromised form.6 This autonomous normative orientation (1) positions empirical manifestation as such as a “check” or “affront” (Anstoß) to the purity and autonomy of rational activity and, accordingly, (2) prescribes unyielding counter-effort on the part of the I to master whatever is irrational or arational by bringing it under the sway of reason’s self-wrought ordering forms—for example, in the pure categorization of the qualitative contents of sensation via the origination and instatement of the nonsensory notion of the not-I.

Idealism and Objectivity (Principles Two and Three) On Fichte’s account, the information contained in sensation alone does not comprise and could not constitute the sensing subject’s further commitment to the existence of a mind-independent sensible entity. The I can countenance an extra-subjective something only if and insofar as it actively supplements the sensory contents of its consciousness with the non-sensory notion of an ontologically independent not-I. Moreover, the extra-mental entity thereby posited by the I—the self-subsistent sensible object as such—is not countenanced by the transcendental philosopher, who makes no existence-claims beyond those required in order to account for experience. Schulze had argued that the Critical philosophy cannot successfully defend its commitments to a subject in itself and a thing in itself, postulated as sources, outside consciousness, of consciousness’s abstract organization and empirical content. As we have seen, however, for Fichte there is no “I in itself ”: the I is not a thing extrinsic to consciousness, but a form of activity nested within it. Moreover, if “opposition in general is absolutely posited by the I,” then it would follow that the notion of a thing in itself, to the extent that this is supposed to be a not-I that is not opposed to any I, is self-contradictory, and that the thing is actually constituted in itself in just the way that it must be thought to be constituted by any conceivable intelligent I. (EPW 74 [GA I/2:62])

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If this is correct, then metaphysical realism and modern-epistemological skepticism are both untenable, insofar as each fundamentally depends upon the transcendentally indefensible idea of an objective order constituted independently of pure-rational ordering. Fichte’s principle that “a not-I is absolutely opposed to the I” inaugurates but does not exhaust his account of the construction of objectivity by the subject. Still to be accomplished is the rationally required further determination (stabilization, clarification, specification, etc.) of the ensuing differentiation–relation, via the further origination and instatement of increasingly focused ordering forms. The third basic principle—“In the I, the I opposes a divisible Not-I to the divisible I” (SK 110 [GA I/2:272])—marks the next step in this process and programs for those that remain. The act just described is conditioned with respect to its form: its performance is rationally required in order to prevent each of the prior acts (the positing of the I and of a not-I) from canceling its counterpart. It is unconditioned, however, with regard to its content, in that neither prior act comprises the concept of divisibility: the notion of susceptibility to limitation or determination by something else. In this new act, then, the I first posits the reciprocal determination (Wechselbestimmung) of I and not-I (SK 127 [GA I/2:290]). This engenders a rational requirement—one that will remain in force, mandating and guiding a whole series of further, more focused positings—to the effect that any passivity in either element (I or not-I) must be represented by the I with reference to an activity of the other, and vice versa. This establishes a generative matrix for the further pure-rational acts and non-sensory notions that are required in order to clarify and complete the I’s representation of the indicated interdetermination. Those acts and ideas will articulate a priori the manifold differentiations and connections embryonically present in that original synthesis—“everything that is to emerge hereafter in the system of the human mind” (SK 110 [GA I/2:272]). In so doing, they will unfold the abstract armature that organizes both the theoretical sphere, grounded in the I’s self-posited susceptibility to limitation or determination by the not-I, and the practical sphere, grounded in the I’s self-posited capacity to limit and determine the not-I. If successful, those further derivations should dispense with another important challenge to the Critical philosophy: Salomon Maimon’s skeptical reworking of the Kantian model of cognition. Maimon maintains (and Fichte agrees) that philosophy aspires to “real thinking”: real in that this thinking yields nonanalytic knowledge of the nature of objects; and thinking in that those insights are reached a priori, not obtained empirically. On Maimon’s account, this is possible only with respect to objects that the intellect itself can construct in accord with intelligible principles. We occupy this privileged position with respect to the objects of pure mathematics, but according to Maimon, we cannot be in this position vis-à-vis the objects of empirical cognition, even if we accept Kant’s putatively constructivist epistemology. For, given Kant’s radical separation of the spontaneity of thinking from the receptivity of sensibility, what “construction” we are capable of will always be arbitrary and incomplete. Because the “understanding is not capable of intuiting anything” (A52/B56), there can be objects of empirical cognition only if something of arational origin appears in empirical intuition, to which the understanding’s pure categories are then applied. But insofar

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as “the senses are not capable of thinking anything” (ibid.), the content of a given empirical intuition cannot be sufficiently articulated to justify the application of some specific category versus the alternatives. We can become aware that objects exist only via the mind’s confrontation with merely sensory content—but insofar as such content is strictly non-conceptual, it can give no rational guidance to our conceptual activities. Consequently, we can have no real basis for the belief that our conceptual activities correspond (let alone coincide) with objectivity’s actual ordering principles.7 The distinctly skeptical slant of the above seems to derive from the thought that there is a determinate, mind-independent scheme whereby objects are individuated and organized, but that said scheme is epistemically out of reach given the informational insufficiency of our sensory states. But given Fichte’s principles, that thought is uncritical and ill-formed: overlooking the fact that “opposition in general is absolutely posited by the I,” that thought harbors an incoherent commitment to “a not-I that is not opposed to any I.” As we saw above, for Fichte, objects can find their way into the rational being’s scheme of things only insofar as they are constructed for the subject by the I. And every step in that construction is superintended by a rational principle (of reciprocal determination). Given Fichte’s three basic principles, therefore, transcendental idealism and Maimonian “real thinking” go hand in hand.8

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

All translations from the 1794/95 Grundlage are my own; I cite SK for the benefit of Anglophone readers who wish to examine Fichte’s claims in context. For the rest of Fichte’s texts, except where otherwise noted, I quote verbatim from the indicated translations. For explication and defense of this interpretation, see Hoeltzel 2019. My treatment of positing is indebted to (but simplifies and occasionally diverges from) Franks 2016, 376–83. See also Zöller 1998, ch. 3—the principal inspiration for the present essay. For a more thorough treatment of the Reinhold–Schulze–Fichte constellation, see Breazeale 2013, ch. 2. For a more detailed treatment of this theme, see Hoeltzel 2019. Concerning Maimon’s reading of Kant, see also Thielke 2001. Regarding Fichte’s response to Maimon, see also Breazeale 2013, ch. 3.

Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Franks, Paul. 2016. “Fichte’s Position: Anti-Subjectivism, Self-Awareness, and SelfLocation in the Space of Reasons.” In The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, edited by David James and Günter Zöller, 374–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Hoeltzel, Steven. 2019. “Fichte’s Account of Reason and Rational Normativity.” In The Palgrave Fichte Handbook, edited by Steven Hoeltzel, 189–212. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Reinhold, Karl Leonhard. 1790. Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophie. Jena: Mauke. Thielke, Peter. 2001. “Getting Maimon’s Goad: Discursivity, Skepticism, and Fichte’s Idealism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (1): 101–34. Zöller, Günter. 1998. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Transcendental Method Halla Kim

Fichte, following Kant, employs a transcendental method in accordance with the goal of his philosophical system called “Wissenschaftslehre” (WL hereafter). In this chapter, I will show that, even though Fichte resorts to both an analytic (regressive/ascending) and a synthetic (progressive/descending) method, the former is crucially offered from the objective transcendental standpoint, i.e., from the philosopher’s objective gaze in abstracting the conditions of the possibility of experience, while the latter is employed by the observing I in the most critical and substantial part of his system for the purpose of describing the procedure of the observed I. In other words, while the analytic method tries to justify a system of representational activities by abstracting the conditions of their possibility objectively, the synthetic method is concerned with what the observing philosopher as the I exemplifies in himself while at the same time describing various mental activities on the part of the observed I. Further, the analytic method involves a phenomenological reflection, whereas the synthetic method is dialectical as well as genetic. As a result, the synthetically employed viewpoint of the observing philosopher can help resolve the potential conflict that can arise between the empirical standpoint in which we have our ordinary experience on the one hand and the transcendental standpoint of the philosophically oriented Wissenschaftslehre. Finally, I will argue that these features are not only displayed in the Science of Knowledge but also in Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy as well as the Foundations of Natural Right and the System of Ethics, even though they are not clearly shown in the Vocation of Man.1 Fichte is known for his “first system of philosophy of freedom” (EPW 385 [GA III/2:300]). On the strength of this self-appraisal, in his “First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre,” Fichte points out that philosophy’s task is simply to “display the foundation of experience” or “explain the basis of the system of representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity” (IWL 8 [GA I/4:187]). Fichte then conceives the mission of his Wissenschaftslehre as one of showing how freedom can exist alongside necessity. For him, Wissenschaftslehre is a “science of sciences as such” (EPW 105–6 [GA I/2:117–18]), and, in this regard, it must be grounded on a principle that is claimed to be absolutely certain and to convey the same certainty to the propositions grounded on it (EPW 104 [GA I/2:116]). In order to achieve

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the goal of his philosophy, Fichte holds that WL must begin with an absolutely unconditioned and certain principle that can be the foundation of all knowledge. Fichte, however, does not propose to prove that there is such an absolutely first principle from the outset. That would be impossible to do. As he puts it, “[i]t cannot be proved nor defined, if it is to be an absolutely primary principle” (SK 93 [GA I/2:251]). For example, a fact such as a mathematical or empirical proposition can be proved in an objective, universally acceptable manner. But the first principle of WL is not such a fact, and it is not amenable to the same proof (Estes 2013, 87–8). Thus, in order to show how a practical agent with a free will can at the same time be considered a link in a causally determined nexus of the spatio-temporal world, Fichte must establish that (1) there is such a fundamental, unifying act that serves as the first principle; and (2) it is the basis for deriving all the acts of the mind that are the conditions of the possibility of our experience—until it is shown how a finite I can engage all of its activities in its typical course of ordinary experience. How do we achieve this purpose? “Philosophy,” Fichte tells us, “teaches us to seek everything within the I” (“Concerning Human Dignity,” EPW 83 [GA I/2:87]).2 According to him, the only way one can answer the philosophical question regarding the nature and limits of knowledge, morality, and faith, is by turning one’s attention within by means of reflection upon the I. “Philosophy itself ” is the “systematic history of the human mind’s universal models of acting” (“Concerning the Difference between the Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy,” EPW 208 [GA, II/3:334]). The I then must be the absolutely first principle of WL. As Fichte suggests: The material of all philosophy is itself the human mind or spirit, considered in all its affairs, activities, and modes of acting. Only after it has made an exhaustive inventory of all of these modes of acting is philosophy Wissenschaftslehre. The philosopher observes the way in which the human mind works. He freezes this process, holding still for examination that which is changeable and transient within the mind. (EPW 200 [GA II/3:227])

It follows that achieving the goal of Fichte’s transcendental idealism is crucially dependent on, and closely intertwined with, his philosophical method. For this, Fichte was without doubt indebted to Kant’s Critical philosophy.3 It is indeed universally agreed that a transcendental method is the foundation of Critical philosophy. For Kant, transcendental cognition “is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our a priori concepts of objects in general” (CPR A11–12/B25). “The system of such concepts,” Kant continues, “would be called transcendental philosophy” (ibid.). A transcendental method then helps us with exposing the conditions of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition (CPR B40–41). There are, however, two kinds of transcendental methods found in Kant: analytic and synthetic. An analytic method begins with an accepted body of knowledge and proceeds to its necessary conditions. It thus regresses onto its conditions in an ascending manner. A synthetic method, on the other hand, proceeds from the highest principle and deduces the necessary elements required for experience. It thus progressively descends from a condition to its conditioned. Kant famously employs a synthetic method in the transcendental deduction of the Critique

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of Pure Reason but he uses an analytic method in his Prolegomena as well as in the first two sections of the Grundlegung.4 Fichte, however, only partially accepted Kant’s procedure. Fichte actively pursued an analytic method in abstracting and identifying the highest principles (e.g., Tathandlung) of our experience but otherwise employed a thicker conception of a synthetic method,5 apparently believing that Kant’s employment of a synthetic method in the Critique was not able to help him achieve the goal of philosophy, i.e., a transcendental derivation of our ordinary experience from the I’s activity of selfposting. Even though, in “the Second Introduction,” Fichte seems to associate his I with Kant’s pure apperception (IWL 56 [GA I/4: 225]), Fichte makes it clear that there are obvious key differences. First of all, Fichte’s I includes practical and theoretical subjectivity. Further, Kant simply could not get to the true nature of the I in the transcendental deduction and instead remained at the level of abstract transcendental apperception. In other words, Kant, in an effort to confront the I as an object, could not lay bare the true nature of the I. It follows that Kant could not find a true subjectivity. Kant’s Copernican Revolution was then not “revolutionary” enough. At this point, Fichte’s hope is to pursue the transcendental project in terms of the fundamental act of the pure and original I. So, in a sense, we can see that the primary philosophical subject for Fichte in his philosophical Denkart is not humanity as such, an abstract I, or even a transcendental subject of the Kantian kind. Rather, it is a concrete finite intellect or embodied practical agent (Breazeale 2013, 202). There is no doubt that all philosophy is concerned with man as such (LSV, EPW 146 [GA I/3, 27]) and therefore it is the ultimate task of any philosophy to answer the question: what is the vocation of man as such? (EPW 147 [GA I/5:351]). In order to be an I at all, one must not only possess that character of “absolute being” associated with the concept of pure I-hood, but also be something specific (Breazeale 2013, 201 n6). As Fichte puts it, “it is not simply that he is; he is also something. He does not say simply ‘I am’”; he adds: “I am this or that” (LSV, EPW 148 [GA I/3:29]). In order to discover the nature of the concrete I by way of an analytic method, Fichte heavily relies on reflection. For this purpose, first of all, Fichte invites us to “attend to yourself; turn your gaze from everything surrounding you and look within yourself ” (IWL 7 [GA I/4:186]). The analytic method of reflection is thus phenomenological, to put it somewhat anachronistically. One must then focus only on oneself and “think the I” by carefully observing what transpires. But it is clearly more than phenomenological because Fichte immediately suggests that one must also abstract the I from all that does not belong to it in a transcendental reflection. Abstraction6 is not a passive observation nor an imposed awareness but a dynamic act expressing the freedom of the philosopher. In other words, Fichte does not claim that I simply find the fully formed I, residing somewhere within me. Instead, I have to produce it myself in order to explain the I to myself and to render intelligible to myself the normative nature of the I as a finite rational being. As Fichte puts it, “I have to construct the concept of the I” (FTP 119 [GA II/3: 340]). Thus, when I am immediately conscious of myself, the I knows itself and produces itself. I have to perform an act by which I become conscious of myself. This suggests that the self-conscious I is self-grounding as it normatively conditions itself in the most direct way—it is directly grasped by means

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of an intellectual intuition without a mediation of any sensation.7 The original I that is the object of the intellectual intuition is thus the I in its purest and unconditioned aspect, which serves as the ground of all beings, and is by no means an ordinary I (even though it is not separated from the latter). Furthermore, this pure I is self-sufficient and independent and, in this regard, can serve as the starting point of WL by simply presupposing the reality of freedom.8 In order to present this pure I most effectively—and in order also to prevent any potential misunderstanding—Fichte constructs a new philosophical concept of “Tathandlung” to refer to this first principle of philosophy (e.g., his “Review of Aenesidemus” and SK). On this conception, the Fichtean I is exhausted by an act (Tathandlung). The Fichtean I then turns out to be nothing over and above this Tathandlung. By a recourse to a Kantian transcendental procedure, and also vis à vis his goal of giving an account of our experience, Fichte proceeds from Tathandlung to a derivation of the whole world of experience. However, whereas Kant’s method in the transcendental deduction starts from an analysis of our most elementary experience and moves on to its a priori and necessary conditions, i.e., the involvement of synthetic activities in our judgments, the categories as the most fundamental concepts that make our experience possible as its transcendental condition, and finally the transcendental apperception as the ultimate cornerstone of our experience, Fichte, on the other hand, reverses the order and starts from the very I that is presumably unconditional and free, and only then goes back to the experience. In a word, he proceeds from the top to the bottom. Then our experience of the world is shown to be the case from the actions of the I as its transcendental conditions in a “synthetic” procedure. Indeed in Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre, he goes on to demonstrate  the entirety of the Wissenschaftslehre from the principle of the selfpositing I through a chain of logical inferences that merely set out the implications of the initial principle in such a way that the certainty of the first principle is transferred to the claims inferred from it.9 Yet this hardly seems to be the whole of Fichte’s transcendental method, since a mere analysis would only give rise to a contradiction, e.g., the kind that can arise in an opposition between the I and the Not-I. This, Fichte suggests, can be resolved only by positing a third concept—the concept of divisibility— that unites the two sides. Thus, resorting to a synthetic method, he constantly invokes new concepts that cannot be plausibly interpreted as the logical consequences of the previous ones. While a use of an analytic (or, as Fichte sometimes puts it, “antithetical”) method alone may lead only to a contradiction between concepts at the end (SK 111 [GA I/2:274]), a synthetic method can resolve contradictions by introducing a new concept (SK 114 [GA I/2:276]; see also Breazeale 2015, 79). In other words, the deductions in the Science of Knowledge go well beyond mere analytical explications of the consequences of the original premise. Note also that the type of synthetic method that Fichte employs is dialectical. It starts from a thesis, which then gives rise to its opposite, i.e., its antithesis, and finally ends with a newly invoked synthesis.10 Further, the synthetic approach to the I in Fichte effectuates a procedure that purports to show how the observed I comes to know itself and realizes itself in concrete experience as a sovereign individual subject. In other words, the synthetic method in Fichte is not designed to abstract the nature of the observing philosopher’s I but to

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describe and at the same time exemplify the structure of the observed I (Breazeale 2013, 125). This is only possible because the I here—as Tathandlung—is a selfreverting activity in which the subject and the object are not two, but one and the same. It is both a subject and an object, a subject–object (IWL 114 [GA I/4:277]). It is this pure I that can impart certainty to the whole of our experience by being present in all that follows. This is why Fichte rejects Kant’s idea of a transcendental subject as the fixed logical substratum of an I. We have no choice but to begin simply with the subjective spontaneity and freedom of the I and then to proceed to a transcendental derivation of its objective necessity and limitation (finitude) as a condition necessary for the possibility of the former. Starting with a fundamental principle, common to both theory and practice, that can only be approved by immediate consciousness (or belief), Fichte’s synthetic method thus demonstrates the intimate relations that our pure subjective, or transcendental, consciousness has to its universal and necessary features in all our mental activities. This also suggests Fichte’s synthetic method is genetic. As he puts it, “this demand [for absolute causality of the I] must also be capable of being demonstrated directly and genetically” (SK 239 [GA 1/2: 404–5]). Indeed, in his engagement with Carl Ch. E. Schmid, Fichte suggests that in WL the object of philosophy is not static and fixed, but something active, and it is thus most succinctly presented in the dynamic activities of the observed I (EPW 322 [GA I/3:254]). WL does not merely justify a given system of things as they are, but rather describes a series of acts that make our experience possible. In it, the I is allowed to act before its eyes, so to speak, while observing his own acting. In this respect, WL proceeds genetically, presenting the dynamic nature of the I as it engages in its own act of representing (das Vorstellen) in what he calls a “deduction of representation” (SK 203ff [GA I/2:369ff]). Fichte’s transcendental idealism thus results in the observing I giving a genetic account of the conditions of the possibility of the observed I that acts freely and spontaneously and proceeds to deduce various acts as the conditions of its possibility. The obvious implication is that whoever subscribes to this transcendental project must be able to do the same, not as a detached third observer, but as a fully committed active performer in his or her engagement. By way of a synthetic procedure that is dialectical and genetic, Fichte is then able to describe the system of self-constitutive acts by which the pure I raises itself to empirical self-consciousness and to the experience of the world (Breazeale 2015, 84). The deduction in effect presents the way that ordinary consciousness arises from the originally posited self-positing of the I. Even philosophy itself is the quest for a genetic explanation of ordinary consciousness. Fichte sometimes calls his system a “pragmatic history of the human mind” (EPW 131 [GA I/2:147 cf. GA I/2:364–5]). In this respect, for Fichte, a pragmatic history purports to present the activity of self-production of the I by way of a free act of construction in which one traces the genesis of certain objects a priori. It thus involves a thorough description of the generation of the cognitive powers of the mind as essentially self-productive and active.11 The pragmatic history of the mind begins with the pure I, which is, as Tathandlung, itself an act and a product of an intellectual intuition. In documenting a pragmatic history of the mind, the philosopher is supposed to be simply observing and reporting on the I’s acts. Note that the “synthetic method,” when employed by the observing

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philosopher, enables her to construct and exemplify activities of the observed I while deriving them from the self-positing activity of the I. In other words, the observing philosopher from her transcendental viewpoint helps expose the way that the observed I is actively resolving contradictions while herself engaging in these activities. But this self-reverting act of the observed I “entails” various acts such as the positing of the Not-I, of an articulated human body, of other individuals, and ultimately all human striving. It “entails” the acts in the sense that each of the acts is required as the one and only way of resolving each contradiction. In the process, intellectual acts of the mind are described as necessarily following each other by the laws of reflection. This then shows how our ordinary experience of the world is deductively generated from its foundation. Beginning with the I, Fichte then proves the existence of the material body, which is the substantial agent of the I’s action, the Not-I or external material world, that is the object of its actions, and also other Is. The pragmatic history then is a complete inventory of all the acts that constitute the human mind. Finally, Fichte argues that the move to resolve contradictions by means of a synthetic method is not only fruitful but also far-reaching in reconciling the distinction between a transcendental viewpoint and an ordinary viewpoint. In an effort to clarify the task and method of transcendental philosophy, Fichte thus insists upon the sharp distinction between the “standpoint” of natural consciousness (for which it is the task of philosophy to “derive,” and hence to “explain” experience) and that of transcendental reflection, which is the standpoint required of the philosopher (IWL 49, 149 [GA 1/4:21–220, 353], FTP 78, 106 [GA IV/3: 323, 342] cf. Wood 2016, 154). He thus insists that there is no conflict between transcendental idealism and the common-sense realism of everyday life. On the contrary, the whole point of the former is to demonstrate the necessity of the latter (Breazeale 2017). By inventing new concepts in its resolution of the old contradictions, Fichte’s synthetic method can also engage in an active dialogue between a transcendental, philosophical, or scientific standpoint on the one hand and an ordinary, everyday, or common-sense standpoint on the other. The former can explain and justify what is known from the latter. Indeed, what is truly synthetic is not the philosopher’s objective and abstract act of observation and description but the very activities of the observed I that constructs itself under the philosopher’s gaze. The philosopher then not only observes but also demonstrates that the acts of the I proceed from one level to another, governed by the law of reflection, until they are united in a single, synthetic unity, at which point all the conditions for the possibility of actual finite self-consciousness will have been determined (Breazeale 2015, 86). Fichte’s synthetic-genetic account of the human subject is also found in the Foundation of Natural Right [GA I/3: 393–6] and the System of Ethics. For example, in the latter, it is pointed out that there are four developing stages of the I in its genetic origination. The first stage is that of animals and infants (SE IV:178 [GA I/5: 172]). They are wholly motivated by the natural drive, the drive to self-preservation. In the second stage they are aware of their power by way of reflection on the natural drive. They exercise the power of choice among various objects of the senses. The third stage is such that they become aware of another drive, the drive to self-sufficiency

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(SE IV: 185 [GA I/5: 179]). In stage four they realize this drive is their true essence (wahren Wesen) as rational beings. This is the stage of autonomy. Rational beings are bound by the autonomy of reason.12

Conclusion In employing a transcendental method for the purpose of achieving the goal of Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte was a staunch Kantian. However, he quickly goes beyond Kant in limiting the analytic method to abstracting and identifying the conditions of the possibility of our experience and enthusiastically pursuing a synthetic method in the most critical part of his system. Further, this synthetic method is not only dialectical but also genetic. The last feature then helps resolve the potential conflict between the transcendental and empirical points of view.13

Notes 1 Due to limited space, no consideration has been given to Fichte’s later work after VM, which seems to be a culmination of Fichte’s Jena project (even though it was written in Berlin). 2 For Fichte, all philosophy is either dogmatism or criticism but never skepticism. See Breazeale, Editor’s Introduction, IWL xxiv. 3 For Kant, Critical philosophy is the same as a transcendental philosophy or a critique. 4 For the details of the difference between the two methods in Kant, see Kim 2015, 5–11. 5 As we will see shortly, Fichte’s synthetic method is not only genetic but also dialectical. 6 For more on the Fichtean abstraction, see Kim 2014. 7 Indeed, in FTP, Fichte explicitly describes this self-positing as intellectual intuition (FTP 129 [GA IV/3: 355]) as it posits itself and it is immediately certain. The act of pure self-consciousness is one in which its object is immediately present. Furthermore, this object is not given but produced. In this sense, the Fichtean original I is the intuiting that intuits itself in an act of intuition (Zöller 1998, 38). It is a product of its own self-intuition. The nature of self-consciousness consists in the very identity of the representing and the represented. The I is the subject and the object at the same time. Such a pure I or self is not a fact (Tatsache), but an originary activity (Tathandlung). 8 It is then treated as an incontrovertible “fact of reason” in the Kantian sense (Breazeale 2017). 9 This reminds us of the geometrical method in Spinoza’s Ethics but this time with only a single premise from which to begin the proofs. 10 The dialectical scheme of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis originates from Fichte, not from Hegel. 11 For this use of this phrase, Fichte was influenced by Plattner, Maimon, and Kant among others. See Breazeale 2015, 72–9.

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12 Does Fichte’s argumentative strategy in Book 3 of VM amount to a genetic method? Fichte’s method here does not seem to contain any genetic method. It is “an argument of belief.” See Radrizzani 2002, 306. 13 Thanks go to Kienhow Goh for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. “Jumping the Transcendental Shark: Fichte’s ‘Argument of Belief ’ in Book III of Die Bestimmung des Menschen and the Transition from the Earlier to the Later Wissenschaftslehre.” In New Essays on Fichte’s later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 199–224. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Breazeale, Daniel. 2015. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre. New York: Oxford University Press. Breazeale, Daniel. 2017. “Johann Gottlieb Fichte.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte. Estes, Yolanda. 2013. “Fichte’s Vocation of Man.” In Fichte’s “Vocation of Man”: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 79–102. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. Kim, Halla. 2014. “Abstraction in Fichte.” In Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 143–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kim, Halla. 2015. Kant and the Foundations of Morality. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Radrizzani, Ives. 2013. “The Place of the Vocation of Man in Fichte’s Work.” In New Essays on Fichte’s later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 317–44. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Rockmore, Tom and Daniel Breazeale (eds.). 2002. New Essays on Fichte’s later Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Rockmore, Tom and Daniel Breazeale (eds.). 2013. Fichte’s “Vocation of Man”: New Interpretive and Critical Essays. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. Rockmore, Tom and Daniel Breazeale (eds.). 2014. Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, Allen W. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. New York: Oxford University Press. Zöller, Günter. 1998. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy. The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Fact/Act (Tathandlung) Halla Kim

Introduction In this chapter I examine and present the concept of Tathandlung, which is arguably one of the most important concepts in Fichte’s writings. First, I introduce it against the background of the Fichtean program of philosophy. Then I explain what it cannot be and proceed to characterize it more positively. Finally, I will show that Fichte’s entire philosophy, the Wissenschaftslehre (WL), is a system that, by way of Tathandlung, vividly presents the dynamic nature of the I that operates at every level of consciousness. As is well-known, Fichte was greatly influenced by Kant’s transcendental philosophy. However, Fichte also adamantly opposed the dogmatic aspect of the Kantian transcendental idealism—there was simply no room for the Kantian thingin-itself in Fichte’s system. In particular, he believed Kant’s idealism was incomplete in an important sense. This was incomplete because, inter alia, it was devoid of any firm foundation or any single fundamental principle that is absolutely certain.1 And it was also lacking a solid derivation of the conditions of the possibility of our experience in what he calls “deduction.” Constructing the entire system on a firm single foundation was the best recipe on Fichte’s part for permanently removing the Kantian hypothesis of the thing-in-itself and also for overcoming all the bifurcations the hypothesis entails, e.g., the opposition between the phenomenon and the noumenon, between consciousness and object, between understanding and senses, between nature and freedom, between theoretical reason and practical reason, etc. Fichte tried to achieve all of this by deducing the fundamental categories of thought from the original, pure I. Fichte then presented his transcendental idealism as “the first system of human freedom” (EPW 335 [GA III, 2: 298]). Amidst his transcendental turn, Fichte’s project in the single fundamental principle of transcendental idealism received further impetus from his battle against skepticism, as his review of G. E. Schulze’s Aenesidemus amply shows (EPW 59–77 [GA I/2:41–67]). Not surprisingly, the task of philosophy vis-à-vis skepticism on his part was, once again, to put the edifice of knowledge on a firm foundation. Philosophy, Fichte says, must begin with an immediate, self-sufficient, and self-grounding first principle. But this cannot be a mere fact (Tatsache) or some stationary entity in the

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world. Rather, it must be something that expresses the primordial, irreducible nature of the active I. Devoid of any proper philosophical tool for it, Fichte invented the concept of Tathandlung to refer to this first principle of philosophy (AR EPW 64 [GA I/2:46], SK 93, 96, 97, 99 [GA I/2:255, 257. 259. 266]). On this conception, the Fichtean I is nothing but a fact/act (Tathandlung).2 Beginning with Tathandlung, Fichte proceeds to establish not only the pure I as positing its own existence but also that of the Not-I. For Fichte, the Other is also conditioned by the activities of the pure I but it is in no way dependent on the contingent empirical I, which is, of course, different from the pure I. We may then say on Fichte’s behalf: “In the beginning there was Tathandlung (Im Anfang war eine Tathandlung).”

What Tathandlung is Not To begin, Fichte’s Tathandlung cannot be a substance in the traditional sense—it is not a static thing with fixed properties. Nor can it be a fact or state of affairs. As Fichte puts it in the First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre: If philosophy begins with a fact, then it places itself in the midst of a world of being and finitude, and it will be difficult indeed for it to discover any path leading from this world to an infinite and supersensible one. If, however, philosophy begins with a Tathandlung, then it finds itself as the precise point where these two worlds are connected with each other and from which they can both be surveyed in a single glance. (IWL 51 [GA I/4:221])

If a Tathandlung were a fact or something of that nature, it would be completely determined by something else. But, in this case, it would not be able to serve as the first principle of WL. It follows that Tathandlung is not a product of the activity of something else but a self-activity of the pure I. For example, it does not produce sensation in a passive response to things outside of itself. Otherwise, our cognition would express nothing but the way the subject is affected by the incoming stimulations from the object. Tathandlung simply indicates the way that the I is active by itself. Further, the pure I, of which “Tathandlung” is a mere expression, is not discovered empirically—you cannot find it in the data of your ordinary consciousness. As the first principle, Tathandlung cannot be given a posteriori. The pure I is thus different from the empirical Is we find within ourselves in the course of ordinary experience. It follows that Tathandlung is not an activity of individual, empirical Is, even though it cannot be separated from the latter. Tathandlung is a primordial activity of the pure I that is to be developed into different empirical Is and their activities in its course in the world. All our other mental activities and their products including the objective reality (the “Not-I”) are due to this self-activity of the I. Tathandlung then is not a cognitive subject as we ordinarily understand it, nor is it an object of our thought when we think. Rather, it is a primordial activity that can be differentiated into such a subject or object given further momentum from itself. Finally,

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a Tathandlung is not some absolute spirit or Godhead, or the Aristotelean “thought of thought.” Nor is it a universal, abstract, disembodied I that somehow resides in the Platonic Heaven.

What Tathandlung Must Be What must Tathandlung then be? Note that the starting point of the WL is the bare thought of the I acting on its own. By starting with the immediate, certain, highest principle, Fichte conceives the task of the WL to overcome the dualisms inherent in Kantian idealism. This task can be completed only when the deduction of the various representations in the theoretical activities of the I and also the deduction of the various drives in the practical activities of the I are successfully carried out. Tathandlung exactly provides the basis for such deductions. In accordance with this plan, Fichte suggests that Tathandlung is a principle of selfconsciousness. In other words, self-consciousness is the form that the I originally takes as a pure activity. Fichte suggests that Tathandlung as a primordial, self-conscious act of the I amounts to the I’s positing itself on its own. By positing (setzen) here, Fichte primarily means a logical and epistemic act of consciousness.3 But knowing is a kind of doing, so Fichte tends to characterize it in practical terms such as activity. So, this original act of consciousness is not just an act of knowing but also an act of performance (Zöller 1998, 47). In a nutshell, for Fichte, positing something has the sense of normatively grounding or conditioning it, both theoretically and practically. Tathandlung then has “a normative status that makes conscious and self-conscious experience possible in the first place and could not be found in any introspection” (Pinkard 2002, 118). However, this primordial, normative act of the self-conscious I is far from being an instance of creatio ex nihilo such as that found in, e.g., Christian theology. Further, for Fichte, Tathandlung as a performance of the I is absolutely immediate. It is an intentional activity that is immediately directed back at itself. In this connection, Dieter Henrich, in his “Fichte’s Original Insight,” suggests that, in self-consciousness, what is subjective and objective are inseparably united within self-consciousness and are absolutely one and the same. The I as the subject is identical with the I as the object, and it knows itself as one with itself (Henrich 1982, 19). In other words, for Fichte, self-consciousness is immediate, and this immediate consciousness is the intuition of the I that is at once subjective and objective. The pure I then consists in a self-reverting activity in which “the subject and the object are not two but one and the same. It is both a subject and an object, a subject-object” (IWL 114 [GA I/4:277]). In this respect, we may even say that Tathandlung is a principle of identity (FTP 153 [GA IV/3:366]; cf. Hegel’s Diff. 35). For example, Tathandlung is a principle of the identity of acting and knowing, saying and doing, the representing and the represented, etc. Tathandlung then expresses “the absolute identity of subject and object in the I” (SE 7 [GA I/5:21]). It thus forms a “supreme point from which the practical and the speculative appear as one” (GA III/2:395). In this sense, we must point out that, for Fichte, Tathandlung as an ontological category must take precedence over the I.

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Tathandlung also expresses its own goal and it is thus self-sufficient. It is an activity whose goal is directly identical with itself. In other words, it is the means to an end (product), which is the same as the means. A Tathandlung is an act where its goal and its process are identical. In this regard, it is also the basis of our moral activity as it expresses the drive to self-sufficiency (SE 146 [GA I/5:144]). As Fichte puts it: The I is what acts and the product of the action at the same time, what is active and what is produced by activity; act (Handlung) and deed (That) are one and the same thing. That is why the I am is the expression of a Thathandlung, as well as the only one possible. (SK 97 [GA I/2, 259] translation modified)

What makes this idea of self-sufficient positing of the I certain is the fact that this is implied by what we affirm for ourselves in our typical moral experience. We are aware of ourselves as self-positing Is because we are aware of ourselves as those who act freely (Breazeale 2015, 152). The self-sufficiency of Tathandlung then is not a passively given datum or some sort of a fixed first principle. It is an ongoing, dynamic process of self-making. Indeed, Tathandlung is operating actively at every moment of our ordinary experience, underlying and anchoring all our empirical acts of consciousness. It follows that Tathandlung entails a self-positing of the pure I that is the ultimate condition of all our knowledge and experience, making possible every act of empirical self-consciousness. There is no further underlying mental subject to which it belongs. Being a primordial, immediate, self-conscious activity, it knows of no prior subject or object. It is now clear Fichte’s overall goal of giving an account of our experience has to start with Tathandlung. His transcendental project then is to give an account of how the pure I comes to know itself and realize itself as a sovereign individual principle. Truth for Fichte is not the apocalyptic “bacchanalian revel where not a member is sober” as in Hegel (PhS §47 [PhG, GW 9:35]) but the very incipient point that kicks off the whole philosophical enterprise. Finally, Tathandlung as pure self-consciousness is self-grounding. Thus, when the I posits itself, the I knows itself as well as grounds/conditions itself. The I, insofar as it is self-posited, is nothing apart from the very act of self-positing (Zöller 1998, 47). In this respect, Fichte goes so far as to suggest that the pure I is identified by an intellectual intuition (intelletuelle Anschauung) (Kim 2014, 147–54). As mentioned before, we do not find the fully formed Tathandlung in our ordinary consciousness. Fichte takes pains to isolate the true character of the pure I phenomenologically by way of relying on what we can discover by means of reflection. In particular, Fichte arrives at the pure I first by abstraction followed by an intellectual intuition (ibid.). As Fichte puts it in his “Review of Aenesidemus,” “[the I] is realized through intellectual intuition, through the I am, and indeed, through the I simply am, because I am” (AR EPW 70 [GA I/2]. The requisite reflection is not empirical but transcendental. As a matter of fact, in the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy, Fichte explicitly describes this self-positing I itself as an intellectual intuition (FTP 128 [GA IV/3:370]). While the reflecting philosopher exercises his freedom in abstracting the observed I away from things and focuses on its true nature by an intellectual intuition of the observed I in the sense of self-observation or self-reflection, here in the FTP,

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the Tathandlung itself of the observed I is identified with an intellectual intuition. For the act of pure self-consciousness is one in which its object is immediately present. Furthermore, since such a pure I is not a fact (Tatsache), but an activity, it is not passively given but normatively constructed. Once we isolate it, then we have to construct it in order to “deduce” the necessary moments of our activities as the conditions for the possibility of our ordinary experience. After having presented Tathandlung as certain, Fichte now goes on to offer his construction in a genetic manner for the purpose of exhibiting its normative nature for us finite rational beings (Bowman 2017). As for the additional acts of the mind required for the deduction, Fichte declares that: [W]e encounter purely synthetic acts, though they are no longer absolutely unconditioned, as their predecessors were. Our deduction has shown, however, that they are acts, and acts of the self. For this they are as certain as is the first synthesis, from which they derive, and with which they are identical. And this latter is an act as certainly as is that highest Tathandlung of the I, whereby it first posits itself –The acts thus postulated are synthetic, though the reflection which postulates them is analytic. (SK 121 [GA I/2:282])

All our other mental activities and their products, including the objective reality (the Not-I), are due to this synthetic self-activity of the original I. The original I as the ground of all beings in turn gives rise to the I qua substance that is bifurcated into the divisible I that limits the Not-I, and the divisible Not-I that limits the divisible I. Finally, the same I is further developed into the I qua accident that is opposed to the divisible Not-I in the substance I (Zöller 1998, 48).

The Tathandlung and the Debate over Dogmatism vs. Idealism Fichte’s transcendental idealism purports to give an account of our experience and starts with the pure I that acts freely and spontaneously as the condition of the possibility of experience. It then goes on to “deduce” various acts as the conditions of its possibility. This is a “genetic” account of the deduction of the representations (Kim 2020). Such a method leaves open the possibility of other explanations of our experience. Fichte claims, however, that the alternatives can actually take only one form. Either, he says, we can begin (as he does) with the I as the ground of all possible experience, or we can begin with the thing-in-itself outside of our experience. This dilemma involves, as he puts it, choosing between idealism and dogmatism. The former is transcendental philosophy, while the latter is a naturalistic approach to experience that explains it solely in causal terms. As Fichte famously suggests in the “First Introduction,” the choice between the two depends on the kind of person one is (IWL 20 [GA I/4: 195]), because they are said to be mutually exclusive yet equally possible approaches. The Tathandlung that Fichte presents, however, has nuanced repercussions on the opposition between dogmatism and idealism. As opposed to idealism, dogmatism, since it deduces ideas from being, leads to determinism. For example, Spinoza begins his dogmatism with an (infinite, all-encompassing) substance and explains individuals

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(individual consciousness) as modes of the substance. No freedom can be adequately accounted for here in dogmatism. Idealism, on the contrary, not only can explain freedom but also dogmatism itself as well. The choice between dogmatism and idealism directly depends on whether one accepts Tathandlung or not. Note that dogmatism is the view that things exist independent of the activities of the I whereas idealism is the opposite of dogmatism. Dogmatism begins with a fact (Tatsache) whereas idealism begins with Tathandlung, i.e., a pure activity (Tätigkeit). However, Fichte emphatically claims that dogmatists cannot imagine their own freedom. As he puts it, “most men could be more easily convinced to consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than an I” (SK 162 n2 [GA I/2: 326 n.]). The dogmatists then tacitly but surely employ their own freedom to presuppose the being in itself and derive the I from the latter (SK 190 [GA I/2: 355]). The very act of abstracting the thing-in-itself from the rest and trying to explain the experience in its terms already shows that the reality of freedom constrains the position of dogmatism.

The Tathandlung as the Principle of Freedom Finally, Tathandlung is the principle of freedom. Tathandlung does not express a haphazard, accidental act on the part of the I. Rather, it manifests a spontaneous normative activity of the self-conscious I. Nothing else determines the pure I. Only it determines itself. Tathandlung is then a normative activity of the pure I that is selfgoverned. Its existence amounts to nothing but the I’s activity operating according to a law it imposes on itself. Thus, it expresses the principle of autonomy.4 As Fichte puts it, “I ought to begin my thinking with the thought of the pure I, and I ought to think of this pure I as acting with absolute spontaneity—not as determined by things, but rather as determining them” (IWL 50 [GA I/4:220–1]). In other words, the Fichtean pure I is nothing but a fact/act (Tathandlung) of freedom. This immediately suggests that Tathandlung expresses the concept of a rational agent that constantly interprets itself in light of normative standards that it imposes on itself, in both the theoretical and practical realms, in its efforts to determine what it ought to believe and what it ought to act.5 Fichte thus rejects Kant’s conception of the moral law as the ultimate principle only for practical philosophy. Both theoretical and practical philosophy should have a common foundation in Tathandlung. For then not only does practical reason have primacy over theoretical, but it also directly implies the thesis of the unity of theoretical and practical philosophy. Both of them have a foundation in one and the same Tathandlung.

Conclusion Tathandlung is arguably the single most important principle that penetrates the entirety of Fichte’s WL. The whole system of WL stands or falls together with Tathandlung. It is

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not only a principle of immediate self-consciousness but also a principle of identity. As the ultimate condition of our self-consciousness, it provides the fundamental starting point for deducing the reality of the objective world, too. Finally, we can see that it offers the basis for the doctrine of the primacy of the practical principle as well as for the unity of reason.

Notes 1 For this, he was influenced by Karl Reinhold. 2 “Tathandlung” is a notoriously difficult term to translate into English. It is sometimes translated as “fact/act” as I did here, but most of the time I will leave it untranslated. 3 “Setzen” is a German counterpart of the Latin “ponere,” which means to affirm logically in the rational tradition in Germany. 4 Breazeale even goes so far to suggest that “in order to construct any genuine philosophy of freedom, … the reality of freedom itself must simply be presupposed and thus treated as an incontrovertible ‘fact of reason’ in the Kantian sense” (Breazeale 2014). 5 Fichte’s indebtedness to the Kantian notion of autonomy in the form of self-imposed lawfulness should be obvious to anyone familiar with the Critical philosophy. See, e.g., Kim 2015.

Bibliography Beiser, Frederick C. 2002. German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Bowman, Curtis. 2017. “Johan Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814).” In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/fichtejg/ (accessed November 1, 2017). Breazeale, Daniel. 1993. “Fichte and Schelling: The Jena Period.” In The Age of German Idealism (Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VI), edited by Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins. London: Routledge. Breazeale, Daniel. 2014. “Johann Fichte.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/ (accessed November 1, 2017). Breazeale, Daniel. 2015. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre. New York: Oxford University Press. Henrich, Dieter. 1982. “Fichte’s Original Insight.” Contemporary German Philosophy 1: 15–52. [Originally, “Fichtes ursprűngliche Einsicht,” Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1967.] Kim, Halla. 2014. “Abstraction in Fichte.” In Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 143–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Kim, Halla. 2015. Kant and the Foundations of Morality. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington. Kim, Halla. 2020. “Transcendental Method,” Chapter 20 in this volume. Neuhouser, Frederick. 1990. Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinkard, Terry. 2002. German Philosophy, 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rockmore, Tom and Daniel Breazeale (eds.). 2014. Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, Allen W. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. New York: Oxford University Press. Zöller, Günter. 1998. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy. The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zöller, Günter and David James (eds.). 2016. The Cambridge Companion to Fichte. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

22

Check and Summons (Anstoß and Aufforderung) Steven H. Hoeltzel

Why suppose that material objects and other minds actually exist? The answer seems obvious: experience straightforwardly supports that supposition. For Fichte, however, that sort of answer is unacceptable. Transcendental philosophy, as he practices it, abstracts from and reflects upon our prephilosophical outlook as a whole, provisionally suspending and critically interrogating the basic ontological commitments that configure it (EPW 432–5 [GA III/3, no. 440]). These are commitments that one ordinarily just unreflectively upholds—chief among them, belief in a material world housing minds other than one’s own—but the transcendental philosopher considers the basic constituents and enabling conditions of those commitments themselves, understood as mental accomplishments that might comprise or presuppose other, more fundamental mental activities. And if the philosopher proceeds idealistically in this, then the ensuing account: explains the determinations of consciousness by referring them to the acting of the intellect, which it considers to be something absolute and active, not something passive. The intellect cannot be anything passive, because, according to the postulate of idealism, it is what is primary and highest and thus is preceded by nothing that could account for its passivity. (IWL 25–6 [GA I/4:199–200])

Working within this framework, Fichte offers separate analyses of the conditions for the possibility of representing or referring to (1) material objects and (2) other minds—extra-subjective entities of importantly distinct sorts. These analyses are importantly akin, in that both postulate, as a necessary condition for the mental accomplishment under consideration, some sort of basic incapacity or limitation that is partly constitutive of human rationality.1 But the two accounts also involve interestingly different understandings of the nature and implications of the basic constraints in question. As a first approximation, we can say that, for Fichte, (1) a rational being posits a putatively mind-independent object only if that being’s self-initiated mental activity encounters a pre- or proto-objective “check” or “affront” (Anstoß), and (2) a rational being can first become concretely conscious of its own capacity for rational

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self-determination only as the addressee of a “summons” (Aufforderung) that calls upon it to actuate that very capacity. I roughly reconstruct the indicated arguments below. I claim that, in keeping with the “postulate of idealism” cited above, Fichte does not suppose that either argument firmly backs philosophical assent to the existence of material objects or of other minds. On the contrary, the goal of Fichte’s professed “deductions” of our everyday “convictions” concerning such things is not to philosophically legitimate those prephilosophical beliefs. Instead, the aim of these arguments is to vindicate Fichte’s transcendental idealism—which, if anything, epistemically undermines said beliefs— by demonstrating that any experience that is putatively “of ” such things has, as its necessary and sufficient conditions, nothing but states and activities of the I. Thus, in the case of material objects, a radical difference manifest within the I—self-initiated rational activity versus “simple sensation”—is “set forth” (vorgestellt) in a representation (Vorstellung) of an extra-subjective bearer of sensed qualities. And in the case of other minds, a demand that the I (qua pure reason, constitutively committed to its own unlimited self-activity and efficacy) makes upon itself (qua rational individual capable of intelligent self-determination) is outwardly depicted as an appeal originating from an extra-subjective source. In neither case does Fichte’s transcendental reconstruction of the rational being’s prephilosophical outlook and precritical convictions assume the existence of anything other than the I’s spontaneous acts and unchosen determinations. This is not to say, however, that Fichte’s philosophy as a whole affirms either externalworld skepticism or solipsism, or that his metaphilosophy or methodology make such conclusions inescapable. Fichte firmly maintains that there exists an extrasubjective order comprising other rational beings, and he makes the case for this on distinctly philosophical (not fideistic or uncritical) grounds. But he bases this case, more specifically, upon a broadly ethical requirement rooted in human reason’s basic vocation, as the latter is illuminated by his transcendental reflections—and thus not on narrowly epistemic grounds deriving specifically from the check or the summons.2

Acting versus Being “The rational being is,” Fichte says, “only insofar as it posits itself as being, i.e. insofar as it is conscious of itself.” (FNR 4 [GA I/3:314]). That sounds straightforward, but Fichte immediately expands upon this thought in a surprising way: “All being, that of the I as well as that of the not-I, is a determinate modification of consciousness; and without some consciousness, there is no being” (ibid.). Such statements are often taken simply to reiterate his view that the existence of the I reduces to the mental activity that constitutes its consciousness of itself and its world. In fact, however, such passages make a stronger claim. In his Jena-era writings, Fichte distinguishes being from acting, understanding these as essentially opposing ways in which entities can exist (see FNR 27–8 [GA I/3:338]). “Being” denotes thinglike subsistence: an existence that is not constituted

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by and for consciousness and that therefore is mind- or perspective-independent. “Acting,” by contrast, signifies self-initiated, self-transparent activity. Thus, the I lacks being but nonetheless exists, for it exists purely in acting: “I do not even want to call the I an acting something,” Fichte says, and those who persist in associating I-hood with thinghood, or acting with being, fail to “raise themselves … to the point of view of philosophy” (FNR 3n. [GA I/3:313n.]). For Fichte, then, all putative being is purely virtual, so to say, or merely apparent. Being is a mode of existence depicted in one kind of mental acting and nonexistent otherwise. This claim does not commit him to solipsism, because it does not preclude his holding that, although all being is purely virtual, one’s own I is not the only existing locus of acting. Fichte strenuously defends the latter position, on broadly ethical grounds with deep transcendental foundations, toward the end of the Jena era (see VM 108–11 [GA I/6:294–6]). Although the acting of the I is self-initiated and precedes all being, it is not lawless or arbitrary; it is the self-regulated implementation of pure rationality (IWL 25–6 [GA I/4:199–200]). Such activity is productive of, but not overtly displayed in, representation of a rationally ordered and orderable world. Here, the I’s subjective contents and accomplishments are placed before the I or set forth in objectivized guise—a depicting of things in being “out there” that overlooks its own nature as mental acting occurring “in here.” In acting, the rational being does not become conscious of its acting, for it itself is its acting and nothing else …. The I becomes conscious only of what emerges for it in this acting and through this acting (simply and solely through this acting); and this is the object of consciousness, or the thing. There is no other thing that exists for a rational being. (FNR 4–5 [GA I/3:314])

From our prephilosophical standpoint, such things are unreflectively regarded as independently real (FNR 6 [GA I/3:316]). But via transcendental philosophy, our underlying, object-constituting acting is brought to light, and in that light our everyday understanding of being is contextualized and qualified (IWL 84 [GA I/4:251]).

Objectivity and Arational Manifestation: The Anstoß Fichte’s 1794/95 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre offers a decidedly postKantian account of the conditions for the possibility of mentally referring to putatively mind-independent objects. On the Kantian model, the empirical content of experience is the result of an “affection” of the mind by some “thing in itself ” outside the mind. As noted above, however, Fichte refuses to countenance extra-mental determinants of the I’s activities. Consequently, “affection in general” is reconceived simply as the advent or manifestation within the I (“im Ich”) of something that is “not immediately posited through the I’s own positing of itself ” (GA I/2:293): “something heterogeneous, alien, and to be distinguished” from the I (GA I/2:405).3 Accordingly, Fichte figures the

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qualitative content of sensory consciousness—“sweet or bitter, red or yellow … simple sensation” (GA I/2:437)—as a strictly intra-subjective determination of manifestly arational but not extra-mental origin. Such adventitious, opaque empirical content stands in marked contrast with selfinitiated and self-transparent rational activity: the I’s autonomous deployment of pure ordering forms (non-sensory notions and norms) that organize cognition and orient volition. First and highest among these forms is the perfectly pure notion of the I itself. “The I originally absolutely posits its own being” (GA I/2:261)—which means that “at the basis of all consciousness,” as its ultimate enabling condition (GA I/2:255), is a pure-rational act whereby rational activity as such, in its strict purity and unmitigated autonomy, is upheld as essentially constitutive of and unconditionally normative for the rational being’s existence. The I demands that it encompass all reality and fill the infinite …. Here the meaning of the principle, the I posits itself absolutely, first becomes fully clear. This makes no mention of the I given in actual consciousness, for that is never absolute, but its condition is always … based on something apart from the I. This speaks rather of an Idea of the I, which must necessarily be based on its practical, infinite demand. (GA I/2:409)

Relative to the “infinite demand,” inherent in I-hood, that pure rational activity should “encompass all reality,” the rationally unbidden qualitative content of simple sensation constitutes an Anstoß—a “check” or “affront”—to the rational being’s basic vocation. Insofar as it appears adventitiously and lacks conceptual structure, the merely sensory content of consciousness is an affront to reason’s highest ideal and a check (obstacle, hindrance) to the I’s essential endeavor. Accordingly, sensation (Empfindung) becomes “feeling” (Gefühl): “the manifestation of a compulsion, an inability” (GA I/2:419), via the appearance of an “alien element” that “conflicts with the striving of the I to be absolutely identical” (GA I/2:400)—to confront nothing not wrought by its own free, form-giving acting. Nevertheless, this check and affront is also a “stimulus”—a third tenable rendering of “Anstoß”—to perseverant activity aimed at bringing the mind’s adventitious sensory contents under the governance of reason’s own ordering forms. As a first step in that process, the I conceptually supplements its sensations with the non-sensory notion of an object separate from the subject. That is to say, “a not-I is absolutely opposed to the I” (GA I/2:266), in an act that transfigures a difference on display within the I—that between rational activity and empirical content—into a categorially structured differentiation, in representation, between the subject and sensible objects. Still, this commitment’s adoption by the I is not echoed by the transcendental philosopher, whose philosophizing deactivates and investigates the mental activities involved. This philosopher avers, to be sure, that “things are present … insofar as we occupy the standpoint of ordinary consciousness” (IWL 99 [GA I/4:264]), the unphilosophical outlook to which we ordinarily default. “Every rational being proceeds originally in this way,” as Fichte notes, “and so, too, undoubtedly the philosopher” (FNR 24 [GA I/3:335])—when not philosophizing, that is. But when philosophizing, we

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should regard the idea that “things in themselves exist outside of us and independently of us” as a “deception … which is quite avoidable and which can be completely extirpated by true philosophy” (IWL 99 [GA I/4:264]). In the Foundations of Natural Right (Part I, 1796), Fichte’s account of objective reference is nested within a larger analysis of the conditions for self-consciousness. The key idea: in originally singling itself out as, and thereby essentially identifying itself with, its own self-active end-setting, the I simultaneously dissociates itself from “whatever lies outside this sphere” (FNR 24 [GA I/3:335]). Thus, the unchosen empirical contents of consciousness are set forth in representations of “a system of objects, i.e. a world that exists independently of the I” (ibid.). Full-fledged self-consciousness thus necessarily comprises a commitment to the being of a world outside the mind; and in establishing this, Fichte says, we philosophically “deduce” our commonsense “conviction [Überzeugung] of the existence of an external world” (ibid., translation modified). Because the problem adverted to here has such a long and checkered history, we should pause to consider what a “deduction” like the above might hope to achieve. In Kant’s work, a transcendental deduction serves a legitimating function: it establishes our entitlement to the employment of some strictly a priori concept by demonstrating its indispensable contribution to a representation of reality that is more than a mere “rhapsody of perceptions” (A156/B195). Fichte takes himself to be conducting the Kantian project in a recast form, so that, for example, a deduction is accomplished by the above argument, whereby “our conviction of the existence of an external word has been shown to be a condition of … self-consciousness” (FNR 24 [GA I/3:335]). Importantly, however, the legitimation sought here is, strictly speaking, not to be understood as the philosophical validation of the claim that sensible objects actually exist outside the mind.4 Fichte is explicit on this point: The transcendental philosopher must assume that everything that exists, exists only for an I, and that what is supposed to exist for an I, can exist only through the I. By contrast, common sense accords an independent existence to both and claims that the world would always exist, even if understanding did not. Common sense need not take account of the philosopher’s claim, and it cannot do so, since it occupies a lower standpoint; but the philosopher certainly must pay attention to common sense. His claim is indeterminate and therefore partly incorrect as long as he has not shown how precisely common sense follows necessarily only from his claim and can be explained only if one presupposes that claim. (Ibid.)

Evidently, what is to be vindicated by the present “deduction” is not our commonsense conviction of the world’s mind-independent existence. As Fichte notes above (and repeatedly insists elsewhere), transcendental idealism, as such and at its very basis, renounces that conviction. Moreover, the above deduction is proffered precisely as a partial vindication of that renunciation—more precisely, of the idealistic approach to accounting for our representations of putatively extrasubjective realities on the basis of nothing but the spontaneous activities and original limitations of the I. If Fichte should prove unable thus to explain how and why the I,

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on its own, must construct representations of extra-subjective entities, then he will have failed to back “the philosopher’s claim” that the content and configuration of our unreflective representation of reality is wholly grounded in and accomplished by the I. Thus the above deduction is the partial redemption of that claim (but only partial, because Fichte has yet to account for our prephilosophical conviction as to the existence of other minds). Therefore, if we are to find a Fichtean argument for firm philosophical assent to the existence of a mind-independent reality, we will need to look beyond FNR §2.

Intersubjectivity and Rational Self-determination: The Aufforderung Similar considerations apply to the deduction of intersubjectivity in FNR §3. To say this is by no means to critique Fichte’s philosophy of right; it is merely to note that the analysis he offers here is not supposed to vindicate transcendental-philosophical assent to the existence of other minds. That goal is put out of reach by the metaphilosophy and methodology that frame the discussion: “The question here is not how the issue might be in itself from the transcendental point of view, but only how it must appear to the subject under investigation” (FNR 32 [GA I/3:343]). Thus, Fichte’s more modest aim here is to demonstrate that (1) a rational being’s prephilosophical frame of reference necessarily comprises representations of interaction with and indebtedness to other rational beings, and that (2) the posited interpersonal relations necessarily involve norms of reciprocal recognition and respectful self-restraint. That second claim lies beyond the scope of this essay, which instead shall consider Fichte’s case for the first—and thus for the Aufforderung, or “summons” to rational self-actualization, as a necessary condition for self-consciousness. Fichte holds that if concrete self-consciousness is to come about, then the I’s own acting—freely self-initiated and radically non-objective—must somehow confront the I as some kind of quasi-objective actuality. But paradigmatically “theoretical,” objectpositing acting tends to work against such self-discovery: it conforms to arational constraints (adventitious sensations) and calls attention to something seemingly in being independently of this acting (a posited not-I). As we saw above, however, Fichte also holds that all such object-positing presupposes a distinctly practical, purerational end-setting on the part of the I. And by setting its own ends, and thus setting itself against standing conditions, the rational being (Vernunftwesen) first locates itself as a locus of agency bent upon efficacy. “The practical I is the I of original selfconsciousness” (FNR 21 [GA I/3:332]). Still, in order to explain how exactly such self-consciousness is constituted, we must identify an experience in which “the subject’s efficacy is itself the object that is perceived and comprehended” (FNR 31 [GA I/3:342]), so that the I no longer just unreflectively is this acting (setting ends, positing objects, etc.) but now reflectively has this acting as an intentional object. As we saw above, the I posits an object only if its acting encounters limitation or constraint. But now, the limitation involved in this case must occasion the positing, not of a thing by which subjective activity is countered or canceled, but of the I’s own self-determining acting, constrained in a way that puts it on

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display. And we grasp how this can happen, Fichte claims, “if we think of the subject’s being-determined to be self-determining – a summons [Aufforderung] to the subject to resolve upon an efficacy” (ibid., translation modified). This “being-determined” must be indicative of objectivity, not only in comprising constraint on the I’s activity, but also by appearing “in outer, not inner, sensation,” such that the I acquires explicit awareness of “its own freedom and self-activity … as a concept given to it from the outside” (FNR 32 [GA I/3:342]). This cannot involve “simple sensation” alone: such merely qualitative content, bare of conceptual structure, manifests itself as rational activity’s opaque negation, not as its overt manifestation. Accordingly, the “outer sensation” involved here must signify a subtler constraint: one by which rational activity is not so much perceptually canceled or bounded off as it is intelligibly called for, thus disclosed and engaged. What thus limits the I’s activity, Fichte argues, is “a mere summons to the subject to act” (ibid., translation modified). No mere efficient cause, this is a conceptually structured item that bespeaks recognition of and respect for the I’s ability to freely determine itself.5 Therefore, says Fichte, “the cause of the summons must itself necessarily possess the concept of reason and freedom; thus … it must be an intelligence, and … a free, and thus a rational being” (FNR 35 [GA I/3:345]). And insofar as the summons is outwardly sensed, the I must posit “a rational being outside of itself as the cause” (FNR 37 [GA I/3:347]). Nevertheless, given the (idealistically suspect) centrality of “outer sensation” to this deduction of intersubjectivity, we should guard against overestimating what Fichte would take it to prove philosophically, versus what he evidently intends it to explain idealistically. As he cautions his readers: The question before us was: how can the subject find itself as an object? In order to find itself, it would have to find itself as only self-active …. In order to find itself as an object (of its reflection), it would have to find itself, not as determining itself to be self-active – the question here is not how the issue might be in itself from the transcendental point of view, but only how it must appear to the subject under investigation – but rather as determined to be self-active by means of an external check, which must nevertheless leave the subject in full possession of its freedom. (FNR 32 [GA I/3:343], emphasis added)

It then emerges that the crucial qualifier, “only how it must appear to the subject under investigation,” attaches both to this subject’s positing of “something outside itself as the determining ground” of the indicated limitation (FNR 34 [GA I/3:344]) and to its further determination of that posited ground as another rational being. Fichte makes this plain when he marks the methodologically critical pivot from (1) the higherorder transcendental demonstration that self-consciousness is conditioned by said limitation, sensed as a summons, to (2) a first-order accounting of how the I (not the philosopher) prephilosophically makes sense of its subjection to said constraint. “The subject,” he says, “in consequence of the posited influence upon itself, may have to posit several other things as well” (ibid.)—including, first and foremost, some rational being outside of the I as the putative source of said influence.

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As we have already seen, however, the basic first-order commitments that ordinarily are unreflectively adopted by the I are not necessarily also upheld by the transcendental philosopher. More to the point, in this context, that the philosopher might countenance anything extrinsic to the I is methodologically ruled out from the start: “What exists for a rational being exists in the rational being; but there is nothing in the rational being except the result of its acting upon itself … and the I itself is nothing other than an acting on itself ” (FNR 3 [GA I/3:313]). Statements such as these, along with cautions and qualifications like those above, strongly suggest that for Fichte, in the final analysis, the summons must be understood to result simply from the I’s acting on itself—presumably in an act of pure-rational self-legislation that places a normative demand upon its own end-setting acting. “The very concept of a rational being,” Fichte maintains, involves the idea of a demand (Anforderung) that said being “realize its free efficacy” (FNR 33 [GA I/3:343])— that its own self-determining end-setting shall set the course for this being’s existence. And Fichte argues elsewhere that awareness of our “self-activity and freedom” is finally founded, not upon our encounters with others, but upon the “ethical law within us,” by which the I is challenged (by itself, qua pure reason) “to act in an absolute manner, the sole foundation of which should lie in the I and nowhere else” (IWL 49 [GA I/4:219]). Clearly, for Fichte, the I posits other rational beings if and only if it finds itself summoned to resolute self-determination—and, evidently, the actual source of such a summons, transcendentally speaking, need not be anything extrinsic to the I. Arguably, then, much as the unreflective, prephilosophical positing of mindless material things is transcendentally traceable to rational activity’s constraint by strictly arational factors (simple sensations in the mind), so, similarly, is the unreflective, prephilosophical positing of other rational beings transcendentally traced back to rational activity’s constraint by the highest rational considerations (normative demands made by reason itself). In each case, something in or about the I that places limits on its rational acting is “set forth” by and for the I in a representation of something other than the I—yet nothing other than the I need actually be involved. “The transcendental idealist,” Fichte says, “concludes – because there is no passivity in the I, as indeed there cannot be – that the entire system of objects for the I must be produced by the I itself ” (FNR 27 [GA I/3:337]).

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

See Breazeale 2013, Chapter 9, for the classic treatment of this theme. Hoeltzel 2016 supplies a detailed defense of these claims. All translations from Fichte’s 1794/95 Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre are my own. At this juncture, my account begins to sharply diverge from recent, more realist readings, such as Wood 2016. Wood 2016, 82ff., is excellent on this dimension of Fichte’s discussion.

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Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoeltzel, Steven. 2016. “Fichte, Transcendental Ontology, and the Ethics of Belief.” In Transcendental Inquiry: Its History, Methods, and Critiques, edited by Halla Kim and Steven Hoeltzel, 55–82. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, Allen W. 2016. “Deduction of the Summons and the Existence of Other Rational Beings.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 72–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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The Ambivalence of Language Ives Radrizzani

Fichte dedicated little attention to the problem of language, which he discusses primarily in an article entitled “On the Linguistic Capacity and the Origin of Language” (“Von der Sprachfähigkeit und dem Ursprung der Sprache”), published in 1795 in the Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft Teutscher Gelehrten (OL 119–44 [GA I/3: 97–127]).1 This article falls under the category of the so-called “popular writings” because the views espoused in it do not belong to the foundational part of the system and are developed independently of it. It seems, however, that Fichte would have had to give this problem a preeminent position in his system of philosophy, because his project in this article is not to study what the origin of language could be, but what it is necessarily, for he defends the strong thesis that language as such is necessary. One can thus not be satisfied merely with showing that and how some language or other might have been invented (daß und wie etwa eine Sprache erfunden werden konnte): one must deduce the necessity (Notwendigkeit) of this invention from the nature of human reason; one must demonstrate that and how language must have been invented (daß und wie die Sprache erfunden werden mußte). (OL 119 [GA I/3: 97])

In virtue of Fichte’s organic conception of knowledge, where principles of knowledge are not thought of as an aggregate of isolated propositions issued from experiments, but as a systematic whole, where every proposition must be deducible from a supreme principle, the necessity of language must be established in the foundational part of the system. It implies that a philosophy of language is possible and that it, as for philosophy of natural right or ethics, must be deducible from the system (ableitbar). Yet neither in the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre), where the topic of intersubjectivity is not yet sketched, nor in the presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, where we notice a major systematic advance in the integration of the doctrine of the summons developed in the Foundations of Natural Right, is the question of language expressly addressed. As such, we can state that if this is not to be considered a gap (which would be grave considering Fichte’s claim to have “completed” the philosophy), it is clearly at the very

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least an insufficient development of the theory of language. Therefore, as in the case of aesthetics, the interpreter is compelled to carry out the thankless task of remedying this defect by reconstructing a “forgotten” piece of the system from the implications spread throughout the text.2

Language as a Transcendental Condition of Consciousness A crucial thesis, for Fichte, is that language is a transcendental condition of consciousness. Language, he maintains, is necessary. As a transcendental undertaking, Fichtean philosophy consists of an immanent analysis of the requirements of consciousness. In such a system, “necessity” means what is required as a condition of consciousness. Therefore, if we assert that language is necessary, then we assert that language is a transcendental condition of consciousness. According to the theory of the summons, especially as it is developed in the first part of the Foundations of Natural Right (FNR, §4, 39–52 [GA I/3: 349–60]) and in §13 of the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (WLnm, in FTP 277–307 [GA IV/3:433–47]), the I can only awake to consciousness—or, equivalently for Fichte, the I can only posit itself as free—if it is summoned to do so. That is, if it understands that other subjects treat it as being free. This summons is necessary for the awakening of consciousness and must be communicated to it. Language is, thus, a necessary condition of the awakening of consciousness and is as such necessary. Essential to the Wissenschaftslehre is that it does not have to do with facts (Tatsachen), concepts, and things (whatever “things” may be). As the immanent analysis of the conditions of the consciousness, it only takes up acts (Tathandlungen). To use the favorite expression of Augustin Dumont, it is in its essence an “actology” (Cf. Dumont 2012, 56 ff.), and language is the tool to communicate a series of instructions leading the interlocutor or the reader to freely produce the summoned act. Fichte indeed confines language to the subordinate role of “sign,” which is external to his actology: “Language, in the broadest sense of the word, is the expression of our thoughts by means of arbitrary signs (Ausdruck unserer Gedanken durch willkürliche Zeichen). Through signs, I maintain, and not through actions (Handlungen)” (OL 120; GA I/3: 97). He even envisages the possibility of a spiritual activity independent of language (“It is my conviction that language has been held to be much too important if one believed that without it no use of reason at all would have occurred”) (OL 124 [GA I/3:103]). However, the fact remains that by admitting the necessity of language, Fichte asserts at the same time that spirit could not develop itself without language. As a tool of social interaction, necessary for the awakening of consciousness, language accompanies all spiritual life. It offers spiritual life rich material in which to unfold itself, whether through a mode of aesthetic communication, which addresses the senses, or through rational communication by concepts, which is the specific mode of philosophical communication. The potential of creativity, according to Fichte, cannot be realized in all the languages. Both in the article on the origin of language and in the Addresses to the German Nation,

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Fichte introduces a distinction that establishes a strong hierarchy between the different languages. He distinguishes expressly between a “primordial language” (Ursprache) and a “derived language” (abgeleitete Sprache). With this distinction, he returns to the opposition between living languages and dead languages. In a living language, no sign would be an obstacle to spirit, because it would be the live and immediate translation of spirit, in its process of permanent reinvention, which is foreign to any fixation or petrification. The derived or dead language, by contrast, is no longer the live mirror of spirit.3

Language as a Trap Although a necessary tool of communication, language is nonetheless radically ambivalent in the eyes of Fichte. And considering the danger connected to its use, the question of its potential of creativity is only of relative importance. No language is pure performativity. Language is always accompanied by a letter. Hardly expressed, it falls into the sphere of facts; it is fixed, curdled, reified. Yet it is the second major thesis of Fichte regarding language: the letter constantly risks betraying spirit. Language, which turns out to be the instrument par excellence to unfold spirit, is at the same time— such is its paradoxical nature—a permanent threat to it. Fixed terminology is perhaps mnemotechnically useful, but leads to laziness of spirit, which Fichte execrates. Language requires a permanent effort to go beyond the letter, to revive it, and to find the creative inspiration that generated it. Is it possible to invent a language which avoids such a trap? Is it possible to develop a language that perfectly expresses philosophy that resides completely within spirit? There are passages that give rise to the idea that Fichte actually had such a “final” presentation in mind, suggesting that the various versions of the Wissenschaftlehre are only imperfect and temporary approximations, which are to be supplanted by a definitive presentation when possible. For example, he writes in the Foreword to the first edition of the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre that he will “adhere to the same maxim [consisting in avoiding as far as possible a fixed terminology] in future expositions of the system until the completed final presentation (endliche vollendete Darstellung) of it” (SK 90 [GA I/2: 252]—trans. modified). We can, however, question the weight of such a statement. For, did Fichte not write just a few short months earlier in the Vocation of the Scholar that “perfection” (Vollkommenheit) would be the supreme, but inaccessible purpose of man, assigning to him, as his proper destiny, to indefinitely approach this goal in a process of “improvement unto infinity” (Vervollkommnung ins Unendliche)? (LSV 152 [GA I/3: 32]). In this case, how could it be possible for Fichte to present the complete and final version of his system, except by shirking his human condition? And what would motivate him to kill the spirit of his philosophy, to which he is so utterly attached, by locking it in a letter, as perfect as the letter may be? The fact is that Fichte never wrote a “completed final presentation” of his Wissenschaftslehre. On the contrary, he always remained faithful to his maxim to

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vary the ways in which one can enter into his system as much as possible, and never stopped warning his readers against the mortiferous power of language, denouncing its petrifying skill, and underlining its inescapable but fundamentally inadequate character.

Remedies of the Deficencies of Language Extremely attentive to the intrinsic deficiencies of language, Fichte develops diverse techniques to neutralize its negative effects and strengthen its performative dimension.

Polyglotism The first technique, particularly visible to anyone acquainted with Fichte’s work, was coined “polyglotism” by Reinhard Lauth.4 Fichte formulated its program in a letter to Reinhold dated 1797: “My theory must be presented in an infinitely varied way, each person will think of it – and will have to think of it – in a different way, by himself.”5 The deliberate will to multiply the entrances into his system explains the impressive number of versions of the Wissenschaftslehre throughout his lifetime. We count approximately seventeen versions; Fichte produced three in 1804 alone. The multiple versions of the Wissenschaftslehre offer a systematic variation of the terminology, the structure, and the method, and in no way means that its author was dissatisfied with his teaching, but only shows his concern with facilitating its access. The teacher must approach his interlocutor by getting as close to meeting his specific expectations as possible. This technique of making language fluid deletes the all too convenient marks that could encourage laziness of spirit, and aims at inciting one to engage in an experiment of thought, to make one think by oneself, to bring one to the level of this performative, actological dimension, which constitutes the essence of the Wissenschaftslehre. Linguistic and actological levels are clearly separated. Indeed, language fills a necessary function as a means of communication, but because the object of communication does not belong to the level of language, but to the actological level, it always remains fundamentally inadequate, that is, it remains outside its object, and the form in which it appears fills only a propaedeutical, symbolic function. This technique is the cause of infinite difficulties for the interpreter, who is concerned with philological precision. Is it possible to change the form without repercussions to the content? Does the work of Fichte amount to a simple formal variation without systematic incidence, and does the task of the reader restrict him to establish a set of equivalences between the various sets of terminology used by Fichte? Fichte made contradictory statements on the matter, which prove that the question is much more complex than he seems to suggest. We can also wonder about the utility of tending toward producing an infinite number of presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre. For, if the success of the Wissenschaftslehre is to be measured by its infinite presentations, then Fichte is doomed to failure, given the factual impossibility of offering an infinite number of presentations. Moreover, no

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presentation, as adapted as it may be to the specific needs of some person or group, can ever be exempt from the effort that the reader himself needs to make to tear himself away from the letter, whatever it may be, and to elevate himself to the level of spirit, such that all the presentations, on this precise point are equivalent. Thus the various presentations generate new problems by opening up an infinite field of ambiguous equivalences without allowing them to solve the specific problem they claim to remedy.

The Ruse of Language A second technique, which is perhaps only a variant of the first, and for which I sometimes use the expression “the ruse of language” as an analogy to the famous Hegelian “ruse of reason” (cf. Radrizzani 2016), has already been highlighted by the great biographer of Fichte, Xavier Léon (1922–7). He established that Fichte, to be understood by his opponents, uses a mimetic process, which consists in assuming their language, not in order to concede to them, but to play their game. In this sense, language is used as a weapon. The purpose of this is to undermine the language of the opposing positions from the inside and, on behalf of superficial similarities, to trick his opponents into accepting his own ideas. Xavier Léon was interested in particular in the use of this technique in Fichte’s relationship to the Romantics. However, the technique is more widespread because Fichte also uses it in Lodge: when he speaks as a Mason, it is always with the aim to dialectically promote the Wissenschaftslehre. The Vocation of Man offers a paradigmatic example of this process. This work, dating back to 1800, is an answer to Jacobi’s Letter to Fichte (Jacobi 1799, 1994) published one year earlier in the context of the atheism dispute, in which Jacobi formulated his famous charge of nihilism against Fichte and his Wissenschaftslehre. Yet the parallels between certain passages of the Letter to Fichte and the Vocation of Man are so striking that Jacobi feels like Fichte would have wanted to “crush” him.6 Also the heavily ontological language used in the period after the atheism dispute must be read as a machine of war against the ontologies of Schelling and Hegel but only makes sense if interpreted in a transcendental key. Finally, the nationalist language adopted in the Addresses to the German Nation can only be explained by the historical context, considering the public whom Fichte addresses, but the message remains profoundly universalist.7 This technique too is a source of endless misunderstandings and largely explains the differences between the various interpretations that still divide Fichte scholars today. Fichte always uses a dual language, which requires an acute sense of dialectic and only makes sense from the point of truth where the strategic aim commanding its use is disclosed. The difficulty of such a process can be measured by the reactions of Fichte’s contemporaries. The only one to have identified the ironic dimension throughout Fichte’s language is Jean Paul, who said about the Vocation of Man that it was written in a “destructive cipher” (vernichtende Chiffre), because, “for the exoteric readers,” it “always means the contrary.”8 Generally the parties that Fichte addresses more directly did not identify the subtle dialectic proposed to them (this is the case, for example, of Jacobi with respect to the Vocation of Man, or of Schelling with respect to the Guide to the Blessed Life [Anweisung zum seligen Leben]).

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The Irony The last technique, which was hardly used by Fichte himself, but by his followers Novalis and especially Friedrich Schlegel, still merits being mentioned since they developed it with express reference to Fichte. It is the famous “romantic irony.” This technique, obtained by transposing in literature Fichte’s distinction between the points of view of ordinary consciousness and of the philosopher, also leads to revitalizing the letter by introducing a split within it. The abyss produced by the irony is a summons to go beyond the letter and to incite the performative dimension of spiritual activity. With this irony, the letter cannot simply be given. It invites one to perform an interpretative act that is supposed to open the eye of spirit. As in the case of the ruse of language, irony operates on two levels. The process of irony moreover meets the same difficulty as the ruse of language, because it is only understandable from the point of view that makes its implementation possible. The three processes discussed above have one characteristic in common: they introduce a split in the letter. That is, they invite one to separate the letter from the spirit and to mitigate the tendency of language to reify. All three aim at inviting the reader to tear himself from the letter and to rise to the level of spirit. All three presuppose the radical inadequacy of language, which they intend to remedy by creating within language a distinction between the strict structure of language and the actological level. For, language tries to signify the actological level and necessarily mediates access to this level, but it always also partially masks it. Important is not the letter of philosophy, but spirit itself. The actual language used to express spirit is of little import, but it must always signify its failure and refer negatively to spirit, which it can only ever betray.

Notes

I wish to express my gratitude to Elise Frketich for her great help with polishing the translation. 1 For a commentary on this article, see Surber 1996. For an introduction to Fichte’s conception of language, see also Dumont 2013, Maesschalck 2014 and the contributions included in a special issue of the Archives de Philosophie that focuses on Fichte’s discussion of language (Radrizzani 2020). For discussion of the idea of an original language, and its importance in history, see Chapter 13 by David James in this volume. 2 Concerning the location of the philosophy of language within the architectonic of Fichte’s system, see Radrizzani 2020. 3 Cf. AGN 63[GA I/10:160]): “in a living language the sign itself is immediately alive and sensuous, representing anew the whole of its own life and thus taking hold of the same and intervening in it. To the possessor of such a language [of a living language] the spirit speaks directly, and reveals itself to him as one man to another.” Further down Fichte writes: “In a living language, … if one really lives in it alone, words and their meanings constantly change and multiply, and this is precisely how new combinations become possible. The language that never is, but is perpetually becoming does not speak itself; rather whoever wishes to avail himself thereof must

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speak it himself after his own manner and re-create it to serve his own needs” (AGN 68 [GA I/10: 166]). Reinhard Lauth used often this term in his lectures. See also Radrizzani 2016 and Garcia 2018. Letter to Reinhold, March 21, 1797, GA III/3, no. 354: 57. Jacobi, F. H. [unedited]. Denkbücher, Kladde VII, 108: “Fichte tried with his Vocation of Man to destroy the results of my letter [to him].” Cf. the key point in the Addresses to the German Nation: “Those who believe in spirituality and in the freedom of this spirituality, who desire the eternal progress of this spirituality through freedom – wherever they were born and whichever language they speak – are of our race, they belong to us and they will join with us. Those who believe in stagnation, retrogression and circularity, or who even set a dead nature at the helm of world government – wherever they were born and whichever language they speak – are un-German and strangers to us, and the sooner they completely sever their ties with us the better” (AGN, 97 [GA I/10: 195 ff.]). Letter of Jean Paul to Karl August Böttiger of March 11th, 1800, quoted in Fuchs 1978–2012, 2:303.

Bibliography Dumont, Augustin. 2012. L’opacité du sensible chez Fichte et Novalis – Théories et pratiques de l’imagination transcendantale à l’épreuve du langage. Grenoble: Millon. Dumont, Augustin. 2013. “Qu’est-ce que dire ‘Je suis‘? Études sur la question du langage chez Fichte.” Les Études philosophiques 105 (2): 179–99. Fuchs, Erich. 1978–2012. Fichte im Gespräch – Berichte der Zeitgenossen. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Garcia, Luis Felippe. 2018. La philosophie comme Wissenschaftslehre. Le projet fichtéen d’une nouvelle pratique du savoir. Hildesheim / Zürich / New York: Olms. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. 1799. An Fichte. Hamburg: Perthes. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. 1994. “Letter to Fichte.” In Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill, translated by George Di Giovanni, 498ff. Montreal, Kingston, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. 2019. Denkbücher, edited by Ives Radrizzani. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Léon, Xavier. 1922–7. Fichte et son temps. 3 vol. Paris: Colin. Maesschalck, Marc. 2014. “Le langage philosophique comme langage spéculatif chez Fichte.” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 112 (2): 289–311. Radrizzani, Ives. 2016. “Les raisons systématiques de l’inachèvement du système fichtéen.” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte (12); https://journals.openedition.org/ref/681. Radrizzani, Ives (ed.). 2020. [A Special Issue on] “Fichte et le langage,” Archives de philosophie 83 (1): 5–101. Surber, Jere Paul. 1996. Language and German Idealism: Fichte’s Linguistic Philosophy. New Jersey: Humanities Press.

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Intellectual Intuition C. Jeffery Kinlaw

Intellectual intuition (ii) in its most basic sense refers to the I’s original self-determining act as well as the I’s immediate awareness of that self-determining activity. Every basic action,1 so Fichte contends, is initiated freely by an act of absolute self-determination of which one has immediate awareness, at least tacitly. Absolute, free self-determination, which Fichte states repeatedly is the I and thus constitutive of I-hood,2 is precisely what an act of intellectual intuition discloses. Intellectual intuition is thereby constitutive of what Fichte calls the Tathandlung of the I, and indicates the way in which the I is immediately present to itself in its original, absolute self-determining act. In this short chapter, I provide a basic explication—space limitations preclude a detailed account as well as a full defense of such an account—of what intellectual intuition discloses and the type of awareness that is intellectual intuition, and I attempt to disentangle Fichte’s view from some common misconceptions in the secondary literature with an eye toward mitigating, at least partially, the excessiveness of Fichte’s view. To that end, I argue that intellectual intuition is far from esoteric. I also evaluate the role intellectual intuition plays in the central argument of the Wissenschaftslehre: that all consciousness is derivable from the absolute, free self-determining act of the I. Consider the following passage from the Zweite Einleitung. But, indeed, it can be shown to anyone in her own acknowledged experience that intellectual intuition comes forth in each moment of consciousness. I can take no step, move neither hand nor foot, without the intellectual intuition of my self-consciousness in this action. Only through this intuition do I know that I do it. Only through this intuition do I distinguish my action, and myself in this action, from encountered objects of the action. Anyone who ascribes an activity to herself appeals to this intuition. In it is the source of life and without it death (GA I/4: 217; translation and emphasis mine).

Fichte contends, in this passage, that without intellectual intuition one would not know that a particular representation is her representation. This claim is fundamental to Fichte’s case against dogmatism. The dogmatist’s metaphysical commitments, as Fichte construes them, require him to explain all consciousness as the result of

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causal processes. To that end, the dogmatist might explain how representations—or any mental content—arise from causal processes, perhaps as epiphenomenal, but his explanation will not account for the way in which one knows that her representations are hers. If the dogmatist is correct, humans would be at most complex organisms, who have a rudimentary capacity for self-determination while lacking any genuine self-awareness. For Fichte, a subject’s representation is not hers unless she makes it hers; this is Fichte’s appropriation of Kant’s transcendental apperception thesis. And she makes it hers, precisely by, so Fichte contends, her act of absolute, free self-determination, which both initiates and grounds her representation. The act of absolute, free self-determination is that core act from which Fichte purports to derive all consciousness. Now consider the claim in the first sentence of the passage cited above: that intellectual intuition comes forth in each moment of consciousness. Fichte maintains not only that all representations are initiated by one’s free act of self-determination, but also that one has intellectual intuition of each and every one of those acts. Call this the Ubiquity Thesis. All consciousness and thus all experience, from the representation of objects (however peripheral within one’s perceptual field) to the formation and execution of basic intentions (however inadvertent), originates from freely self-determined acts of which one has at least tacit awareness. This places intellectual intuition at the core of the project of the Wissenschaftslehre. That all consciousness is derivable from the I’s act of free self-determination is not simply a successful explanatory hypothesis, so the Wissenschaftslehre proposes to establish, but, moreover, acts of free self-determination are real, as intellectual intuition purportedly discloses. For every act of the I, which means for every actional mental state, there is an immediate awareness of that act. This is an extreme claim, which seems clearly false, and yet it is intrinsic to the argumentative strategy of the Wissenschaftslehre. After all, while I am focused on the construction of this sentence on my laptop, slight movements of my head or the movement of my eyes across the screen go unnoticed, even tacitly one might contend. And it is unlikely that Fichte can sustain a distinction between mere bodily movements and actions, especially when, as in my examples, the movements are not involuntary. I argue, however, that this claim and thus the Ubiquity Thesis is less implausible than it appears (though perhaps still implausible), once one understands perspicuously what intellectual intuition discloses, namely, the I’s act of absolute, free self-determination, and the commonplace way in which it discloses it. Before proceeding, some crucial distinctions are in order.3 Intellectual intuition accompanies, in the strong sense of being constitutive to, all acts of the I. It is the way in which the I is immediately present to itself in its act of absolute, free selfdetermination, or, put differently, the way the I is immediately present to itself in self-positing. This is ii2, the immediate self-consciousness that ostensibly grounds all consciousness. Further, one can reflectively or philosophically retrieve ii2, as Fichte argues especially in the later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, in what he claims to be a secondorder awareness of ii2. This is precisely what Fichte admonishes his students to perform when he encourages them to act and observe what they are doing when they act. This is ii3, and it marks the starting-point for thinking through the Wissenschaftslehre. In this way, ii3 provides justification for the existence of ii2, though it doesn’t entail ii2.

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One could agree that ii3 discloses an act of self-determination, but deny its connection to ii2. In fact, one could affirm ii3 and without contradiction deny the existence of ii2. As we shall see, if ii3 simply establishes the possibility of reflectively retrieving ii2 and thereby retrieving the original freely self-determining act that allegedly grounds consciousness, whether ii2 actually underwrites all consciousness would not be fully resolved. After all, absolute, free self-determination might be a useful, even necessary, philosophical fiction. Intellectual intuition also refers to our direct awareness of ourselves as free agential beings, as well as our awareness of the normative restraints of the moral law. Whenever we form intentions, make choices, or resist temptations, we are aware of the way in which we initiate those acts and of ourselves as acting freely when we so act. This immediate awareness of our freedom in acting is a form of intellectual intuition (ii1), and it provides Fichte’s strongest argument for the reality of ii2.4 Fichte’s implicit claim is that ii1 has the same content—immediate awareness of free self-determining activity—as ii2. He affirms the same connection between ii3 and ii2, but ii1 has the advantage of being an unconditional act of which one is tacitly or explicitly aware in everyday decisions and actions, as opposed to an awareness mediated by philosophical reflection. In contrast to ii3, ii1 is not a second-order awareness of the same content within ii2, but rather an ostensible iteration of that content.5 Fichte maintains that the I’s absolute, free act of self-determination grounds consciousness and that we have at least a tacit, immediate awareness of this act that initiates all action. These two claims—absolute, free self-determination and immediate awareness of every act of free self-determination—are interconnected. Unless one understands precisely what intellectual intuition discloses, one can be misled concerning the type of awareness intellectual intuition is (and vice versa). This is the case, I will argue, with Henrich and some of his followers. Consider first Fichte’s arguments for initially postulating, as an explanatory hypothesis, original, free self-determination (or self-positing) as what grounds consciousness. His primary argument, which he offers in two different texts (See FTP 113 [GA IV/2: 30] and IWL 110–12 [GA I/4: 274–6]),6 is a regress argument whose conclusion is that unless one postulates an immediate self-consciousness as the ground of consciousness, consciousness is inexplicable and impossible. The argument goes roughly as follows. Self-consciousness arises from an act of self-reflection whereby one transforms herself into an object and is thereby conscious of her own consciousness. But the consciousness of which she is conscious is an object of consciousness and not the subject that has consciousness of its consciousness. And iteration of self-reflection that yields consciousness of her consciousness of her consciousness confronts the same problem. A regress ensues, and genuine self-consciousness remains elusive. The regress argument Fichte constructs is a standard Agrippan argument. Either the regress is unavoidable and there is a formidable defeater for any explanation of consciousness, or one halts the regress arbitrarily and thereby implicitly admits the force of the defeater, or one shows that there is a form of self-consciousness that is non-reflective, a form of self-consciousness that doesn’t instantiate the subject–object structure of consciousness, a form of self-consciousness in which the self of which one is conscious is not an object of consciousness. Since Fichte takes the conclusion of the regress

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argument (that consciousness is inexplicable) to be false, one of the premises must be false. This is precisely what Fichte argues by providing a counter-example to the initial premise of the regress argument. Consciousness is indeed inexplicable, Fichte maintains, “so long, that is, as one continues to treat [all] consciousness [exclusively] either as a state of mind or else as an object; for in proceeding in this manner one always presupposes a subject, which, however, one can never discover” (FTP 113 [GA IV/2: 30]; additions mine). The error is the assumption that all self-consciousness is reflective and thus has the same intentional structure as consciousness of objects. In order to explain consciousness, one must postulate a non-intentional form of immediate self-consciousness, which grounds all consciousness yet without instantiating the subject–object structure of consciousness. The entire Wissenschaftslehre becomes the confirmation of that hypothesis. What then is the strongest conclusion one can derive from Fichte’s refutation of the regress argument he presents? Precisely that there must be an immediate, nonintentional form of self-consciousness if one is to explain consciousness. That is, one must infer the existence of ii2 for consciousness to be possible, and must affirm ii2 as a necessary explanatory hypothesis. This falls short, however, of Fichte’s stronger claim that ii2 is a real explanatory ground of consciousness. For this reason, I maintain that Fichte’s case against the dogmatist is not only to derive all consciousness from and thus explicate all consciousness on the basis of the I’s absolute act of free self-determination, something (explain consciousness) that the dogmatist cannot do, but also to provide a persuasive reason for affirming that absolute self-determination is real. This is the task of intellectual intuition, which discloses the reality of absolute, free self-determination. Intellectual intuition establishes that original, absolute self-positing is not simply a necessary philosophical fiction. Return to the conclusion of Fichte’s refutation of the regress argument: a nonintentional form of immediate self-consciousness is the ground of all consciousness. Intellectual intuition is therefore a form of self-consciousness. This claim is so commonplace and obvious to any careful reader of Fichte as to seem trivial. Intellectual intuition is constitutive to I-hood and discloses I-hood, that is, constitutive to the disclosure of what the I is. I have maintained, throughout this chapter, that the I is one’s act of absolute, free self-determination. A rigid and obdurate reading of Fichte’s refutation of the regress argument could construe I-hood differently, or at least with a different emphasis. If a non-intentional, immediate self-consciousness is the ground of all consciousness, that is, if immediate self-consciousness is I-hood, this might suggest that the I consists of a type of self-relation, specifically, for Henrich and his followers (see Henrich 1982), an epistemic self-relation. The I is its own act of self-awareness, and thereby constitutes itself as an epistemic self-relation. “The I possesses the absolute power of intuition, for it is precisely thereby that it becomes an I” (SE 36 [GA I/5: 31]). This ability is absolute and underived, again because it is integral to the very nature of the I. Intellectual intuition is not simply an intrinsic byproduct of I-hood, but rather is the way in which the I actually constitutes itself. To repeat: the I is its own act of selfawareness. Call this interpretation of I-hood the Epistemic View. A proponent of the Epistemic View might appeal to Fichte’s strategy in SE §2 to clarify the way in which the I intuits itself as an intuiting subject. Commonly, when

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one is conscious of herself, her awareness is introspective and thus directed toward something (standard mental state) that is already present within consciousness, especially if her relation to what she introspects or “sees” is immediate. In intellectual intuition, however, one doesn’t simply passively observe what is present to consciousness in the act of intuiting. For Fichte, what the I itself is comes to be for the I and does so by the I’s own act of intellectual intuition. This means that intellectual intuition is not introspective in the standard sense, especially if introspection is understood on a spectator model. Interpreted on a spectator model, self-awareness and the self-knowledge thereby disclosed would be of some, say, psychological state to which one has immediate access. But, clearly, the I cannot, in this way, appear to itself, much less come to be for itself, in intellectual intuition. Otherwise, the I would have to know or be aware of itself already in order to recognize itself in intellectual intuition. In this case, intellectual intuition would be a form of re-cognition, and the I would not come to be for the first time for itself, as a discovery, in intellectual intuition. This is the Henrich’s objection, which he thinks that Fichte cannot avoid.7 If the I is its own act of self-awareness and its relation to itself in intellectual intuition (or in selfpositing) is an epistemic self-relation, then Henrich’s objection is formidable. How can the I know that the I which supposedly comes to be for itself in intellectual intuition is the I? More to the point, how, if Henrich is correct, could the I come to be for itself at all? Put in Fichtean language, if Henrich is correct, then intellectual intuition would be a mere ideal activity rather than the unity of ideal and real activity supposedly constitutive of the I. Ideal activity simpliciter is directed toward something present, which suggests that the I’s awareness of itself (its self-knowledge) in intellectual intuition is introspective. The most that introspection could secure is a clarification of the concept of the I or the I’s absoluteness that introspection already presupposes. This cannot be correct, but Henrich’s objection maintains that this is the position to which Fichte’s view of self-positing (or, for our discussion, intellectual intuition) inevitably leads. Is the Henrich’s objection a genuine defeater for Fichte’s view? Consider that, for Fichte, the concept of the I supervenes on the I’s self-constituting act, as well as the self-awareness intrinsic to that act, from which the concept of the I arises. What one thereby grasps in the concept of the I is the I, in Fichte’s terminology, in a state of repose, and not the I as it constitutes itself. What appears in intellectual intuition, rather, is something new, that did not exist prior to intellectual intuition, namely, the I’s absolute, free self-determining act. As Fichte emphasizes, intellectual intuition is not a form of ordinary introspection. “In this case, therefore, the intellect is not a mere onlooker, but itself, as intellect, becomes—for itself … the absolutely real force of the concept. As an absolute force with consciousness, the I tears itself away—away from the I as a given absolute, lacking force and consciousness” (SE 37 [GA I/5: 32–3]). Assume, then, intellectual intuition is not a form of introspective awareness (which would be correct). Henrich might be able to sustain his objection without implicitly endorsing any distinctive conception of self-awareness. I think that Henrich’s objection fails—although I cannot fully defend that claim here—precisely because the I’s relation to itself in self-positing or intellectual intuition is not a strictly epistemic self-relation.8 That the I is its own act of self-awareness doesn’t entail that I-hood is a conventional epistemic self-relation. How so?

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Consider Andreas Wildt’s effort to avoid the Henrich’s objection that intellectual intuition cannot secure the assurance that immediate self-consciousness is genuine self-consciousness. Wildt argues that intellectual intuition is non-cognitive in the sense that it is neither cognitively grounded nor requires cognitive grounding. This, of course, is correct, precisely because self-positing is what grounds cognition and makes it possible. What intellectual intuition secures epistemically, Wildt contends, is the certainty of oneself (or one’s existence) as the subject of mental states to which intellectual intuition provides immediate access and from which Fichte proceeds to develop an account of self-consciousness based upon the empirical certainty of one’s own existence (Wildt 1982, 220–1).9 Aside from the absence of textual evidence, to say nothing of the strong whiff of Cartesianism, Wildt’s interpretation makes for an impoverished conception of I-hood, one that he shares with Henrich despite the differences in the respective epistemic readings of intellectual intuition. If I-hood and intellectual intuition that discloses I-hood are simply self-contained epistemic selfrelations, how can one derive absolute, free self-determination from that relation? If the I’s relation to itself is strictly epistemic, how can the I’s relation to itself be practical. The former doesn’t entail the latter; one could affirm the former and without contradiction deny the latter. In sum, if the intellectual intuition is an exclusively epistemic selfrelation with a distinct epistemic structure, then I-hood cannot be a practical selfrelation. This is the Tugendhat objection (see Tugendhat 1986, especially 39–76). Surely something has gone terribly wrong here. For Fichte, the I’s relation to itself is decidedly practical. Reason is not simply primarily practical but rather inherently practical. The Tugendhat objection is serious, but only if one presupposes the Epistemic View.10 Why hold, however, that the I is merely or even primarily its own act of self-awareness? Why should we accept the Epistemic View, if it delivers a severely deflated conception of I-hood? The claim that the I is simply its own act of self-awareness, or that immediate self-awareness primarily, to say nothing of exclusively, is what is constitutive of the I, is actually rather uninformative. What, in the Epistemic View, does the I discover about itself when it comes to be for itself? And how can what is primarily an epistemic self-relation provide the foundation from which to derive the structure and content of consciousness? The I is itself its own act of absolute, free self-determination, and immediate awareness of itself as its own act of free self-determination is constitutive to the I. The Epistemic View obscures this thicker conception of I-hood. Its deeper deficiency is a failure to recognize that the I’s act of free self-determination is logically prior to its immediate awareness. Although immediate awareness is constitutive to, and not merely a byproduct of, one’s free act of self-determination, there is a sense in which intellectual intuition as intuition supervenes on the act of free self-determination. Practical self-determination and immediate awareness of it in intellectual intuition are one and the same act. The Tugendhat objection thereby dissolves. The I’s act of absolute, free self-determination is the original act from which, according to the Wissenschaftslehre, the transcendental philosopher derives all consciousness, original in the sense that even basic action, including simply the representation of objects in one’s perceptual field, is self-initiated by an act of free self-determination. Even objects one is constrained to represent, such as the screen

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in front of me as I type, a representation Fichte describes as accompanied by a feeling of necessity, are freely initiated because that representation is a component in a freely designed practical aim—in this instance, the completion of this chapter. The representation serves the aim—this is what Fichte means by the primacy of practical reason. One also has an immediate awareness of oneself as this act of absolute, free self-determination. Although this immediate self-awareness is constitutive to every act of free self-determination (thus to every basic action), it doesn’t follow that the I is epistemically constituted as the Epistemic View suggests. Actually, the immediate self-awareness constitutive to every action is rather commonplace. There is nothing inherently baroque about the type of awareness disclosed in intellectual intuition. This is an important claim. If Fichte can establish that every basic action is constituted by a self-awareness sufficiently robust enough for one to self-ascribe that action, that is, for one to know that the action is hers (and hers as freely initiated by her act of free selfdetermination), Fichte can take a significant step toward making a persuasive case that intellectual intuition is real. Further, the Ubiquity Thesis would thereby be less extreme than it initially appears to be. Of course, one could concede that intellectual intuition is real in the sense described above, and deny the central claim of the Wissenschaftslehre that consciousness can be derived from an absolute, free self-determining act of the I. In that case, one would deny ii2, simply because one rejects that what ii2 discloses is a necessary ground of consciousness. At any rate, establishing that what intellectual intuition discloses is commonplace strengthens Fichte’s overall argument. The I’s absolute, free self-determination is, so Fichte could argue, both a necessary explanatory hypothesis and real. In what follows, I will outline how one might make that case for intellectual intuition by drawing on O’Brien 2007. My discussion will be unavoidably and regretfully formulaic. O’Brien contends that one can know immediately when performing an operationally basic action that she is doing it. As noted earlier, operationally basic actions are those that one can do “just like that,” that is, by simply electing to do them. A few examples are picking up a glass of wine, tapping in a one-foot putt, or reaching for a hammer.11 These actions per se are constituted by immediate awareness, though with an important condition. When an agent’s action is the choice she makes as a result of the assessment of things she can do just like that, and she grasps as things she can do just like that, the agent is entitled, in the absence of any contrary reason, to claim knowledge of what she has done. It is knowledge that does not call on the subject’s perceptual faculties to provide immediate grounds (even if perceptual faculties are called in in the execution of the action). (O’Brien 2007, 168)

The stress on an agent’s assessment and recognition of what she can do highlights the necessity of control for the immediate awareness of the action as one’s own. When an agent engages in an action in which she has a sense of control—control meaning that she acts from an assessment of possible actions at her disposal—and thereby understands the action as her own, she has at least a rudimentary form of selfawareness. The self-awareness is basic, immediate, and commonplace, yet sufficient

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enough to justify self-ascriptions of the action as one’s own—and, one might add, the self-knowledge that is an extension of that self-ascription. Again, the awareness of one’s actions is immediate—and thus non-reflective—and non-introspective. The selfawareness is constitutive to the performance of the action. Our actions are things we know, not by observing them, or by reflecting about them, or by accepting some presentation of them, but rather by actively engaging in them. Further, engaging in an action as something I control is engaging with the action as my action, and involves a primitive form of self-awareness. Because of this, the suggestion is, my conscious actions are apt immediately to warrant selfascriptions, without mediating acts or representations. (O’Brien 2007, 183–4)

There are two important conclusions here. First, immediate awareness is constitutive to one’s actions in that performing an action is inseparable from one’s immediate self-awareness that one is doing it. For O’Brien, this is a conceptual claim. What is impossible, O’Brien argues, is to envisage a creature who is self-blind (to borrow Shoemaker’s term) with respect to her actions. Again, immediate awareness is constitutive to the action. Second, the self-awareness intrinsic to the performance of an action is a primitive though commonplace type of everyday awareness. Construed in this way, there is nothing peculiar or baroque about intellectual intuition. A rudimentary and commonplace form of self-awareness can yield nonetheless significant self-knowledge. Consider ii3 and especially ii1. Both disclose a sense of one’s absolute, free self-determination and do so in the actual performance of these acts. Both are actions one executes in a strong libertarian sense from an awareness of alternative actions one could have performed. The dogmatist will object that the sense of one’s freedom, though certainly apparent, is an illusion, but he cannot deny that a sense of that freedom is built into the performance of the action itself. And the self-awareness seems obviously constitutive to the act, even though it is admittedly primitive and sometimes only tacit. The act of ii3, in which Fichte encourages his students to engage, involves the simple awareness that one acts when she acts. So does ii1. When one acts irrespective of some motivating desire or inclination, whether from prudential concerns or from respecting the authority of moral norms, she has selfawareness of herself as she acts, self-awareness, however insipient or tacit, sufficiently robust for her to self-ascribe the action. The controversial issue is not the selfawareness intrinsic to one’s acting, but the self-knowledge that self-awareness yields— namely, one’s free self-determination. An even deeper issue is whether immediate self-awareness is intrinsic to every action, that is, whether ii2, for which ii3 and ii1 supposedly provide justificatory evidence, is not only real but intrinsic to each and every action. The self-awareness that is intellectual intuition—that one is self-aware that she acts when she acts—seems almost indisputable. Again, the contested issue, as Fichte sees it, between the dogmatist and the transcendental philosopher, is the self-knowledge that intellectual intuition discloses. The dogmatist can concede that self-awareness is constitutive to acting—that is, concede intellectual intuition in this straightforward sense—and deny that intellectual intuition has anything to do with

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human freedom. Intellectual intuition is crucial to Fichte’s project because it reveals the sense of free self-determination one has in everyday life when she acts in certain ways. Fichte’s task is to extend that sense of free self-determination to all actions and then proceed to explain all consciousness on the basis of that act of absolute, free selfdetermination. To this end, he attempts to show that both what intellectual intuition discloses grounds all consciousness and that intellectual intuition is real.

Notes 1 By basic action, I mean what Lucy O’Brien calls an operationally basic action such as picking up a dinner fork, reaching for an apple, or signing one’s name. These actions are basic in the sense that one can perform them without doing anything else and can perform them simply by electing to do so. See O’Brien 2007, 167. An explication of Fichte’s theory of action is beyond the scope of this chapter. For the sake of simplicity, when I refer to the I’s free self-determining act that generates all actions, I mean a basic action in O’Brien’s sense. Further, I take the forming of an intention (Fichte’s Zweckbegriff) also to be a basic action, though I do not hold, nor does O’Brien or Fichte, that executing an intention, such as pressing a certain button on my Keurig, involves two actions. 2 Throughout this chapter, I take Fichte’s concept of the I to be the I’s act of absolute, free self-determination. I provide no independent argument for that claim, since it is a commonplace assumption in most of the secondary literature. 3 In what follows, I draw extensively on Daniel Breazeale’s classification of Fichte’s different uses of intellectual intuition (Breazeale 2013, 197–299). I also adopt Breazeale’s symbolism. 4 Breazeale makes this point in Breazeale 2013, 226–7. I advance a similar argument in a different context in Kinlaw 2014. 5 Intellectual intuition, as Breazeale 2013 argues, is central to Fichte’s philosophical method. It refers to the philosopher’s attentiveness to further acts that are necessary conditions for the I’s original self-positing retrieved in ii3, as she sees how further acts constitute the structure and content of experience and action. This is Breazeale’s ii4. 6 My reconstruction of the argument follows the version in FTP. For a detailed reconstruction, see Kinlaw 2014. 7 “If the Self does not already know itself, then it can never achieve knowledge of itself.” Continuing the objection: “…that the Self must be able to know itself, in every relation, as the Self. It seems that such cognition can in every case only be a recognition, so that the argument turns in a circle” (Henrich 1982, 35). 8 For a more a detailed discussion and critique of Henrich’s view, see Kinlaw 2019. 9 For a more extensive discussion and critique of Wildt’s view, see Kinlaw 2019. 10 Christian Klotz in Klotz 2002 raises a similar objection. Klotz contends that Fichte’s turn to practical self-consciousness in the Wissenschaftslehre Novo Methodo is motivated by his recognition that immediate self-consciousness is too weak to underwrite a self-relation to the self that acts freely. Of course, this assumes some form of the Epistemic View. 11 O’Brien restricts actions to bodily movements. Neither Fichte nor I make this restriction.

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Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes From Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henrich, Dieter. 1982. “Fichte’s Original Insight.” In Contemporary German Philosophy 1, translated by Darrel Christensen et al., 15–52. State College, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. Kinlaw, C. Jeffery. 2014. “Self-Determination and Immediate Self-Consciousness in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre.” In Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 176–89. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kinlaw, C. Jeffery. 2019. “Knowledge and Action: Self-Positing, I-hood, and the Centrality of the Striving Doctrine.” In The Palgrave Fichte Handbook, edited by Steven Hoeltzel, 163–87. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Klotz, Christian. 2002. Selbstbewuβtsein und praktische Identität. Frankfurt a. M: Klostermann. O’Brien, Lucy. 2007. Self-Knowing Agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1986. Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, translated by Paul Stern. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wildt, Andreas. 1982. Autonomie und Anerkennung: Hegels Moralitätskritik in Lichte seiner Fichte-Rezeption. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

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Fichte and Philosophy of Mind C. Jeffery Kinlaw

The topic of Fichte’s philosophy of mind is largely unchartered territory. This statement seems astounding (though it isn’t), given that the Wissenschaftslehre is an attempt to philosophically reconstruct the necessary way in which the structure and content of consciousness emerges from the self-determining acts of the I, and, furthermore, that its explication of consciousness, Fichte contends, provides a defeater for the reductive physicalism to which dogmatism is committed. To be sure, ascertaining the precise contours of Fichte’s philosophy of mind encounters difficulties. One the one hand, Fichte affirms the rich mental phenomenology traditionally associated with consciousness—standard mental states, the awareness of what it is like to have an experience, especially, as he emphasizes, the sense or experience of the power of free will, etc.—including the complex interplay of self-determining acts of the I and feelings from which the contents of consciousness are constructed. On the other hand, he rejects not only dualism—the I is not a mental substance—but also standard dualist explanations of consciousness. On the one hand, all representations and all human actions are initiated by absolute and irreducible, self-determining acts of the I. On the other hand, Fichte emphasizes that mind and body are one and the same reality, distinguished only by perspective (FTP 321/WLnm 160). In the case of human actions, Fichte holds that all intentional action is freely initiated—all willing, in that respect, is free—thus Fichte’s extreme libertarianism. He also defends a unified theory of action such that the distinction within any particular observable action between intention and bodily movement is merely the difference between a subjective or objective way of viewing a single unified act. In this short chapter, I do not propose to disentangle these seemingly conflicting claims, nor to explain how Fichte can hold all of them consistently. Rather, I focus on Fichte’s effort to deal with two core issues in contemporary philosophy of mind: (1) the problem of mental causation and (2) the nature of self-knowledge. (1) is motivated by the problem of explaining intentional action—how the self-determining I is efficacious within the world—that arises from Fichte’s commitment to two ostensibly conflicting claims: (a) only physical actions/events can produce alterations in other bodies, and (b) one’s actions are initiated by free, non-physical self-determination. Herein lies the core problem Fichte must resolve in his dispute with dogmatism: how can nature be

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a closed physical system, which adheres to a physical causation closure principle, and also be an environment within which human intentions become observable actions, both on the assumptions that physicalism is false and that mental phenomena are not causes?1 In short, how is “mental” causation possible?2 Fichte’s solution is a unified theory of human action with two irreducible components, intention and bodily movement, which are, nonetheless, flip sides of the same coin. I then turn to (2) and argue that the type of self-knowledge that underwrites Fichte’s conception of freedom and, by extension, his ethics and proposal for moral self-development3 is a non-introspective form of self-awareness. Self-knowledge, for Fichte, specifically knowledge of our freedom and the belief that we are free beings, is a non-epistemic form of self-relation. To this end, I place Fichte in conversation with Hampshire (1975) and Moran (2001), and argue that, for Fichte, our basic self-relation is to ourselves as free, rational agents.4 This ties together the two components of this chapter. In my judgment, though I cannot defend it here, a perspicuous account of Fichte’s philosophy of mind should begin with an understanding of ourselves as free and efficacious rational agents within the natural world and human community. In sum, an explication of how we are and can be free, efficacious rational agents is the linchpin. Humans are embodied rational agents, and this means, Fichte concedes, that all action aims at the fulfillment of a natural drive. What distinguishes us from organisms is that our pursuit of an object of desire is, without exception, freely initiated. This raises directly the question posed above: how can intentions become efficacious actions given the truth of the physical closure principle? Presumably, by some form of mental causation? If so, then how can this be given that the closure principle would seem to block mental causation? Intentions can be efficacious, but intentions are not causes. Both intentions (Zweckbegriffen) and bodily movements are initiated by the I’s free, self-determining act, and are simply philosophically reconstructed components of a single, unified action. Even if we restrict what Fichte means by “mental” to the contents of inner sense, he still must explain how an act of free self-determination, determined specifically as a concrete intention, produces an observable action. Fichte employs a biological term, Trieb, as a core concept in his account of our basic motivational system. Trieb is the original, abstract purposiveness or protointentionality intrinsic to all living things. The manner in which an organism reacts to its environment cannot be properly understood solely by appealing to mechanical causation. Rather, an organism can react to its environment in terms of its own nature, and thereby display its nature, and in so doing exhibit purposiveness, namely, sustaining its own life. Trieb is thus an organism’s propensity to act in certain ways given particular environmental conditions and stimuli, as well as in terms of its own nature.5 Just as an organism is an organic whole, nature itself, for Fichte, is an organic whole of reciprocal interaction among organisms. Two significant points are in order. First, although Fichte generally treats dogmatism/physicalism as committed strictly to mechanistic causation, there is no reason why the physicalist cannot embrace an organic view of nature. The physicalist could even concede Fichte’s insistence that Trieb does not supervene on the laws of Newtonian physics—mechanism cannot produce Trieb—and retain her central claim with Fichte’s approval, namely, that

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nature is a closed system, a synthetic whole of mechanism and natural drive. All nature, including all natural events, would be explicable strictly in terms of scientific laws, even if one denied supervenience among different levels of physical laws. If humans were simply complex organisms, whose experience resulted from the causal influence of things-in-themselves, and whose actions were the necessary expressions of their natural desires and inclinations (Naturtrieb), human freedom, so Fichte would argue, would be impossible. Second, organisms exhibit crude self-determination and thereby a rudimentary form of self-sufficiency. Human agency, however, is not merely an advanced form of self-determination. In fact, human agency, which always is initiated by free self-determination, does not supervene on organic processes! Free self-determination is conditioned by mechanistic and organic processes—these are constraints on the I’s activity—but human self-determination is initiated absolutely and independent of them. Our most basic freedom consists in our capacity to reflect upon our natural drives. This reflective power is not a product of nature, nor is it a component of our natural drive, nor does it supervene on our natural motivational system. Reflection is an act of free self-determination whereby we create a distance between ourselves and our motivational system. Not only can we step back from and assess our natural motivations, those natural motivations never determine our actions. Fichte’s position is radical: there is a sharp boundary between necessity and freedom, so sharp that every desire is resistible. Even when we act on our strongest desire, we freely succumb to the lure of the desire. Whether the strongest desire is acted upon from prudence, duty, or simply pleasure, the strength of the desire simply makes it more likely that we will choose to act upon it. The motivational force of the desire is simply an expression of a natural propensity. The desire itself is a more specific determination of our overall natural drive or natural motivational system, and drives are not causally efficacious. In any given instance, Fichte insists, we can act contrary to what we are inclined to do by our natural motivational system. It is indeed difficult to underestimate the extreme nature of Fichte’s libertarianism: all willing is free! Free self-determination without any external determining grounds initiates all human action. The direction of one’s self-determination—that, for instance, she represents a particular object in a certain way—may be necessitated by the restraints on her act (she can’t avoid seeing what she sees), but the initiation of her self-determination is free and undetermined. In sum, nature has no causal efficacy in human action. Under the conditions of I-hood, nature is merely Trieb. This commits Fichte, I contend, to a form of agent-causation.6 All human action aims at the fulfillment of some natural desire as the expression of an overall natural drive.7 In Fichtean language, all willing is empirical; that is, we humans act as animal organisms, and our natural motivational system conditions the range of our actions. We freely initiate those actions, however, and the source of that initial “umph” is our absolute, free self-determination and thus independent of our natural drive—that is, sharply independent of the laws of nature. What, then, brings about our actions? We do! And we do so as rational animals who have a unique power of free self-determination. It is noteworthy that Fichte doesn’t appeal to Cartesian egos or trans-empirical power “centers” to explain libertarian free will/action. That sort of appeal would be a move to

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metaphysics, something, it is important to note, Fichte generally eschews. Fichte is a dualist in the sense that he affirms the full reality of mental phenomena, but the causal source of human action is something more basic than mental states and, furthermore, conditions mental states. A decision to act is a component of a broader, unified action that involves bodily movement—it is the action viewed subjectively just as the bodily movement is the action viewed objectively or observationally. An agent-causal theorist might claim that humans, simply as human organisms, when acting freely, are the cause of their actions independent of antecedent, determining causes. That is, she might not appeal to any extra-natural “mind” or power center as a basis for agent-causation. Fichte, however, grounds all action in the extra-natural, free, self-determining act of the I. One might argue that free self-determination is an element within an expanded naturalism, but that act transcends the laws of physics nonetheless. And that raises the question of the way in which an act of free self-determination, determined more specifically as a decision to realize a concrete intention, becomes an observable action—again, given the physical closure principle. How can an act of free self-determination, which is not itself a bodily movement, produce bodily movement in a completed action? Fichte’s solution, I argue, is roughly Spinozist: there is a fundamental unity between willing (for instance) and bodily movement. Both are two different ways—neither of which has ontological priority, that is, once willing is determined mentally as intending and deciding—of viewing the same, unified phenomenon. Note carefully, though, that this Spinozist solution maintains a unity between willing as a mental phenomenon and bodily movement. This is the unity Fichte affirms specifically at FTP 321/WLnm 160: “‘My body and I’—‘my mind and I’: these expressions mean the same thing. Insofar as I intuit myself, I am my body. Insofar as I think of myself, I am my mind. But neither of these can exist without the other, and this constitutes the union of the mind and the body.” Both mental phenomena and bodily movement that constitute a concrete action are more specific determinations of the I’s act of self-determination, and are distinguished simply by the way in which one chooses to view the action. As one would expect, the union of mental and physical has its foundation in the I’s more basic self-determining act. An action emerges from self-determination to observable bodily movement in the following way. An initial act of free self-determination projects a possible intention (Fichte’s Zweckbegriff)8 from among other possible actions, which the agent decides to fulfill. She thereby wills to bring about a particular action, and does so unless something prevents her or she has second thoughts. Willing, however, is a complex concept and requires unpacking. First, it is misleading to say that the will moves the body, since willing and bodily movement are simply different perspectives on a single, unified action. On the other hand, willing, unless impeded, is indeed efficacious, but its efficaciousness has its source in pure self-determination. Efficacious willing requires an articulated body, namely, a body whose capacity for movement an agent can manipulate to produce the observable action. Abstracted from bodily movement, willing is the projection of what the agent is to do (Zweckbegriff), the consideration of her motive(s) for acting, and the decision to act. To pose our central question again, how does the I’s initial self-determination produce bodily movement given the closure principle?

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Fichte’s solution is straightforward and prima facie unsurprising. Physical force, power, or energy (Kraft) mediates absolute self-determination and bodily movement. Force is thus an explanatory concept: to explain action, an agent must ascribe to herself an articulated body and the energy to move her body as her concrete self-determination demands. Thus stated, however, this leaves the gap between pure self-determination and the closure principle intact. How, then, to reconcile them? Kraft, as it happens, is a broader concept, and actually mediates between intelligible and observable elements of an action. This concept [of force] is neither purely sensible nor purely intelligible, but partially both. The content (i.e., the specific determination of the will) is intelligible; the form in which this determination of my will occurs (i.e., time) is sensible. The concept of force is {the mediating concept}, the bridge between the intelligible and sensible world, and it is by means of this concept that the I goes outside of itself and makes the transition to the sensible world. (FTP 271/WLnm 131)

Fichte’s appeal to force as an intermediate concept between willing and bodily movement is an unsurprising Kantian move. Force is the third element, which connects one’s willing to do X and doing X and provides the point of union between willing and bodily movement; in sum, it is what enables one to say that willing and bodily movement refer, in different ways, to a single, unified action, as well as how willing is efficacious. But if this is so, Fichte’s conception of mental causation is highly nuanced, if, that is, mental causation is the appropriate term to use here. Willing is indeed generally efficacious, though not construed strictly as a “mental state” but rather as pure, self-determination circumscribed as the projection of a possible action and the decision to execute it—that is, free, self-determination circumscribed or concretely expressed as what we could call a mental state. Accordingly, there is no mental causation in Fichte’s theory of action, if, by mental causation, one means the power of a mental state to bring about alterations in bodies. To say otherwise would be to embrace a dualist explanation of human action, and thereby, undermine the union between mental and physical that Fichte emphasizes. Consider the following passage (FTP 271/WLnm 131): “Every view of the world begins with a view of myself as an object. The error created by all previous philosophers is that they have viewed this knowledge [of myself, that is, of my own force] as something supersensible, despite the fact that all our consciousness begins with a consciousness of what is actual.” What should we make of this passage, noting its close proximity to the passage cited in the previous paragraph? Fichte holds that we understand ourselves in the most basic sense as efficacious agents within the world. In that respect, we are human organisms who have the power of free self-determination as well as the rational capacity to understand how our power of free self-determination answers to rational, normative constraints. With this in mind, we should understand Fichte’s account of “mental” causation as an attempt to show how our power of free self-determination, which is the core of I-hood, is circumscribed as intentional actions within the world. It is free self-determination that is causally efficacious, and free self-determination is a power exercised by human organisms who have the rational capacity to assess possible

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actions and the motives for those actions, as well as to submit their reflective and decision-making powers to the authority of rational norms. Kraft is thus the force of a free, rational, and efficacious organism, whose capacity for free self-determination is fundamentally unique and doesn’t supervene on any physical properties or structures. What we call “mental” causation is simply our power of free self-determination abstracted from the concrete components of action. As Fichte writes: “Pure activity is absolute self-determination, but as soon as one gives a determinate direction to this act of self-determination, one’s acting is then sensible” (FTP 273/WLnm 132). Mental causation is thus the I’s own efficacious act, a self-determining act performed by a free and rational organism. Put differently, human organisms have the power of agentcausation. Fichte’s solution to the problem of mental causation and his explanation is Spinozist without the metaphysics. Human organisms are rational animals with the capacity to assess possible actions, form intentions, and make decisions about what they do. Their relation to their environment is determined neither by the causal influence of other bodies nor the necessity of their own natural drive. Human action is generated by free self-determination, which is concretely circumscribed as mental and physical components, which are, as Fichte stresses, different sides of the same coin. Force is the unifying explanatory concept, but force is simply free self-determination concretely manifested in the sensible world. And, free self-determination—I-hood itself—is at most metaphysically austere. For Fichte, self-knowledge is constitutive of I-hood itself. The Wissenschaftslehre derives all consciousness from the free, self-determining act of the I, an act of which, Fichte contends, we have at least tacit awareness. The justification for the reality of this most basic intellectual intuition (ii2) is our immediate awareness of our free selfdetermination (ii1)9 whenever we choose to do this or that. The type of self-knowledge in question here concerns our basic self-relation as free rational agents, which, we should note, discloses the core of our I-hood. What ii1 discloses is self-awareness of our own freedom. This is called self-awareness because immediate awareness of our own freedom and ourselves as free is intrinsic to acting freely. My concern here is with Fichte’s conception of one’s relation to herself as a free, rational being and the type of self-knowledge this self-relation yields. This raises the question of first-person access and first-person priority or authority. What, for Fichte, gives one’s self-knowledge priority or authority that is asymmetrical with any third-person knowledge of her? How does one’s first-person access inform her knowledge of her beliefs, specifically, in Fichte’s case, belief in her freedom? I argue that Fichte’s view of self-knowledge, at least self-knowledge of our freedom or I-hood, is non-introspective, and that the structure of self-knowledge is non-epistemic. The most that I can offer here is the rough outline of an argument: how one should approach a systematic account of Fichtean selfknowledge. At any rate, I show that one can place Fichte in fruitful conversation with contemporary theories of self-knowledge. Many philosophers have taken first-person authority to arise from one’s immediate, introspective access to her own mental states. Construed in this way, self-knowledge is a form of inner perception, which, because of its immediacy, is sometimes associated with infallibility and introspective certainty. Accordingly, self-knowledge is an

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epistemic self-relation. Call this the Spectator View (SV). In recent decades, SV has received seriously trenchant criticism10 in ways Fichte surely would endorse. First, if ii1 is the primary evidence for the reality of I-hood (ii2), then selfknowledge is fundamentally a practical rather than epistemic self-relation. ii1 purportedly discloses the same content as ii2: free self-determination and awareness of the same. The primary content is free self-determination of which we have direct awareness whenever we exercise freedom (ii1). Self-awareness is a non-controversial byproduct of acting; for instance, when I avow a belief p, I am immediately aware of doing so. It is simply false that self-awareness requires an epistemic self-relation, unless, that is, one confuses ii2 and/or ii1 with one’s philosophical retrieval (ii3) of ii2 when one acts and observes what she is doing when she does so. ii3 and ii2 allegedly have the same content, but ii3 is not an absolute act—it is an elective act of philosophical reflection—and doesn’t underlie, much less underwrite, all consciousness. Even if ii3 is an epistemic self-relation, it doesn’t follow that it is a form of SV, and it certainly doesn’t follow that ii2 and ii1 involve primarily epistemic self-relations. More importantly, a strict epistemic self-relation, and especially SV, elides the genuine nature of first-person authority, which makes for the asymmetry between firstand third-person access to one’s mental life. If my self-knowledge is introspective, as SV maintains, then first-person access loses its privilege if someone else has telepathic powers. Although telepathy doesn’t exist, first-person privilege and authority doesn’t consist primarily in first-person, epistemic immediacy, but rather in the practical relation one has to herself and her beliefs. To say that one is conscious of her belief that she is a free, self-determining, rational being—following Moran’s focus on beliefs—informs and qualifies her belief. One’s consciousness of her belief has an adverbial quality (Moran 2001, 31–4), precisely because to believe that one is a free, self-determining being is to engage in and cultivate one’s freedom. As Moran argues, for one to know that she has a belief, and for that knowledge to be privileged, is for her to avow the belief. This is what it means to understand one’s belief as her own activity. For Fichte, ii1 aims at self-transformation, and initiates one into a higher moral standpoint or self-relation within which one takes herself to stand under the normative authority of the moral law. As I argued in the “Intellectual Intuition” chapter, intellectual intuition doesn’t simply uncover one’s free self-determination in the way she, or anyone with the telepathic capability, might introspectively locate and identify her mental states. Rather, something new arises, namely, her own self-determining freedom. For one to be a free, self-determining, rational being—and to know that she is so—is for her to act freely, that is, to cultivate her freedom. Self-knowledge of this belief is intrinsic to avowing—again, cultivating—the belief in her freedom. If one’s freedom and belief that she is free were disclosed by inner inspection, one might thereby know that she is free and that she believes as much without the belief having any impact upon how she conducts her life. Her self-knowledge would be knowledge of the simple fact that she is free or believes the same. As Moran argues, one could have introspective self-knowledge and be alienated from the content of that knowledge (Moran 2001, 84–6). One could have the belief that she is a free, selfdetermining, rational agent and be alienated psychologically from that belief. Surely, this is wrong, and thus exposes a fatal defeater for SV—so I contend Fichte would

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argue. To believe that p, Hampshire argues, is not a fact about oneself she uncovers introspectively, but rather an action, a decision (Hampshire 1975, 75–6). “A belief, like an intention, must be active in this sense” (ibid., 86); it must answer to normative, epistemic assessment. I suggest that Fichte holds a similar view about our most important belief: that we are free, rational beings. To believe that one is free is to act as a free, self-determining, rational agent under the normative constraints of rational freedom. It is here, I contend, that a comprehensive account of Fichtean self-knowledge should begin.

Notes 1 To say that mental phenomena are not causes means that the I’s free, selfdetermining acts are not mental events. Actually, they are more basic than mental states, since the realm of the mental, for Fichte, is what Kant called inner sense. All mental states are conditioned by the I’s free acts of self-determination. 2 Here I use the term “mental causation” broadly to refer to the I’s free, selfdetermining acts, which are capable of initiating purely mental phenomena (say, one’s thought of where she might go on holiday) and actions that are bodily movements. 3 Here I have in mind the proposal defended in AGN [GA I/10]. 4 Space limitations require that I only sketch a rough outline of the way in which one should develop a comprehensive account of Fichte’s view of self-knowledge. 5 I take no position here on whether Fichte affirmed actual purposiveness in nature, or simply adopted purposiveness solely as the product of reflective judgment and thus merely as an explanatory hypothesis. 6 Space limitations preclude a proper explication and defense of this claim. I think, however, that it is quite plausible and non-controversial. 7 The same holds for moral action: one acts from duty when duty requires that one fulfill a particular natural desire in a specific instance, one acts on that desire, and does so simply because it is dutiful. In Fichtean language, one acts freely simply for the sake of freedom. 8 Intention is what an agent attempts to bring about by the action. One’s intention and one’s action can diverge, which is what occurs in disputes over accountability. There is disagreement about the actual intention of an action, and thus plural candidates. For simplicity, I am assuming that intention and action coincide. 9 For an account of the diverse ways in which Fichte deploys intellectual intuition, see my “Intellectual Intuition” chapter in this volume. There I distinguish between basic intellectual intuition (ii2), which underwrites all consciousness and is the foundation of the Wissenschaftslehre, ii3, which is the philosophical act of retrieval of ii2 to which Fichte motivates students/readers, and ii1. The distinctions follow Breazeale (2013, 197–229). 10 See Shoemaker 1996 and Moran 2001, and indirectly Hampshire 1975. For a comprehensive account of contemporary theories of self-knowledge, see Gertler 2011. One could argue that SV is a target of Wittgenstein’s private language argument, particular the tendency to accommodate self-awareness to the way in which we are aware of objects. See Horwich 2012.

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Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes From Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gertler, Brie. 2011. Self-Knowledge. London: Routledge. Hampshire, Stuart. 1975. Freedom of the Individual. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Horwich, Paul. 2012. Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moran, Richard. 2001. Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shoemaker, Sydney. 1996. The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Freedom Kienhow Goh

Arguably, the name of Johann Gottlieb Fichte evokes the idea of freedom more than any other philosopher’s in the history of modern philosophy. But this is more likely to be due to the activism inspired by his persona than to any insight tied to his theory of the will. To date, there has been little serious effort to engage with Fichte’s theory by contemporary philosophers of free will.1 Reasons for the lack of interest are numerous. Above all, the theory is widely perceived to be burdened by such an exceedingly complex idealist metaphysics that it is hard to salvage. Some are also of the opinion that whatever is of importance in the theory can already be found in Kant. After all, it is Kant’s theory of freedom (particularly as it is expounded in the Critique of Practical Reason) that prompted Fichte to dramatically reject the determinist system of his youth in favor of critical idealism. By this line of thinking, Fichte’s historical importance for the development of Kant’s theory of freedom lies not so much in his offer of any substantive revision of the theory as in his extrapolation of it to such specialized areas as philosophical systematicity and methodology, social and political thought, and the phenomenology of agency. Fichte himself seems to hold a contrary view. He famously claims of the Wissenschaftslehre that it is the first system to break free “from the fetters of things in themselves, which is to say, from those external influences with which all previous systems – including the Kantian – have more or less fettered a human being” (EPW 385 [GA III/2: 300]). In what follows, I suggest a way of making sense of these claims by showing how Fichte’s reform of Kantian philosophy during his Jena period is motivated by the need to address one of the thorniest difficulties posed by freedom to philosophy, or any form of theorizing for that matter. This is the question of how can freedom’s apparent exceptionalism from law be reconciled with universal lawfulness? Strangely, universal lawfulness is not only the bedrock upon which one might hope to build a philosophy or a science, but a condition of freedom itself. As is increasingly recognized in contemporary free will debates, freedom is no more compatible with indeterminism than with determinism. But has not the problem been adequately resolved by Kant’s discovery of a class of laws that are distinct from those that determine nature (namely, moral laws)? According to Kant, the so-called exceptionalism of freedom from law is nothing more than the independence of freedom from natural laws. Freedom is not intrinsically lawless, but

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only appears so relative to nature. By itself, it is determined by the pure-rational law of self-determination, viz., the moral law. Unquestionably, there is much in Kant’s solution to the difficulty that appeals to Fichte.2 However, Fichte could not accept it on account of two contemporary developments. First, the celebrated Kantian philosopher Carl C. E. Schmid argues from Kantian principles for a Kantian version of fatalism, according to which our choices and actions are predetermined by moral laws and forces no more within our control than natural laws and forces (see Schmid 1790, 187–202). Second, Schmid’s “intelligible fatalism” incurred the response of the foremost proponent of Kantian philosophy of the time, Karl L. Reinhold, who ventured to offer a Kantian version of indifferentism (see Reinhold 1792, 262–308). Consequently, the question is raised anew as to how the determination of freedom by the moral law is supposed to make its exceptionalism any more intelligible than its determination by natural laws. Fichte began to engage with the Schmid/Reinhold debate in the important review of Leonhard Creuzer’s Skeptical Observations concerning Freedom of the Will with Reference to the Most Recent Theories he wrote for the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung in the fall of 1793 at the eve of the conception of the Wissenschaftslehre (see Martin 2016, 24–30). From his criticism of Reinhold in the review, it is clear that Fichte is not one to easily concede an indeterminism of the sort supported by indifferentists like Molina and Descartes. As a previous enthusiast of (if not adherent to) the strict determinism of Alexander von Joch (Karl F. Hommel), he saw clearly that a law with exceptions is no law to begin with. He is under no delusion that cracks or gaps can be admitted into a domain without compromising the reign of laws in it (Wildfeuer 1999, 192–219). Before Reinhold, a version of indifferentism had been vigorously advanced by the Pietist philosopher Christian A. Crusius in the 1750s. It is telling that Fichte was, for all his earlier attempts to seek the tutelage of Leipziger Crusian theologian Christian F. Pezold, unmoved to reject Joch’s determinism in favor of Crusius’ indeterminism (Wildfeuer 1999, 262–6).

Overview of the Mature Jena System Although Fichte does eventually endorse Reinhold’s indeterminism (see SE 151 [GA I/5: 148–9]), he does not do so without finding a way of grounding it in a thoroughly determined [durchgängig bestimmte] system of reason. He concedes more to Schmid than one might expect (see SE 182–3 [GA I/5: 177]). Key to coming to grips with his peculiar position is his now prominent tenet that philosophical inquiry properly proceeds from a point of view that is distinct from that from which ordinary human affairs are conducted. My self that appears from the empirical viewpoint as an empirically conditioned person that exists as one among a plurality of persons and objects is, from the transcendental viewpoint, the uniquely existing, empirically unconditioned pure I. Fichte can be said to be an indeterminist only from the empirical viewpoint. From the transcendental viewpoint, there is no determinability and indeterminacy in our world because whatever we can (and will) find in “ongoing experience” is pre-established for

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us for all eternity in the sense of being determined a priori as part of a “system of entire experience” (EPW 352 [GA I/4: 309–10], translation modified). Nothing is excepted from laws from this point of view because reason leaves nothing undetermined. All that is left for us to do is to reflect on and analyze what already is—as opposed to determining and synthesizing what is to be. Still, this does not rule out the determinability and indeterminacy of our future choices and actions from the empirical viewpoint. To see why, we need to examine Fichte’s account (from the transcendental viewpoint) of how the empirical viewpoint of our world (together with our future choices and actions in it) arises from our reflection on, and analysis of, the system of reason. By this account, the I is not only a real, objective striving, but also an ideal, subjective reflecting (see SK 258–9 [GA I/2: 423–4]; IWL 20–1 [GA I/4: 196]; SE 45–6 [GA I/5: 55–6]). The I qua an ideal, subjective reflecting is opposed to the I qua a real, objective striving: as the former, it is absolutely free and self-determining (determinable and undetermined); as the latter, it is absolutely constrained and limited (thoroughly determined). The I as an ideal, subjective reflecting “tears itself loose” from itself as a real, objective striving. Nonetheless, the I as the former is absolutely identical with itself as the latter; it does not, upon tearing itself loose from itself, merely “observe itself ” but “brings itself under its own control” (SE 127 [GA I/5: 128]). For this reason, it appears to itself in its empirical unfoldment as determining itself, “an absolutely free transition from indeterminacy to determinacy” (SE 149 [GA I/5: 147]). Therefore, what appears from the empirical viewpoint as a self-determined transition from indeterminacy to determinacy is from the transcendental viewpoint nothing but the coming-tobe-reflected-upon of thoroughly determined constraints and limitations; and what appears from the former point of view as determinable and undetermined is from the latter point of view nothing but limitations of the reflection. Throughout the Jena corpus, Fichte consistently maintains a distinction between what he termed “freedom in itself ” and its “empirical” expression. The former is “the ultimate explanatory basis for all consciousness,” and hence beyond the reach of consciousness. Notwithstanding, an account of it is furnished from the transcendental viewpoint in terms of the I’s twofold activities. The latter is the freedom of which we can properly be said to be conscious, but amounts strictly to nothing but our “lack of any consciousness of a cause” in our choices and actions. On its basis, a greater variety of freedom’s empirical expressions is admitted (EPW 155 [GA I/3: 36]3).

Freedom in Itself One of the most baffling features of Fichte’s account of freedom in itself is no doubt the claim that whatever we can (and will) do in time is pre-established for us for all eternity. If we take the claim literally, contingent facts like Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon and Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo are all in some sense contained a priori in reason: “no fact [Factum] of this sort can be determined merely as a fact as such; it can be completely determined only if it is determined as a particular fact, one which always is and must be determined by another fact of the same type” (EPW 245 [GA I/3: 144]4).

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Although no complete account of its philosophical motivations and consequences can be provided here, something can be said about why determinism at the transcendental level does not exclude freedom. First of all, we need a finer account of how contingent facts like Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon and Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo are contained in the system of reason. In the first instance, “our world” is delivered not as it is empirically but as it ought to be originally. It is determined “both with respect to what ought to be and what is simply posited as existing in consequence of this ought” (SE 60 [GA I/5: 69]). As such, it is comparable in significance to Kant’s idea of the “supersensible substrate of nature” (CJ 63 [Ak 5:176]). For Kant, any hope we might have of the systemic aptness of nature for realizing moral ends turns on the idea. Besides, the idea of an intelligible, moral world (CPR 678–80 [Ak A807/B835-A811/B839]) discussed in the Canon of Pure Reason can (though it need not) be interpreted as the supersensible substrate. This is significant because the idea of an intelligible, moral world is elaborated in terms of the transcendental ideal (see CPR 679–80, 682–3 [Ak A810/B838-A811/B839, A815/B843-A816/B844]), i.e., the idea of a sum total of all possible things reached by affirming or denying each possible predicate of each thing. This pure idea of reason is the ground for the thoroughgoing determination (durchgängige Bestimmung) of each thing considered “as deriving its own possibility from the share it has in that whole of possibility” (CPR 554 [Ak A572/B600]). Such a ground is an unlimited, allencompassing “highest reality” that is prior to, and a condition of, all possible things, with each possible thing being a “limitation” of it (see CPR 555–7 [Ak A575/B603-A579/ B607]). Interpreted as the transcendental ideal, the idea of the supersensible substrate of nature could potentially serve as an a priori system of all possible things. But it does not do so without an added complication: as a moral ideal, it delivers the sum total of all possible things not as they are, but as they ought to be. In the Wissenschaftslehre, the idea of the supersensible substrate (interpreted as the transcendental ideal) is thought of in the subjective terms of possible experience rather than the objective terms of possible things. These are based first and foremost on a system of drives and feelings rather than one of representations. Fichte sometimes stresses the systematicity of the system by referring to it as one “original limitation,” “original drive,” and “original feeling.” These are not products of the I’s freedom, but constitute its very limits. Nevertheless, they cannot be said to limit its freedom because the I is thereby limited “in accordance with an immanent law of its own being, through a natural law of its own (finite) nature” (SE 97 [GA I/5: 101]). In other words, they are integral to its “original constitution” (see SE 97–8 [GA I/5: 102]). As noted, the I is not only a real, objective striving, but also an ideal, subjective reflecting. This implies two distinct levels of limitation: I am limited only in the intelligible world, and my reflection on myself is indeed limited – for me – through this limitation of my original drive; and conversely, my original drive is limited through my reflection on myself – also for me. Here there can be no talk at all of any other sort of limitation, other than a limitation of myself for myself. (SE : 127 [GA I/5: 127], translation modified)

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I am limited not only with regard to its original constitution, but also with regard to the finite discursivity of intelligence. I am originally the absolute identity of an ideal, subjective reflecting and a real, objective striving I. But I am, on account of the finite discursivity of intelligence, unable to comprehend myself as such. Instead, I am caught in a circle in my effort to do so: on the one side, my reflection is limited (for me) through the limitation of my original drive; on the other, my original drive is limited (for me) through the limitation of my reflection. At the first level of limitation, my entire system of possible (inner and outer) experience is delivered originally through the determination of my original constitution. At the second level, I am further limited by means of a “reflection” on my part. In doing so, I determine which parts of my original constitution I am to become, and thereby which parts of my original system of possible (inner or outer) experience are to become parts of my actual (inner or outer) experience. Corresponding to the two levels of limitation are two orders of possibilities: the first-order possibility of my realizing a moral end at each temporal instant that comes with my original constitution and the second-order possibilities of my failing to realize the moral end of each temporal point that come with my reflection upon my original constitution. The first level of limitation yields a perfect but possible finite rational being, while the second yields an actual but less-than-perfect finite rational being. From the transcendental viewpoint, we have a determinism that is perfectly compatible with my freedom. Since nothing exists outside me, there is no external influence to speak of. In this sense, I am absolutely free. Moreover, what appears from the empirical viewpoint as cracks or gaps in my world are from this point of view nothing but limitations of my reflection upon my original constitution (my analysis of my system of possible experience). As far as the constitution (the system) goes, there is no determinability and indeterminacy. But I am not only thoroughly determined, but also determinable and undetermined. For this reason, reflection of my original constitution (analysis of my system of possible experience) is possible.

Empirical Expressions At the empirical level, Fichte thinks of freedom as taking at least these five forms: (1)  freedom of self-cultivation, (2) freedom of voluntary choice, (3) freedom of thinking, (4) external freedom, and (5) moral freedom. 1. In his account of the “history of an empirical rational being” in Section 16 of the System of Ethics, Fichte identifies a class of “absolutely primary” acts of free reflection that underpins the free voluntary choice (freie Willkür) of a person and the characteristic way in which he exercises it (viz., his “character-type”). A natural human being first becomes cultivated (gebildet) (viz., reason first becomes cultivated in him) through these acts. Since a human being has free voluntary choice only inasmuch as reason is cultivated in him, a natural human being first acquires free voluntary choice through these acts. Through a first act

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of this kind, he first acquires the power to act with consciousness without the power to refrain from satisfying the immediate demand of his natural drive—i.e., “formal freedom.” Through a second act of the same kind, he further acquires the power to refrain from satisfying the immediate demand of the natural drive, and the power to choose (wahlen) from multiple ways of satisfying it—i.e., “material freedom.”5 As preconditions of the power, the acts are not exercises of the power. When I reflect, I do so without “[having] a concept of what I am supposed to do before I actually do it” (SE 172 [GA I/5: 168]). In other words, they do not involve any conscious choice. 2. Generally speaking, Fichte’s conception of free voluntary choice differs from previous indifferentists’ in being more intellectualist or less voluntarist. First, Fichte affirms free voluntary choice not as a dogmatic-metaphysical act, but as the empirical expression of a transcendental act, namely, a reflection upon the original drive. Second, he assigns intelligence—construed uniquely as a selfintuiting power—a more substantive role than previous indifferentists do. Owing to the power, my self-determination is distinguished from the self-determination of a mere thing, such as a compressed steel spring. Unlike the steel spring, my selfdetermination involves a “thoughtful self-awareness and reflection” (SE 146 [GA I/5: 144]) upon its ground. This “intelligible ground in a concept” (SE 170 [GA I/5: 166]) is aptly described by Kant as a maxim, since I have no higher rule of acting at my disposal than my maxim. Given that I have the maxim I have for my maxim, I “could simply not have acted differently from how [I] did act” (SE 172 [GA I/5: 168]). Third, Fichte is clear that I am ultimately the motive (Beweggrund) of my acting. The motive is situated in (my feeling of) a drive that I make a certain rule of acting my maxim, rather than (my experience of) objects outside me. 3. By “absolute freedom of reflection and abstraction” (SK 259 [GA I/2: 424]) or “freedom of thinking” (IWL 18, 78 [GA I/4: 194, 246]; SE 109 [GA I/5: 112]), Fichte means the freedom of intelligence considered by itself, in opposition to my being (Wesen). In his view, my ideal, subjective reflecting need not be bound to my real, objective striving. It is free to abstract from the latter and roam freely on its own. Argumentation (Räsonnement), he remarks, “freely proceeds into infinity; and it must be able to do so, for I am free in all my expressions, and only I myself am able to set a limit for myself through willing” (IWL 147 [GA I/5: 351]). What is characteristic of sheer thinking is the consciousness of an undetermined hovering and wavering of the power of imagination between opposites (see SE 184–5 [GA I/5: 178]). On account of the essential role thinking plays in free voluntary choice, I am prone to mistake the “merely ideal representation of willing” for an “actual willing” (SE 83 [GA I/5: 89]). In truth, what I am able to will to do need not be what I can imagine I am able to will to do. An ideal representing of willing is no more than a “sheer empty willing” until it taps into the force of “[my] nature” (SE 75 [GA I/5: 82]; see also SE 141, 203–4 [GA I/5: 139, 195–6]). 4. Fichte recognizes as an “external condition of free acting” the ability to do something if I will to do it (SE 83 [GA I/5: 88]; see also Neuhouser 2016, 36–7). “External freedom,” as it is often called, entails both positive and negative conditions: positively, I must be equipped with the skills and foresight to realize

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my plans; negatively, I must not be physically coerced to do what I do not want to do or restrained from doing what I want to do. Concerning the former, Fichte alludes in the first lecture of Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation to the need over and above the will, for a skill (Geschicklichkeit) “to suppress and eradicate those erroneous inclinations,” as well as “to modify and alter external things in accordance with our concepts” (EPW 150 [GA I/3: 31]). Concerning the latter, he argues in the Analysis of Original Right of the FNR that freedom from external coercion really amounts to freedom from infringement “by an alien, free power that stands outside [the physical world]” (FNR 104 [GA I/3: 405–6])—a state of the “rule of right” where everyone limits his freedom through the freedom of everyone else (James 2016, 183). Any other physical obstacle is the result of our lack of skills or foresight, and hence our failure to meet the positive condition of external freedom. The account is of special interest because of its recognition that physical obstacles are at the same time a condition of free voluntary choice (see SE 92–5 [GA I/5: 97–9]). 5. As a Kantian moralist, Fichte believes that a person is as free as he can be only if he acts moral-dutifully. To act moral-dutifully is (1) to do what one ought to do (2) from the thought that one ought to do it. While (2) reiterates the freedom of voluntary choice, (1) expresses the freedom specifically of morality. For any particular situation, there is one and only one possible action (or course of actions) that contributes to my “full independence from everything outside [me]” (SE 145 [GA I/5: 143–4], translation modified), i.e., that allows me to become more self-sufficient and independent of my sensible nature. This is none other than my moral duty. My moral duty at a temporal instant t is the one and only action (or course of actions) at t which is in harmony with my original constitution. Being absolutely identical with my original constitution, I am as fully myself and free as I do my moral duty, and as less fully myself and free as I fail to do it.

Notes 1 Comprehensive studies of Fichte’s theory of freedom include Wood 2016, 65–85; Binkelmann 2007; Taver 2006, 11–84; Tilliette 2003; Wildfeuer 1999; Hinz 1981; Pareyson 1976; Gueroult 1974, 18–41. Studies with a special focus on Fichte’s theory of political freedom include James 2013; Renault 1986; Philonenko 1966. 2 The prominence of freedom and the closely related issues of imputation, guilt, and punishment among Fichte’s early philosophical preoccupations is evident in the 1790 fragment Aphorismen über Religion und Deismus, where he notes, apparently upon a cursory acquaintance with the Critique of Pure Reason, that Kant, “the sharpest defender of freedom,” can do nothing more than to justify and explain its concept, since he can by no means derive it from the first principles of human cognition (GA II/1: 290n). 3 See ACR 21–2 (GA I/1: 146–7); SE 130–1 (GA I/5: 130–1). 4 See also SE 97 (GA I/5: 101); IWL 74 (GA I/4: 242). For a nuanced treatment of the claim, see Breazeale 2013, 58–9.

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5 Fichte is not consistent in the way he distinguishes between “formal freedom” and “material freedom.” Note that the distinction here is more basic than the more commonly recognized one, by which “formal freedom” means freedom of voluntary choice and “material freedom” means moral freedom (see Wood 2016, 70; Kosch 2013; Neuhouser 1990, Chapter 4).

Bibliography Binkelmann, Christoph. 2007. Theorie der Praktische Freiheit: Fichte und Hegel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gueroult, Martial. 1974. Études sur Fichte. New York: Georg Olms. Hinz, Manfred O. 1981. Fichtes System der Freiheit: Analyse eines widersprüchlichen Begriffs. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Kosch, Michelle. 2013. “Formal Freedom in Fichte’s System of Ethics.” International Yearbook of German Idealism 9: 150–68. James, David. 2013. Property and Virtue: Fichte’s Social and Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, David. 2016. “Personal Freedom and the Freedom of Others.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 177–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martin, Wayne M. 2016. “From Kant to Fichte.” In The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, edited by David James and Gűnter Zöller, 7–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 1990. Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2016. “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 32–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pareyson, Luigi. 1976. Il sistema della libertà. Milano: Mursia. Philonenko, Alexis. 1966. La liberté hu main dans la prima philosophie chez Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Reinhold, Karl L. 1792. Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie. Zweiter Band. Leipzig: Göschen. Renault, Alain. 1986. Le Systeme du Droit: Philosophie et Droit dans la Pensée de Fichte. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schmid, Carl C. E. 1790. Versuch einer Moralphilosophie. Jena: Crökerschen. Taver, Katja V. 2006. Freiheit und Prädetermination unter Auspiz der prästabilierte Harmonie: Leibniz und Fichte in der Perspektive. New York: Rodopi. Tilliette, Xavier. 2003. Fichte: La science e la liberté. Paris: Vrin. Wildfeuer, Arnim G. 1999. Praktische Vernunft und System: Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur ursprüngliche Kant-Rezeption Johann G. Fichtes. Tübingen: Frommann. Wood, Allen. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

27

Drive (Trieb) Kienhow Goh

Before Fichte, the concept of drive (Trieb) was already in wide circulation among German thinkers and writers of both a rationalist and an empiricist persuasion.1 This is especially true of those working in areas of the life sciences and the newly burgeoning science of anthropology.2 Among sympathizers of the Kantian philosophy, it was used by writers like Carl C. E. Schmid, Johann H. Abicht, and, most notably, Karl L. Reinhold.3 Yet the concept cannot be said to have had as much significance for these writers as it had for Fichte. In the Wissenschaftslehre of the Jena period, it is accorded the pivotal, multi-faceted role of a Vermittlungsbegriff between the I and the not-I, freedom and nature, cognition and action, etc. Its significance for the entire Wissenschaftslehre is comparable to that of the original unity of apperception for Kant’s theory of experience. As Wilhelm Jacobs notes, the concept holds the key to what Fichte considers to be an adequate response to the need (raised by Kant in the third Critique) to mediate between nature and freedom, theoretical and practical reason.4 More poignantly, drive is Fichte’s answer to the Kantian “supersensible, the idea of which must underlie the possibility of all those objects of experience, but which itself can never be elevated and expanded into a cognition” (CJ 63 [Ak 5:175]). In what follows, I discuss the three distinctive ways in which the concept is put to use in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre to account for the I’s positing of an object in general, its comprehension of nature as purposive, and its consciousness of its own pure nature.

Striving Posited At the heart of the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, in Section 5, Fichte posits striving (Streben) as the key to resolving the contradiction spanning across his entire system: the I both posits itself and posits the not-I unconditionally (schlechthin). To say that the I’s positing is unconditional is to say that it occurs because it occurs, without any further ground. The contradiction turns on the thought that the not-I is absolutely opposed to the I. Since the not-I is not the I, the I does not posit itself inasmuch as it posits the not-I, and vice versa. The self-positing I is a pure, selfreverting activity that is self-enclosed, as it were, unrelated to anything foreign to itself.

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To this extent, it is infinite, independent, active, and self-identical. The I that posits the not-I is an objective activity because it extends outward and encounters a check or an ob-ject (Gegen-stand). To this extent, it is finite, dependent, passive, and self-divided. If the contradiction is to be resolved, the I must be active in such a way that it posits the not-I at one and the same instant as it posits itself. Such is the case when it aspires to causality over (abolish the force [Kraft] of) the not-I but is frustrated in realizing it—it strives (Martin 1997, 124–41). In a word, drive is the I’s striving as it is posited by the I in the I. It is “how striving must be posited, if it is to be posited” (SK 253 [GA I/2: 418]). Since the I is nothing except what it is posited by itself to be, it is (inasmuch as it strives) necessarily posited as a drive. In other words, drive is the form the I necessarily takes in and for itself. Carla de Pascale describes this form as “a striving that is caught in the sphere of the subject, and as it only has itself for an ‘object’, is really lacking of a true object” (De Pascale 1994, 236 [my translation]). Inasmuch as it is posited, drive is “fixed and determined.” Inasmuch as it is posited as striving, it possesses just enough causality to produce and preserve itself. In other words, it possesses a force that is checked and driven back to itself, a force that is “inner” in the sense of being self-directed. In Claudio Cesa’s words, “its actuality consists only of its infinite potentiality” (Cesa 1993, 183 [my translation]). On account of its aspiration to causality, it is characterized by an “inability,” limitation, or compulsion. The ground of the inability must be situated outside itself, since it would otherwise be an “unwillingness” (SK 254 [GA I/2: 419]). The drive cannot by itself be raised to the causality to which it aspires, but can be raised to it by a further act of willing (Wollen) on the I’s part. Of course, by the same means, it can also be “contradicted and suppressed” (see EPW 165 [GA I/3: 46]). The I’s self-positing considered in opposition to its striving amounts to a reflection. Yet the I’s reflection is, Fichte admits, conditioned in turn by its striving. It is based on a “tendency to reflection” (SK 254 [GA I/2: 419]) that Fichte ascribes to a “representational drive” (Vorstellungstrieb) (SK 258–9 [GA I/2: 423–4]). Originally, the I is both striving and reflection. Consequently, the philosopher finds himself caught in a circle in his effort to articulate their relationship: no drive is possible without limitation and no limitation is possible without reflection. But no reflection is possible without boundary and no boundary is possible without the bounding—that is, the representational drive. In the first Jena Wissenschaftslehre, the drive is further determined in terms of feeling (Gefühl). Feeling is synthetically unified with drive because it is nothing but a manifestation of inability by which a drive, as we have seen, is characterized. Although the real activity of the I is constrained upon encounter with the object, its ideal activity goes beyond the boundary to posit something the drive would produce if it possessed causality over the not-I. Consequently, the drive is (on account of the I’s unremitting tendency to reflection) felt not only as an inability, but also as a “force” of being “driven beyond out of itself” (SK 260 [GA I/2: 425], translation modified), “void,” or “need” for something-it-knows-not-what—a “longing” (Sehnen) (SK 265 [GA I/2: 431]). Moreover, the two opposed feelings are synthetically unified: no longing is possible without boundary, and no boundary is possible without longing (SK 266 [GA I/2: 431]). Longing is further determined in three ways. First, as a “drive for determination

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[Trieb nach Bestimmung]” (SK 269 [GA I/2: 434], translation modified), it expresses the law by which the I determines external objects from its inner feelings. By means of it, the I’s ideal activity is determined to produce an intuition from feelings. Second, as a “drive for reciprocal determination [Trieb nach Wechselbestimmung]” (SK 279 [GA I/2: 444], translation modified), it expresses the law by which the I determines changes in external objects from changes in its inner feelings. By means of it, the I’s ideal and its real activity are co-determined to find satisfaction from any change of feelings. Third, as a “drive for reciprocal determination of the I through itself ” (SK 284–5 [GA I/2: 449], translation modified), it expresses the law by which the I determines the harmony or disharmony of changes in external objects with its inner demand, viz., the categorical imperative. By means of it, the I’s ideal and its real activity are co-determined to find contentment in some changes of feeling and discontentment in others.

Drive and the Purposiveness of Nature A crucial development in the System of Ethics (and the closely related second Jena Wissenschaftslehre) is that Fichte goes beyond the question of the form of the notI—“why such a limitation has to be posited at all”—to address that of the matter of the not-I—“why this limitedness is thought precisely in the way that it is thought” (SE 97 [GA I/5: 101], translation modified).5 The latter includes an elaborate genetic account (in the transcendental sense) of the inner purposiveness of nature in Section 8 (Subsection V–VII) and its relative purposiveness in Section 17 (Subsection IV), both of which involve a use of the concept of drive that is not found in the Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge. The deduction of the inner purposiveness of nature in Section 8—centering around my nature (viz., my body) as an organized product of nature—proceeds in two steps. The two steps answer Kant’s two-fold classification of natural objects as “aggregates” and “systems” (see CJ 20 [Ak 20:217]). In the Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte has referred to the former as “raw matter” and the latter as “organized matter.” In addition, he has characterized the two in opposed ways. Raw matter is characterized by the mutual independence of its parts from each other, whereas organized bodies are characterized by the mutual interdependence of their parts (see FNR 176, 181, 188 [GA I/4: 14, 19, 24–5]). In Section 8 of the System of Ethics, he ventures to deduce each of them as necessary conditions of self-consciousness. In the first step, I am compelled to think of every part of nature in terms of drive, i.e., nature as a whole of drives, in my effort to comprehend my nature as a drive. I feel my nature immediately as a drive. However, I am checked in my effort to subsume it under the law of causality. In response, I am led by the power of judgment to reverse (umkehren) the concept of causality to reflect on my nature by the law of substantiality. Since my nature is only a part of nature, I cannot comprehend it by the concept of substantiality without transferring (übertragen) the concept to the rest of nature and comprehending the whole of nature by it. In the second step, I am compelled to think of every part of nature in terms of a drive that strives to unite with other drives as a result of its effort to comprehend itself as a drive that constitutes a closed whole. I cognize my

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nature as a whole whose parts are bound with each other in a way they are not with other parts of nature. However, I am checked in my effort to reflect on it by the law of substantiality. In response, I am led by the power of judgment to reverse the concept of substantiality yet again to reflect on my nature by the law of organization. Again, since my nature is only a part of nature, I cannot comprehend it by the concept of organization without transferring the concept to the rest of nature and comprehending the whole of nature by it. According to Fichte, to comprehend nature by the concept of substantiality is just to think of its parts in terms of drive. In the first instance, my drive (and my immediate feeling of it) is a manifestation of limitedness (or boundedness). Since there is no drive without limitedness, presence of drive indicates presence of limitedness. The “original limitedness,” by means of which the whole of my world is determined a priori for me, (see SE 97–8 [GA I/5: 101–2]) can be thought of as a system of limitedness, and hence a system of drives and feelings. This “original, determinate system of drives and feelings” constitutes my nature (or reality), that is, that part of me that is “fixed and determined independently of [my] freedom” (SE 105 [GA I/5: 108]). In the first step, the concept of substantiality is deduced as that by which a drive (and hence my nature as a drive) must be thought. A drive cannot be comprehended by the concept of causality because whereas a cause is thought of as deriving its force from a second thing and imparting it to a third in an open series of causes and effects, the force of a drive “neither comes from outside nor is directed outside” (SE 107 [GA I/5: 109]). In its striving to comprehend my nature, the power of judgment is driven to seek an answer in the opposite concept of substantiality, taken in the Spinozist sense here to mean independence and self-sufficiency. At this point, Fichte introduces a curious account of the material determination of a drive in terms of its lack of a “quantum of nature” (or “quantum of reality”). While each drive is a drive inasmuch as its force is an inner, self-directed one, it is the drive it is—and not the drives it is not—on account of the quantum of nature it lacks and strives for. Consequently, the thoroughgoing determinacy (durchgängige Bestimmtheit) of my nature as a drive entails the thoroughgoing determinacy of the rest—and hence the whole—of nature. Nature as a whole whose parts are determined through each other—and hence through it—is an “organic whole” (SE 110 [GA I/5: 112]). The role of a drive in the first step is primarily to determine nature as an organic whole: given that a drive is determined by the quantum of nature it lacks and strives for, it follows from the thoroughgoing determinacy of my nature as a drive that the whole of nature (of which my nature is a part) is thoroughly determinate. With the establishment of nature as an organic whole, the stage is set for the further determination of my nature as the product of a drive that is characteristic of organic life. In the second step, the concept of organization is deduced as that by which the drive that undergirds my nature as a “closed whole” must be thought. A closed whole cannot be comprehended by the concept of substantiality because its parts are mutually interdependent rather than independent. Each of its parts is determined through its other parts—and hence its whole. In its striving to comprehend my nature as a closed whole, the power of judgment is driven yet again to seek an answer in the opposite concept of organization. As a result, each drive of my nature is the drive it is on account of the quantum of

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nature the other drives of my nature lack and strive for. The determinacy of my nature as an organic whole entails the determination of each of its parts as a drive to form and be formed by its other parts—a “formative drive” (Bildungstrieb).6 Shortly after deducing the inner purposiveness of nature, Fichte seems to deny the relative purposiveness of nature when he writes: “In nature there is only an inner, and by no means a relative, purposiveness. The latter first arises only through the discretionary purposes a free being is able to posit for itself in the objects of nature and is to some degree able to accomplish as well” (SE 123 [GA I/5: 124], translation modified). From Section 17, however, it is clear that he does not think that nature is without relative purposiveness. In the first place, natural objects are posited by the I out of the need to comprehend the original drive. When the original drive is referred to the objects, concepts arise of the use the I wants, as it were, to make of the objects. These “final purposes” of the objects are by no means “arbitrary” (beliebige) uses the I freely choose to make of them, but belong to them as “original determinations” (SE 71 [GA I/5: 78]). On the other hand, Fichte contends that any arbitrary use we can freely choose to make of natural objects are derivative of their final purposes inasmuch as they can arise only from an incomplete reflection on our part on the original drive that is referred to them.

A Catalogue of Original Drives In the series of popular lectures given in his first semester in the University of Jena under the title “Morality for Scholars,” Fichte finds the occasion to explore the anthropological significance of the concept of drive. As a rule, “[n]othing that is in the I is there without a drive” (SK 284 [GA I/2: 449], translation modified). Accordingly, a plurality of drives lies “originally in us” (EPW 223 [GA I/3: 83])—original in the sense of being “grounded in [our] rational nature” (EPW 224 [GA I/3: 84], translation modified)—drives that are identifiable from the various activities and powers of a human being as underpinning them. Besides the “system of our natural drives” (SE 203 [GA I/5: 196]) (primarily, the drive to self-preservation and the sexual drive), we possess a class of “pure drives” (EPW 223 [GA I/3: 83]) on account of our rationality or self-consciousness. These include the “cognitive drive,” the “practical drive,” the “social drive,” the “aesthetic drive,” the “drive for truth,” and the “ethical drive.”7 Although some key lectures in the series are missing,8 it is fair to say on the whole that the drives are individuated ad hoc. On Daniel Breazeale’s estimate, Fichte is not quite successful in his “efforts to construct a complex, hierarchical theory of human drives” because his “primary emphasis is always upon the unity of reason itself and hence upon the underlying unity of its various ‘interests’, theoretical as well as practical” (Breazeale 2013, 353). For him, the various drives are ultimately manifestations of “one particular fundamental drive” (ein besondrer Grundtrieb) (see SE 137 [GA I/5: 135–6] and SL 80 [GA I/6: 341]). As Breazeale has mentioned, Fichte thinks of the drives as being ordered hierarchically, with one drive originally subordinating or being subordinate to another. To say that a drive X is originally subordinate to another Y is to not say that we cannot

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freely choose to satisfy X’s demand over Y’s. Rather, it is to say that we cannot freely choose to satisfy X’s demand over Y’s without placing ourselves in contradiction with ourselves. In the first place, inasmuch as each original drive is constitutive of my being (Wesen), I am not able to ignore its demand without doing some measure of violence to myself. In Fichte’s words, I am not “in harmony” or “at one” with myself, but I “contradict” myself. For example, inasmuch as the social drive (viz., drive to enter into community with other rational beings) is constitutive of my being, I contradict myself by avoiding other rational beings (see SE 223 [GA I/5: 212]). Now the possibility of my simultaneously satisfying the demands of all of my original drives depends on my varying empirical circumstances. Most of the time, I have to sacrifice the demand of one drive to meet that of another. Under such a circumstance, I ought to sacrifice the demand of a drive that ranks lower in the original hierarchy of drives to that of a drive that ranks higher. By this principle, “one’s aesthetic drive certainly ought to be subordinated to one’s drive for truth as well as the highest of all drives, the drive for the ethical good” (EPW 224–5 [GA I/3: 84], translation modified). The highest drive is also “the drive toward identity, toward complete harmony with oneself, and – as a means for staying constantly in harmony with oneself – toward the harmony of external things with one’s own necessary concepts of them” (EPW 155 [GA I/3: 35]). Consequently, I contradict myself in a more global sense by sacrificing the demand of a higher-ranking drive to that of a lower-ranking drive than I do by simply ignoring the demand of a drive. By the original hierarchy of drives, Fichte seeks more than just an alternative way of formulating the Kantian categorical imperative: he seeks to go beyond a mere “heuristic” account of it to explaining its function as “constitutive” principle of our moral life (see SE 222–3 [GA I/5: 212]). For him, the ethical law’s validity is not the ground of our obligation to it, but its consequence. We are obligated to it not because of some fact outside us, but because of the actively operative reason in us. Most interestingly, such an approach furnishes Kantian ethics with a moral psychology that connects it on the one side with the ancient tradition that construes ethical goodness in terms of psychological wholeness, and on the other with twentieth-century ethics of authenticity. As previously noted, the unceasing striving that constitutes a drive is none other than the categorical imperative. Inasmuch as it is constitutive of our being, the drive is comparable to a moral compass that is built into us, whose needle cannot fail to inform us of what we ought to do in each of our varying empirical circumstances. Regardless of whether it is acknowledged by everyone or not, it is “universally enforced” (allgemeingeltend) in the sense that no one is exempt from its demand.9 Its demand is felt immediately as interest, and the harmony and disharmony of the empirical I with its demand are felt immediately as pleasure and displeasure respectively (see SE 136–7 [GA I/5: 135–6]). Given that the drive “toward complete harmony with oneself ” is the ethical drive, we cannot feel satisfaction and contentment except by acting dutifully. Nevertheless, Fichte recognizes that human beings vary in the degree to which they are conscious of each original drive (and its attendant feeling). The different drives are not originally equally worn on the sleeve so to speak, but hidden to varying degrees in the “depths” (Tiefe) of the human psyche (see EPW 195 [GA II/3: 318] and SL 79, 84 [GA I/6: 339, 347]). From the empirical viewpoint, consciousness necessarily

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develops from an occupation with external objects to an inward occupation with itself. An awakening to the demands of the cognitive or practical drive thus presupposes an awakening to those of natural drives, an awakening to those of pure drives presupposes an awakening to those of the cognitive or practical drive, an awakening to those of the aesthetic drive or drive to truth presupposes an awakening to those of the social drive, and so on. In this way, the drives can be seen as charting a “ladder of spiritual development” (SL 88 [GA I/6: 354]). Spirit (Geist) is the force of the drives by which the human being is raised to clearer and more distinct consciousness of their demands (and hence heightened [erhöhen] in his interest to meet them), while cultivation (Bildung) is the activity by which he is so raised. On this basis, Fichte’s single directive for culture is: “Satisfy your drives!” (EPW 224 [GA I/3: 84])10

Notes 1 For a list of possible sources of the concept for Fichte, see Cesa 2006, 29–31. 2 “The concept Trieb,” Zammito aptly remarks, “played a central role in the developing life sciences of the eighteenth century” (Zammito 2017, 347). For a detailed account of the emergence and genesis of the life sciences and anthropology in late eighteenth century Germany, see Steigerwald 2019, Zammito 2017, 2002, and Richards 2002. 3 Reinhold’s effort to incorporate drives in Outline of a Theory of the Power of Desire is arguably the most decisive in prompting Fichte to rethink the place of drive in the system of the human mind (see Reinhold 1789, 560–75). See also Abicht 1788, 105–7, and Schmid 1791. 4 For a summary of the various different functions of the drive in the system of the Jena period, see Jacobs 1967, 82–6. Other recent discussions of the topic include Wood 2016, 118–19; Fabbianelli 1998; De Pascale 1994; Cesa 1993; Soller 1984. 5 This development by no means violates the principles of the first Jena Wissenschaftslehre. For Fichte is clear from the outset: “In [the] interaction [between the I and the not-I], nothing foreign is brought into the I, everything that develops therein, even out to infinity, develops solely from itself, in accordance with its own laws” (SK 246 [GA I/2: 411], translation modified). In other words, the not-I furnishes only the form of objects. The matter of objects is originally contained in the I, and only derivatively carried over to the not-I. 6 The concept of Bildungstrieb (nisus formativus) is the keystone of the influential Göttingen natural historian Johann F. Blumenbach’s theory of generation (see Blumenbach 1781). For a concise account of the concept, see Zammito 2017, 336–50 and Richards 2002, 31329. For a discussion of Fichte’s appropriation of the concept in the “Practical Philosophy” and how it differs from Kant’s, see Moiso 1976, 298–304. For an interpretation of the concept as it is employed in the System of Ethics, see Kosch 2018, 25–27. 7 A treatment of the ethical and the social drive can be found in the first and the second lecture of Some Lectures on the Vocation of a Scholar respectively. The drive for truth is the topic of discussion of the essay “On Stimulating and Increasing the Pure Interest in Truth.” The distinctions of the aesthetic drive from the cognitive and the practical drives are drawn and investigated in the essay “On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy: In a Series of Letters.” As I understand Fichte, the cognitive, the practical, and the social drives belong to a class of drives that stand midway between

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the pure and the natural drives: like pure and unlike natural drives, they presuppose pure-rational self-activity; but like natural and unlike pure drives, their demands are without pure-rational content. The “cognitive drive” and the “practical drive” should be distinguished respectively from the pure drive toward truth and ethical drive inasmuch as they are empirically determined. 8 See Daniel Breazeale’s discussion of the missing lectures and his attempt at a reconstruction of the series in EPW 185–7. 9 The distinction between Allgemeingültigkeit and Allgemeingeltung, first drawn by Reinhold in order to spell out two distinct criteria of philosophical science (namely, universal validity and universal acknowledgement), was reinterpreted by Fichte in the Offenbarungskritik to explain the belief in God’s existence. As Fichte explains, we cannot will the ethical law’s demand to produce “right in us” without postulating the existence of a higher causality to produce “right outside us” (ACR 35 [GA I/1: 27]). This postulate amounts to the belief that the law “is not merely universally valid but is universally enforced” (ACR 37 [GA I/1: 28], translation modified). To be sure, the ethical law’s universal enforcement is a matter of belief rather than a fact, and is to this extent conditional upon our free choice to meet the ethical drive’s demand. Still, the ethical drive is not merely universally valid as the ethical law is, but is universally enforced insofar as it exerts motivational pressure on everyone. 10 Thanks to Halla Kim for helping me to obtain a book for my research on the topic.

Bibliography Abicht, Johann H. 1788. Versuch einer kritischen Untersuchung über das Willensgeschäfte. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Jägerischen Buchhandlung. Blumenbach, Johann F. 1781. Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte. Göttingen: Dieterich. Breazeale, Daniel. 2013. Thinking through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte’s Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cesa, Claudio. 1993. “Der Begriff ‘Trieb’ in den Frühschriften von J. G. Fichte (1792– 1794).” In Kant und sein Jahrhundert. Gedenkschrift für Giorgio Tonelli, edited by Claudio Cesa and Norbert Hinske, 165–87. (Studien zur Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts, Book 4.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Cesa, Claudio. 2006. “Praktische Philosophie und Trieb.” In Fichtes praktische Philosophie. Eine systematische Einführung, edited by Günter Zöller and Hans-Georg von Manz, 21–37. (Europaea Memoria, Reihe I.) Hildesheim: Georg Olms. De Pascale, Carla. 1994. “Trieblehre bei Fichte.” In Fichte-Studien: Realität und Gewißheit, Vol. 6, edited by Helmut Girndt and Wolfgang Schrader, 229–51. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Fabbianelli, Faustino. 1998. Impulso e libertà: “Psicologia” e “trascendentale” nella filosofia pratica di J. G. Fichte. Genova: Pantograf. Jacobs, Wilhelm. 1967. Trieb als sittliche Phänomen: Eine Untersuchung zur Grundlegung der Philosophie nach Kant und Fichte. Bonn: Bouvier. Kosch, Michelle. 2018. Fichte’s Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, Wayne. 1997. Idealism and Objectivity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Moiso, Francesco. 1976. Natura e cultura nel primo Fichte. Milano: Mursia. Reinhold, Karl L. 1789. Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögen. Prag and Jena: Widtmann and Mauke.

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Richards, Robert J. 2002. The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Schmid, Carl C. E. 1791. Empirische Psychologie. Jena: Crökerschen. Soller, Alois. 1984. Trieb und Reflexion in Fichtes Jenaer Philosophie. Würzburg: Könighausen and Neumann. Steigerwald, Joan. 2019. Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life: Organic Vitality in German around 1800. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press. Wood, Allen. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zammito, John. 2002. Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Zammito H., John. 2017. The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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A detailed and comprehensive discussion of resistance is a common thread throughout Fichte’s work—from the very beginning (viz. from his early views on “check” or “impulse”: “Anstoß”) to his late 1813 Vorlesungen; what is more, it is a centerpiece of Fichte’s action-centered transcendental philosophy. His views on this topic mark a turning point. They foreshadow later developments (Bouterwek, Cabanis, Maine de Biran, Destutt de Tracy, Dilthey, Frischeisen-Köhler, Jaensch, Scheler, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, just to name the most prominent). However, Fichte is far more than just a “forerunner.” The question is this: is this not one of those cases in which what seems to lie behind us turns out to be what lies ahead of us? Resistance plays a pivotal role in Fichte’s analysis of the connection between the I and the Not-I, in the framework of both theoretical and practical philosophy. It lies at the core of a radically fresh approach to key philosophical questions, notably the question of reality, the question of perception (and representation), and the question of action. Fichte’s views on resistance show both the key distinctive features of his whole philosophy and how his work opens ground-breaking possibilities for rethinking philosophical questions. The problem is that Fichte’s views on resistance form a many-faced polyhedron. To take all its facets into account would go beyond the scope of this brief outline. First, I cannot consider why resistance is a major theme in Fichte’s philosophy, the role it plays as part of his “complete statement,” the cluster of concepts it belongs to, or the new way of thinking to which his views on resistance ultimately lead. Second, I cannot review all the passages of the corpus fichteanum where resistance is at stake. They are too numerous to list (let alone examine) here. Furthermore, I cannot follow the genesis of Fichte’s interest in this concept (viz. in this phenomenon) and the successive forms his account of resistance took as it developed. Nor can I provide a comparative analysis between Fichte’s account of resistance and other philosophical views on this matter. I must stick to a more modest task. To put it in military terms, I will concentrate our efforts on securing a “bridgehead” on the “shores” of Fichte’s account of resistance— and on getting an insight into some of the main features of his approach. My brief sketch takes the form of a diptych. The first panel has to do with what might be described as Fichte’s path-breaking revision and transformation of some traditional ideas on perception (and indeed of basic assumptions on perception that

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are left unchanged in Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetics). The second panel has to do with how Fichte’s views on resistance play a role in his philosophical account of what we usually term “reality” and shed an entirely new light on the latter. That said, let us plunge in medias res. First, Fichte departs from the assumption that sensation is nothing more than the immediate presence of sensory qualities that impinge themselves upon us and bind us to themselves—so that a pure spectator (a pure onlooker or non-participant observer) is, as it were, filled with their presence and forced to witness them. This assumption comprises three components. It takes for granted (1) that sensory contents are pure qualia, defined only by themselves, and that they are something “inert” one witnesses as just-being-there, before us; (2) that having sensations amounts to being aware of (and confronted with) the immediate presence of their contents; so that (3) in sensation the subject does nothing but seize sensory contents. Fichte departs from all these assumptions. First, he claims that sensory contents are not just pure qualia or inert “whats” we get in touch with in such a manner that they appear as “being there” and are defined only by themselves. This does not mean that sensory contents have nothing to do with qualia. It means that the qualia sensation is all about are only possible as moments of some kind of action or activity (i.e., of some kind of tension) on the part of the subject—so that they result from the latter, and are intrinsically action-related or activity-related (i.e., tension-related). In short, sensations stand for “states” of the subject’s own activity or tension. They are, as it were, self-activity qualia. Second, Fichte claims that having a sensation is not just being aware of the immediate presence of a sensory content (witnessing it as a non-participant observer). It means (1) acting (being after something or yearning for something: beingunderway and steering in a certain direction) and (2) having the course and outcome of one’s activity or action affected in a certain way. Third, in sensation the active and non-indifferent subject finds itself in a certain state of development of its being-aftersomething. In a word, having a sensation is “knowing where you stand,” or, to be more precise, a sensation is nothing if not self-activity knowing where it stands or what it is dealing with.1 It should be noted that Fichte is not just claiming that sensations can trigger desiderative or volitional reactions on the part of a subject, that they can give rise to actions, etc. It is much more than that. The point is that the desiderative or volitional element—viz. the active element—is not something superadded: it lies at the very heart of sensation. Fichte claims that all sensory contents intrinsically belong to the realm of selfactivity—that they are only possible in the medium of self-activity, as moments of self-activity (i.e., as “states” or “phases” of one’s being-after-something or yearningfor-something and steering-in-a-certain-direction) and that all sensory qualia are intrinsically related to all this. What is more, he claims that sensations have to do with resistance (Widerstand)—i.e., with some kind of limitation of activity. In his view, sensation consists of nothing but goal-directed activity or action that meets some kind of opposition. Sensation has to do with the fact that activity is hindered, curbed, or held in check, so that there is some kind of distance between the goal-directed activity or action and its goal. In other words, sensation has to do with the fact that activity is

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not automatically implemented in no time or that there is no entirely unimpeded action or activity—that action or activity finds itself subject to something else, constrained by something else, and indeed in such a manner that it is kept underway or kept at a distance from its goal. Sensory contents—sensory qualia—stand for nothing else but this state of being bound (Bindung or Gebundenheit)2—that is, for aufgehaltene action or aufgehaltene self-activity (i.e., delayed or constrained action viz. self-activity).3 And the difference between contrasting sensations has to do (1) with different kinds (and “lines”) of self-activity and (b) with different kinds of hindrance. In short, sensation is not only all about action. It is a creature of hindrance and resistance, a creature of the “underway” as such (all about wandering, not about “Ithaca”). But let us take a closer look at this. One of the major features of the traditional understanding of sensation is that it has to do with receptivity and therefore with passivity. Sensations impinge themselves upon us, they come “on their own initiative.” And having sensations is a state of being dependent on and bound to their impinging themselves on us. In short, sensation is all about Leiden—not about action, but about passion. There is, of course, some truth to this. But on closer inspection it emerges that this whole understanding of sensation is based on something foreign to sensation and superadded to it—namely on a second “point of view” about sensation. It is as if one were witnessing sensation “from without” and determining the connection between the subject and its sensations in such a way that (1) they appear as two different things, and (2) the sensory contents play an active role while the subject behaves passively. The problem is that this whole understanding of sensation comes from the intellect. It is a “repraesentatio rerum sicuti sunt” (“a representation of things as they are”),4 and thus it is not part of sensation as such. So how is Leiden or passivity sensed or felt? In other words, how is Leiden or passivity sensorily perceived as Leiden or passivity? This is the key question. Fichte tries to answer it and claims that there can be no immanent appearance of Leiden (passivity) when there is nothing but passivity (nothing but Leiden): when it is all Leiden and nothing else. For Leiden to be sensorily granted (for there to be any sensory feeling of Leiden as such) there must be something other than Leiden or pure passivity. Leiden as an immanent feature of sensation is only possible where some constraint counteracts (or stands in the way of) something in the realm of immanence. And this something can only be some kind of tendency or drive—i.e., some kind of activity viz. self-activity heading in a certain direction. If self-activity (immanent activity) is not “smoothly” implemented, if it finds itself hampered or hindered— then this is immanent Leiden (or immanent passivity). In short, the purely immanent experience of (1) having embarked on a certain course of action and (2) finding oneself hindered (encountering resistance, having one’s action deflected from its course by some obstacle) is what immanent passivity—the sensation of being-affected or actedupon—is all about. Two points should be borne in mind here. First, the hindrance Fichte is talking about is as immanent as the action (the activity viz. the drive) counteracted or limited by it. It is a hindrance emerging in the course of one’s action or self-activity. This can also be expressed by saying that the hindrance to which Fichte is referring is part of the action or the activity in question—it is action or

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activity when confronted with or put before something opposed to it. Hence, Fichte’s claim is that sensation = activity + friction (viz. some kind of impediment or opposition to it) i.e., sensation = friction felt in the course of activity or self-activity. Second, when Fichte speaks of resistance (Widerstand, Hemmung, and the like) he is not necessarily referring to hindrance in the strictest sense of the term (to a “stumbling block” or obstructing factor, to some kind of “frontal collision” or stoppage—that is, to the cancellation or suppression of activity). The point is not so much that the subject’s self-activity finds itself blocked and completely prevented from following its course, but that it meets with something not fully coincident with it or somehow differing from it. Fichte’s “resistance” stands for this entirely immanent deflection from the subject’s self-activity (from the subject’s “drive” viz. from its total accomplishment). Any such deflection, no matter how small, is what “resistance” stands for. In short, “resistance” means “otherness” in the course of self-activity (action or drive): being driven toward something and finding something other than the drive (being confronted with something other than the drive itself). It may be helpful to take a look at some of Fichte’s texts on sensation and resistance. Let us consider, for example, what §6 of the Sittenlehre [System of Ethics] has to say in this regard.5 Fichte points out that, in order to have any sensation of being affected, the subject must have some awareness of its own activity: Our consciousness proceeds from an immediate consciousness of our own activity, and we find ourselves to be passive only by means of the latter. It is not the Not-I that acts efficaciously upon the I, which is how this issue has customarily been viewed, but the other way around. The Not-I does not intrude upon the I, but the I goes into the Not-I, which is how we are required to view this relationship in the case of sensible intuition. The same point would have to be expressed transcendentally as follows: it is not the case that we find ourselves to be originally bounded because we become more narrowly bounded, for were that the case then, with the abolition of our reality, consciousness of our bounded condition would be abolished as well; instead, it is by expanding our boundaries – and insofar as we expand them – that we find ourselves to be originally bounded. (SE 90 [GA I/5:95])

He concludes: Everything proceeds from acting and from the acting of the I. The I is the first principle of all movement and of all life, of every deed and occurrence. If the Non-I exercises an effect upon us, then this does not occur within the domain of the Not-I; it operates efficaciously by means of resistance, which it could not do if we had not first acted upon it. It is not the Not-I that encroaches upon us, but we who encroach upon it. (SE 90f. [GA I/5:95])6

In order to avoid any possible misunderstanding, it should be noted that Fichte is not speaking of two different things, one of which is active, the other passive. Nor is he speaking of the boundaries between two independent things or realms, of a “displacement of borders” between them (viz. of “territorial gains and losses”—so

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that one expands and the other contracts). What he has in mind has to do with the complex inner structure of sensation itself and with the connection between its two essential components. In particular, he emphasizes the fact that consciousness of the sensory qualia (consciousness of their presence, of their content, of their impact upon the subject) necessarily presupposes some consciousness of one’s activity. The point is that it is the latter—insofar as it heads toward its own goal—that makes the encounter between itself and the former (and therefore the consciousness of how they collide with each other) possible. In other words, if one does not sense self-activity (viz. one’s drives or striving) one cannot sense the conflict or friction between self-activity and resistance to it. That is, consciousness of sensory qualia is but a particular form of consciousness of one’s self-activity. Fichte does not deny that there is some kind of “attack” from the qualia viz. the sensory contents—they impinge themselves upon the subject and bind it to their presence, etc., so that this is what sensation is all about. But the point is that the “attack” by means of which sensory contents “encroach upon the subject” is, as it were, a “counter-attack” and can only take place (and be sensed) as a result of the first “attack.” The object “seizes” the subject only because the latter “seizes” the former in the first place. Otherwise there would be no “contact” between them. In short, all “contact” between subject and object results from the fact that the former’s self-activity is intrinsically outward-driven. The subject goes out of itself because it heads toward something different from itself (namely to its goal)—and therefore “encroaches” upon whatever lies on the way to its goal. That is how subject and object “come together” or “find a way to one another”: the “field” in which they meet each other results from the one (from the subject’s self-activity) and not from the other. But the problem is that the above can be misleading, for it might suggest that consciousness of one’s self-activity can take place all by itself, before any consciousness of resistance (and therefore before any consciousness of sensory contents). However, nothing could be further from what Fichte has in mind. His point is that consciousness of one’s own activity does not precede consciousness of resistance (viz. of the sensory contents in which resistance manifests itself). Fichte could not be more explicit on this subject. For instance, in the Sittenlehre he writes: “Wherever and whenever you see activity, you necessarily see resistance as well, for otherwise you see no activity” (SE 12 [GA I/5:25]). He restates this view in §6: “only by means of such resistance does the activity of the I become something that can be sensed” (SE 89 [GA I/5:95]). A few lines further he adds: The I is to be posited as an actual I, but solely in contrast with or in opposition to a Not-I. But there is a Not-I for the I only under the condition that the I acts efficaciously and feels resistance in its effective operation, which however is overcome, since otherwise the I would not be acting efficaciously. Only by means of such resistance does the activity of the I become something that can be sensed (SE 89 [GAI/5:95]).

And in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo he insists on this idea: “I can be conscious only of my own activity, but I can be conscious of this only as a limited

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activity” (FTP 162 [GA IV/3:371]). And a few lines further he repeats this claim: “The only sort of action that can be intuited and is, in this respect, really actual is twofold and contains both freedom and limitation, both activity and the cancellation of activity; moreover, both of these are united in every moment of acting.” (FTP 163 [GA IV/3:372]). But what does this mean? If goal-oriented activity (drives, striving, and the like) were of such a nature that they reached their goal directly and immediately, without any kind of friction or delay, then there would be no conditions for them to be sensed as activity (as drives and the like); for once its goal is achieved, activity ceases to be activity (a drive ceases to be a drive). And if their goal is achieved at once, there is, as it were, no room for activity or a drive to appear as such. As a result, if all goal-directed activity (drives and the like) reached their goal directly and immediately, without any kind of friction or delay, it would always be either too soon or too late for any consciousness of them. And the bottom-line is that consciousness of self-activity (of drives and the like) requires a minimum of friction or delay (a minimum of distance from their goal)—that is, a minimum of resistance, or rather a minimum of consciousness of resistance. In short, if there is to be any consciousness of activity (of drives, tendency, and the like), at least an element of passivity (a “touch” of the opposite of activity) must be mingled with activity—or rather at least an element of consciousness of passivity must be mingled with the consciousness of activity (and thereby make the latter possible in the first place). Only when it encounters resistance can activity be sensed as such. Hence, consciousness of resistance is by no means something superadded to consciousness of activity viz. self-activity. Resistance is the medium in which activity viz. self-activity becomes an object of consciousness. And “sensation” (“impression,” Gefühl) is the proper form of sensing one’s activity by sensing some resistance to it. If, as pointed out above, at least some consciousness of activity is an indispensable condition of all consciousness of resistance, the reverse is also true: at least some consciousness of resistance is an indispensable condition of all consciousness of activity. What we are dealing with here is, therefore, nothing less than an unbreakable interdependence (Wechselwirkung) between both. And this means that what at first might seem to be two different (and indeed opposite) things turns out to be two sides of the very same coin. But this is not all. Fichte also points out that consciousness of activity requires at least a minimum level of overcoming resistance (of breaking through resistance), without which activity (and, for that matter, resistance) cannot be sensed. “The I is now supposed to be posited as active, and thus it would have to be posited as eliminating and breaking through (entfernend und durchbrechend) a manifold of boundaries and resistance” (SE 88 f. [GA I/5:90–1]). Put another way, both consciousness of activity and consciousness of resistance require something other than (1) completely unlimited or unrestricted activity and (2) total resistance (cancellation or suppression of activity).7 This means that the said “breaking through” (i.e., at least a minimum level of overcoming resistance) also belongs to the above-mentioned Wechselwirkung,8 the result being that consciousness is the combined product of (1) activity, (2) resistance, and (3) overcoming resistance. Or, to put it in a simple formula: activity × resistance × overcoming resistance (that is: action × object)9 is, as it were, the basis and core of all consciousness.

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In conclusion, Fichte insists on two main ideas: (1) that resistance and passivity are something altogether immanent, an inner component of consciousness itself, and (2) that resistance is by no means a contingent feature of consciousness: it belongs to it essentially. Hence, consciousness of resistance is not a particular kind of consciousness among others (as if there could be any consciousness without resistance, and the latter were something superadded to consciousness): consciousness of resistance (or, to be more precise, of self-activity × resistance × overcoming resistance) is as much the form of all consciousness as being posited against self-activity (and resisting it) is the form of every object of consciousness. But this raises the question: where does resistance come from? This question leads to the second panel of our “diptych”—which for lack of space must be even more concise than the first. When one considers the said fact of immanent resistance (of immanent limitation or passivity), this appears to be of such a nature that it can only result from something existing outside of consciousness viz. from some independent reality acting upon consciousness. It seems self-evident that the very fact of resistance unequivocally shows that there is something beyond consciousness. Or, more precisely, (1) external reality seems to be the only possible source for the said fact, (2) for this very reason the existence of something beyond consciousness (and the fact that this something acts upon consciousness) appears to be unquestionable, and (3) we seem able to comprehend both the fact of external reality and its nature (what we are talking about when we speak of an independent external reality). It goes without saying that if this is the case, then Fichte’s analysis of resistance as immanent passivity proves unable to change the picture significantly. You can twist it and turn it however you want, external resistance or external passivity (the fact that consciousness itself is acted upon) turns out to be what resistance is all about. But this is where the transcendental approach brings about a change of perspective. Fichte’s view on this matter does not deny the fact of this self-evidence. But he tries to evince that it, too, results from the very nature of consciousness. The said self-evidence does not express what it claims to be true (that consciousness is really acted upon by something exterior to it). It just expresses the inner structure of consciousness itself (or, as Fichte puts it, the laws of consciousness).10 In other words, consciousness is absolutely compelled to think in precisely this way—for making this claim is itself an essential “ingredient” or a necessary condition of consciousness, without which it cannot exist. In order to prove this, Fichte follows the complex set of actions by means of which consciousness, fulfilling its own laws, raises the said claim. According to him, these further actions of consciousness are without exception rooted in feeling (Gefühl, sensation, impression), that is, in Beschränktheit (limitation) or resistance. As he puts it in the Nova Methodo lectures, limitation or limitedness (Beschränktheit)—and therefore resistance—is “the Urstoff” (the “prôtê hylê” or first matter) of everything else (FTP 197 [GA IV/3:390]). In itself, this first matter is “neither image, nor a thing, but both at once” (FTP 197 [GA IV/3:390]). But “it is subsequently divided into the image on the one hand and the thing on the other” (FTP 197 [GA IV/3:390]). That is, on the one hand it gives rise not only to the opposition between “limitation within me” (Beschränktheit in mir) and “limitation outside of me” (Beschränktheit außer mir) (FTP 218 [GA IV/3:401]) viz. to the difference between interior and exterior perception, but also to

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the metamorphosis of feeling (Gefühl, i.e., resistance) into intuition (Anschauung). On the other hand, this paves the way for the intellectual metamorphosis of intuition into an “intuition that is not supposed to be an intuition” (eine Anschauung, die nicht Anschauung sein soll) (FTP 226 [GA IV/3:406])—and finally to the “thing that is also supposed to exist in itself and apart from the I” (FTP 227 [GA IV/3:406]).11 This is not the place to follow these complex developments in detail, but it is worth mentioning the following two points. First, as seen above, Fichte tries to show that all these further actions of consciousness are of their own right conditions of possibility of consciousness itself—viz. of self-consciousness—so that the latter could not be without any of them. Second, Fichte’s analysis of the above-mentioned developments tries to undermine the claim that consciousness is able to “reach” “external independent reality.” What seems to be something beyond consciousness and independent of it turns out to be nothing but a content of consciousness (consciousness itself in the guise of something opposed to it). To paraphrase the above quote, it is “a content of consciousness that is not supposed to be a content of consciousness.” And what is more, it also turns out that, though at first sight it seems to be something utterly different from (and independent of) “immanent limitation” viz. resistance, on closer inspection it emerges that “external reality” has no other content or determination but the very “immanent limitation” or resistance it is opposed to. Fichte expresses this by saying that, when all is said and done, the independent external reality is nothing else but an interpretation of our feeling (Deutung unseres Gefühls): “The truly characteristic feature of an object (or of ‘reality’) is that it is something that is posited in consequence of a feeling …. A feeling … lies within us and is transferred to an object, which is supposed to lie outside of us. An external object is an interpretation of our feeling” (FTP 229 [GA IV/3:408]).12 Now, this does not mean that the real insight we allegedly have into the “external independent object” is rooted in our feelings (i.e., in immanent resistance). The point is that “external reality” is itself nothing but an interpretation of our feelings viz. of immanent resistance—that is, (1) something based solely in “immanent resistance” (something constantly “fueled” and “maintained” by it) and (2) something as immanent as our feelings (viz. as immanent as “immanent resistance” itself). In short, what the said self-evidence about “external resistance” views as “the root of it all” (something beyond consciousness and acting upon consciousness) turns out to be the final result of a complex set of actions of consciousness—and indeed of a complex set of actions of consciousness that never cuts the “umbilical cord” with “immanent resistance” and is so entirely dependent upon “immanent resistance” that it turns out to be nothing else but an immanent transformation of “immanent resistance.”13 In conclusion, what the “exterior independent reality” resistance seems to be all about turns out to be nothing of what it claims (and may seem) to be. In the final analysis, it is nothing else but consciousness—immanent resistance—living, as it were, above its means, positing its own absence as the origin and nucleus of resistance and failing to realize that this is just an “optical illusion” and, as Fichte puts it, a Nichtgedanke (a non-thought) (SE 9 [GA I/5:22]).14

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Notes 1 The fact that Fichte often refers to sensations or impressions as “feelings” (Gefühle) has to do with this: they are intrinsically self-activity-related (viz. states of the subject’s own activity or tension). 2 In the Rechtslehre Fichte speaks of a “state of being bound” (Zustand der Gebundenheit). Cf. FNR 20 (GA I/3:330). 3 The point is that action or self-activity is somehow hindered, curbed or held in check. 4 To use Kant’s expression from the 1770 Dissertation (De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et principiis, TP 394, [Ak II:392]). 5 All mentions of the Sittenlehre refer to the 1798 treatise. 6 Cf. FTP 185 (GA IV/3: 384): “The Not-I does not approach the I, but vice versa.” 7 Even if Fichte does occasionally speak of resistance as Aufhebung of activity, he does so in a context in which he points out that the Aufhebung of activity he is referring to coexists with a minimum level of the opposite. 8 In other words, a minimum of activity’s resistance to resistance is a sine qua non of the said Wechselwirkung. 9 Cf. FTP 166 (GA IV/3:373): “Action is activity that is constantly resisted, and it is only by means of this synthesis of resistance that an activity of the I becomes intuitable.”—and also FTP 166 (GAIV/2:57): “A pure activity cannot be intuited as such; it can be intuited only insofar as it encounters some resistance, and then it is called an ‘action.’ This is because an action has to be directed at some object, which our language correctly designates ‘what stands in opposition,’ for this object is what resists activity.” In short, “action” differs from “activity” itself because “action” = “activity” × resistance; and the object (Gegenstand) is “what resists activity” (das der Thätigkeit WIDERSTEHENDE) (FTP 166 [GA IV/2:57]). See also FTP 185 (GA IV/3:384): “The Not-I is in this case a hindrance, a dam: not a counterstriving, but something standing in the way.” 10 See especially SE 9f. [GA I/5:23] and SE 12 [GA I/5:25]: “that such a resistance appears is entirely the result of the laws of consciousness, and the resistance can therefore rightly be considered a product of these laws.” 11 For a closer discussion of these topics see Carvalho 2019. 12 Cf. FTP 228 [GA IV/3:407]: “The I calls this product of feeling a ‘thing’ or ‘reality.’ (was aus dem Gefühle erfolgt[,] heißt dem Ich Ding, Realität).” This amounts to saying: “The I calls this product of resistance a ‘thing’ or ‘reality’).” 13 Fichte inverts the dependency link the said self-evidence is all about. In his view, “independent reality” is but an “avatar” of “immanent limitation” viz. “immanent resistance.” It is something constituted in absolute dependence upon “immanent resistance.” And, thus, it is not “immanent resistance” that is all about what we have termed “external resistance”—it is the latter that, whether we are aware of it or not, is all about the former. This key idea is already to be found in Fichte’s 1793–4 Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie, where he describes what he terms “Realitätsübertragung” (transfer of reality) and in particular Realitätsübertragung auf das NichtIch (transfer of reality to the Not-I). According to him, this Realitätsübertragung stems from what he terms C3 (that is, from begrenzte Tätigkeit or limited activity)— so that “limited activity” (or, as he also puts it, Einschränkung der EigenMacht and Übertragung der EigenMacht, that is, limitation or constraint and transfer of one’s own power) is the “stuff ” everything is made of. Cf. GA II/3:84–91, 97–8.

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14 Cf. GA I/6:448. Two key passages provide a closer insight into Fichte’s claim that the seemingly self-evident explanation of resistance as the result of some exterior reality is a mere “mirage” or optical illusion. The first passage comes from the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, §5 (FTP 163 [GA IV/3: 372]):

This limitation of acting will eventually lead us to a Not-I – not, to be sure, to anything that is present in itself (zwar nicht auf ein an sich vorhandenes), but rather to something that must necessarily be posited by the intellect in order to account for this limitation. More specifically, we may also find that all possible actuality (Würklichkeit) originates from one single actuality (Würklichkeit). The original source of everything actual (der Urgrund alles würklichen) is consequently the interaction, or union (Wechselwirkung), of the I and the Not-I. Accordingly, the Not-I is nothing actual (würklich) unless it is related to an instance of acting on the part of the I, for only on this condition and only by this means does it become an object of consciousness. The “thing in itself ” is thereby abolished once and for all. Moreover, the same thing is true of the I as well: It appears in consciousness only in relation to a Not-I. The I is supposed to posit itself, but it can do this only by acting; acting, however, involves a relationship with the Not-I. The I is something only to the extent that it interacts with the world; both the I and the Not-I are [first] encountered within this relationship. Once one has discovered them, one can then separate them; but each of them, even when considered in isolation from the other, still preserves its original character and can be represented only in relation to the other.



Fichte emphasizes that the original source of everything else (the original source of all actuality) is one sole actuality, namely limitation of activity (limited activity). In other words, the original source of everything is an inseparably complex unity, namely the particular kind of inseparable interaction between the I and the Not-I the word “resistance” stands for. This inseparably complex unity precedes the “isolated I” and the “isolated Not-I”—and indeed so much so that both the former and the latter (1) are but a modified version of the original inseparable unity and (2) cannot take place without it. Hence, neither the “separate I” nor the “separate Not-I” can be the source of the said interaction (i.e., of resistance): it is rather the other way around. In the final analysis, explaining resistance as a result of the Not-I (or, for that matter, explaining it as a result of the I) is like “putting the cart before the horse” (putting the explanandum into the explanans and explaining resistance as a result of resistance). The second passage comes from the Sittenlehre (SE 97 [GA I/5:101]):

From the transcendental standpoint it appears utterly absurd to assume a Not-I as a thing in itself, in abstraction from all reason. How then is the limitation of our efficacy to be explained from this perspective – not, to be sure, explained with respect to its form (i.e., why such a limitation has to be posited at all), for this is precisely the question we have just answered by means of a deduction, but with respect to its material (i.e., why this limitation is thought precisely in the way that it is thought, why precisely such and such means and no others are supposed to lead to the achievement of a determinate end)? Here we are absolutely not supposed to assume either things in themselves or laws of nature, understood as the laws of a nature outside of us; consequently, we can comprehend this limitation [of our efficacy] only in the following manner: the

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I simply limits itself in this way, and does not do this freely or with any choice [nicht etwa mit Freiheit und Willkür], for in that case it would not be limited; instead, it limits itself in this manner in accordance with an immanent law of its own being, through a natural law of its own (finite) nature. This determinate, rational being just happens to be so constituted that it has to limit itself in precisely this way; and this constitution [Einrichtung] cannot be explained any further, since it is supposed to constitute our original limitation – which is something we cannot escape through our acting, and hence not through our cognizing either. To demand further explanation of this point would be selfcontradictory.

Fichte highlights the main distinctive features of a transcendental view on resistance. First, he insists on the idea that the limitation of one’s efficacy (that is: resistance) is the original source of everything else. Second, he concedes that resistance (limitation of one’s activity) requires explanation. But, third, he adds an important caveat (what might be termed the transcendental caveat): he points out that the said original source is, as it were, uncircumventable—and that trying to explain it as the result of some external reality (a pure Not-I) is like traveling without leaving home and making Ixion’s mistake, namely capturing the cloud instead of Juno.

Bibliography Carvalho, Mário Jorge. 2019 “What it takes to make a ‘thing’ (Fichte, Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenchaftslehre).” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte 19, http:// journals.openedition.org/ref/1173

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“I,” “You,” and “We.” Intersubjectivity, Recognition, and Summons Mário Jorge de Carvalho

From the 1797 Rechtslehre (Foundations of Natural Right) to the late Berlin lectures, “intersubjectivity” never ceased to be one of the central questions in Fichte’s work. And it is now known that it is also one of the topics in which Fichte’s philosophy had the greatest impact on later thought. His views on recognition, request, and normative calling or summons (Anerkennung, Anmutung, Aufforderung) stand for nothing less than a radically new transcendental theory of “intersubjectivity.” His approach is original in that Fichte explores new ways out of transcendental solipsism (and tries to identify intrinsic transcendental connections between the “I” and the “You” viz. the “We”). But it is also original because “intersubjectivity” is given a crucial role in shaping the whole realm of representation and action: it emerges as an intrinsic component of everything else; the result being that Fichte’s new view on “intersubjectivity” is actually a new view on pretty much everything. This brief overview attempts to outline some essential features in Fichte’s theory of “intersubjectivity” viz. his answer to the question as to whether there can be such a thing as a transcendental multiplicity of consciousnesses (viz. a transcendental multiplicity of what Leibniz once called partes totales) (Leibniz 1978, 307).1 The problem is that to write a brief outline of Fichte’s views on this matter is like trying to squeeze an oversized foot into Cinderella’s slipper. Throughout his work, Fichte consistently emphasizes that “each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the ONE universal and necessary Thought” (CPA 23 [GA I/8:210–11]). One of his main theses is that “Thought itself is alone truly independent and self-existent; – not indeed the thought which belongs to the single thinking Individual, which truly cannot be self-existent, – but the One Eternal Thought, in which all Individuals are but Thoughts” (CPA 58 [GAI/8:235]). In short, Fichte’s philosophy is the very opposite of the “representational” or “philosophical egoism” it might seem to advocate.2 It is a matter of dispute whether Fichte’s early thought—and in particular his 1794 Grundlage—already took this view. But be that as it may, the complete reversal of the primacy of the singular “I” is a common thread through much of Fichte’s work. However, the problem is that this reversal is inextricably linked with

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many other claims and indeed with Fichte’s whole philosophical system. And, to make matters worse, Fichte was always ready to begin all over again, and along new lines— and he made several different attempts to substantiate his views on this matter and to discuss them (1) at different systematic places, (2) from different angles, and (3) at different levels of philosophical depth. As a result, his account of intersubjectivity viz. of the transcendental multiplicity of consciousnesses resembles Keats’ “large Mansion of Many Apartments,”3 and all I can do here is catch a few glimpses of two of them— namely the Rechtslehre and the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. This is not the place to analyze any of these works in any detail (let alone to compare the views they express, their chains of reasoning, their “systematic place” and their methodological foundations). I must perform a much more modest task: namely to highlight some “common denominators” between them, to determine the overall direction to which their account of “intersubjectivity” is heading, and to identify some of the key points and critical issues by which Fichte’s views on the transcendental multiplicity of consciousnesses stand or fall. First, it should be noted that everything Fichte says on this matter has a purely transcendental meaning. On the one hand, it does not claim to describe “external objects” (realities existing independently of consciousness). It has to do solely with consciousness and its actions: it only claims that consciousness itself necessarily entails certain actions viz. claims (certain Setzungen or Überzeugungen) without which it cannot exist. And, on the other hand, it follows the basic principle that “what exists for a rational being exists in the rational being; but there is nothing in the rational being except the result of its acting upon itself ” (FNR 3 [GA I/3:313]); so “that everything that exists, exists only for an I, and … what is supposed to exist for an I, can exist only through the I.” (FNR 24 [GA I/3:335]). In short: “All being, that of the I as well as of the not-I, is a determinate modification of consciousness; and without some consciousness, there is no being” (FNR 4 [GA I/3:314]); and, what is more, every “object has its ground solely in the I’s acting, and is completely determined through this acting4 alone” (FNR 5 [GA I/3:315]). In other words: “The I itself makes the object through its acting; the form of its acting is itself the object, and there is no other object to think of ” (FNR 23 [GA I/3:334]). In addition, it is worth noting that the whole point in Fichte’s view on “intersubjectivity” is trying to prove that this determinate action—the assumption of other consciousnesses outside my own—belongs to the positing of self-consciousness: that it is a necessary condition of self-consciousness (and therefore absolutely inherent to it) (cf., for instance, GA I/3:315, 319). This has to do with three main features of Fichte’s views on self-consciousness. First, the positing of self-consciousness requires not only one, but indeed a very complex manifold of actions or Setzungen, all of which are of their own right conditions of possibility of self-consciousness—so that the latter could not be without any of them. The positing of self-consciousness is, of course, an undivided action. But it is undivided because the said conditions of possibility presuppose each other and must be fulfilled “all in one go.” In short, there is an “organic connection” not only (1) between the

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positing of self-consciousness and all the assumptions that are an essential condition for it, but also (2) between all the latter. Second, self-consciousness has nothing to do with a pure spectator (a pure onlooker or non-participant observer) having an utterly indifferent relation to its “contents.” The point is that this kind of consciousness is basically impossible. For the practical I is the I of original self-consciousness; … a rational being perceives itself immediately only in willing, and would not perceive itself and thus would also not perceive the world (and therefore would not even be an intelligence), if it were not a practical being. (FNR 21 [GAI/3:332])

Fichte insists on this claim: Thus willing and representing stand in constant, necessary reciprocal interaction, and neither is possible if the other is not present at the same time. Mere intelligence does not constitute a rational being, for it cannot exist on its own, nor does the practical faculty alone constitute one, because it, likewise, cannot exist on its own; rather, only the two, together in unity, complete the rational being and make it a whole. (FNR 22 [GA I/3:333]; cf. FTP [GA IV/3: 366, 466])

And he never tires of repeating this: Only through this reciprocal interaction between the I’s intuiting and willing does the I itself – and everything that exists for the I (for reason), i.e. everything that exists at all – become possible. (FNR 22 [GA I/3:333])

In short, all consciousness is consciousness of willing and acting—and it is and must be consciousness of the willing and acting of a free being. In other words: “Consciousness is immediately connected with freedom; indeed, there is nothing else with which it could be connected. Freedom is the first and immediate object of consciousness” (FTP 143 [GA IV/3:362]). And this determines the essential nature of all objects of consciousness: they are intrinsically related to a free will—i.e., they present “something determinable for and by a choice” (FTP 347 [GA IV/3:466]). Third, in Fichte’s view, the conditions of possibility of self-consciousness do not have to do only with general assumptions concerning the basic outline or the “bare bones” of all objects of representation viz. of all objects of the will, as such, etc. His philosophy revolves around what might be termed a “transcendentalization of the concrete.” He tries to establish a link between the self-positing of self-consciousness and the positing of a vast array of rather specific assumptions concerning highly differentiated contents on all levels of the so-called scala naturae (being, life, perception, intelligence)—and indeed concerning all the basic features of what is usually termed “reality” or the “world.” Much of what one would assume to be empirical turns out to be transcendental; and it is as if he tried to show that the concrete structure of the “world as we know it” is the transcendental structure of all possible consciousness as such.

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This holds true for the Sinnenwelt (the “perceptible world”). Fichte tries to show that self-consciousness must “posit and determine a perceptible world outside of itself ”—“a world that exists independently of the I …, and independently of which the I likewise exists” (FNR 24 [GA I/3:335]). Furthermore, he tries to show that self-consciousness must posit all the basic structures of space, time, matter, force, etc. What is more, he tries to show that the I must take the form of a body (of my own body) among other bodies, and that the “world of bodies” must be shaped as a centered manifold: a multiplicity of “concentric circles” of objectivity revolving, as it were, around my own body, and constituted in such a manner that everything in them defines itself by the particular way it relates to my body and revolves around my body (i.e., around the I).5 According to Fichte, all this amounts to conditions of possibility of self-consciousness— to basic assumptions that are entailed in the self-positing of self-consciousness as such. But what interests us here is that, in Fichte’s view, the same also applies to the “spiritual world” (Geisterwelt)—and in particular to the assumption of other consciousnesses outside my own (viz. of other free beings): “the rational being cannot posit itself as a rational being with self-consciousness without positing itself as an individual, as one among several rational beings that it assumes to exist outside itself, just as it takes itself to exist” (FNR 9 [GA I/3:319]). Or, as he also puts it, “I posit myself as rational, i.e. as free. In doing so, the representation of freedom is in me. In the same undivided action, I simultaneously posit other free beings” (FNR 9 [GA I/3:319]). In the Nova methodo lectures, he stresses that the I must posit itself as an individual and that it cannot do so without positing itself in opposition to other beings similar to itself—that is, without positing “a realm of rational beings outside of ” itself (FTP 302f. [GAIV/3:444f.]). The I cannot posit itself as something determinate without something determinable—and “what is determinable in this case is reason as a whole (my generic essence)” (FTP 302 [GA IV/3:444f.]). That is, the I cannot posit itself without positing more than itself, namely a purely spiritual mass (eine Maße des rein Geistigen) (FTP 302 [GA IV/3:444f.])—the realm of rational beings; so that it posits itself as “a determinate portion of this mass” (FTP 302 [GA IV/3:444f.]; cf. GA IV/3:468f., 470f.). All this is in keeping with the absolute primacy of the I—except for the fact that, paradoxically enough, the positing of the I cannot be dissociated from the positing of a “we” (i.e., of a community of consciousnesses). In other words, the positing of the I cannot take place in the singular (the “first-person singular” presupposes the “firstperson plural”): “According to the order of thinking, therefore, I myself am the first and highest thing I discover; I cannot discover myself apart from similar beings outside of me, however, for I am an individual.” FTP 304 [GA IV/3:446]). The point is that the I is not possible alone—that it is intrinsically part of something more (the transcendental “we”), so that this “something more” (the “we”) is as much a condition and constituent of the I as the I is a condition and constituent of everything else. To use Augustine’s well-known expression, Fichte claims that the transcendental “we” is interior intimo meo; it is the very opposite of something additional or supervening. It must be there from the very beginning, and everything—including the I—is originally determined by the “we” (viz. by the realm of other consciousnesses or other free beings outside of the I) and belongs from the outset to this realm. In short,

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the transcendental “we” (the said “spiritual mass”) is what might be termed the real “transcendental matrix”. Incidentally it should be noted that the “transcendental matrix” we are talking about corresponds to the sphere of the Doctrine of Right (Rechtslehre). For the transcendental “we” is a sphere for freedom that several beings share. I do not ascribe to myself all the freedom I have posited, because I posit other free beings as well, and must ascribe to them a part of this freedom. In appropriating freedom for myself, I limit myself by leaving some freedom for others as well. Thus the concept of right is the concept of the necessary relation of free beings to one another. (FNR 9 [GAI/3:319])

This does not mean that the Rechtslehre is transcendental science (viz. the Wissenschaftslehre)—for the Rechtslehre considers the transcendental “we” from a particular point of view; nor does it mean that the said “sphere for freedom” cannot appear in yet another light—namely from the point of view of moral obligation. But the point is that Fichte’s philosophy directly links the Rechtslehre with nothing less than the very “transcendental matrix” upon which everything else depends. But the key question is this: how does Fichte substantiate the claim that the I can only be determined as an individual—and therefore presupposes the said “spiritual mass” viz. the positing of other consciousnesses: a transcendental “we”? The nervus probandi lies in his claim that what he terms Aufforderung (summons)— and recognition (viz. the complex structure of reciprocal recognition)6—is pivotal both to the positing of the I and to the positing of other consciousnesses. Fichte asks: “How can the subject find itself as an object” (FNR 32[GAI/3:343])— how can the I have itself as an object? How can self-consciousness—that is, free and self-determining self-consciousness—appear to itself as an object (and thereby become self-consciousness in the first place)? The point is that the object in question must meet certain requirements: “The subject’s efficacy” must be “synthetically unified with the object in one and the same moment,” so that “the subject’s efficacy is itself the object that is perceived and comprehended, and … the object is nothing other than the subject’s efficacy (and thus … the two are the same)” (FNR 31[GAI/3:342]). Or, as he also puts it: The synthesis is supposed to yield an object; but the nature of the object is such that, when it is comprehended by a subject, the subject’s free activity is posited as constrained. But this object is supposed to be the subject’s own efficacy; however, the nature of the subject’s efficacy is to be absolutely free and self-determining. Both are supposed to be unified here, the natures of both object and subject are supposed to be preserved without either being lost. How might this be possible? (FNR 31 [GAI/3:342])

And his answer is: “Both are completely unified if we think of the subject’s being determined as its being determined to be self-determining, i.e. as a summons (eine

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Aufforderung) to the subject, calling upon it to resolve to exercise its efficacy” (FNR 31 [GAI/3:342]; cf. GA IV/3:468f.). In other words, the “summons calling upon the subject to act” is a fully fledged object (an external “check”—something “coming from the outside,” an external influence or Einwirkung). But on the other hand, the subject (its efficacy, its free and self-determining activity) is what this fully fledged object is all about: Thus as surely as the subject comprehends the object, so too does it possess the concept of its own freedom and self-activity, and indeed as a concept given to it from the outside. It acquires the concept of its own free efficacy, not as something that exists in the present moment (for that would be a genuine contradiction), but rather as something that ought to exist in the future. (FNR 32 [GA I/3:342f])

As Fichte puts it, the summons is such that the “subject is determined to be selfactive by means of an external check (Anstoß),” but this external check is all about the subject’s freedom and self-determining activity. That is, the subject is not “determined and necessitated by the summons in the way that – under the concept of causality – an effect is determined and necessitated by its cause” FNR 35[GAI/3:345]). In this particular case the external check “must nevertheless leave the subject in full possession of its freedom to be self-determining: for, otherwise, the first point would be lost, and the subject would not find itself as an I” (FNR 32[GAI/3:343]).7 But this is not all. On the other hand, the summons is like a Janus bifrons looking both to the I and to another consciousness. For it is “a limitation of the I” (FNR 34 [GAI/3:344]): but there is no limitation without something that does the limiting. Thus, the subject, insofar as it has posited this influence (Einwirkung) upon itself, must have simultaneously posited something outside itself as the determining ground of this influence. (FNR 34 [GAI/3:344])

And this determining ground can be no other than a rational being. Or, as Fichte puts it, the rational being cannot posit itself as such, except in response to a summons calling upon it to act freely. But if there is such a summons, then the rational being must necessarily posit a rational being outside itself as the cause of the summons, and thus it must posit a rational being outside itself in general. (FNR 37[GAI/3:347])

The point is that the positing of the summons (which is the condition of possibility for the positing of self-consciousness) cannot be dissociated from the positing of other rational beings: The subject has now posited itself as containing within itself the ultimate ground of something that exists within it (this was the condition of I-hood, of rationality

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in general); but it has likewise posited a being outside itself as the ultimate ground of this something that exists within it. (FNR 39 [GAI/3:349])

In short, what we are dealing with here is a particular instance—or rather the original instance—of the general form of consciousness Fichte expresses in the following terms: “we cannot posit ourselves without positing something outside us, to which we must ascribe the same reality we attribute to ourselves” (FNR 39 [GAI/3:348]). Five points should be noted here. First, Fichte’s summons is at the same time a necessary condition and the factical fulfillment of this necessary condition. The positing of the “I ↔ We” requires a factical external influence (a factical Einwirkung: a factical Antoß). The Rechtslehre expresses this by speaking of a “necessary fact” (FNR 34 [GAI/3:344]). Second, this means that the original self-positing of self-consciousness is intrinsically Erziehung (upbringing): “The summons to engage in free self-activity is what we call Erziehung.” (FNR 38 [GAI/3:347]). In other words, Fichte claims that the I is originally constituted through Erziehung (education, upbringing). It acquires itself through a factical relation to someone else. But here Erziehung does not just mean something happening to the I once it is already there. It also means the original positing of the I: the fact that it cannot posit itself without positing this Erziehung (being brought up through a factical relation to another consciousness). Third, Fichte does not just claim that “if there are to be human beings at all, there must be more than one” (FNR 37 [GA I/3:347]) (i.e. if there is to be an I at all, there must be more than one). His claim is that one “becomes a human being only among human beings” (FNR 37 [GA I/3:347]) (the I becomes an I only among other Is). That is, his point is that if there is to be an I at all, there must be a particular kind of interaction or communication between consciousnesses. In short, everything depends on the “acting upon,” and Fichte is not just speaking of a manifold of the Is, but of an interacting community of the Is. Fourth, the interacting community we are talking about is based on reciprocity (free reciprocation). On the one hand, the summons expresses someone else’s recognition of the subject’s own freedom—and this means someone else’s self-limitation (the other being’s limitation of its own freedom) for the sake of oneself. But, on the other hand, it also expresses a request: one is expected to recognize the other’s freedom and to limit one’s own freedom for the other’s sake. The “we” (or, for that matter, the “you”) is therefore all about reciprocal recognition—i.e., the particular kind of interaction Fichte describes in the following terms: “One cannot recognize the other if both do not mutually recognize each other; and one cannot treat the other as a free being, if both do not mutually treat each other as free” (FNR 42 [GA I/3:351]). Fifth, Fichte also addresses the question of how one comes “to transfer the concept of rationality on to some objects in the sensible world but not on to others; what is the characteristic difference between these two classes of objects?” (FNR 75 [GA I/3:380]). Or, as he also puts it: “how do I know which particular object is a rational being?” (FNR 75 [GA I/3:380]). His answer to this question involves, of course, “reciprocal communication” (FNR 75 [GAI/3:380]). But it also involves an attempt to show that there is something unique about the human body—that it expresses self-activity and

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immediately looks like an “instrument of freedom” (FNR 77 [GA I/3:382]). In short, Fichte tries to show that several features of the human form, “in their amazing, instantaneously grasped connection” (FNR 78 [GA I/3:383])—“and without us being aware of the reasons for it” (FNR 76[GA I/3:380])—confront us with the presence of freedom. I would like to conclude with the following thoughts. As Fichte himself points out, the key question is not only (1) “how does a man come to assume that there are rational beings like himself apart from him, and how does he come to recognize them, since they are certainly not immediately present to his pure self-consciousness?” (EPW 153 [GA I/3:34]), but also (2) “whether there is anything beyond this representation which corresponds to it; whether rational beings exist independently of our representations of them and would exist even if we had no such representations” (EPW 154 [GA I/3:35]). In this respect, the following points could be drawn from the discussion above: 1. First, everything depends on whether Fichte succeeds in his attempt to prove the primacy of the I and to show the role played by the positing of the I as a necessary condition of everything else (i.e., of all other positing). 2. Second, everything depends on whether he succeeds in establishing a link between the positing of the transcendental I and the positing of the transcendental “We.” And in particular, everything depends on whether (1) his claim that the determinate I (viz. individuality) presupposes “a sphere of rational beings in opposition to myself ” (FTP 302 [GA IV/3:445]),8 (2) his claim that “individuality = the summons,” (3) his claim that the summons is the only way the I can appear to itself (or become an object to itself), (4) his claim that the summons is the original positing of another consciousness, and (5) his claims about reciprocal recognition are all cogent. And there is also the question of (6) whether the summons is really the original positing of the I as an object to itself, (7) whether the summons is the original positing of other rational beings (whether the summons itself can be posited without presupposing both the I and other rational beings), and (8) whether the summons is really able to be the “wick” of the whole “flame” and to act as the “big bang” of it all. Last but not least, everything depends on whether the “human form” can really play the role Fichte ascribes to it. 3. Third, everything depends on whether Fichte’s account manages to show that there is something beyond our conception of other consciousnesses “which corresponds to the conception itself.” In other words, everything depends on whether he really shows that other rational beings “exist independently of our representations of them and would exist even if we had no such representations” (EPW 154 [GA I/3:35]). For, even assuming that all the above-mentioned claims are perfectly sound, the question still remains whether the necessary assumptions or actions of consciousness (and even the “necessary fact”) Fichte refers to are anything more than just this: someone’s assumptions viz. a purely “immanent” fact—that is, something belonging to the realm of one’s consciousness and which is perfectly possible without the existence of any other. In short, there is a world of difference between (1) the necessary positing of other consciousnesses and (2) their real existence. And the question is whether Fichte’s “other rational beings”

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(the multiplicity of consciousnesses arising from the fact that transcendental consciousness must posit itself among other consciousnesses) are really more than what might be termed a “domestic outside,” and whether Fichte’s account provides (1) a conclusive “proof ” of the real existence of other consciousnesses, (2) some real insight into what (or who) another consciousness is in the first person, and, for that matter, (3) some real insight into what (or who) I am, in the second or third person, to someone else.9

Notes 1 A pars totalis is the very opposite of a sub-totality or a partial totality: it means everything appearing to each one of us, including everything each of us opposes to his or her finite access (for that, too, must somehow appear to us if we are aware that it remains out of our reach, i.e. if we are aware of the finite character of our own access to reality). In short, Leibniz’s pars totalis stands for the absolute totality of appearance, insofar as it is always self-contained and has the form, as it were, of a “one-to-one meeting” (i.e., insofar as it always belongs to someone and cannot be shared with anybody else). And the point is that, paradoxically enough, this absolute totality leaves room for something other than itself, and indeed for something altogether different—namely for another equally absolute totality: the totality of everything appearing to someone else (and revolving, as it were, around someone else). And, what is more, these two partes totales in turn leave room for an unlimited number of still other partes totales (for other no less absolute totalities beyond themselves): namely the absolute totalities appearing to an unlimited number of other consciousnesses. From its own point of view, each of these partes totales is all-embracing, which in turn means that they are all mutually exclusive, so that in a sense none of them has anything belonging to any of the others. They can be aware of each other but in such a way that each of them sees all others as parts of its own realm and has no real access to anything belonging to any other pars totalis (i.e., no real access to how it appears in the framework of another pars totalis: in the eyes of someone else and as part of someone else’s life). But the problem is that, instead of having absolutely no idea of this, each pars totalis seems to be aware of the very thing it has no access to: the absolute otherness of each other pars totalis. In short, paradoxically enough, each pars totalis somehow includes what remains out of its reach. 2 Cf. Baggesen to Reinhold, 19.12.1793 and 5.9.1795, in: Fuchs 1978, 46 and 145f. 3 To J. H. Reynolds, May 3, 1818, in: Keats 1958, 279. 4 That is: through a certain determinate way of acting. 5 Cf. Carvalho 2016. 6 Recognition might be simple (non-reciprocal), so that (1) one recognizes another individual without being recognized by the latter or (2) one asks to be recognized by another individual without recognizing him or her. But, as will be seen later, Fichte claims that there is no such thing as non-reciprocal recognition. 7 Cf. GA IV/3:470–1. Or, as Fichte puts it in this latter passage: “Individuality is given to me precisely through this summons: individuality = the summons to act freely.” 8 This “sphere of rational beings in opposition to myself ” is what the “concept of a species” (FNR 38 [GA I/3:347]) stands for.

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9 That is, whether Fichte’s views provide an answer to the questions raised in Pirandello’s Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One and One Hundred Thousand). For further discussion of Fichte’s views on the topics discussed in this chapter, see notably Kölsche 1931; Opocher 1944; Heimsoeth 1962; Lauth 1962; Philonenko 1966; Naulin 1969; Baumanns 1972; Hunter 1973; Druet 1973; Weischedel 1973; Ferry 1981; Hohler 1982; Masullo 1986; Renaut 1986; Düsing 1987; Ivaldo 1987; Radrizzani 1987; Düsing 1988; Lauth 1989, 180–95; Düsing 1991; Perrinjaquet 1991; Cesa 1992, 198–233; Williams 1992; Kahlo et al. 1992; Radrizzani 1993; Williams 1994; Neuhouser 1994; Fischbach 1999; Williams 2002; Masullo 2005; Darwall 2005; Wood 2006; Breazeale and Rockmore 2006; Clarke 2009; Nuzzo 2010; Radrizzani 2010; Kloc-Konkołowic 2012; von Manz 2012; Radrizzani 2012; Wood 2016; Gottlieb 2016; and Altman 2018.

Bibliography Altman, Matthew C. 2018. “Fichte’s Practical Response to the Problem of Other Minds.” Revista de estud(i)os sobre Fichte 16, http://journals.openedition.org/ref/859. Baumanns, Peter. 1972. Fichtes ursprüngliches System. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Breazeale, Dan and Tom Rockmore. 2006. Rights, Bodies, and Recognition: New Essays on Fichte’s “Foundations of Natural Right.” Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate. Carvalho, Mário Jorge. 2016. “Fichte and the Body in Action.” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte 12, http://journals.openedition.org/ref/683. Cesa, Claudio. 1992. J. G. Fichte e l’idealismo trascendentale. Bologna: Mulino. Clarke, James A. 2009. “Fichte and Hegel on Recognition.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17: 365–85. Darwall, Stephen L. 2005. “Fichte and the Second-person Standpoint.” Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus 3: 91–113. Druet, Pierre-Philippe. 1973. “Fichte et l’intersubjectivité: les thèses de M. A. Philonenko.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 71: 134–73. Düsing, Edith. 1987. “Sittliche Aufforderung. Fichtes Theorie der Interpersonalität in der WL nova methodo und in der Bestimmung des Menschen.” In Transzendentalphilosophie als System – Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen 1794 und 1806, edited by Albert Mues, 174–97. Hamburg: Meiner. Düsing, Edith. 1988. “Anerkennung und Bildung des Selbstbewußtseins – Zum Problem der Intersubjektivität in Fichtes Idealismus der Freiheit.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Philosophie 20: 131–51. Düsing, Edith. 1991. “Individualität und Person in Fichtes frühere Ethik und Rechtslehre.” Fichte-Studien 3: 29–50. Ferry, Luc. 1981. “Sur la distinction du droit et de l’éthique dans la première philosophie de Fichte.” Archives de Philosophie du Droit 26: 287–301. Fischbach, Franck. 1999. Fichte et Hegel: La reconnaissance. Paris: PUF. Fuchs, Erich. 1978. Fichte im Gespräch. Berichte der Zeitgenossen. I. Stuttgart: FromannHolzboog. Gottlieb, Gabriel. 2016. Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Rights: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1962. J. G. Fichtes Aufschließung der gesellschaftlich-geschichtlichen Welt. Torino: Edizioni di “Filosofia.”

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Hohler, Thomas P. 1982. Imagination and Reflection: Intersubjectivity: Fichte’s Grundlage of 1794. The Hague: Nijhoff. Hunter, Charles K. 1973. Der Interpersonalitätsbeweis in Fichtes früher angewandter praktischer Philosophie. Meisenheim a. Glan: Hain. Ivaldo, Marco 1987. “Transzendentale Interpersonalitätslehre in Grundzügen nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre.” In Transzendentalphilosophie als System – Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen 1794 und 1806, edited by Albert Mues, 163–73. Hamburg: Meiner. Kahlo, Michael, Ernst A. Wolff, and Rainer Zaczyk (eds.). 1992. Fichtes Lehre vom Rechtsverhältnis: die Deduktion der Art. 1–4 der Grundlage des Naturrechts und ihre Stellung in der Rechtsphilosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Keats, John. 1958. The Letters of John Keats 1814–1821, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kloc-Konkołowic, Jakub. 2012. “Das Ich und der Andere. Intersubjektivität in der Philosophie Johann Gottlieb Fichtes und in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls.” Fichte-Studien 37: 163–74. Kölsche, Wilhelm. 1931. Die Fortentwicklung des Problems Individuum und Gemeinschaft durch J. G. Fichte. Bochum: Kamp. Lauth, Reinhard. 1962. “Le problème de l’interpersonalité chez J. G. Fichte.” Archives de Philosophie 26: 325–44. Lauth, Reinhard. 1989. Transzendentale Entwicklungslinien von Descartes bis zu Marx und Dostojewski. Hamburg: Meiner. Leibniz, Gottfried W. 1978. Die Philosophischen Schriften, VII. Hildesheim: Olms. Masullo, Aldo. 1986. Fichte l’intersoggettività e l’originario. Napoli: Guida. Masullo, Aldo. 2005. Lezioni sull’intersoggettività Fichte e Husserl. Napoli: Ed. Scientifica. Naulin, Paul. 1969. “Philosophie et communication chez Fichte.” Revue internationale de Philosophie 23: 410–41. Neuhouser, Frederick. 1994. “Fichte and the Relationship between Right and Morality.” In Fichte: Historical Context/Contemporary Controversies, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 158–80. Highland, NJ: Humanities Press. Nuzzo, Angelica. 2010. “Phenomenologies of Intersubjectivity: Fichte between Hegel and Husserl.” In Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, edited by Violetta L. Waibel, Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 97–117. Berlin: De Gruyter. Opocher, Enrico. 1944. G. A. Fichte e il problema dell’individualità. Padova: Cedam. Perrinjaquet, Alain 1991. “Individuum und Gemeinschaft in der Wissenschaftslehre zwischen 1796 und 1800.” Fichte-Studien 3: 7–28. Philonenko, Alexis. 1966. La liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Radrizzani, Ives. 1987. “Le fondement de la communauté humaine chez Fichte.” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 19: 195–216. Radrizzani, Ives. 1993. Vers la Fondation de l’Intersubjectivité chez Fichte. Des Principes à la Nova Methodo. Paris: Vrin. Radrizzani, Ives. 2010. “The Self, the Other and the Limit by Fichte and Levinas.” Archives de Philosophie 73: 285–95. Radrizzani, Ives. 2012. “Das Selbst, der Andere und die Grenze bei Fichte und Levinas.” Fichte-Studien 37: 319–32. Renaut, Alain. 1986. Le système du droit : philosophie et droit dans la pensée de Fichte. Paris: PUF. von Manz, Hans Georg. 2012. “Die praktische Erfahrung des Anderen und die Funktion der Vergemeinschaftung bei Fichte und Husserl.” Fichte-Studien 37: 175–92.

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Waibel, Violetta (ed.). 2015. Fichte und Sartre über Freiheit. Das Ich und der Andere. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. Weischedel, Wilhelm. 1973. Der frühe Fichte. Aufbruch der Freiheit zur Gemeinschaft. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Williams, Robert R. 1992. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press. Williams, Robert R. 1994. “The Question of the Other in Fichte’s Thought.” In Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Controversies, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 142–57. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities. Williams, Robert R. 2002. “The Displacement of Recognition by Coercion in Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 47–64. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Wood, Allen W. 2006. “Fichte’s Intersubjective I.” Inquiry 49, 62–79. Wood, Allen W. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Deduction of Right James A. Clarke

Fichte’s 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right opens with the “Deduction of the Concept of Right” (hereafter, the Deduction).1 This Deduction attempts to show that the concept of a specific norm-governed intersubjective relationship—the “relation of right,” which is a relationship of mutual recognition—is a necessary condition of self-conscious individuality. The Deduction plays a crucial role in the argument of the Foundations for two reasons. First, it provides a central argument in support of Fichte’s thesis that the theory of right (legal and political philosophy) is separate from, or independent of, moral theory. (For discussion of this thesis, see my “Separation of Right from Morality,” in this volume.) This is so because the Deduction purports to derive the concept of right without any reliance on moral concepts or principles. Second, the Deduction derives a concept that plays a central role in Fichte’s legal and political theory as it is developed in the Foundations—namely, the concept of mutual recognition. For Fichte, legal and political norms and institutions are justified only insofar as they guarantee and facilitate relations of mutual recognition between citizens. My aim in this chapter is to provide a clear and compelling interpretation of the argument of Fichte’s Deduction. This interpretation is distinctive in focusing on the nature of Fichte’s argument and on his deduction of the concept of individuality. I conclude the chapter by briefly considering the significance of Fichte’s argument.

The Nature of Fichte’s Argument Before we examine the argument of Fichte’s Deduction, it will be helpful to discuss the type of argument that it is. As Fichte uses it, the term “deduction” denotes a transcendental argument. In its standard form, a transcendental argument proceeds from the premise that Y is the case (where Y is usually something uncontroversial that a skeptic could be expected to accept—e.g., that she is self-conscious) and argues that X is a necessary condition of the possibility of Y (where X is often something about which there is skeptical doubt— e.g., that there is a mind-independent external world). Since Y is the case, it follows that X is the case.2

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The overall argument of Fichte’s Deduction conforms to this pattern. It proceeds from the claim that human beings are self-conscious and argues that standing in a norm-governed relationship of mutual recognition is a necessary condition of selfconsciousness. Although it conforms to this pattern, there are several features of Fichte’s transcendental argument that make it distinctive and that merit comment. First, Kant’s major transcendental arguments all concern issues in the domain of theoretical philosophy. Fichte’s Deduction is noteworthy for its deployment of transcendental argument in the domain of legal and political theory. Indeed, Fichte’s realization that transcendental arguments can be used to justify fundamental legal and political concepts is one of his major innovations in practical philosophy. Second, Fichte’s Deduction is a complex transcendental argument, consisting of a chain of transcendental arguments or deductions. This is noteworthy because understanding Fichte’s argument depends on identifying its component arguments and on grasping how they are related. The third feature concerns the nature of the transcendentally necessary conditions that Fichte derives. For the purposes of this discussion, we can draw a rough distinction between two kinds of transcendental arguments: theoretical and practical. Theoretical transcendental arguments derive necessary conditions that bear on our awareness or knowledge of the world and of the objects within it. These necessary conditions would include our possessing beliefs or having experiences that something is the case (e.g., the belief that there is a mind-independent reality) and, in the case of so-called “truthdirected” transcendental arguments, the truth of beliefs that something is the case. Most of the canonical examples of transcendental arguments (e.g., Kant’s Refutation of Idealism; P. F. Strawson’s “objectivity argument”) are of this kind. Such arguments can be distinguished from practical transcendental arguments, which derive necessary conditions that bear on how the world ought to be. These necessary conditions would include normative beliefs that something ought to be the case, making, and being subject to, normative demands that something be the case, and willing that some state of affairs obtain. Now, what is striking about the complex transcendental argument of Fichte’s Deduction is that it involves both theoretical and practical transcendental arguments. Fichte deduces certain beliefs and experiences (the belief in the existence of an external world; the experience of interacting with another rational being) as necessary conditions of self-consciousness, but he also deduces the issuing of a normative demand as a necessary condition of self-conscious individuality. As we will see, Fichte’s derivation of this “practical” necessary condition plays a decisive role in the argument of the Deduction.

The Argument of Fichte’s Deduction With these preliminaries in mind, let us consider the argument of Fichte’s Deduction. The argument consists of three “theorems.” I will discuss each in turn, ignoring, for the sake of brevity, Fichte’s deduction of our belief in an external world in §2.

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In the first theorem, Fichte provides an account of the self-consciousness of a “finite rational being” (viz. a human being). He argues that human self-consciousness necessarily involves the ascription to oneself of a certain kind of “free activity” or “free efficacy” (freie Wirksamkeit). Free efficacy is the activity of freely forming “concepts of ends” (concepts of goals of action) and of willing to realize them in the world (FNR 20 [SW 3: 19–20]). Insofar as this activity freely determines the ends that it wills, it is autonomous or “self-determining.” Fichte claims that free efficacy is an activity whose “ultimate ground lies purely and simply” within the self-conscious subject (FNR 18 [SW 3: 17]). To say that the “ultimate ground” of free efficacy lies “purely and simply” within the self-conscious subject is to say that, although the content of its willing may be partly determined by and partly dependent on something other than it, it alone is ultimately responsible for deciding what to will and for willing it. Fichte considers this characteristic of free efficacy to be important for two reasons. First, it is in virtue of this characteristic that free efficacy is something that pertains exclusively to oneself (it is what marks the activity as mine and no one else’s). Second, Fichte assumes, uncontroversially, that self-consciousness involves an awareness of something that pertains exclusively to oneself and is not ascribable to anyone or anything else. He therefore argues that if the human being is to ascribe free efficacy to itself—and thereby attain self-consciousness—it must be aware of itself (“posit itself ”) as containing the ultimate ground of its free activity. Such awareness, he later claims (in the third theorem), is the “condition of I-hood, of rationality in general” (FNR 39 [SW 3: 41]. See also FNR 20–1 [SW 3: 20]). As we shall see, this condition plays an important role in the overall argument of the Deduction. So, Fichte claims that a human being can be self-conscious only if it ascribes free efficacy to itself. Fichte does not think that the human being possesses an innate awareness of its free efficacy; he thinks that the human being must manifest its free efficacy if it is to ascribe it to itself. The question he has to answer, then, is this: How is the emergence and self-ascription of free efficacy possible? His answer, which is given in the second theorem, can be stated roughly as follows. If the subject is to ascribe free efficacy to itself, it must manifest it. Fichte argues that the manifestation of free efficacy must be elicited by the influence of an object on the subject. However, he points out that objects typically influence subjects in a way that suppresses and annuls, rather than elicits, their free activity. (His thought, simply put, is that perception of objects is typically accompanied by a sense of oneself as the passive recipient of representations.) What is needed, then, is an object that would, when perceived, somehow impel the subject to manifest its free efficacy. Such an object would, like any object, “determine” (i.e., influence) the subject. However, it would determine the subject to determine itself and thereby manifest its free efficacy. The influence that this object would exert on the subject would constitute a “summons” or “invitation” (Aufforderung) to “resolve to exercise its efficacy” (FNR 31 [SW 3: 32–3]). The Aufforderung is effectively a normative “demand” (Anforderung) that is addressed to the subject—a demand that requires it to determine itself to act. In responding to the summons, the subject determines itself in accordance with freely chosen ends and

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thereby manifests, and self-ascribes, free efficacy (FNR 33 [SW 3: 34]). Since Fichte assumes that only a rational being could issue a normative demand, it transpires that the “object” that is the source of the summons is another subject. Fichte has therefore deduced an intersubjective summons as a necessary condition of the possibility of selfconsciousness. Obviously, the subject can respond to the summons only if it comprehends it, and this means that the subject’s comprehension of the summons is a necessary condition of self-consciousness. Fichte argues that the subject can comprehend the summons only if it infers, on experiencing the summons, that the cause of the summons is a being that possesses concepts, beliefs, and purposes—that is, a free, rational being. This inference, which is an instance of “reflecting judgment,” furnishes the subject with a “sure criterion” for recognizing another rational being: the limitation of physical force by means of concepts and purposes (FNR 36–7, 43, 62 [SW 3: 38, 45, 66]). When that criterion is satisfied, the subject knows that the being that it is in the presence of is actually another rational being—it has, to use Fichte’s terminology, “categorical knowledge” (FNR 41–2 [SW 3: 43–4]). In the Deduction, Fichte does not provide any concrete examples of the summons. However, in the “Corollaries” to the second theorem, and in the First Appendix,3 he links the summons with the “education” or “upbringing” (Erziehung) of children (FNR 37–8, 309–17 [SW 3: 39–40, 358–66]). This suggests that the summons should not be construed as a one-off event, but as a developmental process—a series of summonses— in which the subject’s capacity for free efficacy is gradually developed and refined through repeated intersubjective encounters.4 The account of the summons introduces the theme of intersubjectivity, but it does not yet introduce the concept of mutual recognition. That is deduced in the third theorem, which argues that the summoned subject must posit itself as standing in the “relation of right,” which is a relationship of mutual recognition. (To say that one subject recognizes another is to say that she knows [cognitively recognizes] that the other is a free, rational being, expresses that knowledge in action by limiting her freedom so that the other may act, and does so in a way that is salient to the other [FNR 41–3 (SW 3: 43–6)].) To understand Fichte’s account of recognition, and, indeed, the overall argument of the Deduction, it is vital to have an accurate understanding of what the argument of the third theorem is supposed to achieve. Some commentators have interpreted the third theorem as attempting to deduce a relationship of mutual recognition as a necessary condition of the summons.5 This interpretation is natural inasmuch as the next stage in a sequence of transcendental arguments usually deduces the condition of the possibility of the conclusion deduced in the preceding stage (Cf. Siep 1981, 293–4). However, as Michael Nance points out, it introduces a “problematic circularity” into the argument since Fichte holds that the addressee of the summons does not, prior to the summons, possess the concepts and beliefs that are necessary for recognition (Nance 2012, 613, note 11). It should therefore be avoided. The third theorem does not attempt to deduce mutual recognition as a condition of the possibility of the summons. It rather deduces it as a condition of the possibility of successfully positing oneself as an “individual” (or “person”), where that term, in Fichte’s technical usage, denotes a self-conscious being that distinguishes itself

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from other subjects by ascribing to itself an exclusive sphere of freedom (FNR 53, 40 [SW 3: 56, 42]). The argument of the third theorem, then, is that positing oneself as an individual is a necessary condition of self-consciousness,6 and that standing in a relation of mutual recognition is a necessary condition of successfully positing oneself as an individual. Clearly, this raises the question of why positing oneself as an individual is a necessary condition of self-consciousness. This question is answered in the opening passages of the third theorem, which provide a deduction of the concept of individuality (FNR 39ff [SW 3: 41ff]). This deduction is intended to solve a problem that arises from the deduction of the summons as a necessary condition of self-consciousness. To see what the problem is, recall that Fichte holds that self-consciousness essentially involves an awareness of an activity that has its “ultimate ground” in the subject of self-consciousness and that is, in virtue of that characteristic, ascribable to that subject alone. Thus, if my awareness of free activity is to qualify as self-consciousness, it must be an awareness of a free activity that pertains exclusively to me. As we noted, Fichte calls this the “condition of I-hood.” Now, in responding to the summons, the subject freely determines itself to act and is aware of its act of self-determination. It therefore posits itself as the “ultimate ground” of its manifestation of free activity. It might therefore seem that the condition of I-hood is satisfied; and, indeed, Fichte says that the subject posits itself as containing “the ultimate ground of something that exists within it” (FNR 39 [SW 3: 41]). However, the subject’s act of self-determination is a response to the summons to act, and the summons is the manifestation of the free activity of another rational being—the summoner. Had the other rational being not issued the summons, had it not invited the subject to act, the subject would not have manifested its free activity. The subject is aware of this and therefore also posits the other rational being as the ultimate ground of its activity (see FNR 39 [SW 3: 41]). The upshot of this is that the condition of I-hood is not satisfied after all, since there cannot be two ultimate grounds of one and the same activity in one and the same respect. This means, of course, that the free activity that is manifested by the subject is not ascribable exclusively to it, and therefore does not possess that characteristic which would make it an appropriate object of self-consciousness. The problem, then, is that the summons—which is a necessary condition of the emergence of selfconsciousness—has a consequence that conflicts with the condition of I-hood and thereby threatens to undermine self-consciousness. This problem is solved by the subject positing itself as an “individual” or “person.” To posit oneself as an individual is to distinguish oneself from another subject by ascribing to oneself an exclusive sphere of freedom—a sphere in which you alone can act and from which the other subject is excluded (FNR 43 [SW 3: 46]. See also FNR 53 [SW 3: 56]). The self-ascription of an exclusive sphere of freedom solves the problem because within this sphere the subject is the ultimate ground of its free activity and can ascribe it to itself exclusively (FNR 40 [SW 3: 41–2]).7 Within this sphere, Fichte claims, the subject “constitutes its own freedom and independence” (FNR 40 [SW 3: 42]). The significance of Fichte’s deduction of individuality becomes apparent when we consider his analysis of what is involved in the subject’s positing of itself as an

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individual. The subject can ascribe an exclusive sphere of freedom to itself only if it possesses such a sphere, and it can possess such a sphere only if the other subject (who also posits itself as an individual and who is posited by the subject as positing itself as an individual) voluntarily undertakes not to overstep the limits of its sphere. An obvious, and crucial, implication of this is that the subject’s self-ascription of an exclusive sphere of freedom is dependent on the free activity—the intentional action and volition—of the other subject. The subject is aware of this dependence and therefore implicitly addresses a normative “demand” (Anforderung) or “postulate” (Postulat) to the other subject: the demand that it limit its freedom in accordance with its concept of the subject’s freedom. As Fichte puts it, “This demand upon the other is contained in the act of positing myself as an individual” (FNR 48 [SW 3: 52]). Insofar as the subject posits its continued existence or survival as an individual, it addresses this demand to any individual that it might encounter in the future. This normative demand is effectively a demand for recognition—a demand that other subjects restrict their freedom as a consequence of their knowledge that the subject is a rational being. It might also be regarded as a prototypical or fundamental rights-claim inasmuch as it requires that others not interfere with the subject’s freedom. Fichte’s deduction of this normative demand is the key to his deduction of mutual recognition, which derives the necessary conditions for its satisfaction. The deduction turns on the thought that the satisfaction of an individual’s normative demand is conditional on her interaction partner judging (in the epistemic sense) that she is a free, rational being. In other words, her interaction partner will be rationally compelled to continue to treat her as a rational being (thereby satisfying her demand) only if he knows that she is actually a rational being. The only way that her interaction partner can know that she is actually a rational being is if she limits her freedom in consequence of her judgment that her interaction partner is a rational being—that is, if she recognizes her interaction partner. (If she fails to do this, Fichte claims, her interaction partner cannot infer that she is a rational being [FNR 42 (SW 3: 44)]). However, she can recognize her interaction partner only if he demonstrates that he is a rational being by recognizing her. Consequently, if recognition is to occur at all, it must be mutual. This means, of course, that if the normative demands of individuals are to be satisfied, they must stand in a relationship of mutual recognition. This relationship of mutual recognition is the concept of right. It is important to note that the relationship of mutual recognition, as Fichte deduces it, is not governed by moral norms, but by the norms of theoretical reason—specifically, the norm of “theoretical consistency” (FNR 45, 47 [SW 3: 48, 50]). These norms govern both thought and action, and include the principle of instrumental rationality (Ware 2010, 267). An individual who violates my freedom is inconsistent because she knows X (that I am rational), knows that X entails Y (that she restrict her freedom so that I may act freely) and yet acts in a way that denies Y. She is also inconsistent because she violates the principle of instrumental rationality. This is so because she raises, and wills the satisfaction of, a normative demand, knows that recognizing me is a necessary means for the satisfaction of that demand, and yet fails to recognize me. Having reconstructed the argument of Fichte’s Deduction, I want to conclude by briefly considering its significance.

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The Significance of Fichte’s Deduction Fichte’s Deduction provided the first coherent statement, in the German tradition, of a thesis that is at the heart of the contemporary “politics of recognition”—namely, the thesis that mutual recognition is a necessary condition of self-conscious individuality. Fichte’s statement of that thesis exerted a profound influence on Hegel, whose own theory of recognition was forged in critical reaction to Fichte’s. The current renaissance of interest in Fichte’s practical philosophy owes its origins, in part, to an interest in the sources of Hegel’s theory of recognition. As a consequence of this, much of the discussion of Fichte’s theory of recognition has tended to interpret it through the lens of Hegel’s, regarding the former as an inadequate precursor of the latter. However, several commentators have begun to explore distinctive features of Fichte’s conception of recognition, such as his emphasis on embodied agency (in the “Deduction of the Applicability of the Concept of Right”) and the way in which his theory of recognition is informed by his republican conception of freedom as non-domination (Bernstein 2007; Nance 2016). This research might provide valuable resources for contemporary theories of recognition. Fichte’s Deduction is significant for another reason besides its account of mutual recognition. As I noted earlier, Fichte’s deduction is innovative because it deploys transcendental argument in the domain of legal and political theory. Although Fichte’s innovation in this regard has often been overlooked, it was acknowledged by, and exerted an influence on, the little-known post-Kantian Johann Gottlieb Buhle. In his 1799 Ideen zur Rechtswissenschaft, Moral und Politik, Buhle credits Fichte with inventing the transcendental deduction of the concept of right from “the concept of rational freedom,” criticizes him for relying on dubious metaphysical premises, and attempts to develop a variant of Fichte’s argument that is free from such metaphysical baggage (Buhle 1799, 17–20; my translation). Fichte’s innovation is significant—and Buhle may have realized this—because it adumbrates a potentially powerful strategy for responding to skepticism about human rights. Rather than relying on moral premises that a skeptic might reject, this strategy starts from a minimal claim about self-conscious agency and proceeds, through a sequence of transcendental arguments, to the claim that a self-conscious agent must— on pain of inconsistency—attribute rights to other self-conscious agents and respect those rights. This strategy is usually associated with the political philosophy of Alan Gewirth, who provides a compelling version of it; however, it is, as I have argued elsewhere,8 anticipated by Fichte’s Deduction of the Concept of Right.

Notes

I am grateful to Gabe Gottlieb for his helpful comments and suggestions. The research for this chapter was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant reference: AH/R001847/1). 1 Insightful discussions of the deduction are provided by Gottlieb (2016), Nance (2012), Neuhouser (2016), and Ware (2010). 2 My understanding of transcendental arguments is indebted to Stern (2017).

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3 For an illuminating discussion of the First Appendix, see Gottlieb (2016). 4 For interpretations that emphasize the developmental aspect of the summons, see Nance (2012), Neuhouser (2016), and Gottlieb (2016). 5 Ludwig Siep, who rejects this interpretation, attributes it to Peter Baumanns and to Eberhard Heller (Siep 1981, 293 note 11; 294). 6 Cf. “[T]here is no self-consciousness without consciousness of individuality” (FNR 43 [SW 3: 46]). 7 Cf. “But within the sphere allotted to it, the subject has chosen; it has absolutely given to itself the nearest limiting determination of its own activity; and the ground of this latter determination of the subject’s efficacy lies entirely within the subject alone. Only in this way can the subject posit itself as an absolutely free being, as the sole ground of something; only in this way can it separate itself completely from the free being outside it and ascribe its efficacy to itself alone” (FNR 40 [SW 3: 41–2]; translation modified). 8 For a comparison of Fichte and Gewirth, see Clarke (2014).

Bibliography Bernstein, Jay M. 2007. “Recognition and Embodiment (Fichte’s Materialism).” In German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Espen Hammer, 183–205. London: Routledge. Buhle, Johann G. 1799. “Ueber das Verhältniss des Rechtsprincips zum Sittengesetze.” In Johann G. Buhle, Ideen zur Rechtswissenschaft, Moral und Politik, edited by Johann G. Buhle, 3–50. Göttingen: Schröder. Clarke, James A. 2014. “Fichte’s Transcendental Justification of Human Rights.” In Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, edited by Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale, 242–57. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gottlieb, Gabriel. 2016. “Fichte’s Developmental View of Self-Consciousness.” In Fichte’s “Foundations of Natural Right”: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 117–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nance, Michael. 2012. “Recognition, Freedom, and the Self in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right.” European Journal of Philosophy 23 (3): 608–32. Nance, Michael. 2016. “Freedom, Coercion, and the Relation of Right.” In Fichte’s “Foundations of Natural Right”: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 196–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2016. “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality.” In Fichte’s “Foundations of Natural Right”: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 32–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siep, Ludwig. 1981. “Methodische und systematische Schwierigkeiten in Fichtes ‘Grundlage des Naturrechts’.” In Der transzendentale Gedanke, edited by Klaus Hammacher, 290–307. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Stern, Robert. 2017. “Transcendental Arguments.” The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/ entries/transcendental-arguments. Ware, Owen. 2010. “Fichte’s Voluntarism.” European Journal of Philosophy 18: 262–82.

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Separation of Right from Morality James A. Clarke

In his 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte advances and defends the thesis that legal and political philosophy (the doctrine or theory of right—Rechtslehre) is separate from, or independent of, moral theory (where this is Kantian moral theory).1 This “independence thesis” concerns an issue that is central to early post-Kantian practical philosophy—namely, the issue of how the theory of right is related to Kantian moral theory. The standard or orthodox view of this issue, advanced by writers such as Gottlieb Hufeland, Theodor Schmalz, and Fichte himself, in his early writings, is that the theory of right is dependent on, and derivable from, the principles of morality that are articulated by Kantian moral theory. Some doubts about the adequacy of the standard view are raised by early postKantians such as Salomon Maimon, Johann Benjamin Erhard, and Paul Johann Anselm Feuerbach.2 However, Fichte’s independence thesis goes far beyond anything that is to be found in their work, constituting a distinctive and innovative position in its own right. In what follows, I attempt to provide a clear account of Fichte’s position and of the arguments that he advances in support of it. I also briefly consider its historical and contemporary significance.

The Independence Thesis What does it mean to say that the theory of right is separate from, or independent of, moral theory? It will be helpful to begin by stating what it does not mean. Fichte is not claiming that the theory of right is independent of moral theory in all respects and that there is no connection at all between the two disciplines. There are at least three significant ways in which the two disciplines are connected. First, there is considerable extensional overlap between the practical principles derived by the theory of right and those derived by moral theory. All actions that the law of right (“limit your freedom through the concept of the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in contact”) prohibits will also be morally prohibited, and all morally obligatory actions will also be permitted by the law of right (FNR 10 [SW 3: 10]; Cf. Buhle 1799, 7). Second, Fichte’s moral theory derives duties that either

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correspond to, or require us to establish and act in accordance with, several of the rights, rules, and institutions that are derived in the theory of right. (Thus, the System of Ethics derives the duty to instantiate the right to private property (SE 279 [SW 4: 292]). Third, and relatedly, Fichte’s moral theory derives the moral duty to live in a political community because a rightful social order is a necessary condition for the co-ordination of human behavior, which is itself a necessary condition for the realization of morality in the world (SE 223 [SW 4: 234–5], see Kosch 2017). This means, as Alain Renaut points out, that a rightful social order receives its “ultimate justification” from within moral theory; it also means, as Michelle Kosch points out, that moral theory depends upon the theory of right to derive the conditions for the realization of morality (Renaut 1986, 250; Kosch 2017). Having considered the various ways in which the two disciplines are connected, let us consider what it means to assert the independence thesis. To assert the independence thesis is to claim that the subject-matter of the theory of right admits of a “pure treatment” (reinen Behandlung) that does not appeal to, or presuppose, (Kantian) moral theory (FNR 81 [SW 3: 88]). On an alternative but equivalent formulation, it is to claim that the distinctive tasks of the theory of right can be discharged without reliance, either explicit or implicit, on moral concepts or principles. The theory of right has three tasks: (1) to deduce the fundamental concept of the theory of right (the “concept of right”), which is the concept of a norm-governed interpersonal relationship (the law of right is derived from this concept); (2) to demonstrate that the concept of right is “applicable” to experience; and (3) to deduce the necessary conditions for the “instantiation” or “realization” of that concept (and of any norms or principles deriving from it) in experience. These necessary conditions include legal and political institutions (FNR 12 [SW 3: 11]). Fichte places particular emphasis on demonstrating the independence of the concept of right from moral concepts and principles, and all of his central arguments in support of the independence thesis are related to that aim. This emphasis is no doubt due to the foundational role that the concept of right plays in Fichte’s theory, serving as a first principle from which the norms, principles, and institutions of right are derived. In the remainder of this entry, I will follow Fichte’s emphasis by focusing on his arguments for the independence of the concept of right.

Fichte’s Arguments The Deduction of the Concept of Right To demonstrate the independence of the concept of right from morality would be to show that it can be derived or “deduced” without reliance, either explicit or implicit, on moral concepts or principles. Fichte attempts to show this by providing a “moralityfree”3 transcendental deduction of the concept of right. This deduction begins with the claim that human self-consciousness involves the self-ascription of free agency or “free efficacy” and concludes with the claim that standing in a norm-governed intersubjective relationship (the “relation of right,” which is a relationship of mutual

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recognition) is a necessary condition of self-conscious individuality. (For discussion of Fichte’s deduction, see my “Deduction of Right,” in this volume.) Fichte claims that this deduction does not rely on the concept of the moral law or on any moral concepts (FNR 50 [SW 3: 54]). Although some commentators have contested this claim, it strikes me as quite plausible (see Darwall 2013; Schottky 1995, 293ff). The concept of free efficacy is not a moral concept, but denotes simply the capacity to choose and will freely. The concept of right is concerned solely with the publicly  observable behavior of agents and not with the quality of their motivation (FNR 42–3, 51 [SW 3: 44–5]). And while one might be tempted to interpret the relationship of mutual recognition as a moral relationship (in terms, say, of Kant’s Formula of Humanity or along “contractualist” lines), Fichte argues that within the domain of right the requirement that individuals recognize each other is a requirement, not of morality, but of “theoretical consistency” (FNR 69, 79–80 [SW 3: 74, 86]). Fichte asserts that his deduction entails the falsity of standard Kantian attempts to derive the concept of right from the moral law. This is so, he argues, because “there cannot be more than one deduction of the same concept” (FNR 50 [SW 3: 54]). Taken at face value, that claim looks false, and Fichte provides us with no arguments in support of it.4 Fortunately, Fichte’s rejection of the standard Kantian approach does not rest on that claim, and he provides two arguments against the Kantian approach. These arguments are aimed at attempts to derive the concept of right (and the law that is derived from it) from the concept of the moral law by showing that the former follows directly from the latter. They do not aim to exclude every kind of relationship between the theory of right and moral theory and are quite compatible with the connections mentioned earlier. With this in mind, let us consider Fichte’s two arguments.

The Impossibility of a Deontic Deduction Fichte’s first argument is directed against a deduction of the concept of right from the moral law that is frequently employed by the early post-Kantians, and which he himself employs in his early works (see SW 6: 11–13, 57–61, 73–6, 81–2).5 The deduction exploits the way that the moral law determines the deontic modality of actions and can therefore be described, following Wolfgang Kersting, as a “deontic deduction of right” (Kersting 2001, 22, 27). In the version of it advanced by Fichte in his early works, it is based on three claims about the moral law:6 1. The moral law determines the rightness and wrongness of actions (where actions include intentional omissions) and therefore their deontic modality—that is, whether they are obligatory, prohibited, or indifferent (“merely permitted”). (To say that an action is indifferent is to say that it is both permitted to perform the action and permitted not to perform it.) 2. The moral law has ultimate normative authority in that its decisions always override other normative considerations, including and especially considerations of prudence (Klugheit). 3. If an action is permitted by the moral law, I have a right to perform it.

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These claims give us the concept of a right in general: to say that I have a right to an action is to say that I am permitted to perform it by the moral law. Having derived the concept of a right in general, the deduction proceeds, in a second step, to derive the distinction between inalienable and alienable rights. This derivation turns on the claim that the moral law can permit actions in two ways. (1) It can command that we perform the action—that is, declare its performance to be obligatory. In this case, the permission is unilateral: we are permitted to perform the action (the obligation is entailed by the permission), but not permitted not to perform it. (2) It can be “silent” about the action, neither commanding nor prohibiting it. In this case the action is indifferent, and the permission is bilateral: we are both permitted to perform the action and permitted not to perform it. The two ways in which the moral law permits an action yield, respectively, inalienable and alienable rights (SW 6: 12). What confers the property of inalienability on a right is the fact that relinquishing it would violate a command of the moral law (since I would not be able to perform the commanded action); what confers the property of alienability on a right is the fact that relinquishing it would not violate a command of the moral law. In the Foundations, Fichte attempts to block this deontic deduction by making two claims. The first is that the law of right is a “permissive law.” This claim turns on the idea that the law of right is “limited” in the sense that it issues commands and prohibitions only in relation to a restricted sphere of actions—namely, those actions that threaten to violate the freedom of other agents. The law of right is “silent” about those actions that do not threaten to violate the freedom of other agents, neither commanding nor prohibiting them (Cf. FNR 94 [SW 3: 101]). Such actions are indifferent or merely permitted. Fichte links these merely permitted actions with rights, arguing that a right “follows from a merely permissive law” because “a right is clearly something that one can avail oneself of or not” (FNR 13–14 [SW 3: 13]; Cf. GA, II/3: 405). In contrast with his earlier position, Fichte now considers it to be a defining characteristic of a right that it contains a bilateral permission—that is, to possess a right is to be permitted both to perform an action (by exercising the right) and not to perform it (by not exercising the right). The second claim is that the moral law is not a permissive law. The moral law does not, Fichte claims, have a limited sphere of application, but “governs [gebietet über] all acts of rational spirits”; it “commands unconditionally and thereby extends its reach to everything”7 (FNR 83, note a [SW 3: 90, note a]. My emphasis; FNR 13–14 [SW 3: 13]). This means that the moral law is never “silent,” but declares every action to be either obligatory or prohibited.8 This claim excludes the possibility of morally indifferent actions and represents a radical departure from Fichte’s earlier position, which effectively conceived of the moral law as a permissive law. When combined, these two claims block the deontic deduction. The first tells us that the law of right confers bilateral permissions on agents in the form of rights. The second tells us that there are no morally indifferent actions and hence that the moral law cannot be a source of bilateral permissions. But if that is the case, rights cannot, except on pain of contradiction, be directly derived from the moral law. Fichte’s first argument blocks the deontic deduction, but it does so by relying on a conception of morality that denies the existence of morally indifferent actions.

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This conception might be thought implausible because it requires us to consider as obligatory or prohibited actions that we would not normally—absent certain unusual contexts—consider to be candidates for moral appraisal (e.g., drinking a glass of water; brushing one’s teeth). Such a conception will strike many of us as excessively rigoristic and demanding, and might be thought foreign to a Kantian conception of morality. If Fichte’s argument is to succeed, he needs to provide us with compelling reasons to accept this conception of morality, a task which he attempts in the 1798 System of Ethics.

The Argument from Conflict Fichte’s second argument against the standard Kantian position is simpler and more plausible than the first. It relies on the claim that there can often be a conflict between morality and right, the moral law prohibiting what the law of right permits. Such conflicts are a familiar feature of our moral lives, and there are numerous examples of them. One example, provided by Frederick Neuhouser, is exercising one’s right to private property by gambling away one’s money at the races while a penurious neighbor starves (Neuhouser 2016, 48). Another example, provided by Johann Gottlieb Buhle,9 is a wealthy creditor who exercises his right to demand repayment even though he knows that doing so will ruin the debtor, who could, with a little more time, repay the loan (Buhle 1799, 13). In such cases, Fichte thinks, we would not deny that the right in question is a right, and hence that the right-holder is permitted to exercise it, even though we would deem its exercise in this instance to be morally impermissible. The acknowledgment of such cases creates a problem for attempts to directly derive rights from morality by conceiving of them as permissions of the moral law. For if it is true that in certain cases the exercise of a right is morally impermissible, and it is true, ex hypothesi, that all rights are moral permissions, then it must also be true that the moral law is capable of legislating inconsistently, “simultaneously granting and denying the same right in the same situation” (FNR 50 [SW 3: 54]). In other words, in such cases the moral law would judge the action that is involved in the exercise of the right to be both impermissible and permissible. Since Kantians are, obviously, committed to the view that the moral law legislates consistently, they must (assuming that they accept that the cases of conflict are genuine) abandon the attempt to derive rights from permissions of the moral law. Having discussed Fichte’s position and his arguments in support of it, let us conclude by briefly considering its historical and contemporary significance.

The Significance of Fichte’s Position Fichte’s independence thesis constituted a major development in early postKantian practical philosophy and provided a key reference point for debates about the nature and scope of the theory of right. It exerted a profound influence on the practical philosophy of leading figures such as Schelling and Hegel. Indeed, Hegel’s conception of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) was developed partly as a critical response

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to Fichte’s separation of right and morality. Fichte’s position also influenced lesser-known, but significant, figures such as J. G. Buhle, who drew upon Fichte’s arguments to develop an insightful account of the relationship between right and morality (Buhle 1799).10 An understanding of Fichte’s independence thesis is therefore of significance for understanding the development of post-Kantian practical philosophy. Fichte’s position is also of significance from the perspective of contemporary legal theory and political philosophy. This is so because it explores themes and concepts that are central to those disciplines and does so, moreover, in a way that is sophisticated and often illuminating. Fichte’s discussion of the nature and structure of rights in terms of deontic categories should be of interest to contemporary theorists of rights. His complex account of the relationship between legal and moral norms is clearly of relevance to the debate between legal positivism and natural law theory. Indeed, when viewed from the perspective of that debate, Fichte’s position is intriguing in that it appears to combine aspects of both positions. On the one hand, Fichte’s demand that the theory of right be “pure” or morality-free11 and his insistence on the independence of legal norms from morality might be thought to place him in the camp of legal positivism. On the other hand, there are aspects of Fichte’s position that are congenial to natural law theory. Thus, Fichte holds that there are necessary connections between right and morality and he seems to be committed to the view that the norms of right are universal, “context-transcendent” norms that impose normative constraints on the positive laws of historical communities (James 2011, 29; Renaut 1992, 124). A detailed exploration of Fichte’s position in relation to such issues and debates might shed new light on them, revealing hitherto unexplored possibilities and prompting us to reflect on unquestioned assumptions.

Notes

I am grateful to Gabe Gottlieb, Sean Hamill, and Nedim Nomer for their helpful comments and suggestions. The research for this chapter was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant reference: AH/R001847/1). 1 “[T]he philosophical doctrine of right … ought to be a separate science standing on its own [eine eigene für sich bestehende Wissenschaft]” (FNR 11 [SW 3: 10]. See also FNR 50–1 [SW 3: 54–5]; GA II/3: 404.) Insightful discussions of Fichte on right and morality are provided by James (2011, 112–43), Kersting (2001), Kosch (2017), Neuhouser (2016), Nomer (2013), and Renaut (1986, 222–52). 2 In his Introduction to the Foundations, Fichte refers to some “excellent hints” in the writings of Maimon and Erhard (FNR 12–13 [SW 3: 12]). Although he does not mention Feuerbach, Fichte’s formulation of the independence thesis is very close to Feuerbach’s statements about the status of the theory of right, and his arguments seem to be informed by Feuerbach’s discussion (Cf. Feuerbach 1795, 140, 153, 154). For an illuminating discussion of Maimon’s, Erhard’s, and Feuerbach’s positions and of how they relate to Fichte’s, see Schottky (1995, 272–317). 3 The term “morality-free” is from Kersting, who characterizes Fichte’s deduction as a “moralfreien Begründungsargumentation” (Kersting 2001, 25).

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4 As an early, anonymous review of the Foundations points out, it is not obvious why one could not accept Fichte’s morality-free deduction and provide a deduction of the concept of right that proceeds from the concept of duty or from the “more general” concepts of the “moral law” and “moral necessity” (Anon 1796, 1930; my translation). In his (famously vituperative) response to the review, Fichte asserts that “the same proposition cannot follow from two different pairs of premises” and claims that it is contradictory to think otherwise (SW 2: 468; my translation). From the perspective of formal logic, this claim is false, and it is not clear why Fichte would think it true. 5 Fichte outlines this deduction in his 1793/4 Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s Judgement of the French Revolution and his 1793 “Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, who have Oppressed it Until Now.” For discussions of Fichte’s deduction of right from the moral law, see Clarke (2016), Kersting (2001), and Neuhouser (2016). 6 For brevity’s sake, I have provided a compressed and simplified account of Fichte’s deontic deduction. For a fuller account, see Clarke (2016, 53–9). 7 Fichte endorses this conception of the moral law in his 1795 notes for a review of recent theories of natural right. See GA II/3: 405. See also SE 148, 253 [SW 4: 155–6, 264]. 8 Cf. Schottky (1995, 313, note 157; my translation.): “Fichte … thinks that it is impossible for the unconditional moral law to be limited in its domain of application, [and hence] for there to be any actions at all that are morally neither commanded nor prohibited, but left merely to arbitrary choice [Willkür].” 9 This example is also given by Erhard (1970, 12). 10 Buhle’s account stresses that although right and morality are separate, there are necessary connections between the two domains and their respective principles (Buhle 1799, 7–8, 36–44). An interesting feature of Buhle’s account is his argument that the concept of permission (Erlaubnis) is a moral concept and is therefore incapable of capturing what is distinctive about legal norms and principles (Buhle 1799, 49–50). 11 As Alain Renaut has pointed out, there is a striking affinity between Fichte’s conception of the theory of right and Hans Kelsen’s positivist program of a “pure theory of law” (reine Rechtslehre) (Renaut 1986, 250).

Bibliography Anon. 1796. “Grundlage des Naturrechts, nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre, von Joh. Gottlieb Fichte.” Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen 194: 1929–40. Buhle, Johann G. 1799. “Ueber das Verhältniss des Rechtsprincips zum Sittengesetze.” In Johann G. Buhle, Ideen zur Rechtswissenschaft, Moral und Politik, 3–50. Göttingen: Schröder. Clarke, James A. 2016. “Fichte’s Independence Thesis.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 52–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darwall, Stephen. 2013. “Fichte and the Second-Person Standpoint.” In Stephen Darwall, Honor, History, and Relationships: Essay in Second-Personal Ethics II, 222–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Erhard, Johann Benjamin. 1970. Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution und andere Schriften. Edited by Hellmut G. Haasis. Frankfurt: Syndikat. Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm. 1795. “Versuch über den Begriff des Rechts.” Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft Teutscher Gelehrten 2(2): 138–62. James, David. 2011. Fichte’s Social and Political Philosophy: Property and Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kersting, Wolfgang. 2001. “Die Unäbhangigkeit des Rechts von der Moral (Einleitung).” In Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts, edited by Jean-Christophe Merle, 21–39. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Kosch, Michelle. 2017. “Individuality and Rights in Fichte’s Ethics.” Philosophers’ Imprint 17(12): 1–23. Maimon, Salomon. 1795. “Ueber die ersten Gründsätze des Naturrechts.” Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft Teutscher Gelehrten 1(2): 141–74. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2016. “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality.” In Fichte’s “Foundations of Natural Right”: A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 32–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nomer, Nedim. 2013. “Fichte’s Separation Thesis.” Philosophical Forum 44(3): 233–54. Renaut, Alain. 1986. Le système du droit. Philosophie et droit dans la pensée de Fichte. Paris: PUF. Renaut, Alain. 1992. Qu’est-ce que le droit? Aristote, Wollf, et Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Schottky, Richard. 1995. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der staatsphilosophischen Vertragstheorie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Hobbes – Locke – Rousseau – Fichte) mit einem Beitrag zum Problem der Gewaltenteilung bei Rousseau und Fichte. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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Are There Any Moral Rights for Fichte? Nedim Nomer

It is commonplace in the secondary literature on Fichte’s moral theory that, in his post1795 moral and political writings, Fichte neither provides a derivation of individuals’ rights from considerations of morality, nor encourages such a line of enquiry, even though such a derivation of right had been the centerpiece of his Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment of the French Revolution in 1793/4. This interpretive claim has two versions. One version holds that around 1795 Fichte started to think it impossible to derive the law of right from the principle of morality (Breazeale 2008, 273; Clarke 2016, 63; Kosch 2017, 4). The other version of the claim, by contrast, suggests that Fichte in fact never ruled out the possibility of a moral derivation of right, but avoided such a derivation after the indicated date, since for various reasons he came to consider a non-moral derivation of right as more appropriate for the purposes of his practical philosophy (Neuhouser 2016, 48). I argue here that both claims are false: in fact, Fichte provides and makes use of a moral derivation of right both in his Foundations of Natural Right (1796/97) and in his System of Ethics (1798). This derivation concerns the moral rights of individuals, which may or may not be incorporated into a regime of juridical rights that are enforceable by the state. Fichte himself is partly responsible for his readers believing that after 1795 he no longer supported the moral derivation of rights, since he states at the outset of his Foundations that the basic goal of that work is to develop a “self-standing” theory of right, which cannot be seen as part of a moral theory (FNR 11 [GA I/3: 321]). Throughout that book, and in his other relevant writings, he specifies the defining features of such a theory of right, and in so doing explains why it could not be rooted in morality. First of all, he takes the principal task of such a theory to be to providing an image of a society where everybody enjoys an inviolable sphere of liberty without infringing on the similar spheres of others (FNR 10 [GA I/3:320]). This is a society in which all citizens adopt the “law of right,” which requires each to limit his or her external freedom through the external freedoms of all others. The law of right thus articulates the general condition under which the members of any society can enjoy certain positive legal or juridical rights and so coexist in harmony. As Fichte indicates, however, this law is “formal,” because while it calls for drawing boundaries between personal spheres of liberty, it does not specify where those boundaries should lie. On this, Fichte stipulates, the parties must “reach an agreement in good faith” (FNR 15

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[GA I/3:327]). This means that there can be no general, unconditional obligation to live in, or have allegiance to, any society. Societies can continue existing only to the extent they (immediately or over time) allow their members to negotiate and decide on the contents of the rights to be accorded to each. Fichte also describes the law of right as “permissive,” because it leaves it to rights-holders to decide whether and how they exercise their rights; accordingly, right is “something one may avail oneself or not” (FNR 13 [GA I/3:324]). For Fichte, these points about the law of right suffice to explain why it cannot be rooted in morality (FNR 11–14 [GA I/3:320–4]). This is because, he explains, at the heart of morality lies a categorical law, which requires moral agents to pursue moral autonomy or self-sufficiency “absolutely and without exception.” For Fichte, then, morality cannot support a law that allows individuals to think and act any way they choose so long as their actions are compossible, since morality specifies what individuals should or should not do with the rights that they have. Similarly, morality cannot allow individuals to decide whether or not they have allegiance to a particular political society, since it imposes duties upon moral agents regarding others in all circumstances. Fichte offers and frequently reiterates another reason why morality cannot establish the permissive law of right, which has to do with the role that he believes political government can play in the implementation of this law in a society. As indicated earlier, Fichte believes that the most stable way of applying the law of right in a society is through collective action, i.e., collective negotiation and determination of the contents of juridical rights to be accorded to each. Fichte also realizes, however, that rights violations can nonetheless occur in any society. In order to deter and/or to respond to such violations, he proposes, the members of a society would authorize the political government to use physical force against rights-violators (FNR 126 [GA I/3:426]). For Fichte, herein lies another difference between “legality” and “morality,” since the latter can never allow the use of coercion to promote its ends. Given that the final end of morality is moral autonomy or self-sufficiency, Fichte explains, morality is committed to regarding all human beings, including the violators of others’ rights, as capable of perfecting their will of their own accord rather than through the application of coercion by an external agent (SE 294 [GA I/5:273]). While there is no disagreement among commentators that Fichte’s considerations as sketched above indicate some of the key features of his “self-standing” theory of right, there is no consensus on how Fichte’s moral theory itself relates to the law of right. As mentioned earlier, some scholars believe that by way of developing a self-standing theory of right, Fichte in effect demonstrates that it is impossible to derive the law of right from the moral law. For instance, Daniel Breazeale argues that the “fundamental, systematic difference” that Fichte makes between the domain of right and that of morality make it impossible to ground the principle of right upon that of morality (Breazeale 2008, 274). For similar reasons, James Clarke reaches the conclusion that Fichte “rules out” the deontic deduction of right (Clarke 2016, 63). For other scholars, however, this conclusion is not warranted. Frederick Neuhouser, for one, argues that Fichte cannot think that rights are not derivable from a categorical ought since in 1793 he argues precisely that each person’s moral duty to fulfill the

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demands of moral autonomy generates certain constraints on the actions of others (Neuhouser 2016, 48). For Neuhouser, Fichte in his later writings refrains from providing such a derivation of rights not because such a derivation cannot be provided but for two other reasons (Neuhouser 2016, 49). The first is that Fichte comes to think that claiming a right involves more than appealing to the moral conscience of another; it expresses a demand that the object of a right is guaranteed to the right-holder, and this guarantee can be supplied only by a coercive state. Second, and perhaps relatedly, Fichte begins to see the political order as having an end distinct from that of morality: the promotion of free, self-conscious individuality, i.e., personhood, rather than moral autonomy. On Fichte’s new view, then, rights are rooted in personhood, not in morality. Neuhouser also notes, though, that in Fichte’s view some of the rights (especially property rights) that persons enjoy in a political society in fact facilitate the pursuit of moral autonomy, and therefore his System of Ethics establishes moral duties to join a political state and to acquire property (Neuhouser 2016, n21, n26). This last point made by Neuhouser is shared by Allen Wood, who argues that although the principles of right are derived independently of morality, right ultimately serves the ends of morality in that “a law-governed condition of right is necessary for the moral virtue of those subject to it” (Wood 2016, 257). Hence Wood argues that, according to Fichte’s moral theory, “there is an ethical duty to respect the rights of others” and that duty “can be derived from the principle of morality” (ibid.) So, even though commentators differ on the question of the derivability of right from the moral law, they all share the assumption that whenever Fichte talks about rights in his later political and moral writings, he invariably always talks about generally accepted and administratively enforceable juridical rights rather than moral rights. This is the assumption I challenge. Fichte, I argue, not only provides a derivation of moral rights but also elaborates on the role of such rights in social and political life, in both his System of Ethics and his Foundations. If true, this means that just because after 1795 Fichte develops a “self-standing” theory of right, it does not mean that he comes to regard moral rights as meaningless or superfluous. On the contrary, Fichte remains committed to providing a meaningful and coherent account of moral rights, a project that he had started in his 1793/4 book on the French Revolution. Admittedly, the account of moral rights that is presented in Fichte’s System of Ethics and his Foundations is far from being fully developed. It includes neither a detailed analysis of the variety of moral rights that individuals may have, nor a systematic discussion of the conditions under which such rights can be exercised. Still, Fichte’s relevant remarks suffice to indicate some of the key features of moral rights. He uses the expression “moral right” (moralisches Recht) only twice, once in his System of Ethics (SE 322 [GA I/5:298]) and once in his Foundations (FNR 286 [GA I/4:117]). In many other passages, however, he hints at such rights without using the expression “moral right.” The passages where he (either explicitly or implicitly) refers to moral rights typically concern social interactions that take place outside the jurisdiction of the political state, such as those between parents and children, and those between the soldiers of two warring armies locked in hand-to-hand combat (SE 267, 322 [GA I/5:250, 298]). Regarding such interactions, Fichte takes the view that the rights that individuals exercise in such contexts are not juridical rights

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conferred to them by the state, as the state in such contexts has neither the chance nor the authority to assign rights. Instead, these rights arise from the individuals’ understanding of the demands of morality. To be sure, Fichte’s moral theory also furnishes moral rights that are at the same time juridical rights, such as the right to property and the right to honor. Yet even with regard to such rights Fichte maintains that what makes them rights is not simply that they are recognized and codified in state law, but that they are justified by morality (SE 279, 297; FNR 210–14 [GA I/5:259–60, 276; I/4:43–8]). Given the widespread disbelief as expressed in the secondary literature concerning the presence of moral rights in Fichte’s later moral theory, let me now consider a general statement that Fichte makes in the Foundations about the relevance of right for the moral lives of individuals, before examining some moral rights of individuals in further detail. In the passage below, where Fichte explores the possibility of “rightful relations” among human beings, he compares a society organized around the formal, permissive law of right with what we may call a moral society: Either there is a thoroughgoing morality and a universal belief in such morality, and furthermore, the greatest of all coincidences takes place …, namely, the claims made by different human beings are compatible with one another. In this case the law of right is completely impotent and would have nothing to say, for what ought to happen in accordance with the law happens without it, and what the law forbids is never willed by anyone. —For a species of perfected moral beings, there is no law of right … Or—the second possibility—there is no thoroughgoing morality, or at least no universal belief in it. In this case the external law of right exists, but can be applied only within a commonwealth. Thus, natural right disappears. But what we lose on the one side, we recover on the other, and at a profit; for the state itself becomes the human being’s natural condition, and its laws ought to be nothing other than natural right realized. (FNR 132–3 [GA I/3:432])

Here Fichte calls for imagining a society of morally upright individuals, who exist together in peace and harmony without necessarily needing or implementing the law of right, since the moral rules that are commonly accepted in that society regulate the actions and interactions of individuals such that they do not conflict with one another. This society would also not need a state to exist, or if it did exist, to enforce any rule. This is because given the “universal belief ” in morality, all the members of that society would, of their own volition, take care not to infringe upon the freely undertaken deeds of others. Fichte points at the way in which such a harmonious coexistence of individuals can be established: not when each individual acts on his or her own conscience independently of what others think or do, but when all individuals avoid making conflicting “claims” (Ansprüche) on one another. Fichte does not specify here what kinds of claims morally motivated individuals would make upon one another. But he implies that, whatever those claims may be, there would be a continual dialogue among the members of that society on the permissive scopes of such claims. This is because the subsistence of moral society depends on these dialogues yielding mutually acceptable norms of public conduct. Relatedly,

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Fichte points out that even though a moral society has no need for an “external law of right” to coordinate the actions of its members, the existence of such a society in fact depends on performing a function that is identical to that of the law of right, i.e., assigning each a sphere of inviolability. So, in a moral society, “what ought to happen in accordance with the law [of right] happens without it, and what the law forbids is never willed by anyone” (FNR 13 [GA I/3:432]). The unstated conclusion of this passage seems to be that the morality has resources to generate its own version of “rightful relations.” Fichte doubts that such a society could exist in reality, but he does not regard this as a logical or practical impossibility. Other statements to the same effect can be found both in the Foundations and in the System of Ethics. While commenting in the Foundations on the possibility of a commonly acceptable regime of rights, Fichte observes that morality provides an “obligation” to respect “the freedom of all other rational beings outside oneself ” (FNR 81 [GA 1/3:386]). In the System of Ethics he formulates as follows this fundamental, universal duty that moral agents owe to others: “We have a duty to protect and promote the formal freedom of our fellow human beings, for we are obliged to regard everyone with a human face as a tool of the moral law” (SE 298 [GA I/5:276]). More importantly, with respect to some other-regarding moral duties associated with the universal duty cited, Fichte submits that what makes them moral duties is not simply that they stem from, and are consistent with, the duty-bearer’s own understanding of what morality demands; it is also the case that the beneficiaries of such duties have a morally valid claim on their performance (SE 272; FNR 295 [GA I/5:254; I/3:125]). Hence, the beneficiary of such duties may exercise judgment on their performance (SE 272). So, for instance, the beneficiaries of such duties are entitled to press their claims against duty-bearers. And this entitlement, I submit, is what makes moral agents possessors of moral rights as well as bearers of moral duties in Fichte’s moral theory in his Jena period. To make this point more concrete, let me now consider two examples of moral rights that correlate with moral duties according to Fichte’s moral theory. The first is the “moral right” of parents to the voluntary obedience (Gehorsam) of their children (SE 318–23 [GA I/5: 294–9]). For Fichte, the upbringing of children is a juridical duty that is bestowed upon the parents by the state. However, once the parents are given this duty, the decision regarding how to educate their children is left to their “conscience” alone, which in turn is governed by morality (FNR 311–12 [GA I/4:142]). From the standpoint of morality, the duty of parents is to “cultivate” the spiritual and worlddirected skills of their children in accordance with the demands of moral autonomy. Interestingly, Fichte submits that the parents’ duty to educate their children is exercised as a right to “restrict the freedom of their children for the sake of cultivating them” (SE 318–19 [GA I/5:295]). This is because the parents have the sole moral authority to make sure that their children are properly raised. And this right, in turn, generates for the parents an additional moral right to expect their children to obey their related decisions. According to Fichte, obedience to parents is the only moral duty of children, and it is a “moral” rather than a natural or legal duty, because children’s exercise of this duty is a first step in the development of their ability to act for the sake of duty alone (SE 320–1 [GA I/5:296–7]). What is crucial for our purposes is that this duty of

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children is a “directed” duty in that it correlates with the moral right of their parents to expect its performance. Another moral right Fichte considers is soldiers’ right of self-defense during handto-hand combat in wars between states. This right amounts to an exemption from the moral prohibition (which otherwise remains in effect) to “exercise any immediate influence over the body of another” (SE 265 [GA I/5:248]). According to Fichte, for a state the legitimate aim of war is not to kill the citizens of another state; rather, it is only to defend itself by repulsing the enemy army or by disarming its soldiers (SE 267; FNR 328 [GA I/5:250; I/4:158]). In hand-to-hand combat, however, this rule becomes immaterial, because a soldier may not be able to defend his life without killing the soldier with whom he is presently fighting. Therefore, Fichte submits, the soldier in this situation is released from the moral duties he otherwise has toward others and so is entitled to kill the enemy soldier. Fichte goes out of his way to emphasize that this entitlement is not “conveyed to him by the state,” since the state has no such right in the first place. Nor is this entitlement an instance of the natural right to save one’s life merely for the sake of remaining alive. Rather, this entitlement stems from, and is justified by, the moral duty “to care for myself only because and only insofar as I am a tool of the moral law” (SE 268 [GA I/5:250]). So, although Fichte does not explicitly call a soldier’s right of self-defense a “moral right,” he leaves no doubt that this is the only way to describe it. The preceding is far from a complete analysis of what Fichte has to say about the moral rights of individuals and about how such rights relate, on the one hand, to moral duties, and, on the other hand, to juridical rights. It is only meant to be a first step toward a better understanding of the nature of Fichte’s moral theory and its relation to right. At any rate, nothing I have said in this paper contradicts the fact that sometime around 1795 Fichte decided to develop a theory of institutional, juridical rights without relying on the resources of his moral theory. If sound, my analysis only suggests that Fichte developed a theory of juridical rights alongside, but independently of, a project that he simultaneously undertook of understanding precisely and concretely what morally motivated individuals owe to one another. It is also crucial to note that these two projects are not necessarily in tension with one another. After all, as we have seen, Fichte acknowledges that a society where there is “thoroughgoing morality and a universal belief in such morality” may never exist in reality, and therefore that actual human societies tend to be organized around and by political states that determine the permissible boundaries of the actions of their citizens. However, it would be a mistake to infer from this that morally motivated individuals have no choice but to surrender their moral conscience to the state. Rather, such individuals always strive to make the social and political order in which they find themselves better than it is. For what truly characterizes the pursuit of moral autonomy is the “absolute non-belief in the authority of the communal conviction of one’s age” (SE 237 [GA 1/5:224]). Hence, morally motivated individuals would not “consider anything to be true or correct simply because the church teaches it or because the state practices it”; instead, they would always “have some other reason for calling something true or correct” (SE 237 [GA 1/5:224]). I believe that one cannot

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make sense of statements such as these without acknowledging the account of moral rights that Fichte develops, yet which lies at some distance from his theory of judicial rights.

Note I am indebted to Michelle Kosch and Owen Ware for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Bibliography Breazeale, Daniel. 2008. “The First-Person Standpoint of Fichte’s Ethics.” Philosophy Today 52 (3–4): 270–81. Clarke, James A. 2016. “Fichte’s Independence Thesis.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right. A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 52–71. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kosch, Michelle. 2017. “Individuality and Rights in Fichte’s Ethics.” Philosophers’ Imprint 17 (12): 1–23. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2016. “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality.” In Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right. A Critical Guide, edited by Gabriel Gottlieb, 32–51. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wood, Allen W. 2016. Fichte’s Ethical Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Part Five

The Reception and Influence of Fichte’s Philosophy

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Fichte and the Emergence of Early German Romanticism Elizabeth Millán Brusslan

When we speak of post-Kantian philosophy and its grand heyday in the sweeping terms of Kant and Hegel, we either neglect a host of thinkers who contributed in deep and rich ways to a tradition of thought that continues to shape the field of philosophy or we relegate them to the periphery of our intellectual tradition. In what follows, as I focus on the ways in which Fichte shaped the emergence of early German Romanticism, I shall also consider a question not posed often enough, namely: What does a postFichtean philosophy look like?1 Using the notion of post-Fichtean philosophy to explore the period between 1794 and 1808 casts light upon some details that often get lost within the shadows of post-Kantian or post-Hegelian philosophy. By looking carefully at the legacy of Fichte’s thought, especially the influence he had upon a group of young students in Jena in the wake of the publication of his Wissenschaftslehre (1794), we can begin not only to understand the genesis of some of the prominent lines of early German Romanticism, which was shaped in central ways by the work of Fichte, but also to more deeply appreciate Fichte’s philosophical commitments and the philosophical significance of German Idealism. Early German Romanticism, an intellectual movement that flourished in Berlin and Jena between the years of 1794 and 1808, would be unimaginable without Fichte and the effects his work had on the leading figures of that movement. The leading figures of the early German Romantic Movement were the Schlegel brothers (Friedrich and August Wilhelm), Caroline (née Bohmer) Schlegel Schelling, Dorothea (née Mendelssohn) Veit Schlegel, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Wilhelm H. Ludwig and Sophie Tieck, and Wilhelm Wackenroder. Early German Romanticism was a short-lived period of innovative thought (in part, unfortunately, due to the short lives of some of its members: Wackenroder died in 1798, Novalis in 1801). Friedrich Schlegel, after leaving Jena (which had become an increasingly difficult place for him to publish given his disagreements with Schiller) in 1798, settled in Berlin and with his brother founded Das Athenäum, a journal dedicated to challenging the philosophical and cultural values of the period. The journal was published for only two years, 1798–1800, yet its legacy was far-reaching, for within the fragments and essays published in its pages we find the intellectual heart of the early German Romantic Movement.

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Between 1795 and 1797 Fichte was the most important philosopher in Jena and the young Romantics fell under his spell: their contact with the rising philosophical star was formative. Yet, the early German Romantics were hardly blind followers of Fichte’s idealist philosophy. Certainly, the early German Romantics took much of their philosophical impetus from the publication of Fichte’s Wissenschaftshlehre in 1794. Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) and Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) (1772–1801), the main philosophers of Frühromantik, developed some of their key positions in conversation with Fichte’s thought. Novalis’s Fichte Studien, early notebooks written between the years of 1795 and 1796,2 while not always ringing endorsements of Fichte’s philosophy, were certainly inspired by Fichte’s lectures and writings. Schlegel’s engagement with Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is concentrated in two collections of fragments, Zur Wissenschaftslehre 1796 (KFSA 18, 3–14, Nrs. 1–125) and Geist der Wissenschaftslehre 1797–1798 (KFSA 18, 31–9, Nrs. 126–7), but observations and critical remarks concerning Fichte’s place in the intellectual landscape of the period can be found throughout the fragments that Schlegel wrote during the peak of his Romantic period (1794–1808). Those who dig no deeper than a superficial glance at titles might be left with the impression that Schlegel and Novalis were Fichteans, seeking to spread the spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre. While the spirit of Fichte’s work undoubtedly shaped the emergence of early German Romantic Philosophy, the early German Romantics were most decidedly not deferential followers of Fichte’s idealism; indeed, the early German Romantics were some of the most impudent thinkers of their time, and so not inclined to be deferential toward much of anything at all. As we shall see, their impudence was often levelled against Fichte, the very person whose work inspired them, albeit not to follow in his footsteps. While shaped by Fichte’s idealism, the Romantic path is not an idealist path. In the next section, I will discuss the distinction between German Idealism and early German Romanticism, for in focusing upon the distinction between German Idealism and early German Romanticism, I hope to highlight the important connections and ruptures between Fichte and the early German Romantics.3 In the next two sections I will then explore in more detail how Fichte’s Wissenschaftshlehre and the Romantic critique of it shaped the emergence of early German Romantic Philosophy.

Early German Romanticism and German Idealism As the revival of interest in the philosophical importance of early German Romanticism continues to grow in the anglophone world, a theme that has been prominent in much of the recent literature is whether the early German Romantics were idealists or realists. This matter has been highlighted in particular by the work of Manfred Frank and Frederick Beiser. Frank has argued that the early German Romantics are best understood as realists, and he offers compelling arguments in support of distinguishing early German Romanticism (Frühromantik) from classical German Idealism. In contrast, Beiser argues that the early German Romantics are idealists.4 As Beiser puts it:

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What [Romanticism and idealism] have in common and how they differ, is still very obscure. They are indeed so obscure that some scholars have begun to dispute their proper relationship. Two such scholars are myself and Manfred Frank. Over the years we have formed antithetical conceptions of the relationship between idealism and romanticism. In his Undendliche Annäherung5 Frank has seen the early Romantic Movement as fundamentally opposed to idealism. He has stressed the opposition between these movements for two reasons: the romantics were realist in their ontology, and they were antifoundationalist in their epistemology, unlike the idealists, who were foundationalists. In my German Idealism6 and Romantic Imperative7 I have placed the early romantic movement within German Idealism, which Frank and others see as a terrible mistake because it seems to attribute Fichtean idealism and foundationalist concerns to the early romanticism. (Beiser 2014, 30)

As Beiser indicates, Frank has presented some of his disagreements with Beiser’s characterization of the early German Romantics as idealists in his Auswege aus dem deutschen Idealismus (Frank 2007). I have presented my own disagreements with Beiser’s views in my study of Schlegel and early German Romanticism (Millán 2007). Here I discuss some of Schlegel’s criticisms of idealism. Influenced by Frank’s work, I argue that in order to better understand the contributions of the early German Romantics, we would do well to more sharply distinguish their philosophy from that of their German idealist contemporaries. Yet, Beiser’s move to read early German Romanticism as a part of German Idealism is not without merit. Schlegel, for example, did not reject idealism altogether, and a certain strand of idealism shapes his view of how one comes to understand the world. He, after all, does want to use Fichte’s idealism to construct an account of reality, while stressing that Fichte’s idealism will yield only a partial view of reality. Idealism must be combined with realism: Fichte (idealism) and Spinoza (realism) must be brought together. Ultimately, Schlegel did not think Fichte’s idealism was the fitting tool for the Romantic philosophy he sought to develop. I shall return to this point below when I discuss the main lines of critique that Schlegel levelled against Fichte’s idealism. The discussion of whether the early German Romantics were idealists or realists highlights the central role Fichte plays in understanding the genesis of philosophy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Despite Fichte’s strong influence on the Romantic thinkers of the period, it is clear to most scholars that the early German Romantics were not Fichteans, if to be a Fichtean means to accept Fichte’s idealism on Fichte’s terms. As H. S. Harris tells us in the introduction to his (and Walter Cerf ’s) translation of Hegel’s Differenzschrift, the leading thinkers of the period around 1800 were each strongly influenced by and quite loyal to Fichte, “[b]ut the loyalty of Hölderlin and his friends to Fichte was of the same kind as Fichte’s loyalty to Kant. It was the sense of an intellectual debt that was to be paid precisely by transforming the ideas one had received” (Diff. 3). Beiser also notes that “[T]he romantics were not disciples but critics of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre” and “one of their major aims was to overcome what they perceived as the inadequacy of Fichte’s idealism” (Beiser 2014, 32). Beiser places the Romantics’ break with Fichte’s idealism in helpful historical context when

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he speaks of the “fundamental break around 1800” between the “subjective idealism of Kant and Fichte” and the “objective idealism of Schelling and Hegel” (Beiser 2014, 34). As Beiser reminds us: That break appears in Schelling’s correspondence with Fichte, and then in Hegel’s Differenzschrift, which defends Schelling’s break with Fichte. Schelling and Hegel argued that their “objective idealism” is superior to the subjective idealism of Kant and Fichte because it accommodates the independent reality of nature and because it does not reduce nature down to the experience of the self-conscious subject alone. (Beiser 2014, 34)

The Differenzschrift (or The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy) was written by Hegel in 1801.8 This text announced a divide between Fichte and Schelling, and marked “a public breach between Fichte and Schelling” (Diff. 3). The preface of the young Hegel’s text lends evidence to Schlegel’s claims from Lyceum Fragment Nr. 8 that “A good preface must be at once the square root and square of its book” (KFSA 2, 148, Nr. 8/Firchow, 1). In the preface we find the themes that shape the study. In the following passage from the preface, Hegel: (a) notes Fichte’s strong, certain influence on the age; (b) clears space for art and poetry in philosophy; and (c) strongly condemns the limitations of both Kant and Fichte’s idealism: As to the need of the times, Fichte’s philosophy has caused so much of a stir and has made an epoch to the extent that even those who declare themselves against it and strain themselves to get speculative systems of their own on the road, still cling to its principle, though in a more turbid and impure way, and are incapable of resisting it. The most obvious symptoms of an epoch-making system are the misunderstandings and the awkward conduct of its adversaries. However, when one can say of a system that fortune has smiled on it, it is because some widespread philosophical need, itself unable to give birth to philosophy—for otherwise it would have achieved fulfillment through the creation of a system— turns to it with an instinct-like propensity. The acceptance of the system seems to be passive but this is only because what it articulated is already present in the time’s inner core and everyone will soon be proclaiming it in his sphere of science or life. In this sense one cannot say of Fichte’s system that fortune has smiled on it. While this is partly due to the unphilosophical tendencies of the age, there is something else that should also be taken into account. The greater the influence that intellect and utility succeed in acquiring, and the wider the currency of limited aims, the more powerful will the urge of the better spirit be, particularly in the more openminded world of youth. A phenomenon such as the Speeches on Religion may not immediately concern the speculative need. Yet they and their reception—and even more so the dignity that is beginning to be accorded, more or less clearly or obscurely, to poetry and art in general in all their true scope—indicate the need for a philosophy that will recompense nature for the mishandling that it suffered in Kant and Fichte’s systems, and set Reason itself in harmony with nature, not

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by having Reason renounce itself or become an insipid imitator of nature, but by Reason recasting itself into nature out of its own inner strength. (Diff. 82–83)

It is noteworthy that Schleiermacher’s 1799 text On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers would be mentioned by Hegel as he prepared the ground for his attack on Kant and Fichte’s idealism. Schleiermacher, a roommate of Schlegel’s in Berlin, was a close member of the Frühromantik circle; he even contributed to the short-lived journal Das Athenäum (1798–1800), which was the most important literary vehicle of the early German Romantic Movement. And with Hegel’s reference to the “dignity that is beginning to be accorded, more or less clearly or obscurely, to poetry and art in general in all their true scope” we find a strong affinity with the calls voiced in The Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism (1796).9 This revolutionary text has, with good reason, become known as a kind of Romantic manifesto. The text that was found was in Hegel’s handwriting, yet its authorship remains a point of contention— Hegel, Hölderlin, and Schelling have each been put forth as viable authors, while some speculate that the piece was co-authored. The case of authorship notwithstanding, it is clear that Hegel came to have deep disdain for the early German Romantics and even for some of the claims put forth in the text. Here we find some vestiges of the nod to art and poetry expressed by Hegel in the preface to his Differenzschrift, in particular, to the claim that there is a “dignity that is beginning to be accorded” to “poetry and art in general in all their true scope.” Yet it would be the early German Romantics, and not Hegel, who would clear space for poetry and art that accorded them equal footing with philosophy.10 The Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism (1796) does not set out a program for any sort of system of German Idealism at all, but rather in piecemeal fashion calls for a move away from using mechanistic models to understand natural and social reality—invoking a new mythology that will join science and art, lawfulness, and freedom.11 According to the text, “the highest act of reason is an aesthetic act,” and so “the philosopher must possess as much aesthetic power as the poet” (Schulte-Sasse 1997, 72–3). Those individuals lacking in aesthetic sense will remain limited beings, “in the dark when it comes to anything beyond graphs and charts” (ibid., 73). In other words, those people who do not know how to handle ideas will be limited to the realm of the measurable, the quantifiable. Those individuals lacking an aesthetic sense are summarily dismissed as philosophers of the letter, unable to handle anything like the spirit of a text or an idea. As we are told, “the philosopher of the spirit is an aesthetic philosopher” and “the people with no aesthetic sense are our philosophers of the letter” (Ibid).. Both the early German Idealists and the early German Romantics stressed the intimate relation between poetry and philosophy and were interested in providing culture with an aesthetic point of orientation. Nonetheless, although The Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism emerges from the hand of Hegel, and while in the preface to his Differenzschrift he acknowledges the dignity that poetry and art deserve from philosophers, his version of idealism could not have developed it as it did under the influence of this text. The aesthetic project sketched in the text belongs more properly to the spirit of early German Romanticism, a movement that was dedicated to a project of blending the borders between philosophy, science, and poetry. The text is

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calling for a radical new map of the borders between philosophy, poetry, and science, one that would bring the disciplines into dialogue with each other and eliminate any sense that philosophy is above either science or poetry. It would be the Romantics who would go on to develop a philosophy inspired by a central claim made in the text, namely, that the “highest act of reason is an aesthetic act.” And at this point we find another line of digression between the early German Romantics and Fichte, who never made “aesthetic acts” the pillar of his thought. Also noteworthy in Hegel’s lines from the preface to his Differenzschrift is the charge against Fichte’s view of nature, because it is a charge that Schlegel would level against Fichte as well. Schlegel delivers his indictment of Fichte’s view of nature within the context of a critique against Fichte’s dismissal of the value of mythology for philosophy, another point that Schlegel developed following the calls in the Earliest Program text. The matter of mythology’s guiding role for modern society was a point of contention between Schlegel and Fichte.12 Schlegel writes: “Fichte’s views [esp. his view that fantasy is the source of all fanaticism] are as injurious to art as they are to natural science. For along with animated nature, all of mythology would be discarded and with it the most significant portion of poetry and visual art” (Schulte-Sasse 1997, 117/KFSA 8, 72). Schlegel takes Fichte to task for his view that nature is mere “inert matter, means and tools for purposes ordained by reason” (Ibid., 118/KFSA 8, 73). Later, Hegel and Schlegel would diverge stridently in their views, but in Hegel’s preface to the Differnzschrift and in Schlegel’s critique of Fichte’s Basic Characteristics of the Age we find them calling Fichte to task for the same grave mistake: setting reason out of harmony with nature. Hegel and the early German Romantics disagreed on how to maintain reason’s harmony with nature. Hegel’s idealism did not appeal to the early German Romantics, and certainly Romantic irony did not appeal to Hegel. A contrast between Hegel’s idealism and early German Romantic Philosophy is developed by Frank to make a distinction between the Idealist and Romantic philosophy. Frank traces classical German Idealism to its articulation by Hegel, which claims that consciousness is a self-sufficient phenomenon, one that is able to make the presuppositions of its existence comprehensible by its own means. Frank contrasts this kind of idealism and the accompanying view of the self-sufficiency of consciousness to the conviction that characterizes the early German Romantics, namely, that selfbeing owes its existence to a transcendent foundation that cannot be made fully transparent by consciousness, claiming, in no uncertain terms, that it is a mistake to read Frühromantik as a mere appendage to German Idealism (Frank 2004, 75, 178). Frank offers the following (admittedly ad hoc) definition of early German Romanticism: The thought of Hölderlin and that of Hardenberg (Novalis) and Schlegel cannot be assimilated to the mainstream of so-called German idealism, although these philosophers developed their thought in close cooperation with the principle figures of German idealism, Fichte and Schelling (Hegel, a late-comer to free speculation, played at that time only a passive role). The thought of Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schlegel implies a tenet of basic realism, which I will provisionally express by the formula, that that which has being—or, we might say, the essence

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of our reality—cannot be traced back to determinations of our consciousness. If ontological realism can be expressed by the thesis that reality exists independently of our consciousness (even if we suppose thought to play a role in structuring reality) and if epistemological realism consists in the thesis that we do not possess adequate knowledge of reality, then early German Romanticism can be called a version of ontological and epistemological realism. (Frank 2004, 28)

Frank emphasizes the strong connection between the Romantic position that the true foundation of self-being is a puzzle that cannot be handled by reflection alone to the early German Romantics’ privileging of art and aesthetic experience. Schlegel claims that “where philosophy ends, poetry begins” (KFSA 2, 261, Nr. 48/Firchow 1991, 98). Frank’s reference to the puzzle posed by the problem of Being points to a characteristic feature of Romantic philosophy, an acknowledgment that our epistemological limitations make it impossible for us to get a clear look at the Absolute: aesthetic experience allows us to approximate the Absolute. This epistemological humility contrasts rather sharply with the confidence exhibited by the German idealists of the period, (the early) Fichte and Hegel, both of whom are led in their philosophical endeavors by the belief that Being is, ultimately, transparent to reason. Early German Romantic Philosophy certainly emerges from a response to the position championed by Fichte as he developed his idealism, but to understand the positions of Schlegel and Novalis, we must understand their critiques of Fichte’s idealism. In his discussion of Novalis’ conception of the Absolute, Frank emphasizes that according to Novalis’ view, the Absolute can only be known negatively, which is why Novalis calls the “searching for the first principle” a futile activity, “the squaring of the circle” and “from the impossibility of ultimately justifying the truth of our conviction [Novalis] draws the conclusion that truth is to be replaced with probability.” Fichte is one who tried to “square the circle” by claiming he had uncovered the first principle for all of philosophy, even if the principle was introduced by Fichte not as a Tatsache but rather as a Tathandlung. The problems endemic to foundationalist thinking contaminated his enterprise. For Novalis, the probable is what “is maximally well connected,” that is, what has been made as “coherent as possible without there being an ultimate justification to support the harmony of our fallible assumptions of an evident Archimedean point of departure” (Frank 2004, 175). Novalis pushes the point of the futility of grasping the ground of philosophy when he stresses that “the whole rests more or less—like a game in which people sit on each other’s knees in circular fashion without a chair” (NS 2, 242, Group IV, Nr. 445/Kneller 2003, 141). The futility of establishing a first ground for philosophy is also expressed in Novalis’s claim: “Philosophisizing must be a unique kind of thinking. What do I do when I philosophize? I reflect on a ground. The ground of philosophizing is thus a striving after the thought of a ground” (NS 2, 269, Group V, Nr. 566/Kneller 2003, 167). Striving is essential to Romantic philosophy. We may recall Schlegel’s insistence in Athenäum Fragment 116 that Romantic poetry is “still in the process of becoming,” its essence is to be eternally in the process of becoming. Fichte’s idealism and his search for a principle for that idealism suggests a resting point, a point of certainty that will endow his philosophical edifice with a firm foundation.

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If we follow Frank’s portrait of the early German Romantics, a portrait that carefully details the philosophical dimensions of both Schlegel and Novalis’s thought, we come to view them as realists who nonetheless bid farewell to certainty as an epistemological goal, and who embraced something like a coherence view of truth, built around a conviction that absolute justification is an impossibility, an attempt to square the circle, yet, who are thinkers striving for ever more knowledge, drawing important aesthetic consequences from the lack of any absolute grounding for our knowledge claims. Frank’s portrait also enables the contrast between the Romantic view of philosophy and Fichte’s idealism to emerge in clear detail. Now let us turn to the Romantic critique of Fichte.

Poetry, Philosophy, and the Tensions between Fichte and the Early German Romantics While Schlegel heralded Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre as a tendency of the age, he found much to critique in Fichte’s Basic Characteristics of the Age. As I mentioned above, the matter of mythology’s guiding role for modern society was one point of contention between Schlegel and Fichte.13 Schlegel writes: “Fichte’s views [esp. his view that fantasy is the source of all fanaticism] are as injurious to art as they are to natural science. For along with animated nature, all of mythology would be discarded and with it the most significant portion of poetry and visual art” (Schulte-Sasse 1997, 117/ KFSA 8, 72). Schlegel found fault with Fichte’s lack of an aesthetic sense. Was Schlegel too harsh in his critique of Fichte? In a letter to Goethe, we find a hint that the author of the Wissenschaftslehre was aware of the important role that fantasy could play in philosophy. In a letter dated June 21, 1794, Fichte praised Goethe’s contributions to philosophy, writing: Philosophy will not have attained its goal so long as the results of abstract reflection fail to conform to the purest spirituality of feeling. I consider (and have always considered) you the representative of the latter or that level of humanity which we have presently achieved. Philosophy is right to turn to you. Your feeling is its touchstone. (EPW, 379 [GA III/2: 143])

What does philosophy get right in turning to Goethe? Philosophy should, Fichte claims, turn to Goethe, because philosophy is in need of feeling. Does Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, steeped as it is in abstract reflection, conform to “the purest spirituality of feelings”? Both Schlegel and Fichte see a place for Goethe’s poetry in philosophy. But the place each thinker reserves for poetry is quite distinct. Schlegel shared Fichte’s admiration for Goethe and for the central role Goethe played in the development of philosophy. Recall Athenäum Fragment Nr. 216, where Schlegel claims that “The French Revolution, Fichte’s philosophy, and Goethe’s Meister are the greatest tendencies of the age” (KFSA 2, 198, Nr. 216/Firchow 1991, 46). As discussed above, Schlegel’s reference to Fichte’s philosophy is a reference to his

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Wissenschaftslehre (1797/8), a work in which Fichte attempts to establish an absolute first principle for philosophy, an attempt that Schlegel (and Fichte, too) believed had revolutionized the field of philosophy. Ultimately, Schlegel rejected Fichte’s attempts to establish a first principle for philosophy, indeed, Schlegel rejected any attempt to establish a first principle for philosophy. Schlegel’s anti-foundationalism is accompanied by a firm commitment to overcoming the separation of philosophy from poetry. In Critical Fragment Nr. 115, Schlegel writes that “The whole history of modern poetry is a running commentary on the following brief philosophical text: all art [Kunst] should become science [Wissenschaft] and all science art; poetry [Poesie] and philosophy should be made one” (KFSA 2, 161, Nr. 115/Firchow 1991, 14). The push to fuse poetry and philosophy is also expressed in Ideas Nr. 108, “Whatever can be done while poetry and philosophy are separated has been done and accomplished. So the time has come to unite the two” (KFSA 2, 267, Nr. 108/Firchow 1991, 104). Schlegel, in keeping with his project to unite science, art, and philosophy, brings our attention in Athenäum Fragment Nr. 216 to the philosophical innovation present in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, the literary innovation found in Goethe’s Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meister (1795–6), and the social–political innovations ushered by the French Revolution.14 Despite a shared admiration for Goethe and an acknowledgment that poetry and feeling are valuable guides for philosophy, already in the details of this fragment we find hints of a theme that distinguishes the very approach to philosophy favored by the early German Romantics from Fichte’s approach to philosophy. Unlike Fichte, Schlegel did not consider philosophy as the science of sciences, and he pushed for a fusion between disciplines that would guide us in our infinite progress toward truth. In Schlegel’s border-fusing intellectual project, art and aesthetic experience take a leading role. Philosophy not only needs to turn to Goethe’s poetry and to feeling, as Fichte suggested in his letter for Goethe, but rather philosophy is poetry. Philosophy, for the early German Romantics, becomes aesthetic in a way that it never did for Fichte, and in a way Schlegel believed it never could for Fichte. There are two camps on this matter of whether there is room for an aesthetic theory in Fichte’s work. For some thinkers, the lack of a developed aesthetic theory in Fichte’s work is a matter of historical contingency: Fichte, had he lived longer, would have developed the aesthetic theory latent in his work. For others, the lack of an aesthetic theory in Fichte’s work is the result of deeper systematic commitments that excluded the development of aesthetic theory.15 In thinking about the lack of a developed aesthetic theory in Fichte’s work, we still do not know if we are dealing with a case of a path not taken or a case of a path not present. If we take as serious Fichte’s note to Goethe that philosophy needs feeling as its touchstone, just the sort of feeling Goethe delivers, then we seem to have an opening for making a case that Fichte saw an important bridge between poetry and philosophy.16 A push to link poetry and philosophy would bring Fichte closer to the early German Romantics, for the early German Romantics ultimately call for the fusion of poetry and philosophy. Fichte made no such calls to blend poetry and philosophy. Indeed, Fichte’s influence upon the early German Romantics came in the form of his alleged foundationalism, a tendency they fought to dispel.

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Fichte’s Foundationalism Fichte’s philosophy is based upon one principle consisting of three logical propositions. As Dieter Henrich points out in his small but powerful book, Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht (Fichte’s Original Insight), Fichte’s unique discovery was that he saw that selfconsciousness, which had long since been assumed to be the ground of all knowledge, can only be thought under certain circumstances (Henrich 1967). These are expressed in three logical propositions and together constitute the principle of all knowledge. The three logical propositions are: identity, contradiction, and synthesis. According to Fichte, the principle of identity is presupposed in every act of consciousness. But A=A is a logical fact (Tatsache), not yet any act of consciousness (Tathandlung). There must be, Fichte argues, something that posits this fact. This is the self-positing I. This selfpositing I then goes on to posit a Non-I, for in the act of self-positing, there is an active I that perceives itself as an object of consciousness, and hence as a Non-I. Here we come to the second principle, that the I cannot be at one and the same time the Non-I: this follows from the logical principle of non-contradiction (A and -A is always false). Yet, in the act of self-consciousness, we are aware of ourselves as an I and hence identical with that I (I=I) and as an I having as its object an I that cannot be identical to the positing I (I=Non-I). These two moments come together, the I posits itself and it posits a Non-I, resulting in knowledge of the I as self-positing and the I as the Non-I or as the object of the self-positing I. This synthesis is effected by knowledge and knowledge is the transcendental unity of the I and the Non-I. The fundamental principle of the Wissenschaftslehre is contained in the sentence, “The I posits itself absolutely” (Das Ich setzt sich schlechthin). In this formulation we find the primacy of the I not as thinking subject, but as active subject. For Fichte, reality is pure activity, an activity of the I.17 Fichte’s idealism begins with a self-positing I, hence with an act (Tathandlung) of consciousness rather than with a fact (Tatsache) of consciousness. Fichte calls this most fundamental self-positing, which is presupposed by all facts of consciousness but is not itself a fact, an act (Tathandlung). The I posits itself and upon doing so posits the Non-I as well. This Non-I serves to limit the I and this limitation gives the I its reality. For, according to Fichte, a pure I, one which would exist unconditionally, would be indefinite and unreal. Fichte saw his contribution as an extension of Kant’s philosophy, in particular of Kant’s transcendental deduction, for the transcendental deduction establishes objective validity through the subjective conditions of representability. Fichte was also addressing the problem of Kant’s positing of a thing-in-itself as the necessary source for all experience: Fichte believed that this thing-in-itself was unnecessary. Those philosophers who did not see this, and who insisted that the thing-in-itself was a necessary condition for the possibility of objective knowledge, were dogmatists. According to Fichte, there are only two possible consistent explanations of experience: dogmatism (materialism) and Critical philosophy (idealism). According to Fichte, dogmatism is that philosophical position which believes itself to be in possession of cognitions of things-in-themselves, and so is a type of metaphysical realism. This has the dangerous consequence of ending in a kind of determinism or fatalism (he mentions Spinoza as an example of this type of philosopher). This philosophical position focuses

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upon the thing rather than the I, on substance rather than on the active subject. The I is posited as part of being.18 Critical philosophy, on the other hand, asserts freedom as its starting point, whereby the I takes priority over any concept of the thing, the subject is understood as activity rather than as substance, and being is understood in terms of the activity of the I. In Fichte’s idealism (which is a form of critical rather than dogmatic philosophy), the Non-I is not a Kantian thing-in-itself beyond the reach of the thinking subject, but rather something that is opposed to the I by force of that same I and hence very much within reach of the I. Schlegel was particularly drawn to the role that freedom played in Fichte’s thought. Yet, his attraction to this aspect of Fichte’s thought did not amount to blind loyalty. In a fragment from 1797, Schlegel writes: “The I posits itself not because it posits itself, but rather because it ought to posit itself; there is a big difference between the two/Das Ich setzt sich nicht weil es sich setzt, sondern weil es sich setzen soll; das ist ein sehr grosser Unterschied” (KFSA 18, 35, Nr. 176; trans. mine). Schlegel was aware that unless Fichte includes the moral imperative (should) in his original self-positing of the I, he cannot account for freedom. Schlegel’s awareness of this problem was an important step in the development of his own philosophical position. Ultimately it led him to the more radical claim that: The I posits itself and the I should posit itself are not deduced from a higher proposition, one is as high as the other; they are two principles, not one. Two principles that condition each other reciprocally/Das Ich setzt sich selbst und das Ich soll sich setzen sind wohl mit nichten abgeleitete Sätze aus einem höhern, einer ist so hoch als der andre; auch sind es zwei Grundsätze nicht einer. Wechselgrundsatz. (KFSA 18, 36, Nr. 187; trans. mine.)

The Wechselgrundsatz becomes a central element of Schlegel’s philosophy, an element that emerges from Schlegel’s reaction to Fichte’s philosophy. Schlegel’s focus upon a Wechselgrundsatz or reciprocal proof structure is quite distinct from the sort of foundation Fichte developed to ground his critical idealism. I shall end with a brief account of the tensions between Fichte’s foundationalism and Schlegel’s Romantic anti-foundationalism.

Concluding Remarks We find a clue for understanding Schlegel’s break with Fichte in their reception of Goethe’s poetry. Schlegel was captivated by Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; it represented for Schlegel the paragon of what art could accomplish, immortalized, as we saw above, in the company of the French Revolution and Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, as a “tendency” of the age. While Schlegel could only be partially supportive of the French Revolution (which collapsed all too soon into the Reign of Terror) and Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (which he claimed had undesirable dogmatic, mystical aspects), he saw in Goethe’s Meister a universal Mischgattung, a Romantic model of what art could and should achieve.

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Early in the Meister essay, Schlegel tells us that in Wilhelm Meister “art will become science, and life an art” (Bernstein 2002, 271/KFSA 2, 128). Given that the theme of the unity of poetry, philosophy, and science shapes so much of Schlegel’s work, if Wilhelm Meister is indeed a novel in which such unity is achieved, we begin to see why Schlegel would identify it as a tendency of the age, and claim further that an understanding of the work would reveal everything that was happening in literature. There is an important sense in which Schlegel’s Über Goethes Meister provides us with an answer to a question posed in Athenäum Fragment Nr. 168, namely, “what philosophy is fittest for the poet?”(KFSA 2, 191–2/Firchow 1991, 39). Schlegel begins to answer the question in the very same fragment where it is raised, telling us that the philosophy fittest for the poet is a philosophy of freedom: “[W]hat philosophy is left for the poet? The creative philosophy that originates in freedom and belief in freedom, and shows how the human spirit impresses its law on all things and how the world is its work of art” (KFSA 2, 191–2/Firchow 1991, 39). The creative philosophy sketched in this fragment is precisely the sort of system we find in Fichte’s work—one reason why Schlegel was attracted to Fichte’s work. Yet, while Fichte’s “creative philosophy” is one “that originates in freedom and belief in freedom,” and did indeed show “how the human spirit impresses its law on all things”—all of which attracted Schlegel to Fichte’s work, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre did not and could not show “how the world is its [the human spirit’s] work of art.” For that demonstration we needed the world of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. The early German Romantics were clear that poetry was essential to philosophy. While the early German Romantics were led to this insight through reflections on freedom, which were prompted, in part, by Fichte’s philosophy, they could not find the poetic philosophy for which they were searching in Fichte’s work. Fichtecizing is essential to Romantic philosophy, but the Romantics felt the need to go beyond Fichte’s philosophy to accomplish their goals for a philosophy of freedom. As Novalis writes in his “Logological Fragments”: It might well be possible that Fichte is the inventor of an entirely new way of thinking—for which language has yet no name. The inventor is perhaps not the most perfect and ingenious artist on his instrument—although I am not saying that this is the case. But it is probable that people exist and will exist—who are far better able to Fichtecize than Fichte himself. Wonderful works of art could come into being in this way—as soon as we have learned to Fichtecize artistically. (NS 2, 524, Nr. 11/Mahony Stoljar 1997, 49)

I would like to close by suggesting that early German Romantic Philosophy was an “entirely new way of thinking,” and that the early German Romantics were a group who may very well have Fichtecized better than Fichte himself, at least, more poetically than Fichte himself. Romanticism would not have developed in the ways that it did without Fichte, yet the Romantic Fichtecizers were not Fichteans—they invented a new way of doing philosophy, one inspired by Fichte, but often deeply at odds with Fichte’s approach to philosophy.

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Notes 1 I discuss some aspects of post-Fichtean philosophy in my “Fichte and the Development of Early German Romantic Philosophy” (Millán 2016, 306–25). 2 It is important to note that this was not the title given to the writings by Novalis, but rather by editors of the critical edition of his work. As Manfred Frank has pointed out, this title disrupted the Wirkungsgeschichte of Frühromantik, and it continues to confuse readers, suggesting that Novalis was dedicated to the same sort of foundationalist philosophy put forth by Fichte. See Frank 2004, 40–1. 3 I have analyzed the distinction between early German Romanticism and German idealism in Millán 2014, 389–408. 4 The most recent iteration of their debate can be seen in Nassar 2014, an excellent collection of recent work on the philosophical dimensions of early German Romanticism. In that volume, we find Manfred Frank’s “What is Early German Romantic Philosophy” (ibid., 15–29) and Frederick Beiser’s “Romanticism and Idealism” (ibid., 30–46). 5 Frank 1997. Part of this has been translated into English as Frank 2004. 6 Beiser 2003a. 7 Beiser 2003b. 8 For an excellent account of Fichte and Schelling’s fraught philosophical relationship, see Gardner 2016. 9 The title to the fragment was given to the text by Franz Rosenzweig, who published the text in 1917. Although the text was found in Hegel’s handwriting, its authorship has never been decisively established (Hegel, Hölderlin, and Schelling are each viable candidates). The title is not descriptive of the contents; certainly, this text is not the place to find clues for unraveling the mystery of what German Idealism is. 10 In their essay “Representing Self and Other in Early German Romanticism,” Elizabeth Mittman and Mary Strand write: “In approaching early German Romanticism as both a philosophical movement and a model for an aesthetic practice, it is tempting to look at the ‘Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism’ as a conceptual and chronological starting point” (in Schulte-Sasse 1997, 47). 11 For more on the text and its role in understanding the new mythology, see Frank 1982, 153–87. The most detailed account of the text is given by Bubner 1973. 12 See Schlegel, Fichte’s Basic Characteristics of the Age (1808). In Schulte-Sasse 1997, 112–18/KFSA 8, 63–75. 13 Ibid., 63–75. 14 For more on the call to unify the disciplines, see KFSA 2, 161, Nr. 115/Firchow 1991, 14 and KFSA 2, 262, Nr. 108/Firchow 1991, 104. 15 French scholars Alexis Philonenko and Alain Renaut argue for the latter position, while thinkers such as Claude Piché, Faustino Oncina Coves, and Ives Radrizzani argue for the latter. See: Philonenko 1966, Renaut 1986, Radrizzani 2001, Oncina Coves 2001, Piché 2002, Pollack-Millgate 2008, and Breazeale 2013. 16 To do this, we must bracket the fact that Goethe wielded great political clout in Jena at the time, making decisions on university appointments, so that Fichte may have had good reasons for ingratiating himself with Goethe by praising him and his work. 17 For more on how this insight shaped later developments in phenomenology, see Millán 2010.

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18 For a more thorough analysis of this, especially with respect to how Fichte’s foundation establishes a life philosophy over and against an ontology, see Heidegger 1997, esp. 49–175.

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Millán, Elizabeth. 2014. “The Aesthetic Philosophy of Early German Romanticism and its Early German Idealist Roots.” In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, edited by Matthew C. Altman, 389–408. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Millán, Elizabeth. 2016. “Fichte and the Development of Early German Romantic Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, edited by David James and Günter Zöleer, 306–25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Nassar, Dalia (ed.). 2014. The Relevance of Romanticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Novalis. 1965. Novalis. Schriften, 3 vols, edited by Richard Samuel, Hans-Joachim Mähl, and Gerhard Schulz. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Abbreviated as NS. Oncina Coves, Faustino. 2001. “Rechte oder Äesthetik als Vermittlung zwischen Natur und Freiheit: Ein Dilemma bei Fichte?” In Der transzsendentalphilosophische Zugang zu Wirklichkeit: Beiträge aus der aktuellen Fichte-Forschung, edited by Erich Fuchs, Marco Ivaldo, and Giovanni Moretto, 361–79. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: FrommannHolzboog. Philonenko, Alexis. 1966. La liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Piché, Claude. 2002. “The Place of Aesthetics in Fichte’s Early System.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 299–316. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Pollack-Millgate, Howard. 2008. “Fichte and Novalis on the Relationship between Ethics and Aesthetics.” In Fichte’s System of Ethics: Papers from the Ninth Biennial Meeting of the North American Fichte Society. Philosophy Today 52(3–4): 335–47. Radrizzani, Ives. 2001. “Von der Kritik der Urteilskraft zur Ästhetik der Einbildungskraft, oder von der kopernikanische Revoution der Ästhetik bei Fichte.” In Der transzsendentalphilosophische Zugang zur Wirklichkeit: Beiträge aus der aktuellen Fichte-Forschung, edited by Erich Fuchs, Marco Ivaldo, and Giovanni Moretto, 341–59. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2001. Renaut, Alain. 1986. Le système du droit. Philosophie et droit dans le pensée de Fichte. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schlegel, Friedrich. 1958ff. Kritische Ausgabe, 35 vols, edited by Ernst Behler (in collaboration with Jean-Jacques Anstett, Jakob Baxa, Ursula Behler, Liselotte Dieckmann, Hans Eichner, Raymond Immerwahr, Robert L. Kahn, Eugene Susini, Bertold Sutter, A. Leslie Wilson, and others). Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. Abbreviated as KFSA. Schulte-Sasse, Jochen, et al. (eds., trs.). 1997. Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Fichte’s Response to Hegel in the Late Wissenschaftslehre Faustino Fabbianelli

Introduction The title of this chapter, “Fichte’s response to Hegel,” should not be understood as alluding to a direct and explicit statement in the late Wissenschaftslehre. Hegel is never referred by name in Fichte’s works.1 Rather, it points to a theoretical refutation of Hegel’s thought that can be formulated on the basis of Fichte’s claims in his later writings. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present Fichte’s late Doctrine of Science as a theoretical answer to Hegel’s speculative philosophy. However, this cannot be done without recalling some objections that Hegel raises against Fichte’s Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. After having presented Hegel’s charge that Fichte’s transcendental philosophy is a philosophy of reflexion and a system of the bad infinity, I want to stress the difference between Fichte’s heterological and Hegel’s antithetical opposition between I and non-I. I will explain the conception of heterological below. For now it should suffice to say that I borrow the term “heterological” from the German philosopher and one of the leading neo-Kantians Heinrich Rickert, who used it to describe the mode of thinking according to which two concepts that posit and negate each other are mutually complementary. Unlike the antithetical one, the heterological opposition does not imply the mutual exclusion of both concepts, but their complementary connection to the whole in the synthesis.2 This will then lead us to the double opposition that exists both between the concepts of the absolute and the relation of the absolute to its own appearance (Erscheinung). While Hegel proposes a definition of the absolute as the identity of identity and non-identity, the later Fichte claims that the absolute can be considered in its relationship with its appearance as “identity in non-identity.” Whereas Hegel wants to overcome every form of division between absolute and its manifestations, Fichte grounds his transcendental philosophy on the opposition of the absolute and absolute knowing (Wissen). Knowing represents only the appearance of the absolute and must not be confused with it. Even if one can speak of material identity, or identity in content, between them, their formal difference implies that absolute knowing and the I as its schema is not the absolute, but ought to become it. With regard to the differences between the absolute and its appearance, I particularly emphasize the opposition between Fichte’s analogical and Hegel’s non-analogical thinking.

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Hegel on Fichte in the “Differenzschrift” and “Glauben und Wissen” Hegel is of the opinion that Fichte’s transcendental philosophy (as well as Kant’s) is only “one science of the Absolute” (Diff. 172 [GW 4:76]). Alongside it, we find a philosophy of nature whose subject matter does not represent the “subjective SubjectObject” (the I) (Diff. 136 [GW 4:48]), but rather an objective Subject-Object: nature is not the product of subjective reflexion, it is on the contrary a spiritual subject that refers to itself. According to Hegel, only when one does not recognize the rational character of both forms of philosophy is it possible to consider nature as “mere matter” and not as Subject-Object (Diff. 164 [GW 4:70]). Only in this way can one conceive of nature as “something absolutely determined by the concept” (Diff. 165 [GW 4:70]). In Fichte’s transcendental philosophy, “identity constitutes itself only as subjective Subject-Object” (Diff. 155 [GW 4:63]); in it, the principle of the identity “Subject-Object” is not realized in the system, and “as soon as the formation of the system begins, identity is abandoned” (Diff. 155 [GW 4:62]). Hegel admits that Fichte has achieved the absolute principle of philosophy insofar as he recognizes that the foundation of the system “is intellectual intuition, pure thinking of itself, pure selfconsciousness, I = I, I am,” and that therefore “the Absolute is Subject-Object, and the I is this identity of subject and object” (Diff. 119 [GW 4:34]; here and elsewhere I replace “Ego” with “I”). The inadequacy of the Wissenschaftslehre, according to Hegel, consists in the fact that the I “does not become objective to itself” (Diff. 123 [GW 4:37]), that “the objective I is not identical with the subjective I” because the latter is “I” and the former is “I + non-I” (Diff. 124 [GW 4:38]). Thus, it further follows that “[a]s the theoretical faculty, the I is unable to posit itself with perfect objectivity, and escape from the opposition” to the non-I (Diff. 128 [GW 4:42]). The non-I of the Wissenschaftslehre has no positive character, “but it does have the negative character of being something other, i.e. something opposite in general” (Diff. 128 [GW 4:42]). Through the theoretical faculty, the I “does not succeed in making itself objective to itself. It does not penetrate to I = I. Instead, the object originates for it as I plus non-I. Or in other words, pure consciousness is not shown to be equal to empirical consciousness” (Diff. 129 [GW 4:42]). For Hegel, this shows the incompleteness of Fichte’s system of philosophy, as well as the principle underlying it. The absolute opposition of the pure consciousness of the I and the empirical consciousness of the I + non-I is a reciprocal relationship, resulting in an identity that is “highly incomplete and superficial” (Diff. 130 [GW 4:43]). Consequently, the deductive progression of knowledge in the Wissenschaftslehre is “nothing but a picking up again of what was abstracted from.” For example, in regard to the freedom of the rational being, the object of the will is posited as a minus; however, the deduction of the sphere of freedom consists of demonstrating that the same object should be posited as an existing plus. In the same way, “ [a]n empty money-bag is a bag with respect to which money is already posited, to be sure, though with the minus sign; money can immediately be deduced from it because, as lacking, money is immediately posited” (G&W 159 [GW 4:391–2]). In order to re-establish the unity of the pure I, which has disappeared into its relation to the non-I, reference is made to the practical faculty that manifests itself in the I’s demand for its own absolute identity. For Hegel, this “demand” remains a

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demand: “[n]ot only is it not dissolved into an authentic synthesis, it is fixed in the form of a demand; so that the ideal is absolutely opposed to the real and the supreme self-intuition of the I and Subject-Object is made impossible” (Diff. 132 [GW 4:45]). The highest synthesis in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is “an ought”: “I equals I turns into I ought to equal I. The result of the system does not return to its beginning” (Diff. 132 [GW 4:45]).3 The subjectivity of yearning (Sehnen) “is itself turned into the infinite, it is something thought; it is an absolute requirement, and as such it is the climax of the system: the I ought to be equal to the non-I” (G&W 153 [GW 4:387]). According to Hegel, Fichte’s concept of infinity can therefore only be bad (that is, spurious or negative), “since it is nothing but the negation of the finite, but the finite arises again in the same way, so that it is no more sublated than not.” This kind of infinity expresses only the requirement that the finite ought to be sublated. … This progress ad infinitum does not go beyond the expression of the contradiction, which the finite contains, [i.e.,] that it is just as much something as its other, and [this progress] is the perpetual continuation of the alternation between these determinations, each bringing in the other one (Enc. 1, 149 [GW 19:130–1]).

Fichte’s Concept of the Thing-in-Itself and Heterological Philosophy In order to evaluate Hegel’s objections to the Wissenschaftslehre, it is first necessary to examine Fichte’s notion of the thing-in-itself. He recalls at the beginning of the section on practical knowledge that the I as intelligence, according to its determinations in this sphere, is determined by itself. Nothing is present in the representing I except what the I itself posits. This theoretical sphere, however, “is not posited for the I by the I, but by something outside it; the mode and manner of representation in general is certainly determined by the I; but that the I should engage in representing at all is determined … not by the I, but by something outside it” (SK 220 [GA I/2:386]; here and elsewhere I replace “self ” with “I”). As Fichte explains, the ensuing contradiction between a conception of the I in which it is self-determined and one in which it is dependent can only be resolved if the I is understood as both infinite and finite. This means that the absolute activity of the I, which recedes into itself insofar as it relates to the not-I, does not present any determinate activity. Rather, it must be understood as “a tendency or striving towards determination” (SK 231 [GA I/2:397]). Fichte therefore claims that the object can be posited only with respect to the striving of the I. This striving, however, is found in the relation between the I and something foreign to it. In the genetic demonstration (Beweis) of the demand for an absolute causality of the I, out of which striving arises simultaneously as a limited and an infinite causality, Fichte shows that the possibility of a foreign influence of the not-I on the I is posited in the absolute I. This means that the I opens itself up to this foreign influence, since it is an activity that “is to be checked at some point” (SK 242 [GA I/2:408]). Thus, the possibility that the I and the not-I may come into contact is contained within the I. In order to explain such an influence, it is necessary to acknowledge that the I alone

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no longer suffices, neither from a factual nor a transcendental point of view. With regard to the quaestio facti, Fichte asserts that the non-I’s check (Anstoß) of the I is a fact that “is absolutely incapable of derivation from the I” (SK 242 [GA I/2:408]). It is also true in regard to the quaestio iuris, however, that the I can only posit itself as an actual I insofar as it is checked by something foreign to it. “According to the Wissenschaftslehre, then, the ultimate ground of all reality for the I is an original interaction between the I and some other thing outside it, of which nothing more can be said, save that it must be utterly opposed to the I” (SK 246 [GA I/2:411]). If everything is to be explained by the positing of the I, the I will be set into motion by an opposition that can itself be called a “mover” (SK 246 [GA I/2:411]), and that only exists for the I insofar as it is felt by the I. Fichte thereby emphasizes the dual character of his philosophy: on the one hand it is realist, since it grounds the consciousness of finite reason in the opposition of two mutually foreign elements, while on the other hand it is transcendental, since that which is independent of the I is always explained through the positing of the I. Thus, this dual nature of the Wissenschaftslehre makes very clear in which sense the thing-in-itself represents a concept that is never sublated. Without such a concept, that check upon the I, upon which the reality of the I depends, would not be possible. As long as it is thereby in relation to the I, however, the thing-in-itself exists transcendentally only for the I. “This fact, that the finite spirit must necessarily posit something absolute outside itself (a thing-in-itself), and yet must recognize, from the other side, that the latter exists only for it (as a necessary noumenon), is that circle which it is able to extend into infinity, but can never escape” (SK 247 [GA I/2:412]). Thus, the thing-initself represents a concept that is only theoretically unacceptable; whereas practically speaking, it is independent from the I both in terms of its being and its determination, and as such must be regarded as an absolutely indispensable concept (SK 248 [GA I/2:413]). Ultimately, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is grounded in this dialectical status of the thing-in-itself. A philosophy that overlooks the circle described above between the I and the thingin-itself, and the related dialectic of immanence and transcendence, is for Fichte “a dogmatic idealism” or “a transcendent realist dogmatism” (SK 247 [GA I/2:412]). There are two different ways by which such an inadmissible position may arise: either one denies “all reality outside us” and maintains that everything is in the I, or one claims just as dogmatically that the not-I is simply a thing-in-itself that cannot be explained through the principles of the I. “Neither of these courses is the one to follow: we should reflect neither on the one aspect alone, nor the other alone, but on both together, oscillating inwardly between the two opposing determinations of this idea” (SK 250 [GA I/2:414]). Consequently, the Wissenschaftslehre claims to be both realist and idealist. It is realist insofar as it shows that the consciousness of finite reason is only possible through a power (Kraft) that is independent from and opposed to reason and that is not identified but simply sensed. The Wissenschaftslehre also shows itself to be transcendental-idealist insofar as that element which is independent of consciousness is not simply seen as a matter of fact, but rather is explained through the principles of the I. Thus, the question “[n]ow where do we locate our opponent’s independent non-I, or thing-in-itself ” (SK 249 [GA I/2:414]) must be answered with: “[o]bviously,

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nowhere and everywhere at once. It is there only so long as we do not have it, and as soon as we seek to apprehend it, it flies away” (SK 249 [GA I/2:414]). Both the relation between the I and not-I and the being of the thing-in-itself underscore a foundational aspect of the Wissenschaftslehre which, using Heinrich Rickert’s terminology, can be called “heterological.” The general heterological principle of philosophy claims that the other of the one is not simply the negation of identity, as if negating the one would be enough to obtain the other. The negation of something does away with it and turns it into a non-something (ein Nicht-Etwas), or rather a nothing (ein Nichts). On the contrary, the other of the one must be seen as a positive non-one, that is, as a position that is always presupposed by negation. In thinking of the negation of the one, the difference of position (that is, of an other) is logically implied. As long as the nothing of something is only understood as a special case of the other, the principle holds that “otherness logically precedes negation” (Rickert 1921, 58; my translation). As heterological philosophy, the Wissenschaftslehre represents an alternative to Hegel’s dialectic of negation. The not-I is not simply the other of the I, resulting from the I’s negation. On the contrary, it represents the transformation of the absolute otherness of the thing-in-itself into an otherness for the I. In this sense, the heterological principle according to which “otherness logically precedes negation” also holds true for Fichte. It is no accident that the mutual limitation of the opposition with which the Third Principle of the Wissenschaftslehre is concerned preserves the significance it has in the Second Principle, according to which the not-I is opposed to the I. This act of limitation “occurs immediately, within and alongside the act of opposition; both are one and the same, and are distinguished only in reflection” (SK 108 [GA I/2:270]). At any rate, in the mutual limitation of the Third Principle the absoluteness of the opposition posited in the Second Principle remains unchanged: “the form of counterpositing is so far from being contained in that of positing, that in fact it is flatly opposed to it. Hence it is an absolute and unconditional opposition” (SK 103 [GA I/2:265]). In turning back to Hegel’s objections, one finds that they ultimately aim to call into question the aforementioned heterological character of the Wissenschaftslehre. It could be said that the respective approaches of Fichte’s and Hegel’s philosophies are absolutely opposed: the Wissenschaftslehre presents a heterothetic relationship between the I and the not-I (the thing-in-itself), whereas Hegel is concerned with a dialectical antithesis of subject and object.

The Absolute and its Appearance These opposed approaches of Fichte and Hegel are revealed in the concept of the absolute as well as in the relation between the absolute and its appearance. With regard to this latter opposition it is necessary to introduce another type of relation that can provisionally be called analogical. In order to establish the difference between the absolute in Fichte and in Hegel, it is appropriate to recall a passage from the Wissenschaftslehre that Hegel also discusses in his Differenzschrift (Diff. 159 [GW 4:66]):

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[f]or the deity, that is, for a consciousness in which everything would be posited by the mere fact of the self having been posited (though for us the concept of such a consciousness is unthinkable), our Science of Knowledge would have no content, since in such a consciousness there could be no other positing whatever, save that of the I; but even for God the science would have formal correctness, since its form is the form of pure reason itself. (SK 224 [GA I/2:390–1])

This passage attempts to accentuate the difference between Fichte’s absolute and divine consciousness. For Fichte, God’s self-consciousness cannot be understood by finite reason, because the latter is attached to the principle of determining upon which one reflects. “But since in God as reflected upon, everything would be in one and one in everything, and would similarly be so for God as reflecting, there would be no distinguishing, in and through God, between the reflecting and the reflected, between consciousness itself and the object thereof; and God’s self-consciousness would thus be unexplained” (SK 242 [GA I/2:407]). Hegel advocates the opposite viewpoint. As long as philosophy understands the object as a subject-object, it proves itself not only to be formally correct, but also materially valid, not only for infinite reason but also for divine consciousness. In other words, if idealism is not simply subjective but also objective, then it is capable of speaking of a rationality that agrees with God’s self-consciousness. For Hegel, this means that the absolute “is the whole” (PhG 13 [GW 9:19]), and therefore it contains within itself all conceptual determinations through which it expresses itself. “Hence, the absolute itself is the identity of identity and non-identity” (Diff. 156 [GW 4:64]).4 Fichte, however, rejects such a definition of the absolute. This point is made apparent in a passage from the Doctrine of Religion (1806), which defines the relation between the absolute and knowing (Wissen): Ex-istence (Daseyn) must apprehend, recognise, and image forth itself as mere Ex-istence; and, opposed to itself, must assume and image forth an absolute Being (Seyn) whose mere Ex-istence it is; it must thus, by its own nature, as opposed to another and an absolute existence, annihilate itself—which is precisely the character of mere image (Bild), representation (Vorstellung), or Consciousness of the “is” (Seyn). (PWF II 342 [GA I/9:88]; translation slightly modified)

This passage makes two things clear: first, that the appearance of God is not God, but rather it represents God and as such is in a relation of identity and difference to the absolute. Its nature as “Existence” shows that the appearance is in fact the appearance of the only possible being, of the absolute. Second, that in order to be something for us, the absolute must appear (i.e., it must enter into a relationship with the finite). Thus, it is by the absolute that we know its appearance; we also know that the absolute does not exhaust itself in its appearance. The absolute is an “in itself, of itself, and through itself,” it is that “singularity [Singulum] of immediately living being” that maintains its own independence despite its relation to the finite (SK1804 137, 121 [GA II/8:278, 242]). Fichte illustrates such a relation between the absolute and knowing by means of the difference between Being (Seyn) and concept, as we see from a passage in the

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eighteenth lecture of the Wissenschaftslehre Erlangen (1805): “concept and Being are differentiated in absolutely every respect; the Being before the concept only appears in the concept as an absolute opposition to the concept and to Being, as it is in it, within the concept” (GA II/9:260; my translation). This means that one can only speak of the sameness (Gleichheit) of Being before the concept and Being in the concept insofar as Being enters into the concept; that is, insofar as it is “fluid” (GA II/9:260). This sameness of the absolute and the concept does not, however, nullify their difference: “the absolute’s existing is not its Being” (GA II/9:260). For Fichte, the formula “identity in non-identity” applies (GA II/9:260), through which the character of the absolute is expressed in the Wissenschaftslehre. The absolute becomes fluid and manifests itself in knowing; however, an identity in difference exists. In content they are identical, but differ in respect to form. In this regard, it can be seen as an analogical relationship.5 It is important here to understand on what grounds Fichte establishes the relation between the absolute and the concept. It is precisely in the concept that God exists, and in it He exists “insofar as He can exist; that is, the way in which He exists, because He is God, and exists” (GA II/9:260). Thus, that which exists corresponds to God in terms of content: “therefore, the concept has real content, posited through God’s inner being, and by no means through the concept” (GA II/9:260). This comprises the identity of absolute and concept. Since the concept represents the moment, however, in which God’s essence becomes fluid, it is not identical with God—otherwise it would not be the concept of God, but rather God Himself. Although in content it is identical with God, the concept of God is absolutely distinct, in the sense that through God’s becoming fluid this same content has assumed the other form of the concept. In this respect, Fichte claims, God’s inner essence should be understood as the “in tantum” and the concept as the “tantum” (GA II/9:260). In other words, God can exist insofar as His essence is that “tantum” of content which unites with the formal “tantum” of the concept. For Fichte, both moments arise “completely through each other; and it is truly the case that ideal=real, and real=ideal” (GA II/9:260–1). It must be said that such interpenetration of content and form is found in the concept as well as in the absolute. If this were not the case, there would be an absolute lacking either form or content. Both the concept as the sole appearance of the absolute and the appearing absolute are unities of form and content. Through appearing, the absolute loses its own form and takes on the form of knowing: “inner absolute form: which God takes on simply by existing, because it is itself that which exists” (GA II/9:261). This identity of content in the non-identity of form underlies the analogical relationship between the absolute and its appearance. For Hegel, an identity that in itself contains an opposing non-identity, or is part of an unresolved difference—whether in form or in content—does not constitute a true and actual identity, because it is still understood to be specifically in opposition to the other. This gap between Fichte and Hegel is reinforced by the “as” category.6 For both thinkers this is a category of negation, in the sense that “as” indicates that something is that thing as such, insofar as it is this and not that. The Wissenschaftslehre of 1805 designates the “as” as the category of knowledge that brings duality into unity and therefore finds non-identity in identity: “How can two become one internally? Through an ‘as’” (GA II/9:210). Thus, the “as” brings about a formal change within identity of

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content. The image, for example, is an image as such because it is seen in terms of a relation of identity and non-identity to the being of which it is an image. Hegel also uses the “as” category; for him it expresses the determination of something by negating and differentiating it. According to Hegel, such determination (which must be concrete and not abstract) pertains to both form and content, and is thereby distinct from the “as” of the Wissenschaftslehre, which only pertains to form. On Fichte’s side, then, one faces the otherness that exists (and must exist) between the members of the absolute relation—the absolute and its appearance—and on Hegel’s side the denial of such otherness. While in the Wissenschaftslehre the absolute and the concept are in a relation of immanence that does not exclude (but rather, implies) the transcendence of that which manifests itself in appearance, in the case of Hegel’s metaphysics of the absolute any residue of transcendence must be sublated in favor of an inclusive relation between the whole and moments of the whole, according to which totality is not outside of its moments, but rather is constituent of each of them. On this point, the Wissenschaftslehre of 1805 refers to “foreignness” in order to describe the way in which the light of knowing nullifies itself “by making this act of generation the act of something foreign, of Being (Seyn) itself ” (GA II/9:223). For Fichte, light is “fundamentally foreign to itself ” because it is “God’s Existence” (GA II/9:223). Foreignness expresses the overspill of the absolute that goes beyond the finite; it guarantees that no absolute interpenetration of the two occurs, and therefore that the finite is not the infinite, but ought to become it. In contrast to Hegel’s identity and non-identity, Fichte places “essential sameness in non-identity, and non-identity in identity, in absolute and indivisible unification” (GA II/9:257). It is evident that the moment of negation has a different meaning for Fichte than for Hegel. One could also argue that in the Wissenschaftslehre the absolute is with itself (bei sich) in the form that is particular to it, whereas it is represented in its image in the particular form of knowing. According to Hegel’s Science of Logic, on the other hand, the absolute is only absolute when it is with itself in the other. This requires a determination (or a negation) that is not a simple one—like the relationship between the absolute and the concept—because this would entail the relation of otherness and difference. The absolute would thus be absolute because it is not the relative, and thus it would be understood and specified by an opposition. Only insofar as negation negates itself (it becomes an autonomous negation7) can that which is opposed to that which is negated be something opposed to negation and posited through it. In other words, for Hegel the absolute is not absolute because it is situated in a relationship of negation with something else, but rather because it is that negative through which its self-positing is negated. That in which the absolute posits and determines itself (for Fichte, its appearance), however, must also represent an autonomous negation. Only then can the relation of both moments (of the absolute and of the appearance), which are essentially identical, be understood as self-relation. We have seen, however, that according to Fichte absolute negation or nothingness can only be the concept in which the absolute manifests itself; as such, this concept does not completely agree with the reality of Being. I would now like to explain the difference between Fichte’s and Hegel’s positions in terms of both thinkers’ evaluation of Spinoza’s philosophy and of their different conceptions of the concept of ground.

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Spinoza in Fichte and Hegel Although he criticizes Spinoza’s position in the Ethics, Hegel recognizes the validity of the seventh proposition of Part II, according to which “the order and coherence of ideas (the subjective) is the same as the coherence and order of things (the objective)” (Diff. 166 [GW 4:71]). It is by making use of that proposition that it becomes possible to show how the science of the subjective and that of the objective are equal with regard to their relationship and their hierarchy. For Hegel, this means that every opposition, including that between subjective and objective, must be carried within the absolute. It is precisely because between the two opposing members, subjective and objective, there exists a real, and not only ideal, opposition (Diff. 123–6, 159 [GW 4:38–40, 66]), inasmuch as everything is in itself subject-object (Diff. 159 [GW 4:66]), that even the absolute that contains them can sublate (aufheben) their independent existence (Diff. 95–6 [GW 4:17–18]). This positive evaluation of Spinoza proposed by Hegel8 represents the exact opposite of that offered by Fichte. Already in the Grundlage Fichte notes how Spinoza had made the mistake of distinguishing pure consciousness from empirical consciousness, driven by the practical need to produce the supreme unity of human knowledge, drawing its conclusions from the principles of theoretical reason. “The first [the pure consciousness] he attributes to God, who is never conscious of himself, since pure consciousness never attains to consciousness; the second [the empirical consciousness] he locates in the specific modifications of the Deity” (SK 101 [GA I/2:263]; my additions). It could be said that, according to Fichte, both Spinoza and Hegel would be wrong to attempt to overcome the limits of finite self-consciousness: Spinoza because he postulates a pure consciousness that is really and not only abstractly distinct from the empirical one by identifying it with the divine consciousness, and Hegel because, by considering the object as a Subject-Object, he believes that he can give a material explanation of the same divine self-consciousness. From his transcendental point of view, Fichte thinks that Spinoza (but also Hegel) has not been able to keep pure consciousness and empirical consciousness together. He could therefore accept the Hegelian assertion according to which, on the basis of the Wissenschaftslehre, “[s]omething that is not constructed out of pure self-consciousness can no more occur in empirical consciousness than pure consciousness can be distinct in its essence from empirical consciousness” (Diff. 120 [GW 4:35]). Fichte could only do so, however, if this assertion does not claim (as it does for Hegel) that pure consciousness and empirical consciousness are identical in the absolute as its quantitatively different parts (Diff. 159 [GW 4:66]), but only that they ought to identify themselves. The dialectic between empirical consciousness and pure consciousness is not real, so as to be overcome in the absolute. If, as in Hegel, a level is reached in which this necessary structure is annulled in the absolute, it is clear that even the points of reference for a possible opposition are no longer one, but two; that is, pure consciousness and empirical consciousness are not opposed only to one another, but also to the absolute (Diff. 125 [GW 4:39]).9 In the Wissenschaftslehre 1811, Fichte, while recognizing the theoretical greatness of the Spinozist system, establishes an essential opposition between it and its transcendental philosophy. He agrees with Spinoza that “Being is simply one, in itself,

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through itself, and out of itself.” This means that the absolute is the whole that cannot increase in reality, and cannot even become anything else than what it is: “all variability and change is closed to it. It only is, and can by no means become” (GA II/12:163; my translation). With respect to this point, the distance from Hegel is already evident: for Hegel, the absolute is not at all something static, but rather is the becoming and selfrealization of the concept. Unlike Spinoza, the Wissenschaftslehre places the concept in which Being expresses itself alongside Being. In fact, Being can be thought of, which means that in addition to Being, philosophy must recognize the concept that thinks it. “Clearly if this concept is outside of Being, comprehensive, and a sphere which includes every Being, then it is not Being itself in its lived existence; rather, it contains only its empty form, its image and schema” (GA II/12:165).

The Concept of Ground The Kantian definition of freedom as autonomy of the will expresses the thesis that there is a form of act that does not depend on anything other than itself and has its own law in itself. This conception of Autonomie (autonomy) anticipates the Selbständigkeit (independence) of classical German philosophy, but is not identical to it. While the first concept refers only to the practical relationship of the pure will to itself, the second one has a larger meaning, insofar as it denotes the theoretical or ontological freedom of the principle of philosophy. This transformation corresponds to the semantic variation that occurs at the level of the concept of ground. While in Kant ground is mostly meant in the sense of ratio, as that which gives rise to something else and accounts for it (e.g., freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law and the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom), in both Fichte and Hegel ground is primarily the fundamentum or base upon which something else rests. The independence expressed by the Kantian concept of autonomy is transformed into the self-sufficiency or self-subsistence that characterizes the absolute: in this context, if one can still legitimately speak of autonomy (Autonomie), then only insofar as one understands it as a derivative concept with respect to the independence (Selbständigkeit). Thus, freedom is really the freedom to rest upon oneself; it is freedom of the self-sufficient being: a freedom that can be authentically assigned only to the absolute. Here we are dealing with two conceptual variations that are strictly interdependent. The Kantian ratio does not yet have anything of the fundamentum in itself since it only explains the emergence of something; therefore, it only guarantees that the act of pure will is not heteronomous, since it does not originate from a member outside the will itself. On the contrary, the fundamentum of the Wissenschaftslehre and the Science of Logic (the two texts relevant to the current inquiry) is the basis on which the whole system of philosophical knowing rests. The freedom of such a ground thus assumes the character of the independence (Selbständigkeit) that characterizes the absolute as fundamentum. On this point, Fichte and Hegel agree. In Fichte’s words, “it belongs to being a ground to be outside of itself, from itself, and immediately through itself, as everyone

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who understands the concept of ground takes it to be” (GA II/13:311; my translation); according to Hegel, “[t]he resolved contradiction is therefore ground, essence as unity of the positive and the negative. In opposition, determinateness has progressed to selfsubsistence; but ground is this self-subsistence as completed” (WL 378 [GW 11:282]). This is clearly nominal agreement. To measure the true distance that separates Fichte and Hegel it is necessary to investigate in more depth the nature of the free ground and the link that binds it with its own grounded. Let us begin with Hegel. Ground is the category of the Logic of Essence in which the contradiction between the positive and the negative as determinations of reflection is resolved in the sense of the Aufhebung. Hegel speaks of the “repelling” (Gegenstoß) of the reflected determination within itself, to indicate that ground determines itself independently (selbständig) by producing identity and difference. Essence as ground, “in thus being determined as self-sublating, does not proceed from an other but is, in its negativity, identical with itself ” (WL 386 [GW 11:291]). The Logic of Essence distinguishes between absolute ground and determinate ground. While the former is absolute because it is the ground of its own determinations, the latter is determinate because it presupposes its determinations without being the true ground of them. If the former is infinite ground and the ground of infinity, the latter is finite ground and the ground of the finite. Here it is worthwhile to examine the chapter of the Logic of Essence on formal ground (der formelle Grund) in relation to the Wissenschaftslehre. Formal ground is the first determination of determinate ground, and it is formal in the sense that the form belonging to it is separated from its content. “The ground has a determinate content. For the form … the determinateness of content is the substrate, the simple immediate as against the mediation of form” (WL 397 [GW 11:302]). Ground is also formal because the relationship between it and the grounded concerns only form and not content. Hegel asserts that ground is an identity that refers negatively to itself and that is identical with itself in its negativity. Ground is in relation with itself; it posits itself as a “grounded” (ein Begründetes) which is, at the same time, identical and different from its ground. Ground “is negatively self-referring identity which, for this reason, makes itself into a positedness; it negatively refers to itself because in its negativity it is identical with itself ” (WL 397 [GW 11:302]). Thus, formal ground is both identical and different from itself as grounded. Whereas diversity consists in the difference of form (ground–grounded), identity depends on the content that remains extrinsic and indifferent to the form: “this identity is the substrate or the content which thus constitutes the indifferent or positive unity of the ground-connection and, in this connection, is the mediating factor” (WL 397 [GW 11:302]). This means that ground and grounded are the same with respect to content and different with respect to form. It is important that the difference concerns only the form and not the content. Otherwise, we would have a ground–grounded relationship in which each element has its form and its content, and thus they would be completely different and could not be the ground or the grounded of one another. On the other hand, the irrelevance of content to the distinction between ground and grounded implies that it has in itself no determination with respect to the groundrelationship. “In this content, the determinateness that the ground and the grounded have over against one another has at first disappeared” (WL 397 [GW 11:302]).

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Such a relationship between ground and grounded, for which the content of the two moments of the relationship is the same and only the form is different, is, as we have seen, that one which subsists between the absolute and the concept of the Wissenschaftslehre. While, as in the case of Fichte, finite and infinite are in a formal relationship (same form, different content), one has for Hegel still to do with an absolute that is not yet an absolute as such because it does not manifest itself completely (as for the content and the form) in the relative. In short, there is no correspondence between the idea or the concept and its reality. And this is precisely what according to Hegel characterizes the finite and, by contrast, the absolute. On the contrary, Fichte’s theory of ground is a theory of boundary (Grenze). Ground is, in fact, a notion that is valid only for knowing and from the point of view of the finite. Fichte expresses this idea by attributing the quality of being a ground firstly to the concept of knowing; such as in the Sittenlehre 1812, where he states that the concept is “ground of the world” (GA II/13:310), or when in the Doctrine of Religion he says that the concept is “the real creator of the world,” meaning the foundational relationship that unites the giving of the world to knowing. It is important to emphasize here that this does not at all mean that it makes sense to speak of ground only in relation to knowing. As a theory of boundary, the Wissenschaftslehre posits not only a ground within knowing but also a ground outside of knowing; that is, the absolute. One could also argue that transcendental philosophy as a philosophy of boundary assumes a transcendent ground of knowing, if it does not affirm that knowing is the same absolute. Fichte expresses this point in various ways, such as when he states that our immediate seeing is the original appearance of the inaccessible light in its original effect (GA II/9:298), and that God does not exist through the light of knowledge, but rather that the light of knowledge exists because God exists (GA II/9:223–4). In short, the absolute appears in the absolute light “as such and as ground” (GA II/9:236). We are faced, then, with two alternative conceptions of ground, and it becomes clear that the relational metaphysics of the Science of Logic10 is opposed to the analogical metaphysics of the Wissenschaftslehre. Whereas in the first case any residue of transcendence must be eliminated in favor of an inclusive relationship between totality and moments in which totality is not outside its moments but is a constituent part of each of them, in the second case there is a relationship of immanence between the absolute and the concept that does not exclude, but rather implies, the transcendence of what appears in the manifestation. As a category of rational thought (that is, beyond the distinction of finite and infinite), ground reunites identity and difference for Hegel, but not as identity in difference in the sense of the Wissenschaftslehre. Identity and difference are therefore determinations that are not valid with respect to the analogical relationship between the absolute and its appearance (Fichte), but with respect to the moments of the absolute. Where Fichte establishes such a relationship on the basis of the formal distinction between the absolute and its appearance, Hegel finds that this relationship can be understood only in the sole absolute as ground. As long as between ground and grounded there is an identity only of the content and not of the form (as in the Wissenschaftslehre), according to Hegel they are in a relationship of simple negation or opposition. Only when this relationship is understood in a speculative sense does negation double and

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produce an identity of content and form. This implies a different definition of ground, no longer as something different from the grounded but as something that is the same. Hegel can therefore claim, as he does at the conclusion of the chapter on ground, that one fact (Sache) is not grounded by its ground, but comes from it (geht hervor): “The fact proceeds from the ground. It is not grounded or posited by it in such a manner that the ground would still stay underneath, as a substrate; on the contrary, the positing is the outward movement of ground to itself and the simple disappearing of it” (WL 417 [GW 11:321]). Expressed in terms of the transcendental relationship between the absolute and the concept, this means that the latter derives from the former, since it is that in which it has been sublated (aufgehoben). The absolute does not remain under the concept, that is, it does not exceed the same (as in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre), but rather disappears completely in it. What has just been said can be summarized by observing that the Wissenschaftslehre operates according to a logic of being and not according to a logic of essence in the Hegelian sense. These two forms of logic are distinguished by the character of the negation proper to them: simple in being, autonomous in essence. This implies that while determinations of being follow one another in terms of a becoming (Werden), those of essence are the product of the movement of reflection, that is, they are relationships. This is a fundamental distinction: relations of being are relations of otherness, while relations of essence are relations between moments of negativity. It follows that the other in the Logic of Being—a being with negation or limitation— turns into a negation with the negation in the Logic of the Essence. In the Logic of Being there is a first moment that passes into its other, if it is therefore immediate and equal to its other in the measure in which, by negating itself, it passes into and is maintained in the other. In the Logic of Essence, on the other hand, the first moment is also a negation that negates itself in its other, which is also negation. The sameness of both moments, therefore, “is not a first from which the beginning is made and which would pass over into its negation; nor is there an existent substrate which would go through the moves of reflection.” The becoming of essence is “the movement from nothing to nothing and thereby back to itself” (WL 346 [GW 11:249–50]). On the contrary, the absolute of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre removes itself and goes into the concept; it therefore negates itself in its appearance in the measure in which determining itself (manifesting itself) it loses its form. However, such a negation does not imply that the absolute itself is negation; in fact, for Fichte it is and remains a being that has no negation in itself.

Conclusion To what extent, then, can it be claimed that Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre thoroughly rebuts Hegel’s dialectic of antithesis? It seems this position can be maintained in two ways. First, by returning to Fichte’s heterothetic relation of moments. The Wissenschaftslehre of 1804 calls this the “living ‘through,’” and it concerns the point of disjunction in every relation of knowledge. It is as a result of the living “through” that thought is understood as the heterothetic principle, because it consists of the oneness of the subject and

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otherness of the object (or of I and Non-I). That is, the one is possible through the other, and the other is possible through the one. This “through” of absolute thought, which constitutes and justifies heterothesis in opposition to Hegel’s antithesis, is now also “through” as the appearance, or rather the image, of the absolute. Fichte introduces the relation of the double “through” with the question “How would it be if the internal life of the absolute light (= 0) were its life.” This question is answered through the following explanation: “If there is to be an expression—an outward existence of the immanent life as such—then this is possible only with an absolutely existent ‘through’” (SK1804 85 [GA II/8:154]). In this way, it also becomes possible to grasp the relation of the absolute to absolute thought through the previously introduced principle of analogy. There can be analogical knowledge only if human reason cannot reach the transcendence of being-in-itself (Ansichsein) in the immanence of being-for-us (Fürunssein). For Hegel, on the other hand, there is no place for analogical knowledge.11 The ensuing question about the logical order of the heterothetic and analogical principle of philosophy is answered by the fact that the principle of the analogy of the absolute, and of the image, can be considered as determination of the principle of the heterothesis. The heterothetic principle of knowing also proves to be for Fichte’s transcendental philosophy the absolute principle, the principle of all principles of knowledge in general. Since absolute knowledge itself only represents the absolute appearance of the absolute, however, the principle of analogy (which forms the basis for the relation of the absolute and knowing) shows itself to be a determination of the heterothetic principle of knowing. The simple difference of the one and the other as moments of heterothesis is therefore linked to the sameness and difference of the absolute and knowing. Thus, a double sense of otherness is established: otherness in the context of the heterothesis of knowing and otherness in the context of analogical sameness. These correspond to two different relations: in the first case to the horizontal relationship of constituting moments of knowing, and in the second case to the vertical relationship of this same knowing to the absolute. The latter can be seen as a determination of the former, which never allows otherness to become a non-identity in Hegel’s sense. The other of the absolute is certainly found in knowing, though not in the sense of Hegel’s non-identity, but rather through an otherness that is not explainable through dialectic because it is heterothetic. Hegel places every relation of moments under the same principle of antithetic dialectic, thereby levelling the difference between the relation within knowing and the relation between knowing and the absolute. Thus, he misunderstands the twofold principle in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre of heterothesis and analogy. Hegel negates the idea that the heterothetic correlation between the one and the other can be considered logically prior to the determining relationship of identity and non-identity. In this regard, Fichte’s transcendental philosophy suggests that the heterothetic principle is the only principle of absolute knowing on the basis of which positing, or rather knowing, is possible at all. In the Wissenschaftslehre, however, one finds a transcendental principle of analogy that normalizes the relation between the absolute and knowing, and at the same time determines the relation of otherness. In any case, it concerns itself with a determination that in no way sublates

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heterological otherness, and which therefore must not be confused with the dialectical determination that pertains to every type of relation for Hegel.

Notes 1 Twenty years ago, Reinhard Lauth proposed the thesis that the “new philosophical author” of whom Fichte speaks in the first lecture cycle Vom Verhältniß der Logik zur wirklichen Philosophie (in the so-called Logik 1), which he gave in Berlin during the summer term of 1812, “must be Hegel” (Lauth 1998, 460). A milder version of this thesis appears in the commentary on the relevant passage in the Gesamtausgabe Fichtes (GA II/14:140, note 88). 2 See Flach 1959, 13. 3 On this point see Lauth 1987, 47. 4 On Hegel’s concept of the absolute within the Differenzschrift see Zimmerli 1974, 84–6. 5 I have emphasized this aspect of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre in Fabbianelli 2019. On Fichte’s relationship between the absolute and its image see Ivaldo 2014. 6 On Fichte’s concept of “als” see Henrich 1967, 21–5; Janke 1970, 19–26, 191–204. 7 On this concept see the fundamental study of Henrich 1976. 8 Bernard Bourgeois has emphasized the possible transcendental meaning of Spinoza’s proposition: for Fichte, it would speculate about the parallelism between the thought of being (natural thinking) and the thought of the thought of being (philosophical thinking) (Bourgeois 1968, 36). 9 On this point see Girndt 1965; Naylor 1978; Göbel 1984. 10 Here I borrow an expression from Iber 1990. 11 Specht 1952 and Heintel 1954 come to the same conclusion.

Bibliography Bourgeois, Bernard. 1968. L’idéalisme de Fichte. Paris: PUF. Breazeale, Daniel. 1995. “De la Tathandlung à l’Anstoß – et retour: liberté et facticité dans les Principes de la Doctrine de la science.” Les Cahiers de Philosophie Numéro hors série: Le bicentenaire de la Doctrine de la science de Fichte (1794-1994): 69–87. Druet, Pierre-Philippe. 1972. “L’‘Anstoss’ fichtéen: essai d’élucidation d’une métaphore.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 70: 384–92. Fabbianelli, Faustino. 2019. “Fichte und die analogia entis.” In Fichtes Bildtheorie im Kontext. Teil I: Entwicklungsgeschichtliche und systematische Aspekte, edited by Christian Klotz and Matteo Vincenzo d’Alfonso (Fichte-Studien 47), 129–46. Leiden: Brill. Flach, Werner. 1959. Negation und Andersheit. Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der Letztimplikation. München/Basel: Reinhardt. Girndt, Helmut. 1965. Die Differenz des Fichteschen und Hegelschen Systems in der Hegelschen “Differenzschrift.” Bonn: Bouvier. Göbel, Wolfgang. 1984. Reflektierende und absolute Vernunft. Die Aufgabe der Philosophie und ihre Lösung in Kants Vernunftkritiken und Hegels Differenzschrift. Bonn: Bouvier.

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Heintel, Erich. 1954. “Kant und die analogia entis.” Wissenschaft und Weltbild 7 (2): 107–11. Henrich, Dieter. 1967. Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann. Henrich, Dieter. 1976. “Hegels Grundoperation. Eine Einleitung in die ‘Wissenschaft der Logik.’” In Der Idealismus und seine Gegenwart. Festschrift für Werner Marx zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Ute Guzzoni, Bernard Rang, and Ludwig Siep, 208–30. Hamburg: Meiner. Iber, Christian. 1990. Metaphysik absoluter Relationalität. Eine Studie zu den beiden ersten Kapiteln von Hegels Wesenslogik. Berlin: De Gruyter. Ivaldo, Marco. 2014. “La costituzione dell’immagine e l’assoluto nel tardo Fichte.” Rivista di storia della filosofia 4: 667–84. Janke, Wolfgang. 1970. Fichte. Sein und Reflexion – Grundlagen der kritischen Vernunft. Berlin: De Gruyter. Lauth, Reinhard. 1987. Hegel vor der Wissenschaftslehre. Mainz/Wiesbaden/Stuttgart: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur/Franz Steiner Verlag. Lauth, Reinhard. 1998. “Eine Bezugnahme Fichtes auf Hegels ‘Wissenschaft der Logik’ im Sommer 1812.” Kant-Studien 89: 456–64. Naylor, Josef G. 1978. “La controverse de Fichte et de Hegel sur l”indifférence’.” Archives de Philosophie 41: 49–67. Rickert, Heinrich. 1921. System der Philosophie. Erster Teil: Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie. Tübingen: Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Specht, Ernst Konrad. 1952. Der Analogiebegriff bei Kant und Hegel. InauguralDissertation Köln. Zimmerli, Walther Christoph. 1974. Die Frage nach der Philosophie. Interpretation zu Hegels Differenzschrift. Bonn: Bouvier.

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Fichte and Phenomenology Virginia López Domínguez

There are many who claim that there is no direct influence of Fichtean idealism on Husserlian philosophy; although they both deal with common matters, they are distinguished in their development and, therefore, “the differences between them are  immediately visible” (Hyppolite 1959; also see Boehm 1959; Iribarne  2001; Welton 2003). Perhaps these opinions are based on an ignorance of Fichtean philosophy, an ignorance that was considerably reduced as the critical edition of his works appeared. In spite of this, it is still emphasized that Husserl only experienced a relationship of “confirmation” and “affinity,” above all, with ethical idealism, but distanced himself from the Doctrine of Science in its theoretical aspect (Hua XXV, 269: “Einleitung”; see also Hart 1995). Nevertheless, what cannot be denied is that the founder of phenomenology in the twentieth century knew Fichte’s thought well and was inspired by him to construct important aspects of his own conceptions. In turn, since Husserl initiated a whole philosophical school, he influenced—if indirectly—a number of concepts and theories of his disciples and followers, such as Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur. Husserl’s interest in classical German philosophy appears before the publication of his Logical Investigations and coincides with a long period of reflection on the philosophical status of phenomenology, its method, and its essential elements, such as the transcendental I or the noetic/noematic correlations. His privileged interlocutors on these theoretical issues are Kant and Fichte, who offer him support points to overcome psychologism. Given his attempts to found and systematize knowledge, Husserl’s philosophy can be considered as a theory of science, which he did not hesitate to call by the Fichtean name of “Wissenschaftslehre.”1 Even in a letter addressed to Heinrich Rickert, Husserl attributed some responsibility to Fichte in the evolution of his phenomenology toward a form of idealism.2 However, Husserl’s attitude is ambivalent and in some cases he even criticizes Fichte for his lack of a rigorous method and the absence of an intentional psychology on which to base experience, which— according to him—is lost in speculations, in a dark metaphysics, lacking in scientism.3 Nevertheless, it is important to remember that it was Fichte who first used the term “phenomenology” in a positive sense, with the same meaning as Husserl later did.4 It

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was initially Lambert who introduced the word into philosophical discourse in 1764, but he defined phenomenology as a science of illusions with a merely propaedeutic function in the process of unveiling truth.5 This same meaning appears in a letter that Kant sent to Lambert on September 2nd, 1770, when he considered the possibility of calling “phaenomenologia generalis” what would later be the Transcendental Aesthetics of the Critique of Pure Reason, which he had already started working on.6 The trace of this negative sense remains even in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, since this work represents the path that consciousness follows to access science, an access that occurs to the extent that the set of illusions is destroyed, that is, admitting errors as partial aspects of a total and absolute truth that is gradually fulfilled in history.7 Unlike all these authors, Fichte defines phenomenology in an affirmative way, as a theory of what manifests or appears, perfectly distinguishing the phenomenon (Erscheinung) from mere appearance or illusion (Schein). It is clear that such a distinction goes back to Kant.8 Yet since for Kant the phenomenon coincides with the represented object, in his view, philosophy cannot be concerned with transforming appearance into truth, which is impossible. Rather, Kant believed that philosophy should deal with turning phenomena into experience by establishing intelligible relations, judicative among them.9 For this reason, Reinhold, Kant’s first interpreter, was able to say that phenomenology completes the explanation of rationalism by applying rationalism’s principles to phenomena and teaches us, with the help of these laws, to distinguish and separate them from mere appearance.10 It is, therefore, a preparatory science that has to do with the determination of reality (Wirklichkeit),11 but which is not yet in charge— according to Fichte—of finding the basis of facticity. For Fichte, the phenomenon is not an artificial object, or pure creation, but a real and true fact that appears in consciousness, a factum, but its foundation is not in the factum itself but directly in truth itself, for consciousness “constitutes only the external phenomenon of truth.”12 According to this definition, the Doctrine of Science is a “transcendental investigation of the origin of the spiritual fact” (Ivaldo 1992, 93) that produces a double series: that of the foundation of principles (the theory of truth) and that of the description of what appears (phenomenology) (see SK 1804, GA I/8:204–8). As in Husserl, it presents two fundamental, complementary and non-exclusive reasons: the epistemic and the epistemological (see Hyppolite 1959; Rockmore 1979). Its starting point must be a return to what appears13 in order to transcend into the enabling condition of the facts (Tatsachen) of consciousness, to its foundation outside all experience, which is the absolutely spontaneous activity of the I (Tathandlung). A clear example of this methodology appears in the first paragraph of the Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge. In order to access the first principle, a procedure is used, like abstract reflection, similar to the Husserlian epoché, which leads to phenomenological reduction (Ideas I, para. 18, Hua III, 33. Ibid. para. 31–2, 55). Moreover, regardless of basic affinity, it is truly surprising to see how the philosophies of each philosopher are nearly identical in certain respects, even when the genetic method acquires, in Fichte, a synthetic character to construct from a factum “the pragmatic history of the human spirit” (SK [GA I/2:365]). Specifically, as happens in the Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge, where the impulse can be interpreted as a noetic explanation of the tendency (Streben),14 or in the Foundations

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of Natural Right as in the deduction of the body and of alterity effected, where a realistic explanation of sociality is made on the margins of morality, that is, directly from the principles of the Doctrine of Science and, therefore, in opposition to Kantian naturalism. This inaugurates within idealism a methodological approach that will later fully fit into Hegel’s foundation of law. Husserl’s interest in Fichtean anthropology dates back to 1903, when he taught a course on The Vocation of Man, which he taught once more at Göttingen in 1915. Two years later he returned to the subject in three lectures about the “Ideal of the humanity in Fichte,” which he delivered to soldiers returning from the battlefield. He repeated a year later. The lectures were based on Fichte’s several works written in his later period, and, in addition to The Vocation of Man, also included The Way Towards the Blessed Life; or, the Doctrine of Religion, The Characteristics of the Present Age; On The Nature of the Scholar and its Manifestations; Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation of 1811; and the Addresses to the German Nation. The focus of his attention was directed toward Fichte’s shift from the theoretical I, to the practical, to the teleological question, and to the doctrine of love (Lahbib 2004; cf. López Domínguez 1982). Indeed, in a letter to A. Grimme in 1918, Husserl acknowledged that these conferences had marked a milestone in his evolution, given that “the religious-philosophical perspectives opened by phenomenology at that time were remarkably related to the last theology of Fichte.”15 In fact, the second of these lessons, entitled “The universal ethical order as creative principle of the world” (Hua. XXV, 267n), introduces an important change in phenomenological ethics because, immediately afterwards, Husserl left purely evaluative intuition in order to focus on subjectivity as responsibility, after having made an ethical reflection of culture. His aim was to urge an ethical-political renewal of humanity, which he found necessary in the face of a war that revealed the deep crisis of values ​​that Europe was experiencing, as well as the exhaustion of its culture.16 At such a juncture, philosophy could be the saving force that would lead the transformation of humanity, due to its power in establishing the meaning of life and showing a person that “in acting [she] is free, that is, [a] free citizen in a society destined to freedom.”17 These reflections, which seek to foster mutual understanding and respect for others, will mature slowly and will end up crystallizing more than ten years later in the fifth Cartesian Meditation. In this work, transcendental otherness can be interpreted as the basis of a pluralistic ontology, the basis for a world that is universally valid and which, nevertheless, admits multiple perspectives of irreducible configuration in its difference, a monadological totality. The starting point for explaining intersubjectivity for both philosophers, Fichte and Husserl, is the finite consciousness. The difference is that for Husserl, the act of freedom, of gratuity and spontaneity, which philosophy initiates and on which abstraction rests, seems to be a theoretical option in the epistemological pretense of reaching a radically scientific and full truth because it does not emphasize it sufficiently and does not show its consequences. There is, in Fichte, also a concern for converting philosophy into science by giving it an undoubted and unconditioned beginning; the choice of the first principle, thus, is a commitment to explain the world either from the I or from the thing [thing-in-itself]. In other words, this is a dilemma between freedom and determinism, a dilemma whose ethical character makes the choice even

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more pointed and non-transferable.18 At the same time, the ethics of the starting point have a repercussion on the goal of philosophy, which consists in offering a rational explanation of the social world, and for this reason Fichte deduces intersubjectivity first in the field of the foundation of law, being for him the only objective instance that can regulate the relationship between subjects.19 As a consequence, it is clear that the system is at the service of the construction of political life, as Fichte states in his famous letter to Baggesen in 1795 (GA III/2:300, no. 282b).20 The monadic point of departure not only ensures individual freedom, which is strictly necessary to conclude the inescapable responsibility in one’s actions, but also serves to sustain cultural and political differences in the principalities (lands or provinces) of a soon-to-be Germany, as well as Germany itself vis-a-vis the unifying advance of France at the end of the Thirty Years War.21 However, for Fichte (as well as Hegel), the juridical subject is constituted when the free activity of the I is concretized, that is, when it is limited or endowed with a determined sphere of manifestation that is its own and belongs to it exclusively. In order for the law to judge, individuality has to be externalized. Therefore, its beginning refers to the phenomenon of appropriation that consciences make of their environment, understanding them as forces that can enter into litigation in the dispute for world domination. In this way, property, especially land ownership, which at that time was the main source of wealth in Germany, served as the basis of the entire legal edifice. The term to which the act of appropriation is directed (be it the body itself, as in Fichte, or the material goods in Hegel), will depend on the social or private character of the property, as well as the role of the individual in the social and political set. As for Fichte, the explanation of intersubjectivity begins, in Husserl, with the individual, as constituted by Eigenheitsphäre. Husserl’s conclusions are different precisely because he does not deduce the Other in the legal–political context. In fact, the expression Eigenheitsphäre means a “field of belonging” and represents that which is directly linked to an intentional act, to the spontaneous activity of the I that leaves itself in a reference that never comes to merge with an external object. It is the body, whose senses allow the appearance of the world and produce a material possibility of the relationship with other concordant subjects, that reverts to the constitution of one’s own subjectivity. Consequently, Husserl’s greatest concern again seems to be theoretical: it consists in avoiding solipsism,22 explaining the coherence and, above all, the universality of the experience of the I. There is no doubt that what he intends is to construct a philosophy of conciliation, respectful of individuality. But the fact that the sphere of appearance of the alter ego is not related to property but only to the constitution of the sense of the world puts in evidence that his intention is to promote a renewal of the culture of humanity—still shocked by the consequences of the First World War. It responds, therefore, to the lack of social understanding, to the impossibility of dialogue, caused, to a great extent, because the state and its institutions monopolized all voices. The same phenomenological message of adhering to the facts obliges us to take into account war and its aftermath, to recognize, as Fichte did, that confidence, in the capacity of the state, cannot be maintained to foster internal and external harmony, in order to create a material approach to the Kantian kingdom of ends and, consequently, to happiness.

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The description of the body has surprising similarities in both authors, especially if one is circumscribed to the deduction of it that Fichte does in the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy nova methodo, a set of lessons, manuscripts of which it is unclear whether or not Husserl knew. Since in this work the beginning of the system is not found in the absolute I but in the reciprocal relation between the I and the world,23 the body acquires a leading role as mediator, be it in the connection between theory and praxis, or in the internal articulation of the two domains. It becomes a necessary place for the constitution of consciousness and for the explanation of the finite being in general. Interestingly, Fichte presents this in very similar terms to those later used by Husserl. As is well known, from a phenomenological perspective of consciousness, representations accompanied by a sense of need, those that cannot be changed at will and therefore belong to the field of perception, only make sense if they are included in a relational totality where they are ordered in space and time; that is, the set of all the sensations, which, by contrast, allows one to perceive the plurality and its changes. This network of cross-references is, for Husserl, the body, which acts as the sphere of appropriation of intentional acts. Similarly, in the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy nova methodo the body is defined as a “system of sensitivity”24 because it is an intertwining of sensations that remains stable as a whole, despite the variation of its members and the appearance of new sensations. It represents the framework in which these are included and by which they acquire meaning, or literally “the possible sum of changes, according to their form, with complete abstraction of their content” (WLnm[H] 68, 118; WLnm[K] 90). In other words, it constitutes the very determination of alterability (Veränderlichkeit) that makes possible the perception of plurality and its concrete variations, a transcendental condition for the appearance of sensations in consciousness (FNR, Para. 6). Thus, the body is already presented as an organism, although in this passage it is not yet recognized as such. It is a whole that lives and is concretized through its members, but which, in turn, allows the existence of its parts by sustaining them in a self-differentiating whole and generating itself. Being a living whole in which a consciousness is expressed, the body cannot be considered as a mere corporeal object but as the place of embodiment of freedom. In this way, in Fichte there already appears the distinction between Körperlichkeit (corporeity) and Leiblichkeit (corporality) that Husserl made so famous. The characterization of the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy nova methodo makes irrelevant the postulation of two kinds of organs (the inferior and the superior) or of two different matters (gross and subtle) that appear in the Foundations of Natural Right. These distinctions have only metaphorical value, even if they are to be compared with anatomical or physical discoveries of the twentieth century. They constitute a resource that faces the need to present the body as an instrument that works efficiently in the Non-I.25 They are helpful to bridge the gap between theory and praxis, between the spiritual and the material world, an issue that becomes secondary when it is posed in the context of the semantic constitution of the world by an intentional consciousness. Precisely, the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy nova methodo seeks to overcome this implicit dualism by presenting the soul as an internal organ and

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the body as an external one, constituting a single I seen from two different perspectives of sensitization: the internal and the external intuition.26 Consequently, in the strict sense, it cannot be said that the body is an instrument for consciousness, because it is not a tool external to it but a starting point to constantly overcome in order to deploy our action in the world. And it is so, even though it recaptures us again and again, since we are bound to it (Gebundenheit, WLnm[K] 120). In any case, it is the way of being installed in the world, because this is primarily the place of realization of the actions, since we have found it through acting and, therefore, from the beginning we have raised it teleologically.27 Thus, man is a systematic unit where each characteristic refers to all the others. It constitutes a moment of a primary set that gives coherence to all of them and can do so because it consists of a knot of meanings. In this primordial unity lies its principle of life, which is freedom, activity, self-assertion, and self-possession, which is lived and realized in each of its acts and its parts. This unity, the body, is what individualizes the soul, because each psyche is of a particular organism and vice versa. The psyche is organic and the organism is psychic. This is precisely the sense that the body as “psychophysical unity” has in Husserl.28 As a result, the uptake of the own organism is not comparable to that of any object. It can only be lived, felt from within in full identification with the own I that becomes transparent to itself. According to Fichte, this is due to an original feeling (Urgefühl, WLnm[H] 118). Every intuition of the I as an object becomes secondary and is based on a free reflection, that is, on a return of consciousness to itself by a previous abstraction of the world in which it has been expanded.29 Husserl will call this feeling a “worldly apperception of myself ” and will clarify—using the vocabulary of the idealist—that it reveals the “I in reciprocal relationship with the Not-I” (Descartes 1984 V, Para. 45), a synthesis in which consciousness and the world establish immediate contact, relating spontaneity and receptivity. Thanks to this double belonging, the I is capable of feeling itself and its surroundings, finding here the origin of all perception. For Fichte, the body places man in the physical world and acts as a spatial configurator, an axis mundi from which all distances are deployed, being for each individual the absolute place or—as Husserl says—the “central here of the nature” (Meditation V, Para. 53. Cf. WLnm[K] 121). In this way, the external arrangement of the spatial world converges with the immanent configuration of the experiences in time. Fichte had already made this deduction by explaining this representation from the oscillating movement that the imagination performs, when the affirming activity meets an obstacle that produces in the I a feeling of limitation, a sensation that returns the energy to the subject transforming it into a patient (SK [GA I/2:360 n.]). The oscillating alternation of activity and passivity distends the I in its three temporal dimensions. In short, thanks to the body, subjectivity is individualized, situating itself in certain spatio-temporal coordinates. Thus it acquires a non-transferable point of view, a perspective that would become incompatible with others, if it did not also constitute, according to Fichte, the place of immediate expression of freedom, of the tendency to absolute affirmation, which is the vehicle of universal and, consequently, of the moral law (WLnm[K] 120)30. To admit that the rational being puts itself in space as a being that tends practically as a will (WLnm[K] 122)31 forces us to transcend the mechanistic

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vision of the world configured from the body and to recognize the place of realization of ends, in nature. For this reason, teleology is presented as the last synthesis of the Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy nova methodo, a discipline whose scientific validity had previously been rejected and is now admitted, to the extent that it studies the physical world as an analogon of freedom (WLnm[K] 238 n.). Although the terms that Fichte uses in his interpretation of the body in the previous passages connect directly with the interests of Husserl in the three conferences of 1917, due to the noumenal character of both freedom and will, it must be acknowledged that in Meditation V there is no direct reference to either of these ideas. However, when Husserl refers to the body, he not only defines it as a field of sensations but as the only sphere in which “I command and rule in an immediate way” (Meditation V, Para. 44, 128), that is, he implicitly admits that the body is impregnated with purpose and freedom. As a consequence, also in that primordial world that is nature reduced to property, he recognizes the presence of predicates that have meaning from the psychophysical I, as, for example, those of value and work (ibid.). Only on the assumption that there are such significations in the world phenomenon will it be possible to access the realm of culture, the “worldliness” (Weltlichkeiten) of higher degrees (Meditation V, Para. 55). As in Fichte, then, the values and ​​ ends, that is to say, the ideas that shape the intelligible world, also have an impact on the constitution of the sensible world (see DGW [GA I/5:353 n.]; AP [GA I/5:431]; WLnm[H] [GA IV/2:125]). This is, in short, a cultural, anthropological universe, and not merely natural, because the starting point of Husserlian philosophy is phenomenon, the manifestation of things to consciousness, and its goal is to reconstruct the genesis of all meaning. Precisely in this theoretical context, otherness appears as a necessary instance for the constitution of meaning in general, thus avoiding the objection of solipsism. According to the phenomenological method, the principle that governs the constitutive theory of the experience of a “stranger” is the other experienced as it is given directly to consciousness with its onto-noematic content. Therefore, we have full certainty of the experience that others really are and that they are in the world, but the problem is that they do not present themselves as mere natural things but as psychophysical objects that govern psychically in their organic bodies, that is, as subjects for that world that I myself experience (Husserl, Meditation V, Para. 43).32 As in Fichte, it is the question of recognition (Anerkennung), which consists in explaining how the acknowledgment of other beings occurs as they resemble us.33 The response of both authors is pretty similar: the act of the recognition of otherness is a complex process which being a conscious experience is associated with a perception of the other at the bodily level; yet the experience itself, as it occurs in practice, is an immediate synthesis. According to Fichte, the experience of recognition of the other is not attainable “through habit and teaching but [could be achieved] naturally and by reasoning only” (FNR [GA I/3:380]). Husserl calls this process empathy (Einfühlung).34 For Husserl, the recognition of otherness corresponds to an embodied, sensitized, human subject, a member of the external world and capable of distinguishing himself from it. This I-monad is the starting point, because in it there is the intentionality that is directed to the other by reference to itself. The stranger appears as a reflection of oneself thanks to an analogizing or assimilating perception, a kind of mediative intentionality,

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which, from the perception of the physical body of the other, transfers the organic character of my own body, whose organicity I know perfectly well, for I myself, as a psychophysical being, am the one who governs fully in him (Meditation V, Para. 50). The association of data implicit in this apperception is indirect, since it evokes a similar appearance corresponding to the constitutive system of my organic body as a physical body in space, hence Husserl calls this first intuition “reminder” (ErinnungsAnschauung, Meditation V, Para. 53). It is clear that, although he speaks of mediation, it is a synthetic intuition and, moreover, explained in the same way as in Fichte. The recognition of the other is produced by projecting the image that the I has of itself over others. And thanks to that, its recognition automatically happens as well, not only as a sensitive being but as an intelligent being. Indeed, by unifying the body of the other and identifying it as an organized natural product, the I turns it into a rational totality. But, in turn, the I also does the test to itself. Since it can never see itself from the outside and objectify itself as a whole, but always partially, through some members, the I’s imagination is only able to construct a body scheme by reference to that of others, understanding it as a symbol of the spiritual, in close link with freedom. As a result, it can be said that the awareness of my own being, full self-consciousness, depends on the constitution of the alter ego, and is speculatively built in the corporal relations with the neighbor (FNR, Para. 6 [SW 3: 61–85], see López Domínguez 1996 and 1999). But let us detail this process even more in Husserl. It has been said that the meaning of the objective world is constituted on the basis of a sphere of belonging of each “I” and that its first step is the constitution of the alter ego, of the You. This is a dual experience, called pairing (Paarung, Meditation V, Para. 51), by which another meaning is superimposed on the primordial world, conferring objectivity and allowing an opening toward the infinite, toward other possible acts of giving meaning that are intertwined with the first. Before us emerges a community of monads that are in harmony, not metaphysically but phenomenologically established, an “intermonadic totality,” which is equated with humanity (Meditation V, Para. 49 and Para. 58, 159).35 In short, the first form of objectivity is constituted by the common being of nature, by the organic body and the psychophysical I of the stranger in pairing with my own. Husserl calls this synthesis “communalization” of the monads (Vergemeinschaftung). It is the common basis that makes possible the Einfühlung of certain contents of the higher psychic sphere, which are reached by indication of the body and its behavior in the external world (Meditation V, Para. 54). In the Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte explains the encounter with others from an external influence, an action at a distance that he calls “appeal” (Aufforderung) (see FNR, Para. 3.) and consists in a call by the other, making itself present, demanding attention and requesting to be recognized as an equal. Although the presence of this external influence makes us suppose from the beginning the presence of a freedom outside the I, in fact, it finds its realization only in the active formation of an image of the other by the first subject (FNR, Para. 6). This shows that in both authors recognition begins with the appearance of the alter ego in the perceptual field of the I, when the stranger is placed under his gaze and is incorporated into the world that he had configured in identity with his body.36 But, in addition, in none of the cases can the contact be reduced to a simple image, because the other appears before me

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in person, affecting my entire primordial world. The relation is clearly reciprocal and, therefore, dialectical, so that it reverts on the first subject constituting it as an individual and a member of a community. It is, then, a connection between being and being, an existential determination that completes the proper recognition of each finite I, as it is open to the world, in reciprocal relation with other individuals. This relationship is the basis for a pluralistic ontology, the starting point of which is found in the body as a unit of freedom and limitation, that is, in a field prior to the separation between theory and praxis. Its ultimate goal has to do with duty (Sollen), with the kingdom of ends and the creation of a moral order of the universe, purely ideal, but its actual and concrete development occurs through a community located in spatio-temporal coordinates and governed by law, which only deals with establishing what is allowed (Erlaubtsein) (WLnm[K] 145 [GA IV/2:17]). In short, the deduction of the other is also the first step for the constitution of the world in general, and this allows us to reject the interpretation initiated by Eduard von Hartmann, and continued by Martial Guéroult, which points out a contradiction between the ideal phenomenalism and the transcendental realism that characterize respectively the Fichtean foundation of the theoretical field and the practical one. According to this interpretation, in the thinking of an idealist there is a gulf between objectivity and otherness. In theory, solipsism rules because reality is produced from private feelings and postulated by faith, while in practice the requirement of the moral postulate requires admitting as necessary the existence of others, leading to an ethical altruism (Hartmann 1899, 75n; Guéroult 1930, I: 339n; cf. Pareyson 1976, 397n). This criticism is meaningless if one admits that theory and praxis start from the limitation of one and the same tendency, which Fichte defines as “vehicle of practical laws.” By placing the unit of the starting point in the aspiration to be absolutely affirmed, this contradiction is eliminated because, faced with the desire for affirmation, the world presents itself as a field of action, which is configured semantically, not from a theoretical belief but from a practical faith, until it becomes a sensitive material of our duty (SK [GA I/2:439n]). In conclusion to what has been said so far, it can be held that both Fichte’s material community and Husserl’s “intermonadic totality” are historical. This means that they are in space and time, and admit changes, although always within a transcendental horizon. Such admission of difference within the common totality allows a pluralistic ontology linked to the idea of ​​harmony or dialogue. Thus, this community becomes the appropriate medium for the renewal of the culture required by Husserl and, in the case of Fichte, to approach the teleological community, which must be placed outside of space and time as the regulative goal of humanity. The fundamental difference may be due to the different historical moments in which both philosophers lived. Located in a time when Germany is embarked on a world war, Husserl distrusts the power of the state to avoid conflicts. Fichte, on the other hand, is at the beginning of a process that will unify the various German kingdoms and principalities in a single nation and, therefore, trusts the possibility that the rational state serves as a means to achieve unity by promoting a moralization of the individuals that will once encompass all of humanity. For this reason, he elaborates different political proposals over and over again, although he knows clearly that the end of the state is its own dissolution. Its

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decline will occur when citizens are able to internalize the legal law and no longer need external coercion to respect themselves and others.

Notes 1 See, e. g., Second Part of Vorlesungen über Grundprobleme der Ethik, Hua. XXVIII, Para. 7 a), 284 n.; Formale Typen der Kultur in der Menschheitsentwicklung, Hua. XXVII, 83; Cartesianische Meditationen, Hua. I, 181 or Logische Untersuchungen I, Hua. XVIII, Para. 5–11. 2 Letter to Heinrich Rickert (January 16, 1917), Briefwechsel, Band V, 178. See Hua. VII, 234–5 and 293–4. 3 The title of §57 of Krisis, where the question of Kant and Fichte is clear: “The fatal separation of transcendental philosophy and psychology.” Criticism to the lack of scientificity of the Doctrine of Science is found, for example, in Phänomenologie und Anthropologie, a contemporary work of Ideas, Hua, XXVII, 172/65, or Krisis, 229, Hua VII, 360 and 106/118. In these and other texts it can be seen that Husserl knew perfectly some of Fichte’s WL. 4 See the chapter “Phaenomenology” in Exposition of the Science of Knowing (WL 1801). 5 In 1764 Lambert published his New Organon, whose aim was, as expressed in the same title (Neues Organon und Gedanken über die Erforschung und Bezeichnung des Wahren und dessen Unterscheidung vom Irrthum und Schein), to explore and characterize the truth, distinguishing it from the error and the illusion. The work consists of four parts: a Dianology (rules on the art of thinking), an Alethology (theory of truth), a Semiotics, and a Phenomenology, which he defines as the Doctrine of Appearance (Phänomenologie oder Lehre von dem Schein). After establishing the different ways of appearing, Lambert devotes some chapters in his extensive Phenomenology to the phenomenon of appearance in the sensitive area as well as in the psychological and moral, to finally establish what is plausible and what are the characteristics that define the illusion (see Lambert 1968, 217n). 6 Cf. Kant: “The more general laws of sensibility falsely play a great role in metaphysics, in which, however, only concepts and principles of pure reason must intervene. It seems that a totally particular, although merely negative (phaenomenologia generalis) science that determines the validity and limits of the principles of sensibility, must precede metaphysics so that judgments about objects of pure reason do not err, as always has occurred” (Ak. 10:98; Letter 1). 7 See, for example, the following passage from Preface to the Phenomenology: “In contrast, philosophy does not study inessential determinations but only those that are essential. The abstract or the non-actual is not its element and content; rather, its element and content is the actual, what is self-positing, what is alive within itself, or existence in its concept. It is the process which creates its own moments and passes through them all; it is the whole movement that constitutes the positive and its truth. This movement just as much includes within itself the negative, or what would be called ‘the false’ if it were to be taken as something from which one might abstract. … Judged in the court of that movement, the individual shapes of spirit do not stably exist any more than do determinate thoughts, but they are also equally positive, necessary moments just as much as they are negative, disappearing moments” (PhG/GW 9:34–5; see also PhG/GW 9:55n; 9:433n).

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8 “Still less may we take appearance and illusion for one and the same. For truth and illusion are not in the object, insofar as it is intuited, but in the judgment about it insofar as it is thought. Thus it is correctly said that the senses do not err; yet not because they always judge correctly, but because they do not judge at all. Hence, truth, as much as error, and thus also illusion as leading to the latter, are to be found only in judgments, i.e., only in the relation of the object to our understanding. … Hence neither the understanding by itself (without the influence of another cause), nor the senses by themselves, can err … [I]t follows that error is effected only through unnoticed influence of sensibility on understanding” (CPR A 293–4/B 349–50). See also the “explanation” on the empirical reality and the transcendental ideality of space and time (CPR A 36/B 53). 9 Cf. Kant: “What is here in question is not the transformation of the appearance into truth, but rather of the phenomenon into experience because in the appearance is always implied the understanding, which with its judgment determines the object, although running the risk of taking the subjective by objective; but in the phenomenon is not at all implied a judgment of the understanding. This observation is useful not only here but also for philosophy as a whole, since, otherwise, when dealing with phenomena we would take this expression with the meaning of appearance, always being exposed to error” (MFNS/Ak 4:555). See also Kant’s Prolegomena (Prol./Ak 4:297). 10 “Phenomenology completes the exposition of rational rationalism by applying its principles to the phaenomena, teaching us, with the help of these principles, to distinguish and separate the mere appearance” (Reinhold 1802, Heft IV, v). Also: “The error that is contained in all the other errors and under which all the other errors are contained lies … precisely in the appearance of the objectivity of the subjective and of the subjectivity of the objective, which is taken by the truth itself. This appearance, which, according to its essence, is one and the same in common and speculative error, acquires, above all in the latter case, the appearance of an elevation above itself ” (Reinhold 1802, Heft IV, III; see also 205). 11 “The object of representation … as such, the represented, or the object as represented, is the phenomenon and, as a phenomenon that does not contain contradiction and that, therefore, is not mere appearance, is as such reality (Wirklichkeit)” (Reinhold 1802, Heft VI, 69). 12 “[T]he foundation of truth as truth is certainly not found in consciousness, but, radically, in truth itself. … Consciousness is only the phenomenon of truth, from which you cannot leave and whose foundation must be indicated to you. If, however, you believe that the reason the truth is truth lies in this consciousness, then you fall into appearance; and everywhere where you consider that something must be true because you are aware of it, you are radically vain in appearance and error. … The original factum and the source of all that is factual is consciousness. It cannot authenticate anything – as the Doctrine of Science proves – and therefore it must be rejected and abstracted from it, where we must deal with the truth. But insofar as the whole second part of the Doctrine of science – which is only possible from the first and based on it – it is a phenomenology, a theory of manifestation and a theory of appearance, it must derive both as existing, but exactly as they exist: factually.” WL 1804 [SW 10:195 (trans. mine)]; Lecture 13 [GA II/8:206 n]. 13 “The philosopher performs an experiment. To put what is there to investigate in a situation where the observation that is attempted can be done with certainty, such is its mission; his mission is to pay attention to the phenomena, to properly track and establish connections between them; but the question of

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Virginia López Dominguez how the object manifests is not his business but is a matter of the object itself, so that the philosopher would act frankly against his own purpose if, far from abandoning the object to himself, he would intervene in the development of the phenomenon.” “In the Doctrine of Science there are two series of spiritual acts that are very different from each other: that of the I that the philosopher observes and that of the observations of the philosophers” (“Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre,” in IWL [GA I/4:209 n]). For this claim, I am based on Ferraguto 2010. Letter to Grimme on April 9, 1918, Briefwechsel 3/3, 81. According to Olivier Lahbib, Husserl’s interpretation of Fichte is also based on Husserl’s reading of Fischer’s work (Lahbib 2004, 422). Cf. Fischer 1900. “What the war has revealed is mankind’s indescribable misery, which is not only moral and religious but philosophical” (Letter to William Hocking del July 3, 1920, Hua. XXVII, XII). And one more passage: “This war, the deepest and most universal sin of mankind in all its history, has laid bare all current ideas in their impotence and lack of authenticity … The present war, turned into a war of the people in the strictest and most awful sense of the word, has lost all its ethical sense … For the ethicopolitical renewal of mankind what becomes necessary is an art of the universal education of mankind, which would be sustained by the highest ethical ideals, clearly established, an art in the form of a powerful literary organisation to illustrate humanity and educate it by leading it along the path of truth” (to Winthrop Bell (August 11, 1920), Hua. XXVII, p. XII). Here is another relevant passage: “Renewal is the general clamour of our troubled present, and this is so in every sphere of European culture. The war which has devastated it since 1914 and, since 1918, has limited itself to preferring, instead of military means of coercion, the ‘more elegant’ ones of morally degrading spiritual torture and economic penury, has revealed the intimate lack of truth, the lack of meaning of this culture. Precisely this discovery means that the authentic impulsive force of European culture is exhausted” (I, 1. Erneuerung: Ihr Problem und ihre Methode, Hua. XVII, 3). Finally: “What is needed is not only a doctrine of ethical principles, which is only and always formal, but a theoretical science of universal reach which will investigate the entire realm of the theoretically cognizable and which will lay it out in a multiplicity systematically woven together with particular sciences. What is needed, in short, is universal science placed under the direction of a life insomuch as it has to be concretely undertaken and it has to be achieved as far as possible to perfection … Rather than a mere individual ethics as formal doctrine of the principles of the rational life of man as an individual, what is needed above all is a social ethics whose maximally specific elaboration would make it possible for all individual actions to be submitted to concrete norms” (Formale Typen der Kultur in der Menschheitsentwicklung (1922/3), Hua. XXVII, 87). On the need of an ethico-political renewal of mankind see Hoyos Vázquez 2002. Fichtes Menschheitsideal II: “Die sittliche Weltordnung als weltschaffende Prinzip,” Hua. XXV, 279. Cf. “First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre,” in IWL, GA I/4:204n [§§ 3–5]. Luigi Pareyson is the first to use the expression “ethical dilemma” to refer to this passage of the “First Introduction,” in Pareyson 1976. Cf. López Domínguez 1995, 78. FNR, Para. 5 and, especially, 6. The first appearance of a reference to this theme is in Fichte´s book on the French Revolution, i.e., in a context of the founding of political life, or rather of the foundation of the juridical order emanating from the Revolution.

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The second is in Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar´s Vocation (LSV [GA I/3:34]) and in the SK [GA I/2:337]. 20 See also GA III/2:298, no. 282a/Sch. 231: “My system is the first system of freedom. Just as that nation [France] has broken the political chains of man, so mine, in theory, tears man from the chains of the thing in itself and its influence … and provides him with the strength to liberate himself also in praxis through the sublime animus which it transmits. My system arose during this nation’s years of struggle for its freedom thanks to a previous inner struggle against old rooted prejudices. Seeing its strength has transmitted to me the energy I needed for it, and during the research and justification of the principles on which the French Revolution was built, the first principles of the system acquired clarity in me.” 21 In FNR, Introduction, Para. 3, [GA I/3:323], Fichte notes the relationship of his work with Kant’s Perpetual Peace, for the mediating role of law in social relations. However, monadism refers to Leibniz and its political application in the sketches of Accesiones historicae. On the relationship between the philosophies of Fichte and Leibniz see Ivaldo 2000. The central thesis of this essay is that the Doctrine of Science made “the transcendental transformation of the system of pre-established harmony in light of the practical and theoretical principle of freedom” (Ivaldo 2000, 125). Based on this idea, Ivaldo discusses the question of the recognition of the Other (ibid., 123–61) as the first step toward the constitution of the monadic world, i.e., the realm of spirits, which culminates in the idea of ​​God as a moral order of the universe (ibid., 338–56). However, Ivaldo does not address the political and historical aspect of Leibniz’s Fichtean reception, despite the fact that Fichte himself acknowledged that his affinity with Leibniz was more fundamental and not limited to a few partial aspects. (Cf., GA IV/I:374–5 or Fuchs, Lauth, and Schieche 1978–92; Testimony of B. K. H. Jöijer refers to a conversation with Fichte on August 30th, 1798 in Jena, GA IV/6/1:287). 22 Meditation V, Para. 42. Cf. Lessons of 1910/11 on fundamental problems of Phenomenology (Hua XIII, 11–195) and Para. 96 of Formale und transzendentale Logik, Epilogue, Hua V, 150; Hua, VIII, 433 and Letter to Ingarden, 31. Fichte also responds to the objection of solipsism in the Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre (see IWL 36–51 [GA I, 4, passim, especially Para. I, 210n]). 23 WLnm[K] 62. See §5 passim and cf. also WLnm[H] (GA IV/2:18n) and WLnm[K], 12n. Fichte had already used this opening in previous work, e.g. in the “Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre.” See in IWL [GA I/4:186]. 24 WLnm[K] 120 and [H] 68/Meditation V, Para. 44, 160, Para. 52 and 54. For bodiliness and synaesthesis see Presas 1976. 25 FNR, GA I,/3:378. In WLnm Fichte holds this characterization. 26 “[T]he soul emerges if I sensitise myself through the form of internal intuition, the body emerges through the sensitisation of external and internal intuition at the same time” (WLnm[K] 171, cf. 211). 27 “What is my body but a certain perspective of my causality as intelligence? According to this my body would be a producing of concepts, because I am thought of as a body by a sensitive thought reaching out in space and transforming itself into matter,” 197 WLnm[K]. 28 “[I]f I reduce myself as a man I obtain my organic body and my soul, that is to say myself as psychophysical unity and, in this unity, my personal I, which, in this organic body and by means of it acts upon the exterior world and suffers from the action of it,” Meditation V, Para. 44, 128. See also Para. 55, 153 and Para. 58, 161. As can be seen from the cited text, Husserl also takes into account the physical character of the body, as an efficient receptor and instrument of actions in the world.

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29 “I intuit myself as a feeler whilst I feel as an intuiter of an object in space … the intuition of myself as an object comes later and is based on a reflection for freedom” (WLnm[K] 120). 30 Cf. SK (GA I/2:398 f., 404 f. and especially 432n). See also the following passage: “The body is the sum of determinability which considered sensibly shows itself as individuality, but considered intellectually it appears as a moral law” (WLnm[K] 139, translation mine). 31 Cf.: “The transcendental concept of the body is: it is my original will considered in the form of external intuition” (WLnm[K] 160). 32 In paragraph 48 of his Meditation Husserl even uses Fichtean terminology: “The factum of the experience of the strange (Non-I) presents itself as the experience of an objective world and of others (Non-I in the form: other I)” (Meditation V, 136). 33 In LSV, Fichte argues that philosophy, understood fundamentally as anthropology, as a theory of man, should answer certain questions, among which the first has to do with grounding natural law and consists in clarifying what authorizes us to consider a part of the Non-I as ours and to assume it as our own body; the second is how we come to admit and recognize other rational beings as our like, when neither determination is immediately supplied in our self-consciousness (GA I/3:34). Incidentally, these issues had already been considered by Jacobi 1785, 211). 34 Husserl knew Theodor Lipps’ theory of the Einfühlung since 1905, possibly through Alexander Pfänder and Johannes Daubert, who had been disciples of Lipps. According to Iso Kern’s Introduction to Husserl (Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, in Hua., XIII, XXV), Husserl never accepted Lipps’ theory and although he used the term Einfühlung, he was not convinced that the theory itself would be correct. See, for example, Erste Philosophie (Hua. VIII, 63), where the experience of the other through his/her bodiliness is defined as “experience through interpretation” and it is recognized that “this has recently been called Einfühlung, which is an inappropriate term.” Cfr. Hua. V, 109. 35 It is worth noting that for Husserl the originally self-appearance is purely passive (Meditation V Para. 55, 156). This coincides with Fichte, in the sense that it is produced in a feeling, which must then be actively elaborated through the imagination that adds a concept to the feeling. 36 The issue of the look is treated by Fichte in LSV (GA I/3:39); it is also mentioned in Para. 6 of FNR. The other fundamental element in the recognition of a human face is for him, as for Herder, the mouth. Finally, the criterion to determine the rationality of a being is its trust in reciprocal communication, its ability to dialogue.

Bibliography Boehm, Rudolf. 1959. “Husserl et l’idéalisme classique.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 57: 351–96. Descartes, René. 1984. Meditations on First Philosophy. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 3–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferraguto, Federico. 2010. “Tendency, Drive, Objectiveness. The Fichtean Doctrine and the Husserlian Perspective.” In Fichte and the Phaenomenological Tradition, edited by V. Weibel, D. Breazeale, and T. Rockmore, 119–39. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.

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Fischer, Kuno. 1900. Fichtes Leben, Werke und Lehre. Heidelberg: Karl Winter. Fuchs, Erich, Reinhard Lauth, and Walter Schieche (eds.). 1978–92. J. G. Fichte im Gespräch. Berichte der Zeitgenossen. 6 vols. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: FromannHolzboog. Guéroult, Martial. 1930. L´ évolution et la structure de la Doctrine de la science chez Fichte. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Hart, James. 1995. “Husserl and Fichte. With Special Regard to Husserl´s Lectures on Fichte´s Ideal of Humanity.” Husserl Studies 12(2): 135–63. Hartmann, Eduard von. 1899. Geschichte der Metaphysik II. Leipzig: Hermann Haacke. Hoyos Vázquez, Guillermo. 2002. “La ética fenomenológica como responsabilidad para la renovación cultural.” In Husserl, E.: Renovación del hombre y de la cultura. Cinco ensayos, VII–XXXIII. Barcelona: Anthropos. Husserl, Edmund. 1917. “Fichtes Menschensideal. Drei Vorlesungen.” In Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), edited by Th. Nenon and H. R. Sepp, 267–93. Dordrecht/Boston/ Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1956–2014. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Gesammelte Werke. 42 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (Abbreviated in text as Hua.) Hyppolite, Jean. 1959. “L´idée fichtéene de la Doctrine de la science et le projet husserlien.” In Husserl et la pensé moderne, Phaenomenologica, edited by H. L. van Breda, 173–82. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Iribarne, Julia I. 2001. “Tres conferencias sobre el ideal de humanidad en Fichte.” In De la ética a la metafísica: En la perspectiva del pensamiento de Edmund Husserl, 119–29. San Pablo: Sociedad de San Pablo. Ivaldo, Marco. 1992. Libertà e ragione. L´etica de Fichte. Milano: Ugo Mursia Editore. Ivaldo, Marco. 2000. Fichte e Leibniz. La compresione trascendentale della monadología. Napoli: Guerini e Associati. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. 1785. Ueber die Lehre des Spinozas in Briefen an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn, in Jacobi´s Werke IV. Leipzig, 1825. Reimpression, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Lahbib, Olivier. 2004. “Husserl, lecteur de Fichte.” Archives de Philosophie 67(3): 421–43. Lambert, Johann Heinrich. 1968. Philosophische Schriften. Hildesheim: Olms. López Domínguez, Virginia. 1982. La concepción fichteana de amor. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. López Domínguez, Virginia. 1995. Fichte: acción y libertad. Madrid: Ediciones Pedagógicas. López Domínguez, Virginia. 1996. “El cuerpo como símbolo: la teoría fichteana de la corporalidad en el sistema de Jena.” In Fichte 200 años después, edited by V. López Domínguez, 125–41. Madrid: Editorial Complutense. López Domínguez, Virginia. 1999. "Die Idee des Leibes im Jenaer System." Fichte Studien 16: 273–93. López Domínguez, Virginia. 2010. “Body and Intersubjectivity: The Doctrine of Science and Husserl´s Cartesian Meditations.” In Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, edited by V. Weibel, D. Breazeale, and T. Rockmore, 191–206. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. López Domínguez, Virginia. 2020. Fichte: el Yo encarnado en un mundo intersubjetivo. México/Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/RAGIF. Pareyson, Luigi. 1976. Fichte. Il sistema della libertà. 2nd edition. Milano: Editore Mursia. Presas, Mario A. 1976. “Corporalidad e historia en Husserl.” Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía 2 (2): 167–77. (In German: “Leiblichkeit und Geschichte bei Husserl.” Tijdscchrift voor Filosofie 40 (2): 112–27.)

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Reinhold, Karl L. 1802. Beyträge zur leichtern Uebersicht des Zustandes der Philosophie beym Anfang des 19 Jahrhunderts. Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes. Rockmore, Tom. 1979. “Fichte, Husserl, and Philosophical Science.” International Philosophical Quarterly 19: 15–27. Schulz, Hans. 1967. Fichtes Briefwechsel, hrsg. von Hans Schulz, reimpression: Hildesheim, G. Olms, 1967. (Abbreviated as Sch.) Welton, Donn (ed.). 2003. “Genetic Method and Transcendental Philosophy in Fichte.” In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, 270–4. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Freedom and the Problem of Others: Fichte and Sartre on Human Freedom and its Conditions Arnold L. Farr

Introduction Anyone who has read Sartre knows that he never tired of trying to distinguish his philosophy from idealism. However, several authors have found some striking similarities between Sartre’s existentialism and some forms of idealism. Although there are some very important similarities, one must not be tempted to ignore the equally important differences. The overlap and disconnect between Sartre and idealist philosophers depends on which idealists one chooses and what issue is at hand. Our idealist for this chapter is J. G. Fichte, and the topic at hand is freedom and the problem of the “other.” There are many similarities between the philosophies of Sartre and Fichte as well as some important differences. Daniel Breazeale has carefully explored many similarities between the two thinkers in his essay “How to Make an Existentialist? In Search of a Shortcut from Fichte to Sartre” (Breazeale 2010). Although Breazeale addresses quite a number of issues in his essay, he laments that due to lack of space there are several important issues in Fichte and Sartre that he will not be able to address. He writes: I regret, for example, that there will not be time to analyze the fascinating similarities and differences between their accounts of the primordial presence of the “other” to the self and of the ways in which Fichte’s understanding of this presence as an Aufforderung or “summons” to limit one’s own freedom anticipates and yet goes beyond Sartre’s account of one’s “shame” in the presence of the other. (Breazeale 2010, 280)

The presence of the “other” and the issue of freedom in Sartre and Fichte is what will be explored in this paper. There is a puzzling claim in the above passage by Breazeale that will serve as a guide for our present inquiry or at least provides us with a question for which we will seek an answer. Breazeale claims that Fichte’s understanding of the primordial presence of

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the “other” as an Aufforderung or “summons” to limit one’s freedom anticipates and yet goes beyond Sartre’s account of one’s “shame” in the presence of the other. In what way does Fichte’s understanding anticipate Sartre’s, and in what way does it go beyond Sartre’s? Since Sartre wrote over a hundred years after Fichte, would he not stand on the shoulders of those before him and as a result develop the more advanced view? Perhaps it is the case that the similarities between Sartre and Fichte are merely coincidental, so Sartre may not have known enough about Fichte’s philosophy to benefit from it. Although Sartre was familiar with Fichte it is not clear that there was ever any serious engagement with Fichte’s philosophy. Regarding this matter, Breazeale writes: We know, for example, that in October of 1926, while he was a third-year student at the École Normale Superieure, Sartre checked out from the library French translations of three of Fichte’s earlier works – the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, and The Vocation of Man – and that he kept them for five months. What we do not know is if he actually read any or all of these volumes nor, if he did, what he thought about what he read. Nor do the few, passing references to Fichte in Sartre’s own writings  – one in The Psychology of the Imagination, another in Search for a Method, and two in the posthumously published Notebooks for an Ethics – offer much insight concerning his knowledge of Fichte’s works. Instead, they reflect the conventional, received view of Fichte as a subjective idealist who maintains that the Not-I is created by the I as an arena for its own activity, or as something to be fully “assimilated to” or “disgusted by” the I. (Breazeale 2010, 277–8)

So first it is not clear that Sartre actually engaged with Fichte’s work. It is possible that the views that Sartre and Fichte held in common are simply coincidental. If Sartre did not carefully read Fichte, it is understandable that he would accept the conventional view of Fichte as a subjective idealist and would therefore not recognize the similarities between himself and Fichte. It is possible that Fichte’s influence is indirect in the sense that it comes in through Hegel via Alexandre Kojève. I will explore this possibility later. In the meantime, in the next section of this chapter I will discuss the role of the “other” in Fichte’s philosophy as a limit to one’s freedom as well as a condition for one’s freedom. In the third section I will examine the status of the “other” in Sartre’s existentialism. In the final section I will explore the possibility of Sartre’s more negative view of the “other” as possibly the influence of a particular reading of Hegel.

The Summons as a Limit to and Condition for Freedom Throughout his entire philosophy, Fichte maintained that freedom is always a limited freedom. Indeed, consciousness itself requires a limitation to our free activity. In the 1794 version of the Wissenschaftslehre, consciousness as well as self-consciousness is produced when the activity of the I encounters a check (Anstoß) and is thrown back upon itself in reflection. This check is based on an inner feeling, the source of which is

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not a matter for knowledge, but it provides the feeling whereby belief in the external material world is necessary. Our concern here is with the “other,” another individual person as a limit as well as condition for the free activity of the I. Very much like the Anstoß, the “other” not only presents a limit to my free activity, it also compels me to further self-determination. Fichte’s most developed theory of the summons occurs in his Foundations of Natural Right and the Foundations of Trancendental Philosophy: (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo. We must keep in mind that Fichte’s project in Foundations of Natural Right is quite different from Sartre’s ontological project. In Foundations of Natural Right Fichte’s task is the deduction of the concept of right from the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre, which means the deduction of right from the concept of a finite rational being. For Fichte, an analysis of the finite, human I is necessary for the development of any adequate social/political philosophy. Everything must be deduced from the nature of the I. Fichte begins his deduction of the concept of right with a theorem that states, “A finite rational being cannot posit itself without ascribing a free efficacy to itself (FNR 18 [GA 1/3: 329]).” That is, if the finite rational being is to be effective, it must freely act on the world. However, the ground of the activity of the I must lie purely within the I itself (FNR 18 [GA 1/3: 329]). That the I posits itself and that the ground for this positing lies purely in the I has led some, like Sartre following the conventional view, to believe that Fichte was a subjective idealist or even a solipsist. This interpretation is incorrect. Fichte uses the term setzen (posit) to indicate activity on the part of human consciousness. The I is a self-reverting activity wherein consciousness of the external world and self-consciousness are equiprimordial. The concept of efficacy (Wirkung) is central to Fichte’s argument for the primacy of practical reason. He writes: What is being claimed is that the practical I is the I of original self-consciousness; that a rational being perceives itself immediately only in willing, and would not perceive itself and thus would also not perceive the world (and therefore would not even be an intelligence), if it were not a practical being. Willing is the genuine and essential character of reason; according to philosophical insight, representing does of course stand in reciprocal interaction with willing, but nevertheless it is posited as the contingent element. The practical faculty is the inner-most root of the I; everything else is placed upon and attached to this faculty. (FNR 21 [GA 1/3: 332])

There are three important points here. First, practical reason is original to the extent that it is through such reason that the I forms the concept of a goal or purpose that propels it into action. Second, the I is originally constituted by internal drives that discharge themselves into the external world, thereby producing the original encounter between the I and the world. Finally, representing does stand in reciprocal relation to willing. This fact is often referred to as the equiprimordiality thesis and it is the absolute unity of theoretical and practical reason. That is, consciousness is always the product of willing or the expression of a drive and the representation of an object

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toward which the drive is directed and by which the drive encounters a limit. Every moment of willing entails the will for alteration in some representable object. The task of practical reason is to exercise an influence on the world. As the I attempts to influence the world it is influenced by the world and thereby becomes self-conscious as it encounters a limit to its activity and reverts into itself. As I stated earlier, our primary concern is the form of limitation provided by another human individual. Fichte’s second theorem states: “The finite rational being cannot ascribe to itself free efficacy in the sensible world without also ascribing such efficacy to others, and thus without also presupposing the existence of other finite rational beings outside itself ” (FNR 29 [GA 1/3: 340]). He continues: “Any act of comprehension is conditioned by a positing of the rational being’s own efficacy, and all efficacy is conditioned by some prior act of comprehension by the rational being” (FNR 29 [GA 1/3:340]). Here we have encountered Fichte’s theory of intersubjectivity, which receives further development in Hegel’s philosophy. Fichte developed his theory of intersubjectivity as a response to the question of how one becomes self-conscious of one’s freedom. We have learned from his first theorem that the self-positing I requires consciousness of freedom. The second theorem explores how such consciousness is possible. We are faced with an ethical (practical) problem as well as an epistemological one. That is, in what way is efficacy and comprehension (representation) reciprocal? Fichte’s doctrine of the Aufforderung (summons) is key to his theory of Anerkennung (recognition). The summons has a duel function that systhesizes efficacy and representation while also producing recognition. It is the theory of the summons that allows Fichte to avoid the charge of solipsism or subjective idealism. Recall Fichte’s claim that “all efficacy is conditioned by some prior act of comprehension by the rational being (FNR 29 [GA 1/3: 340].” What is comprehended is another rational being from which the summons originates. However, since the summons originates with another rational being the dual demand of the summons is contained therein. The summons from a rational being to exercise efficacy, to act freely, must necessarily be a demand to limit one’s freedom at the same time since it is the nature of rationality in general to act efficaciously. That is, a rational being cannot summon another rational being to act efficaciously to the point where he or she who summons no longer has efficacy. Therefore, as one is summoned to act efficaciously one is also summoned to limit his/her freedom for the other. It is as a result of the summons that we comprehend ourselves as individual human beings. However, Fichte argues that the concept of the human being is not the concept of an individual but is instead the concept of the species. The summons reveals to the I that it is one among many, it is a part of a manifold of rational beings. It is also a call to stand in a particular kind of relationship to these other rational beings. This leads us to Fichte’s third theorem: “The finite rational being cannot assume the existence of other finite rational beings outside it without positing itself as standing with those beings in a particular relation, called a relation of right [Rechtsverhältniβ]” (FNR 39 [GA 1/3: 349]). As I mentioned earlier, Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right is a work in political philosophy and as such he attempts to deduce the concept of right from the rational nature of the finite human I. However, the concept of right is not our

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concern here. We are simply concerned with the role of the “other” as a limit to and condition for freedom. With regard to the manifold number of rational beings, Fichte’s position is best understood as follows: Imagine that the entirity of finite rational beings constituted what we might call a sphere of freedom. No individual could occupy the entire sphere all by himself. In fact, such a situation would make the concept of individuality impossible. Individuality itself is constituted by carving up this sphere of freedom into distinct units. The act of carving up the sphere of freedom is imparted to each individual. This notion of the sphere of freedom leads to Fichte’s fourth theorem, which states: “The rational being cannot posit itself as an individual that has efficacy without ascribing to itself, and thereby determining, a material body” (FNR 53 [GA 1/3: 361]). Without what Fichte calls the articulated body there can be no efficacy, freedom, or willing. While the body is a limiting condition, it is also a necessary condition for the manifestation of freedom since it is only through the body that the will is articulated. Fichte writes: The material body we have derived is posited as the sphere of all the person’s possible free actions, and nothing more. Its essence consists in this alone. According to what has been said above, to say that a person is free means: the person, merely by constructing a concept of an end immediately becomes a cause of an object corresponding perfectly to that concept; the person becomes a cause simply and solely through his will as such: for you to will means to construct a concept of an end. But the body just described is supposed to contain the person’s free actions; thus it is in the body that the person would have to be a cause in the manner just described. Immediately by means of his will, and without any other means, the person would have to bring forth in this body whatever he wills; something would have to take place within this body, exactly as the person wills it. (FNR 56 [GA 1/3:363])

He continues: Futhermore – since the body thus described is nothing other than the sphere of the person’s free actions, the concept of such a sphere is exhausted by the concept of the body, and vice versa. The person cannot be an absolutely free cause (i.e. a cause that has efficacy immediately through the will) except in the body; if a determinate act of willing is given, then one can infer with certainty that a particular change in the body corresponds to it. (FNR 56 [GA 1/3: 363])

These three issues are actually one and the same. In the I freedom is manifest at two levels. First, the person freely constructs the concept of an end. This activity Fichte calls ideal thinking. Second, the person attempts to actualize this concept in the material world. It is through the body that the concept of a goal produced by ideal thinking comes to life or is given material form. Fichte calls this process real activity. It is a practical activity wherein there is a transition from an indeterminate concept to a determinate state of affairs. The will is actualized through the body.

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This leads to Fichte’s fifth theorem, which states: “The person cannot ascribe a body to himself without positing it as standing under the influence of a person outside him, and without thereby further determination of it” (FNR 58). Embedded in this theorem is Fichte’s theory of intersubjectivity, recognition, and the summons. Consciousness of myself is also consciousness of the “other” as an influence on me. Robert Williams describes this situation as follows: Fichte’s theory of intersubjectivity finds expression in the twin concepts of Summons (Aufforderung) and Recognition (Anerkennung). Its basic idea is that freedom and responsibility must be mediated through an objectification of the self which the self requires in order to become conscious of its freedom, and yet cannot accomplish by itself. The ego is so far from being absolutely autonomous that it is dependent on the recognition of others to become conscious of freedom. Summons and recognition refer to the mediation of the self to itself by the other, through which freedom becomes explicit. We are thus confronted with the following paradox: autonomous self-consciousness is not given; it is a mediated result of interpersonal interaction (Williams 1992, 57).

The summons, just like the Anstoß (check) in Fichte’s earlier presentation of his system, is not just a limit to action, it is also a stimulus. The I is stimulated by the other, called to action, called to recognize the other as a rational being. This is explained by Fichte’s theory of the articulated body. The articulated body refers to the relationship between the body and the will as the will, through the body, becomes a kind of causality in the world. Consciousness of autonomy is not possible without self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not possible without the self-reverting activity of the I when it encounters a limitation to its activity. This limitation to the I’s activity discloses its finitude. In this case the self-reverting activity results from the I encountering another being like itself. The I is affected by the other insofar as a quantity of the I’s activity has been canceled in this encounter. How can the activity of the I be canceled by another I if it is free? It is worth quoting Fichte’s explanation at length. Any activity of the person is a certain way of determining his articulated body; thus, to say that an activity of the person is restricted means that a certain determination of his articulated body has been rendered impossible. Now the person cannot posit that his activity is restricted, that a certain determination in his articulated body is impossible, without simultaneously positing that the same determination is possible; for the person posits something as his body, only under the condition that it is possible for him to determine it by his mere will. Thus the very determination that is supposed to be impossible (and precisely insofar as it is supposed to be impossible) would have to be posited by the person as possible; and, since the person cannot posit anything unless it is (for him), the person would actually have to produce this determination. But this activity, even though it is actually produced, must remain continually restricted and canceled. Thus we can grasp this much for the time being: this determination of the body’s articulation is,

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in a certain way, actually produced by the will; efficacy, and at the same time – in another way – it is canceled by an influence from outside. (FNR 59–60 [GA 1/3: 366–7])

Here, the I experiences itself as limited by the “other,” but this limitation must be posited by the I’s free activity. This is explained by Fichte’s theory of “double articulation” or “double organ (sense).” The higher organ is our inner sense while the lower organ refers to our outer sense. The “other” does not restrict the I’s activity directly by restricting the body. The encounter with the other produces a modification in the I’s higher sense. The I then decides in what way to restrict his lower organ. We discover here that the I’s causality requires external and internal conditions. While the I’s choices are made internally and then expressed through some external movement or behavior, the impetus for this inner activity is external. Hence, the two I’s are in a relationship of mutual causality. At this point in the Foundations of Natural Right Fichte begins his discussion of this mutual dependence and causality between two I’s as a relation of right. However, that discussion takes us beyond the scope of this chapter. All we needed for our present purposes was to explain how the other is a limit to and condition for the freedom of the I. It should be clear to readers of Sartre that we have in Fichte’s account of limitation and the “other,” as well as the articulated body, something similar to Sartre’s notion of facticity. It is to Sartre that we now turn.

Sartre on Freedom, Shame, and the Other Any attempt to write on Sartre must begin with the question of which Sartre will be the subject of one’s writing. The voluminous nature of his publications as well as the variety of genres and a change in focus between major works like Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Dialectical Reason make it difficult for a writer to know where to begin or how much of Sartre’s oeuvre to include. In this chapter I will focus on the early Sartre, particularly the Sartre of Being and Nothingness, because the early Sartre seems to have more in common with Fichte than the later. Although we turned to Fichte’s political philosophy to examine the role of the “other” in his philosophy, this approach was guided by the fact that we get the most detailed account of the relationship between the I and the “other” in his political philosophy. Further, Fichte characterized his entire philosophy as a system of freedom. Our guiding question is how is the I free in relation to the “other”? One may also define Sartre’s philosophy as a system of freedom, although his approach differs from Fichte’s. Under the influence of Husserl and Heidegger, Sartre begins with the question of Being, hence, ontology. However, there is some common ground between Sartre and Fichte regarding their starting point. One of the things about Kant’s philosophy that disturbed post-Kantian German idealists was Kant’s dichotomy between noumena (things in themselves) and phenomena (appearances). Both Sartre and Fichte attempted to give an account of consciousness that avoided the pitfalls of this dichotomy. Fichte started with the self-positing I while Sartre started with Being. On both accounts, all reality is to be explained within the

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sphere of human consciousness. It is not possible to posit anything that is not posited by consciousness within itself. This is not a rejection of the external world; it is a new way of taking up into consciousness and explaining the external world without appealing to anything that lies beyond the world that is taken up by human consciousness. We cannot speak of anything that lies beyond consciousness. For this reason Sartre even rejects the Freudian notion of the unconscious. Sartre’s approach in Being and Nothingness is to begin his analysis of Being with the phenomenon. He immediately argues that there is no opposition of internal or external in the existent, thereby getting rid of the Kantian dualism. Sartre states: “The appearances which manifest the existent are neither interior nor exterior; they are all equal, they all refer to other appearances, and none of them is privileged” (Sartre 1956, 3). He continues: The obvious conclusion is that the dualism of being and appearance is no longer entitled to any legal status within philosophy. The appearance refers to the total series of appearances and not to a hidden reality which would drain to itself all the being of the existent. And the appearance for its part is not an inconsistent manifestation of this being. To the extent that men had believed in noumenal realities, they have presented appearance as a pure negative. It was “that which is not being”; it had no other being that that of illusion and error (Sartre 1956, 4).

Sartre argues that the appearance reveals essence rather than hiding it. Further, appearance is not pure negativity, but rather, full positivity. In this context Sartre makes an interesting move that seems to be the creation of another dualism. However, although he produces another dualism, it is of a very different nature than the dualism that he rejects. The dualism that is rejected by Sartre is a dualism that presupposes an inside that is the essence of the external that is mere appearance. Sartre overcomes such dualism by designating appearance as being. Now, we then discover that being is constituted by a dualism. That is, being is constituted by two distinct but necessarily related regions or spheres of being. There is being-in-itself and being-for-itself. However, this new dualism is rather different from the one that Sartre criticized. As stated above, appearance is positive, it is being-in-itself. Being-for-itself is an absence or a negative that sets being-in-itself in motion. In other words, it is consciousness as the negation of being as it is. Sartre’s theory of consciousness resembles Fichte’s insofar as consciousness is also self-consciousness. Both consciousness and self-consciousness requires an “other” or some opposition to the I that forces the I back upon itself. Here there is a similarity between Sartre and Fichte that Sartre seemed to have missed in his taking Fichte to be a subjective idealist. In the 1794–5 presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre Fichte appears to be a subjective idealist as he claims that the I posits itself absolutely. Of course, we saw earlier that this self-positing required an Anstoß, or check, whereby the I becomes self-conscious. Fichte explains the relationship between consciousness and self-consciousness as being rooted in a self-reverting activity whereby the I becomes conscious of itself as it encounters its limitations in the process of trying to exercise its efficacy in the world. Sartre’s view is similar.

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Although Fichte states that the I posits itself absolutely, this is not to claim that there is an absolute I. However, there is an absolute striving of the I as it seeks to assert its freedom. Just like for Fichte, the I is not an absolute I, and Sartre dismisses the notion of a transcendental I. Sartre argues: “The transcendental I is the death of consciousness. Indeed, the existence of consciousness is an absolute because consciousness is consciousness of itself. This is to say that the type of existence consciousness is to be consciousness of itself. And consciousness is aware of itself insofar as it is consciousness of a transcendent object” (Sartre 1987, 40). This last sentence expresses the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness. In the language of Husserlian phenomenology, consciousness is always consciousness of something. Consciousness is also aware that it is conscious of something. Sartre refers to this consciousness of something and the awareness that accompanies it as unreflected or pre-reflective consciousness. Consciousness becomes reflective when it turns upon itself and becomes its own object. This reflection reveals not a transcendental I but an empirical I. This is very similar to Fichte’s view of the self-reverting activity of the I. The I as pure activity becomes an object for itself upon reflection. In the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo Fichte ask the reader to think the wall, and then to think he who thinks the wall. Here there is the I as an activity (thinking) but also the I frozen in thought (the I as an object). We see that through reflection one becomes an object for oneself. While there is no transcendental I according to Sartre, consciousness itself is a transcendence. He writes: “Consciousness is consciousness of something. This means that transcendence is the constitutive structure of consciousness; that is, that consciousness is born supported by a being which is not itself ” (Sartre 1956, 23). At this point I want to turn specifically to the “other” and the objectification of the I in relation to the “other.” The being by which consciousness is born and supported, which is not itself, may not just be contingent objects in the world, but other human individuals. It is here that we discover common ground between Fichte and Sartre regarding the “other,” and at the same time a striking difference is disclosed. Sartre depicts the encounter with the “other” as purely negative. Fichte recognizes the possible negative and positive features of this encounter. I’ll return to Fichte later after examining Sartre’s position a bit more closely. We saw that for Fichte an encounter with the “other” imparts to the I a summons that has a dual character. At one level the summons is a demand that the I limit its freedom for the “other.” At another level the summons is a demand for the I to exercise efficacy in the world. The I and the “other” recognize in each other a rational will and, thereby, they recognize each other as subjects. However, on Sartre’s account the encounter is more negative. The encounter with the “other” does not result in a summons and mutual recognition, but rather, it produces shame in the I. Sartre writes: “By the mere appearance of the ‘other,’ I am in the position of passing judgment on myself as an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the ‘other’” (Sartre 1956, 302). Before the “other” my subjectivity, my for-it-selfness, my freedom is challenged. My self-reflection becomes negative before the “other.” It is as an object for the “other” that the I emerges (Sartre 1956, 332). Interestingly, this shame before the “other” is connected to our awareness of our freedom and its limits.

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Before we go any further it is necessary to briefly discuss the relationship between what Sartre calls being-in-itself, being-for-itself, facticity, and being-for-others. Being-in-itself is simply non-conscious being or simply being is what it is. Beingfor-itself is being what it is not and not being what it is (Sartre 1956, 28). That is, being-for-itself is being in flight, it is an attempt to escape its contingency and facticity. The for-itself is a form of negation or nihilation of the in-itself. “The foritself is perpetually determining itself not to be the in-itself. This means that it can establish itself only in terms of the in-itself and against the in-itself ” (Sartre 1956, 134). Consciousness strives to not be the in-itself. This activity of the for-itself is transcendence and implies freedom as the conscious individual seeks to alter his facticity. We can see common ground here between the activity of the for-itself and Fichte’s theory of the striving I. Facticity refers to the fact that the for-itself is tied to the in-itself and its situation in the world. Therefore, freedom is always exercised within a situation that is contingent and without a ground. Sartre states that the for-itself appears in a condition that it has not chosen, it is “thrown into a world and abandoned in a ‘situation’, it is as pure contingency inasmuch as for it as for things in the world” (Sartre 1956, 127). Being-for-others means to exist outside of one’s self as an object for others. Maurice Natanson writes: In effect, Sartre’s ontology of the Other puts the alter ego in retreat, for it is not the actualized, specific fellow man I meet on ontological ground but the Other’s world with respect to which I am a peripheral moment. In my being-for-the-Other, I discover him as the origin of interpretive organization of a reality in which I am an object of some order; in coming to recognize the Other as a master, I lose him as a brother; I discover myself as a character in the Other’s drama; my own sovereignty is overthrown. (Natanson 1991, 337)

The encounter with the “other” entails a decentering of the subject as he discovers his position on the periphery of another’s world. The “other” is recognized as another individual with the power to interpret and organize the world. The “other” confronts me as another freedom. The “other” is also a mediator whereby my self-consciousness becomes identical with itself “by means of the exclusion of every ‘other’” (Sartre 1956, 319). Sartre states: “Thus the primary fact is the plurality of consciousnesses, and this plurality is realized in the form of a double, reciprocal relation of exclusion” (Sartre 1956, 319). In this context Sartre rejects the Cartesian cogito as the point of departure for philosophy. He follows Hegel in suggesting that the existence of the “other” makes the cogito possible when the self is apprehended as an object (Sartre 1956, 320). “Thus the ‘moment’ which Hegel calls being for the Other is a necessary stage of the development of self-consciousness; the road of interiority passes through the ‘other’” (Sartre 1956, 320). As we have seen, the for-itself is the nihilation of the in-itself insofar as the for-itself is in flight toward what it is not. However, this flight is interrupted by the “other” as this flight becomes fixed in the in-itself. Sartre writes:

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For the Other I am irremediably what I am, and my very freedom is a given characteristic of my being. Thus the in-itself recaptures me at the threshold of the future and fixes me wholly in my very flight, which becomes a flight foreseen and contemplated, a given flight. But this fixed flight is never the flight which I am for myself; it is fixed outside. The objectivity of my flight I experience as an alienation which I can neither transcend nor know. Yet by the sole fact that I experience it and that it confers on my flight that in-itself which it flees, I must turn back toward it and assume attitudes with respect to it (Sartre 1956, 473).

This is the source of shame in my encounter with the “other.” As I flee my being-initself toward my future possibilities, my flight becomes frozen in the in-itself by the gaze of the “other.” Hence, I become an object for another. I am seen as I am, and what I am is that for which I am responsible. I recognize in the “other” another freedom, another for-itself whom I cannot transcend. My response is to recapture my freedom by turning back to the “other” and making him an object. Sartre argues that “my project of recovering myself is fundamentally a project of absorbing the ‘other’” (Sartre 1956, 475). He concludes that “conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others” (Sartre 1956, 475). This picture of human relationships looks almost Hobbesian insofar as it seems that we are all trapped in a war of all against all in a struggle to recapture our freedom after having been objectified by the “other.” Similarly, Hegel’s notion of the struggle for recognition in the master/slave dialectic comes to mind. It is worth discussing Hegel briefly, as I believe that it is possible that the similarities between Sartre and Fichte might have been due to the indirect influence of Hegel on Sartre.

Sartre’s Fichte Through Hegel and Kojève? From the beginning, this chapter focused on some interesting parallels between the philosophies of Fichte and Sartre regarding the “other” and freedom. I have not made any reference to a direct influence by Fichte upon Sartre. As Daniel Breazeale has shown, although we do know that Sartre once checked out several books by Fichte from the library, it is not clear that he read them. Further, in the very few places where Sartre mentions Fichte he seems to assert the misguided but common understanding of Fichte as a subjective idealist. The similarities between Fichte and Sartre are either merely coincidental or perhaps there is some degree of indirect influence through Hegel and Kojève. However, matters are still sketchy regarding Hegel’s direct influence on Sartre. We cannot explore in any detail Fichte’s influence on Hegel in the scope of this chapter. Readers of Hegel know that he read Fichte carefully and was greatly influenced by Fichte. One can also see the similarities between Fichte and Hegel on the necessity of the “other” in the development of human consciousness based on my earlier discussion of Fichte. Sartre himself does discuss Hegel quite extensively in Being and Nothingness. However, even though Sartre discusses Hegel in Being and Nothingness he admits to not having studied Hegel until two years after the publication of Being and Nothingness.

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In an interview, Sartre says that prior to and during the writing of Being and Nothingness he knew of Hegel through seminars and lectures but did not study him until around 1945 (Sartre 1991). In his discussion of Sartre’s misreading of Hegel, Robert Williams claims that when Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness he was not working with Hegel’s Phenomenology but with a collection of Hegel’s writings in abridgement and translation (Williams 1992, 292). This may account for Sartre missing key moves in Hegel’s argument. Sartre’s interpretation of Hegel was greatly influenced by Alexandre Kojève, who lectured on Hegel at the École des Hautes Études from 1933–9. Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology focuses the entire text on the master/slave dialectic. Sartre, following Kojève, focuses on the negative moment of this relationship and identifies recognition with the opposition between master and slave. Sartre denies reciprocal recognition (Williams 1992, 372). Robert Williams points out that “Sartre fails to see that, for Hegel, recognition has an ontological structure capable of supporting a wider greater range of instantiations than master/slave, conflict and domination. Thus, he fails to grasp master/slave as a deficient mode of recognition” (Williams 1992, 291). We saw that in Sartre’s philosophy the encounter with the “other” leads to an ongoing struggle between one’s self and the “other” as each attempts to overcome the reduction of the for-itself to the in-itself by the other. This struggle does not seem to end or resolve itself in mutual recognition. Hence, one might conclude from this neverending struggle that Hell is other people. Sartre’s view of freedom is primarily negative. At this point, I will have to express a bit of a disagreement with Robert Williams, who claims that Sartre’s negative conception is like Fichte’s (Williams 1997, 374). This is a confusing claim since Williams does not clarify in this context what is negative about Fichte’s conception of freedom and later he discusses Sartre’s more positive notion of the “appeal” from the Notebooks on Ethics. Williams compares this notion of the “appeal” in a positive way to Fichte’s notion of the summons. However, by looking at his other essay one gets a sense of what is negative about Fichte’s conception of freedom. In his “The Displacement of Recognition by Coercion in Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts,” Williams argues that Fichte’s positive account of intersubjectivity and mutual recognition is undermined when Fichte introduces the problem of the loss of trust and confidence between subjects (Williams 2002, 47). I believe that Williams moves too fast here. To properly understand the difference between Fichte and Sartre regarding freedom and the “other” we must correct Williams’ claim that Sartre’s negative conception of freedom is like Fichte’s. However, we must remember that the common ground between the two thinkers is that they both base human consciousness as well as self-consciousness on an encounter with the “other.” It is also in this encounter that the I becomes simultaneously conscious of its freedom and limitations. Once Fichte has established the intersubjective condition for the concept of right he goes on to demonstrate how the concept may be applied. This is a task for the science of right and it is the task that Fichte sets for himself in this text. There is no time to engage his full argument here. What has to be explained is how the I is free yet dependent on the “other.” Much of this ground has been covered earlier in this chapter. When one I encounters another she recognizes a free, rational being like herself. The second I demands recognition from the first and vice versa. In each

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I is the intuition that the other is free and should not be treated as a mere thing. Therefore, each I should limit his/her freedom for the other. The independent I is to some degree dependent on the “other.” However, this mutual dependence does not suggest that either I is simply determined. Either I can freely choose to not limit his/ her freedom for the other. If an I chooses to not limit his/her freedom for the other this I is involved in a contradiction. Such an I demands recognition as a rational being from other rational beings but is not willing to provide the same sort of recognition for the other. We can see the blueprint here for Hegel’s master/slave dialectic. To deny another I freedom is to also deny the rationality of the same I, which jeopardizes the very type of recognition that one seeks. Here we are at an important turning point in Fichte’s argument. From this point onward we must explore the possible failures of recognition. That is, what is to be done when one I refuses to limit his or her freedom for another? If mutual recognition occurs between individual persons then these persons become a part of a community of free and rational beings. This entrance into a community of free and rational beings cannot be coerced but must be freely chosen. However, one is free to not enter such a community. The refusal to limit one’s freedom for the sake of others gives birth to what I call the principle of forfeiture. That is, the failure to respect the freedom and rights of another is to forfeit my own freedom and rights. At this point coercion may be introduced to protect the other members of the community who have freely chosen to limit their freedom for each other. From this, Fichte goes on to develop his theory of the state. I will not get into Williams’ criticisms of Fichte’s theory of the state. I find it problematic too. My point here is that Fichte does not abandon or undermine his theory of intersubjectivity or mutual recognition. The community of rational beings is based on a very positive conception of the encounter between the I and another. However, the fact that human freedom is capable of producing other kinds of relationships is important. Some human conflict is a fact of human existence. Hegel was aware of this and viewed the state as that body that was constituted for the purpose of mediating human conflict in civil society. On Fichte’s account, there is always the possibility of a community of rational beings based on mutual recognition. In his “Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation,” Fichte provides us with a view of the state that is much more positive than that developed in the Foundations of Natural Rights. In “Some Lectures” he argues that the aim of the state is to abolish itself and that “the goal of all government is to make itself superfluous” (LSV 156 [GA 1/3: 37]). That is, a properly functioning state would develop a system of ethical education so that its citizens would undergo a form of moral development that would make the state unnecessary. Fichte argues that man is destined for society and must perfect within himself the skill of sociability. Harmony with one’s self requires a harmony with others that does not seem to fit into Sartre’s account of the relationship between one’s self and the “other.” Fichte argues that “the social drive aims at Interaction, reciprocal influence, mutual give and take, mutual passivity and activity” (LSV 158 [GA 1/3: 39]). The social drive, according to Fichte, strives to enter into community with other free rational beings outside of ourselves. In the Foundations of Natural Right the discussion of “upbringing” is connected to this idea of ethical education and preparation for

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entrance into a community of free and rational beings. Hence, one is raised to be a rational being by other rational beings. Although both Fichte and Sartre root human freedom and self-consciousness in an encounter with the “other,” they end in different places regarding the meaning of this encounter for human community. Sartre’s account of this encounter is rather negative and does not envision any moment of reconciliation like Hegel’s account, or a vision of a form of moral education wherein individuals freely create a community of rational beings by limiting their freedom for each other. It is this vision of a possibly community of rational beings and the project of educating individuals for community that locates Fichte’s theory of the “other” beyond the murky waters of perpetual shame in Sartre’s philosophy. On Fichte’s account Hell is not other people, rather, other people are the necessary condition for the development of rationality in the individual as well as the necessary condition for a rational and free human community. If Fichte is right, then even in a moment when other people are experienced as Hell there is still perhaps some hope in striving for community.

Bibliography Breazeal, Daniel. 2010. “How to Make an Existentialist? In Search of a Shortcut from Fichte to Sartre.” In Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, edited by Violetta L. Waibel, Daniel Breazeale, and Tom Rockmore, 277–312. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Natanson, Maurice. 1991. “The Problem of Others in Being and Nothingness.” In The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 326–44. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel Barnes. New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo: Washington Square Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1987. The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. Translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1991. “An Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre.” In The Philosophy of JeanPaul Sartre, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 5–51. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Williams, Robert. 1992. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. Albany: State University of New York Press. Williams, Robert. 2000. Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Williams, Robert. 2002. “The Displacement of Recognition by Coercion in Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechte.” In New Essays on Fichte’s Later Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 47–64. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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The Thought of a Principle: Rödl’s Fichteanism G. Anthony Bruno

In recent decades, an increasing number of philosophers trained in the analytic tradition have laid claim to strands of thought in the German idealist tradition. Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Michael Thompson, and Steven Darwall have drawn on idealist arguments for the sociality of reason, the primacy of practical reason, the logical concept of life, and the reciprocal recognition of rational agents in an effort to address lacunae in contemporary philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and ethics. Much of Sebastian Rödl’s work seeks to articulate German idealist notions of first-person and second-person knowledge, notions that he holds are necessary for solving persistent problems in epistemology and philosophy of action. In Self-Consciousness, he claims to comprehend the German idealist thought that the study of knowledge and action “must be pursued as part of an inquiry of selfconsciousness” (Rödl 2007, viii). Although Rödl mostly foregoes analyses of idealist texts after Kant, he clearly grasps the importance of post-Kantian thought and presents his work as post-Kantian in orientation. Rödl’s accounts of first-person and second-person knowledge do not occupy an ambiguous relation to the German idealists, as they are strikingly Fichtean. In “The Single Act of Combining,” he argues that self-consciousness is an “original synthesis” that grounds the synthesis of judgments in an inference (Rödl 2013, 219). Rather than cast original synthesis in the merely formal function of apperception, Rödl echoes one of the signature doctrines of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre: [original synthesis] cannot be an act of [empirical] knowledge. For, empirical knowledge is in principle incapable of being unified in one synthesis, one act. Only a subject of intellectual intuition conjoins all knowledge in one act, in its one act of intellectual intuition. (Rödl 2013, 219)

In “Intentional Transaction,” he says: As a transaction can be described in two ways, from the side of the patient and from the side of the agent: Peter is giving to Paul, Paul is receiving from Peter, so a transactional self-predication can be expressed in two ways, from the side of the agent and from the side of the patient: I am giving to you, I am receiving from you. (Rödl 2014, 310)

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This bears a remarkable similarity to Fichte’s argument that second-person knowledge contains my summons and your response as two aspects of a single event. Rödl’s unspoken arrival at two of Fichte’s original insights suggests a post-Kantianism distinctly Fichtean in character. While Rödl adopts core facets of Fichte’s accounts of first-person and secondperson knowledge, I will argue that he does not fully articulate the distinctive priority that Fichte gives to the former and that this is crucial because the priority of (nonempirical, non-individual) first-person knowledge is central to Fichte’s thought and, indeed, definitive of the German idealist tradition that Rödl aims to comprehend. Grasping this priority requires distinguishing, I suggest, between Fichte’s view that selfconsciousness rests systematically on the first-person knowledge he calls “intellectual intuition” and his view that self-consciousness arises genetically from the secondperson knowledge he calls “reciprocal recognition.” For Fichte, the object of intellectual intuition is the infinite I or the I as first principle, which is meant to rule out the first principle of Spinozism and its nihilistic entailment that human freedom and purposiveness are incoherent. By contrast, reciprocal recognition obtains between finite rational Is or selves, the possibility of whose rational freedom is conditioned a priori by their mutual acknowledgment. Intellectual intuition has systematic priority since it not only avoids nihilism, but also grounds reciprocal recognition, namely, by serving as the source from which such a priori conditions of finite rational freedom as reciprocal recognition can be derived. Without this source, these conditions would lack a common root and form an arbitrary set.1 First-person knowledge of the infinite I ensures that experience is a grounded, rational order in which second-person knowledge can so much as occur.2 As yet, Rödl does not derive second-person knowledge from a first principle in the manner of either Fichte’s doctrine of intellectual intuition and method of genetic deduction or Hegel’s development of dialectical logic and use of determinate negation.3 This overlooks the architectonic and anti-nihilistic significance of firstperson knowledge that defines the idealist tradition with which Rödl aligns. He thus neglects the main question with which German idealism grapples, namely, what makes possible the very order of reason, what Fichte calls the “rational mass,” within which we address each other. As I will suggest, the idealist answer to this question—its principal thought—is the thought of a principle. In §§1–2, I examine Fichte’s distinction between the I and the self and the related distinction between systematic and genetic priority. In §§3–4, I argue that Rödl’s analyses of first-person and second-person knowledge, despite echoing Fichte’s accounts of intellectual intuition and reciprocal recognition, do not thematize the systematic priority of the I as first principle. Rödl agrees with Fichte that the object of first-person knowledge is neither perceptual nor demonstrative and that I am the object of your second-personal thought just if you are the object of mine. His analyses are all the more valuable given their lucidity and given his ability to connect them to philosophers including Aristotle, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Anscombe. But Rödl obscures the German idealist thought he aims to comprehend by, so far, not conceiving of first-personality systematically. This is a conception that, for Fichte and the tradition that he helps to initiate, makes it so much as possible to relate second-personally.

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§1 German idealism can be characterized by two main demands: (1) to show that experience has a single explanatory ground and (2) to show that this ground is accessible firstpersonally. While (1) serves the goal of systematicity, (2) safeguards human freedom and purposiveness from nihilistic views of systematicity. The explanatory ground of experience is conceived by Reinhold as a fact of consciousness, by Hegel as the result of determinate negation, and by Fichte (and, briefly, Schelling) as the infinite activity of reason or the I. Despite their differences, they agree that this ground cannot be external to the act of its apprehension—lest this act result from infinite external causes, that is, on pain of nihilism—and that this act cannot be a mere ideal—lest its concept lack reality, that is, on pain of empty formalism.4 The explanatory ground of experience and the act of its apprehension must be identical, such that this ground just is the act of its apprehension, an act that grounds itself. In order to satisfy (1), Fichte distinguishes the I from the self. In Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre, he says: The word “self ” has frequently been employed of late to designate this same concept [“I” or “I-hood”]. If my derivation is correct, all the words in the family to which the word “self ” belongs … signify a relationship to something that has already been posited, though only insofar as it has been posited through its mere concept. If what has been posited is I, then the word “self ” is formed. Hence the word “self ” presupposes the concept of the I, and everything that is thought to be absolute within the former is borrowed from the concept of the latter. (IWL 115 [SW I: 530n])5

Without a self to apprehend the I, the latter would transcend our first-person standpoint and thwart (2). Nonetheless, “I” and “self ” do not simply co-refer. When I refer to myself as a finite rational subject, I do not strictly refer to the explanatory ground of experience. Rather, my self-reference presupposes knowledge of reason or the I as the a priori condition of purposive selfhood. Fichte calls this condition “I-hood,” by which he means an activity that is purposive insofar as it is its own end or is “self-reverting.”6 A finite self must exhibit or instantiate such an activity—via intellectual intuition—lest she deny, not only that she acts for the sake of ends, but that her free activity is itself an end and not merely nature’s means. First-person knowledge is anti-nihilistic proof that purposive selfhood is grounded, not on Spinozistic substance, but on the self-reverting activity of I-hood.7 Intellectually intuiting the I demonstrates how purposiveness is possible. But it does not show how it is livable, that is, under which conditions I can exercise and perfect my purposive agency in the world. Positing the I demonstrates my commitment to purposiveness, but does not determine how it is possible for me to live out this commitment. Each is a distinct philosophical endeavor. As Fichte says in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, philosophy consists of “two parts.” The first shows that the I “is the true object of consciousness [and] the foundation of everything else.” The second begins “at that point … in the actual process of constructing

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[consciousness]” (FTP 354 [GA IV/2: 179]). For Fichte, first-person knowledge of the I is the starting point from which the conditions under which we can enact our purposiveness must then be genetically deduced, conditions that include secondperson knowledge. Having posited the I, “[t]he Wissenschaftslehre then proceeds to exhibit the conditions that make it possible for the I to posit itself and to oppose a Not-I to itself … demonstrating these conditions by means of a deduction” (FTP 83 [GA IV/2: 8]). Fichte echoes this methodological point in the Versuch, stating that a deduction shows that what is first set up as a fundamental principle, and directly demonstrated in consciousness, is impossible unless something else occurs along with it, and that this something else is impossible unless a third thing takes place, and so on until the conditions of what was first exhibited are completely exhausted, and this latter is, with respect to its possibility, fully intelligible. (IWL 31 [SW 1: 446])

Deducing the conditions for exercising the purposiveness originally intuited in the I leads Fichte to derive second-person knowledge between subjects, as well as a subject’s “spatial extension and subsistence” or “body” and “temporal identity and duration” or “soul.” Since such conditions are derived from the initial affirmation of the I’s purposiveness, their deduction is what Fichte calls “a genetic account of how the I comes to think of itself ” (IWL 81 [SW 1: 495]). We can clarify Fichte’s I/self distinction by distinguishing between systematic and genetic priority. An a priori condition is systematically prior if it conditions the possibility of purposiveness, but genetically prior if it conditions the exercise of purposiveness. First-person knowledge of the I in intellectual intuition is systematically prior because it grounds my capacity for willing ends in general. Through it, I own up to the reality of my freedom. By contrast, my second-person knowledge of you who summon me to recognize your selfhood, and thereby to limit my own, is genetically prior, for it grounds the expression of my will in response to you in particular. Through it, I exercise and coordinate my freedom with yours. As Fichte says in Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre: the subject’s efficacy lies simultaneously within itself and in the being outside itself. If the external being had not exercised its efficacy and thus had not summoned the subject to exercise its efficacy, then the subject itself would not have exercised its efficacy … But within the sphere allotted to it, the subject has freely chosen; it has absolutely given to itself the nearest limiting determination of its own activity; and the ground of this latter determination of the subject’s efficacy lies entirely within the subject alone. (FNR 40 [SW 3: 41])

You may summon me to exercise my freedom. But the systematic ground of this freedom is reason or I-hood. And I-hood is this ground just if I exhibit it firstpersonally, via intellectual intuition. The difference between systematic and genetic priority reflects, not only the “two parts” of the Wissenschaftslehre, but also the “two different aspects” of the I that

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Fichte discerns in Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, aspects that track his distinction between I and self: Insofar as the I is absolute, it is infinite and unbounded … Insofar as the I opposes to itself a not-I, it necessarily posits limits, and itself within these limits … and to that extent thus necessarily posits itself as finite … So far as the I posits itself as infinite, its (positing) activity relates to the I as such, and nothing else but that … So far as the I posits limits, and itself within these limits, as we said above, its (positing) activity does not relate immediately to itself, but rather to a not-I that is to be opposed thereto … Thus the I is finite, insofar as its activity is objective. (SK 225–7 [SW 1: 255–7])

While the I’s first, infinite aspect systematically grounds the very idea of purposiveness, which Fichte calls “pure activity,” its second, finite aspect articulates the “objective activity” that is demarcated by second-personal relations between finite selves (SK 226–7 [SW 1: 256]). Hence, he says in the Versuch that “[t]he I that appears within pure self-consciousness is determined by nothing but itself ” and that we “cannot understand our pure apperception to be the same as our consciousness of our individuality, nor can [we] combine the latter with the former. For consciousness of one’s own individuality is necessarily accompanied by another sort of consciousness, namely, consciousness of a ‘you,’ and it is possible only on this condition” (IWL 61 [SW 1: 476]). Similarly, after deducing reciprocal recognition as a condition of finite rationality in the Naturrechts, Fichte repeats his distinction between “the absolute, formal I” and “a determinate, material I,” adding: “One would hope that these two quite distinct concepts, which are contrasted here with sufficient clarity, will no longer be confused with one another” (FNR 54 [SW 3: 57]). Fichte’s need to distinguish the I from the self is architectonic. Without first-person knowledge of the infinite I, the conditions under which we exercise our purposive freedom, which include second-person knowledge between finite selves, lack a unifying origin from which to be derived. The former’s systematic priority prevents the latter’s genetic priority from forming an arbitrary set. We will see that Rödl underplays this crucial distinction in comprehending the German idealist tradition. But first, we must take a closer look at the first-person knowledge that Fichte calls “intellectual intuition.”

§2 Despite differing contexts and motivations, Fichte and Rödl can be seen to engage the question “what is the I.” Their answers share a two-step response. First, they argue that the I’s explanans cannot be other than the I, but must lie in the I itself. Second, they argue that the I’s self-explanation yields a special sort of knowledge: grasping the identity of explanandum and explanans in this case produces knowledge of that which grounds the very intelligibility of experience. I will trace Fichte’s steps toward this claim before tracing Rödl’s steps in §3.

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Fichte’s first step is driven by the nihilistic threat that systematic philosophy undermines freedom and purposiveness. In the Grundlage, he says that, in Spinoza’s system, the I “does not exist absolutely because it exists; but because something else exists,” namely, substance or the Not-I (SK 101 [SW 1: 100]). However, Spinoza “ought to have stopped forthwith at the unity given him in consciousness” (SK 118 [SW 1: 121]). Fichte rejects the dogmatic view that the I’s explanation transcends its standpoint,8 for it entails I-hood’s determination by infinite external causes and thus the impossibility of its purposive freedom.9 On pain of nihilism, the I’s explanans must be immanent to itself. As Fichte says, the I “posits itself by merely existing and exists by merely being posited” (SK 98 [SW 1: 97]). If the I posits itself just if it exists, then it explains itself. Fichte’s first step in showing what the I is accordingly consists in denying that its explanans is third-personal. Fichte’s second step is to ground systematic philosophy by articulating our knowledge of the I as first principle. He first shows that the dogmatist’s purported knowledge of the Not-I as first principle is practically self-refuting.10 In positing the Not-I, the dogmatist betrays his capacity purposively to do so: “he is not well prepared to defend himself against [idealist] attacks, for there is something within his own inner self which agrees with his assailant” (IWL 19 [SW 1: 434]). Positing a first principle is a response to philosophy’s primary purpose or “first task” of discovering the explanatory ground of experience, described as (1) above (IWL 8 [SW 1: 423]). Despite itself, the dogmatist’s act is inescapably purposive.11 It is the performative contradiction12 of positing a principle that is incompatible with its nihilistic consequences.13 As Fichte says: “I am only active. I cannot be driven from this position. This is the point where my philosophy becomes entirely independent of all arbitrary choice and becomes a product of iron necessity—to the extent, that is, that free reason can be subject to necessity; i.e., it becomes a product of practical necessity” (IWL 50 [SW 1: 466–7]). The I is thus the sole first principle of systematic philosophy. But this is just to say that satisfying the demand (1) of accessing the explanatory ground of experience requires satisfying the demand (2) of accessing it first-personally. Indeed, we find that philosophy’s “first task” of finding the explanatory ground of experience and what Fichte calls its “first demand” (IWL 7 [SW 1: 422]) of attending to the first-person standpoint are one and the same, for unless that ground is sought from this standpoint, the former is external to the latter, threatening nihilism. Hence Fichte’s claim: a philosophical system is not a lifeless household item one can put aside or pick up as one wishes; instead, it is animated by the very soul of the person who adopts it. Someone whose character is naturally slack or who has been enervated and twisted by spiritual servitude, scholarly self-indulgence, and vanity will never be able to raise himself to the level of idealism. (IWL 20 [SW 1: 434])

If purposiveness is ineliminable from philosophy’s first task, then a person must be judged by how high she rises to “the level of idealism.” The Wissenschaftslehre accordingly contains the only standard by which to judge systematic philosophy.14 Having ruled out the Not-I as first principle, Fichte can characterize our knowledge of the I. By “I” or “I-hood” he means an activity that is identical to its end, that is, a purposive or self-reverting activity: “‘I’ and ‘self-reverting acting’ are completely

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identical concepts” (IWL 45 [SW 1: 462]). Furthermore, as the explanatory ground of experience, it signifies “that Act which does not and cannot appear among the empirical states of our consciousness, but rather lies at the basis of all consciousness and alone makes it possible” (SK 93 [SW 1: 91]). Such an act cannot be known conceptually, for a concept mediates access to a particular with a universal, whereas the I, which is identical with its end, exists immediately for itself. Hence, it must be known by intuition. Fichte describes this intuition as “consciousness in which what is subjective and what is objective cannot be separated from each other at all, but are absolutely one and the same” (IWL 113 [SW 1: 527]). Intuition here differs from sensation, which presupposes a difference between a passive subject and an object. It is instead an act of apprehension that is identical to what it apprehends—an act that Fichte calls “intellectual intuition.” Intellectual intuition is knowledge of the I, not of the self. A self has no priority regarding the possibility of purposiveness. And yet Fichte says intellectual intuition is “the immediate consciousness that I act, and of what I do when I act” (IWL 46 [SW 1: 463]). This ties intellectual intuition to the first-person standpoint—as we would expect given (2), the demand that the explanatory ground of experience be accessible from this standpoint. Nevertheless, Fichte denies that intellectual intuition is simply identical with self-consciousness.15 How, then, are selves capable of it? In intellectual intuition, I embrace my purposive freedom and renounce nihilism. I thereby exhibit the actuality of purposiveness and, with it, the actuality of its systematic condition. As Fichte says in Die Bestimmung des Menschen: I, however, that which I call my ‘I’, my person, am not the anthropogenetic force itself but only one of its expressions: and when I am aware of myself I am aware only of this expression and not of that force which I only infer because of the need to explain myself. This expression, however, seen as it really is, emanates from an original and independent force and has to be found as such in consciousness. That is why I take myself to be an independent being. (VM 14)

Intellectual intuition is not simply knowledge of my finite self because it demonstrates my instantiation or “expression” of a general activity or “force.” This is why Fichte treats “I,” “I-hood,” and “reason” as synonymous: The character of rationality consists in the fact that that which acts and that which is acted upon are one and the same; and with this description, the sphere of reason as such is exhausted. —For those who are capable of grasping [reason] (i.e., for those who are capable of abstracting from their own I), linguistic usage has come to denote this exalted concept by the word: I; thus reason in general has been characterized as “I-hood.” (FNR 3 [SW 3: 1]) The ‘pure I’ of the published Wissenschaftslehre is to be understood as reason as such or in general, which is something quite different from personal I-hood. (FTP 437 [GA IV/2: 220])

The activity threatened by dogmatism is not merely purposive, but rationally so: it is the activity we express as norm-responsive, goal-oriented selves. I-hood characterizes

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the “sphere of reason” because experience is purposive in this robust sense. We are therefore capable of intellectual intuition insofar as it is the actualization of reason so characterized.16 Grasping Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre depends crucially on bearing in mind his architectonic distinction between the infinite I and the finite I, according to which first-person knowledge of I-hood has systematic priority in the order of philosophical explanation. We will now see that Rödl’s account of first-person knowledge, for all that it shares with Fichte’s, overlooks this distinction, which, given its centrality in the German idealist tradition, complicates his admirable project of extending that tradition into contemporary discussions of knowledge and action.

§3 Rödl’s answer to the question “what is the I” is driven by contemporary forms of nihilism: It has been held that, since its essential normativity cannot be accommodated within the natural sciences, we might be forced to throw the concept of action and with it action concepts on the trash heap of outdated theories. With action concepts a logical basis of first person thought disappears. Renouncing action concepts is a form of self-annihilation: logical self-annihilation. It annihilates a source of the power to think and say “I.” (Rödl 2007, 63)

Rödl is primarily concerned with confusion regarding the sense of “I,” that is, how this term refers. Following Anscombe, he rejects demonstrative and perceptual accounts of how “I” refers, arguing that its sense is inseparable from its referent because I can refer with “I” only by being its referent and can be its referent only by referring to it. Examining this identity of being and referring will reveal the extent to which Rödl’s two-step answer follows that of Fichte. In “The First Person,” Anscombe argues that philosophers falsely suppose that “I” is a referring term. That it does not refer does not owe to its purported referent, for surely one has “the right sort of thing to call ‘I’,” namely, oneself (Anscombe 1975, 50). It owes instead to the very idea of the term’s sense. First, it cannot be demonstrative. If I utter “that man,” I may be surprised to find a post, and if my utterance successfully refers, this is contingent on empirical facts. The potential for unsuccessful or accidentally successful reference fails to capture the use of “I,” which Anscombe says involves an assurance of presence to oneself: “thinking ‘I … ’ guarantees not only the existence but the presence of its referent. It guarantees the existence because it guarantees the presence, which is presence to consciousness” (Anscombe 1975, 55). Second, the sense of “I” cannot be perceptual. If it were, then, in sensory deprivation, I would be absent to my utterance of “I” and so absent to myself. Moreover, the possibility of the unnoticed substitution of a perceptual object undermines the guarantee of self-presence. Anscombe infers that “I” does not refer, observing that we cannot prove that a term refers by eliminating inadequate models of reference:

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[g]etting hold of the wrong object is excluded, and that makes us think that getting hold of the right object is guaranteed. But the reason is that there is no getting hold of the object at all. With names or denoting expressions (in Russell’s sense) there are two things to grasp: the kind of use, and what to apply them to from time to time. With “I” there is only the use (Anscombe 1975, 59).

However, Anscombe’s conclusion leaves open the possibility that “I” refers in a nondemonstrative, non-perceptual way. Such a possibility must avoid the spoiling feature of demonstrative and perceptual reference, which Anscombe herself identifies when she says that the “grammatical illusion of a subject” results from “the connection of what is understood by a predicate with a distinctly conceived subject” (Anscombe 1975, 65, emphasis added). It may be that our use of “I” presupposes no such distinction between subject and predicate. I take Anscombe’s argument, then, as a challenge to leave the negative path of excluding inadequate models of reference and take the positive path of showing precisely how uttering “I” involves an assurance of reference, which alone can ensure an illusion-free answer to the question “what is the I.” Rödl takes just this path. In Self-Consciousness, he argues that, in first-person knowledge, I refer to myself as myself. When Oedipus refers to Laius’ murderer, he refers to himself, but not as himself. He is unaware that, in his mouth, “I” and “Laius’ murderer” co-refer. He expresses his thought without the pronoun “I” and so lacks self-consciousness. Such a case, Rödl observes, reveals the importance of grasping the sense of “I”: “we are concerned with the sense, rather than the meaning, of ‘I.’ We do not want to know what one refers to with this word, but how one refers with it” (Rödl 2007, 2). Grasping the sense of “I” is essential to answering the question “what is the I,” for unless I know how “I” refers, I cannot refer to myself as myself and so cannot know the I that I am. Knowing the sense of “I,” then, is inseparable from knowing the nature and identity of the I. Rödl distinguishes identification-dependent from identification-free judgments. My judgment Fa is identification-dependent if it rests on judging a=b and Fb, but identification-free if I need refer to a in no other way to know that it falls under F (Rödl 2007, 5–6). Rödl argues that the sense of “I” cannot be perceptual17 because perceptual reference is an instance of identification-dependence: my perceptual judgment “I am sitting by the fire” depends on judging “I am this object” and “This object is sitting by the fire.” Here, the identity of the sense of “I” and its referent is accidental, given the possibility of sensory malfunction or undetected substitution. But accidental reference falls short of Rödl’s thesis that I am self-conscious and so have first-person knowledge just if I refer to myself as myself. This thesis demands the necessary identity of the sense of “I” and its referent. Following Fichte’s first step, Rödl denies that the identity constitutive of the use of “I” is explicable third-personally. Perception, he says, is knowledge of myself “as other” (Rödl 2007, 8), knowledge in which I move from the observation that some object is sitting by the fire and that I am this object to the inference that I am sitting by the fire. Here the identity of “I” and its referent is accidental because it is mediated by third-personal identification, which is fallible. But then first-person knowledge is not knowledge of oneself as other: “referring to an object first personally, I am in a position

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to know ‘from the inside’ how things stand with it. It does not so happen that I know the object ‘from the inside’. Rather, this is how I refer to it” (Rödl 2007, 9). I do not contingently refer to myself with “I” because how “I” refers is necessarily identical with being its referent. Here, sense and reference are one and the same. Such an identity is only explicable “from the inside,” that is, first-personally. Compare this thought to Fichte’s Versuch: in thinking something other, “the thinking subject and the object of thought are posited in opposition to one another,” whereas in thinking oneself, “the act of thinking and what is thought of within this act are one and the same” (IWL 45 [SW 1: 462]). Rödl’s second step, like Fichte’s, exhibits a special kind of knowledge: “first person thoughts articulate knowledge I possess, not by perceiving, but by being their object. If I know without mediation that I am F, then I know it, not by perceiving that I am F, but by being F” (Rödl 2007, 9). First-person knowledge is explicable, not by something other, but by itself. This is because, in such knowledge, I am the referent by referring to it and I refer to it by being it. The identity of being and referring in this case bears an affinity to that in which, as Fichte says, “the I exists because it posits itself, and posits itself because it exists” (SK 129 [SW 1: 134]). Indeed, seemingly in line with Fichte’s idealist thesis (from (1) and (2) above) that the explanatory ground of experience is identical with the “Act” of its apprehension, Rödl subsequently adopts the term “intellectual intuition” and describes it as both “the ground of the possibility of all knowledge” and an “act” (Rödl 2013, 219). Despite this affinity, Rödl does not articulate Fichte’s principal thought, namely, the distinction between the infinite and finite I.18 This distinction gives first-person knowledge architectonic significance by giving it systematic (as opposed to genetic) priority over second-person knowledge. Without first-person knowledge of the infinite I, indispensable to the German idealist response to nihilism, we cannot grasp the ground of purposiveness. For Fichte in particular, intellectual intuition is the derivational source of genetic conditions such as reciprocal recognition. In the final section, we will see how Rödl’s neglect of this source obscures the idealist tradition he seeks to champion.

§4 In “Intentional Transaction,” Rödl argues that the concept “I” determines or specifies the concept “I–you.” On this view, thinking second-personally under the concept “I– you” is logically prior to thinking first-personally under the concept “I” (Rödl 2014, 311). In other words, the sense of “I”—the way its referent is given to one who utters it—is grounded on the sense of “you”—the way its referent is given to two who address each other. Rödl does not derive the logical form of second-person knowledge from a first principle. To grasp his divergence from Fichte in this respect, we must first review Fichte’s account of second-person knowledge. Fichte conceives of second-person knowledge in the Naturrechts in terms of reciprocal recognition, which he derives as a genetic condition of the exercise of one’s purposive agency. There must be a condition, he says, on which I find myself “as

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something that could exercise its efficacy, as something that is summoned to exercise its efficacy but that can just as well refrain from doing so” (FNR 33 [SW 3: 34]), that is, a condition on which I discover myself as “being-determined to be self-determining” (FNR 31 [SW 3: 33]). No mere efficient cause can incite a subject’s efficacy with such latitude as to “leave the subject in full possession of its freedom to be self-determining” (FNR 32 [SW 3: 33]). Only a similarly purposive entity can issue the appropriate, nonnecessitating determination, namely, in a summons. Your summons is an invitation whose “ultimate end is [to bring about] the free efficacy of the rational being to whom the summons is addressed” (FNR 35 [SW 3: 36]): me. I may respond in many ways, some you intend but do not compel, others you prohibit but only by conceding their possibility. In this way, you are an “intelligence” whose end is my response (FNR 35 [SW 3: 36]). Since my response in turn takes you as its end, our exchange is reciprocal. I recognize you as an intelligence just if you recognize me as one—I respond to you purposively just if you summon me in kind. Fichte expresses this reciprocity thusly: on the one hand, “the cause of the summons must itself necessarily possess the concept of reason and freedom,” while on the other hand, “the summons is conditional on the understanding and freedom of the being to whom it is addressed” (FNR 35 [SW 3: 36]). Summons and response, then, are “partes integrantes of an undivided event” (FNR 33 [SW 3: 34]).19 The concept under which this event falls is the concept of right. “Right” denotes the necessity of my standing in relations of mutual recognition with other free rational beings.20 Second-person knowledge is accordingly constituted by my contraction into a sphere of agency from which I recognize your sphere of agency. Hence, whereas firstperson knowledge of I-hood grounds purposive activity in general, second-person knowledge grounds my participation in this activity with others. As Fichte says in the Nova Methodo, it is by another’s summons that “my own individuality arises from the total mass of reason” (FTP 355 [GA IV/2: 179]), which mass in turn rests on the I as first principle, on pain of nihilism. Fichte’s deduction of reciprocal recognition demonstrates our essential sociality: “if there are to be human beings at all, there must be more than one … [T]he concept of the human being is not the concept of an individual—for an individual human being is unthinkable—but rather the concept of a species” (FNR 37 [SW 3: 39]).21 Being with others genetically conditions the exercise of my purposive agency. Yet purposiveness as such—that “general mass of rational beings” from which your summons “select[s]” me (FTP 351 [GA IV/2: 177])—is systematically conditioned by the infinite I. As we will now see, this I is absent from Rödl’s otherwise Fichtean account of second-person knowledge. In Self-Consciousness, Rödl argues that second-person knowledge is a single form of knowledge with two sides. This form makes it the case that my thought that I help you and your thought that you are helped by me express the same thought. Just as “yesterday” spoken today and “today” spoken yesterday express one thought, so, too, our thoughts express one thought (Rödl 2007, 197). Developing this idea in “Intentional Transaction,” Rödl argues that second-person knowledge has a “universal” form. The form uniting our thoughts in second-person knowledge is not empirical, for our respective thoughts, each falling under the concept “I,” are abstractions from our

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logically joint thought, falling under the concept “I–you.” Thus, to the question of what shows me that you and I share in the form of second-person knowledge, Rödl responds: “nothing shows me this … because any apprehension of a partner in transaction by a partner in transaction is a specification of the universal one-another-thought in which any partner always already recognizes any partner” (Rödl 2014, 313). To be sure, Rödl’s thesis that self-consciousness “essentially manifests itself in mutual recognition of self-conscious subjects” (Rödl 2007, 192) echoes Fichte’s claim in the Naturrechts that reciprocal recognition is “a necessary condition of a rational being’s self-consciousness” (FNR 33 [SW 3: 34–5]). Indeed, Rödl states in a footnote that we might paraphrase the priority of the concept “I–you” “by saying that I is a Wechselbegriff—as Fichte does” (Rödl 2014, 315n6), and then cites the Naturrechts: the concept of individuality is a reciprocal concept [Wechselbegriff], i.e., a concept that can be thought only in relation to another thought, and one that (with respect to its form) is conditioned by another—indeed by an identical—thought. This concept can exist in a rational being only if it is posited as completed by another rational being. Thus this concept is never mine; rather, it is—in accordance with my own admission and the admission of the other—mine and his, his and mine; it is a shared concept within which two consciousnesses are unified into one. (FNR 45 [SW 3: 47–8])

It is clear from this passage that Fichte’s reciprocal concept signifies a relation between finite Is. A reciprocal concept uniting “two consciousnesses” denotes what he describes elsewhere as one self ’s selection by another self from the general mass of rational purposiveness. But this general mass, for Fichte, is itself systematically conditioned by first-person knowledge of the I in intellectual intuition, a ground that “lies entirely within the subject alone.” Hence, when, in a final footnote, Rödl claims that Fichte “conceives the unconditional activity, which returns to itself, that is, self-consciousness, the I, not as monadic, but as universal one-another-predication” (Rödl 2014, 316n14), he speaks at once of the self-reverting activity of I-hood and the recognitive activity of selves without distinguishing their systematically and genetically conditioning roles, respectively. But Fichte deduces reciprocal recognition from the “unconditional” activity of I-hood, which serves, on pain of arbitrariness, as the former’s derivational source. In articulating the nature and contemporary significance of the German idealist project, and in strikingly Fichtean terms, Rödl, at least so far, overlooks the architectonic perspective of the infinite I. With his claim that “I–you” is “man’s first word” (Rödl 2014, 314), he departs from Fichte’s idealist view that there is no word prior to “I” (not to be confused with “me”). As he says in the Versuch: [t]he concept of I-hood that arises within ourselves is then transferred to and synthetically united with … an “it”, a mere object, something outside of us. It is by means of this conditioned synthesis that a “you” first arises for us. The concept of the “you” arises from the union of the “it” and the “I.” (IWL 87 [SW 1: 502])

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From an architectonic standpoint, “I” denotes the self-reverting activity on condition of which you and I are capable of reciprocal recognition—of so much as uttering and hearing words as words. My aim has not been to diminish the similarity between Fichte and Rödl, but only to make precise Rödl’s proximity to the tradition he aims to comprehend. When Rödl says that your second-person knowledge of me “comes to fruition only as my power to return it is actualized” (Rödl 2007, 190), we hear Fichte’s claim that your summons is purposive only if I realize its end (FNR 44 [SW 3: 46–7]). When he says that I, in turn, have second-person knowledge of you only if I see you as “anticipating my thought returning to you” (Rödl 2007, 190), we hear Fichte’s claim that my response presupposes that you are an intelligence (FNR 35 [SW 3: 36]). But this, for now, is as close as he comes to Fichte’s position in particular and to German idealism in general.22 As I have suggested, the principal thought of German idealism is its thought of a principle. Whether this thought signifies the dialectically emerging shapes of an “Absolute” that results from the “becoming-of-itself ” (PhG 13 [GW 9: 19]), following Hegel, or the purposive activity of I-hood exercised as the space of recognitive embodied selves, following Fichte, it is meant to grasp the explanatory ground of experience firstpersonally, vindicating philosophical systematicity while avoiding nihilism. Despite the differences that remain, Rödl’s achievement to date is to have significantly furthered the development of the idea of German idealism for a contemporary audience through remarkably Fichtean accounts of first-person and second-person knowledge.

Conclusion It is perhaps telling that Rödl’s few references to Fichte are limited to the Naturrechts, for it is in the Grundlage, the Versuch, and especially the Nova Methodo that Fichte makes explicit the derivational relation between first-person and second-person knowledge, that is, between intellectual intuition of the infinite I and reciprocal recognition between finite Is. I have noted that this relation assumes a distinction between systematic and genetic priority: whereas a priori conditions like spatiality, temporality, and relations of right make the exercise of purposiveness possible, the I as first principle conditions the possibility of purposiveness as such, while ensuring the former conditions’ collective unity. To be sure, Rödl’s account of second-person knowledge compellingly articulates the German idealist insight into our essential sociality, justifying our engagement with the idealist tradition as a way of overcoming a persistent tendency to think atomistically about finite rational agents. But if we are to inherit this tradition without overestimating our affinity with it, we must discern its driving problems and basic concepts. In particular, if we overlook Fichte’s thought of a first principle, we neglect the transformative experience we are said to undergo by intellectually intuiting it. While the idea of a first principle is available to pre-Kantian philosophers, it is only after Kant that it becomes a real, livable possibility, namely, through its first-personal apprehension. Fichte is all too aware that its apprehension cannot be compelled,

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on pain of nihilism, but rather must be invited. In this regard, he reserves a special, metaphilosophical conception of the summons: One would hope that every person will be able to think of himself. One would hope as well that every person will become aware that, insofar as he is summoned to think of himself, he is summoned to engage in a type of inner acting that depends upon his own self-activity and will realize that, in accomplishing what is thus requested of him, he actually affects himself through his own self-activity; i.e., he acts. (IWL 45 [SW 1: 461–2])

Fichte can invite us to embrace our self-sufficiency, but he can only serve as midwife: “Everyone must freely generate it within himself ” (IWL 14 [SW 1: 429]). As important as registering philosophy’s first principle, then, is registering the contingency of apprehending it.23

Notes 1 Compare Fichte’s criticism of Kant’s metaphysical deduction of the categories from the logical forms of judgment: “To a Critical idealist … who does not derive the presumed laws of the intellect from the very nature of the intellect, one may address the following question: How did you obtain any material acquaintance with these laws? I.e., how did you become aware that the laws of the intellect are precisely these laws of substantiality and causality?” (IWL 27 [SW 1: 442]). 2 The full titles of Fichte’s theory of right—Grundlage Des Naturrechts nach Prinzipien Der Wissenschaftslehre—and theory of ethics—Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre—indicate that their subject matter is logically downstream from knowledge of philosophy’s first principle. 3 According to Paul Franks, Fichtean intuition and Hegelian dialectic are “competing interpretations of the same underlying methodological idea: the idea of a metaphysical deduction that begins with the ens realissimum and proceeds to trace the necessary delimitations or determinate negations of the ‘space’ of all possible transcendental realities … Whereas [Hegel] and Schelling had previously insisted that the system must begin with the absolute—by which they meant the idea of the ens realissimum from which the totality of the real is to be derived—Hegel now says [in the Phenomenology of Spirit] that the absolute ‘is essentially a result, and only at the end is it what it is in truth’ (PhG 13 [GW 9: 19]). This might mislead one into thinking that Hegel has given up the project of a progressive derivation from the idea of the ens realissimum. But this would be incorrect. What he means is that the first principle disclosed through the Factum of ‘self-consummating skepticism’ (PhG 52 [GW 9: 56]) is an initial and still inadequate expression of the first principle, which achieves adequate expression only through its dialectical articulation in the system. Hegel’s system is still progressive and, moreover, still progresses from the idea of God, although this idea is at first expressed in its most impoverished form, as mere ‘being.’ For ‘being’ and all the other determinations of Hegelian logic are ‘the metaphysical definitions of God’ “(Enc. 1 §85) (Franks 2005, 373, 377). Compare Fred Rush’s gloss of Schelling’s charge that Hegel “operates with an epistemically charged

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variant of intellectual intuition,” a “form of rational insight” that is “internally articulated, indeed dialectically so” (Rush 2014, 220–1). See Franks 2005, Chapter 3. This distinction is obscured by Heath and Lachs’ translation of “Ich” as “self ” in the Grundlage and the introductions to the Versuch. See Fichte: “Though you may have included many things in your concept of the I which I have not (e.g., the concept of your own individuality, for this too is signified by the word ‘I’), you may henceforth put all of this aside. The only ‘I’ that I am concerned with here is the one that comes into being through the sheer self-reverting act of your own thinking” (IWL 108 [SW 1: 523]). We may wonder if Fichte is a foundationalist. Tom Rockmore defines three types of foundationalism: ontological, which involves a direct grasp of reality, perceptual, which asserts incorrigible knowledge, and principal, which relies on assumed principles (Rockmore 1994, 100). Given these definitions, he denies Fichte is a foundationalist and reads the Wissenschaftslehre as anti-foundationalist in spirit, focusing on the circular relation between the I’s activity and its product, namely, itself. But these definitions are not exhaustive: a fourth type of foundationalism is exemplified by the I’s self-reverting activity, which explains and thus founds itself. Indeed, a common feature of Rockmore’s definitions is an external relation between foundation and founded, whereas the I relates internally to what it founds. See Fichte: “Any philosophy is … dogmatic, when it equates or opposes anything to the I as such; and this it does in appealing to the supposedly higher concept of the thing (ens), which is thus quite arbitrarily set up as the absolutely highest conception. In the critical system, a thing is what is posited in the I; in the dogmatic, it is that wherein the I is itself posited: critical philosophy is thus immanent, since it posits everything in the I; dogmatism is transcendent, since it goes beyond the I. So far as dogmatism can be consistent, Spinozism is its most logical outcome” (SK 117 [SW 1: 119–20]). See Fichte: “if the explanation of presentation, that is, the whole of speculative philosophy, proceeds from the premise that the not-I is posited as the cause of the presentation, and the latter as an effect thereof, then the not-I is the real ground of everything; it exists absolutely, because it exists and as it exists (Spinoza’s fatalism). Even the I is a mere accident thereof, and not a substance at all, and we arrive at materialistic Spinozism, which is a form of dogmatic realism” (SK 146 [SW 1: 155]). Fichte acknowledges that the antinomy between dogmatism and idealism is theoretically insoluble: “Neither of these two systems can directly refute the opposing one; for the dispute between them is a dispute concerning the first principle, i.e., concerning a principle that cannot be derived from any higher principle. If the first principle of either system is conceded, then it is able to refute the first principle of the other. Each denies everything included within the opposite system. They do not have a single point in common on the basis of which they might be able to achieve mutual understanding and be united with one another. Even when they appear to be in agreement concerning the words of some proposition, they understand these words to mean two different things” (IWL 15 [SW 1: 429]). See Robert Pippin: “To assume [the opposite of idealism] would still be to determine oneself to act as if determinism were true. But that would make it a norm for action and so to refute oneself ” (Pippin 2000, 158). See Fichte: “in presupposing the thoroughgoing validity of the mechanism of cause and effect, [dogmatists] directly contradict themselves. What they say stands in

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contradiction with what they do; for, to the extent that they presuppose mechanism, they at the same time elevate themselves above it. Their own act of thinking of this relationship is an act that lies outside the realm of mechanical determinism. Mechanism cannot grasp itself, precisely because it is mechanism” (IWL 94 [SW 1: 509–10]). Compare Schelling: “The dogmatist, who assumes everything to be originally present outside us (not as coming to be and springing forth from us) must surely commit himself at least to this: that what is external to us is also to be explained by external causes. He succeeds in doing this, as long as he remains within the nexus of cause and effect, despite the fact that he can never make it intelligible how this nexus of causes and effects has itself arisen. As soon as he raises himself above the individual phenomenon, his whole philosophy is at an end; the limits of mechanism are also the limits of his system” (IPN 30). 13 Frederick Neuhouser claims that the “inadequacy of dogmatism consists in the fact that, by starting from the thing itself, it will never be able to arrive at an account of the consciousness of things and therefore will prove incapable of constructing a single, all-encompassing system … The decisive strength of idealism, then, lies in its ability to achieve completeness” (Neuhouser 1990, 58). But the dogmatist’s problem is not primarily the theoretical error of leaving an explanatory gap. It is the practical error of betraying his own purposiveness. As Fichte observes in the Grundlage, in positing the Not-I, the dogmatist must “think unawares of the absolute subject as well, as contemplating this substrate; and thus they unwittingly subjoin in thought the very thing from which they have allegedly abstracted, and contradict themselves. One cannot think at all without subjoining in thought one’s I, as conscious of itself ” (SK 98 [SW 1: 97]). Similarly, Fichte acknowledges in the Versuch that the dogmatist “does not deny, as a fact of consciousness, that we consider ourselves to be free … Instead, he uses his own principle to prove the falsity of this claim.” Although the dogmatist alienates himself from his agency, his system nevertheless makes conceptual space for the fact of consciousness, namely, as “illusion” (IWL 15 [SW 1: 430]). This is why Fichte holds that the antinomy of systematicity cannot be resolved theoretically, but only practically. 14 This removes the appearance of metaphilosophical pluralism from Fichte’s dictum that one’s philosophy “depends upon the kind of person one is” (IWL 20 [SW 1: 434]). The dictum may suggest that one could legitimately endorse dogmatism. But the dogmatist’s self-refutation shows that he has no first principle: “the object of dogmatism cannot be considered to be anything but a mere invention” (IWL 14 [SW 1: 428]). With no first principle, he has no system. The kind of person one is accordingly amounts to a question about whether one embraces idealism, that is, whether one owns up to one’s freedom or evades it in bad faith. As Fichte says in the Nova Methodo: “[w]hether one embraces or rejects [idealism] is something that depends upon one’s inmost way of thinking and upon one’s faith in oneself. A person who has faith in himself cannot accept any variety of dogmatism or fatalism” (FTP 95 [GA IV/2: 17]). It is precisely because a person is either a self-willed or a failed idealist that Fichte can conclude that “[t]he only type of philosophy that remains possible is idealism” (IWL 24 [SW 1: 438]). 15 See Fichte: “the act in question is a mere intuition. —Accordingly, it also produces no consciousness, not even self-consciousness … The described act of the I merely serves to put the I into a position in which self-consciousness—and, along with this, all other consciousness—becomes possible” (IWL 43 [SW 1: 459]).

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16 See Robert Pippin: “If there is a ‘monism’ emerging in the post-Kantian philosophical world, the kind proposed by Fichte … is what might be called a normative monism, a claim for the ‘absolute’ or unconditioned status of the space of reasons” (Pippin 2000, 164). 17 Rödl attacks perceptual and demonstrative models of reference in one stroke since both involve third-personal reference. 18 One might deny there is any affinity at all. Rödl adopts Frege’s conception of sense as the way in which a referent “is apprehended to fall under concepts” (Rödl 2007, 5). Must I apprehend myself under some concept in first-person knowledge? Would this not disqualify it as intellectual intuition, which Fichte defines as non-conceptual? An answer lies in Rödl’s description of demonstrative judgment as (a) unmediated by another judgment and (b) such that no concept governs the knowledge that it provides. My judgment “This drum is taut” is unmediated, for I need refer to this drum in no other way to know that it falls under the concept “taut.” Yet neither tautness nor any other concept is the principle governing my judgment of this drum. As Rödl says, this judgment’s principle “need not be a piece of knowledge, knowledge that the object (uniquely) satisfies a certain concept. It may be a relation to the object by which one is in a position to know how things stand with it” (ibid., 6). Here, Rödl broadens Frege’s notion of sense beyond apprehension under concepts. One effect is to elucidate the referential character of first-person knowledge. Modifying the above description, my reference to myself is (a) unmediated by any other judgment and (b*) such that no concept governs the knowledge that it provides because I know the referent by being in a position to know how things stand with it, namely, by being it. The denial above falls because first-person knowledge, for Rödl as for Fichte, is ultimately unmediated by concepts. One may still object that concepts figure in Rödl’s account of the identity of being and referring in first-person knowledge. On this account, however, knowing I am F presupposes my immediate relation to myself. Like demonstrative knowledge, no particular concept governs this relation. Although first-person knowledge is doubtless expressible by thoughts determined by an “individuating concept,” Rödl distinguishes such determination from the grounding sense whereby I relate to myself as “a source of indefinitely many pieces of knowledge” (ibid., 7). In this way, the sense of “I” is a perspective on the space of reasons as such, not merely a point within it. I am open to this space by knowing that I am myself. As Rödl says, first-person knowledge, construed as original synthesis, “is the ground of the possibility of all [empirical] knowledge, but is not itself [empirical] knowledge” (Rödl 2013, 219). Still, one might object that Rödl denies of intellectual intuition that “all knowledge comes out of it in the manner of being derived from it” (ibid.). But the context of this denial is empirical knowledge. Fichte would likewise deny that such knowledge is derivable from intellectual intuition of the I. The conditions he derives from the latter, since they are a priori, are rather the objects of transcendental knowledge. 19 Compare Stanley Cavell: “I (have to) respond to [the other’s life], or refuse to respond. It calls upon me; it calls me out. I have to acknowledge it. I am as fated to that as I am to my body; it is as natural to me … And what happens to me when I withhold my acceptance of privacy—anyway, of otherness—as the home of my concepts of the human soul and find my criteria to be dead, mere words, wordshells? … I withhold myself … —Isn’t the idea of withholding prejudicial, implying a prior state of union, or closeness? Whereas maybe I never was a part, or party, to these (other) lives. Couldn’t I be just different? —But I want to know where this leaves me, what has happened to me. —Then it is the idea of being left that is prejudicial” (Cavell 1979, 84–5).

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20 See Fichte FNR 9 [SW 3: 8]. 21 Compare Fichte: “No You, no I; no I, no You” (SK 172–3 [SW 1: 189]). 22 Rödl has very recently moved closer to the German idealist thought of a principle. In Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism, he argues that philosophy is the science of judgment, that is, the systematic understanding of the objectivity of judgment, and he says that his argument echoes Hegel’s formula that reason is the certainty of its consciousness of being all reality (Rödl 2018, 14–15). Rödl claims that this science affords knowledge of the principles of judgment, which are the logical concepts that belong to the idea of objectivity, such as those of sensibility, substance, temporality, and teleology (ibid., 17, 62, 81, 140). This affirms the systematic priority of the self-conscious, first-personal character of judgment for the sake articulating the unity of these concepts. However, it amounts to a statement rather than a derivation of this unity: “[i]t is not to our purpose here to articulate the principle, or principles, of logic. But it will be helpful to equip ourselves with a provisional idea of their content … We need not develop the principles of logic. It is enough that there be [such] principles” (ibid., 139–40). The task in Rödl’s latest presentation is thus to assert, not yet to deduce, the lawfulness of the set of logical concepts by which the first principle of idealism would articulate its absoluteness. 23 Thanks to Gabriel Gottlieb, Colin McQuillan, and audiences at the Universities of Emory, Xavier, and Sussex for helpful comments on this chapter.

Bibliography Anscombe, G. E. M. 1975. “The First Person.” In Mind and Language, edited by Samuel D. Guttenplan, 45–65. Oxford: Clarendon. Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Franks, Paul. 2005. All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments and Skepticism in German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 1990. Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pippin, Robert. 2000. “Fichte’s Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism.” In The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, edited by Sally Sedgwick, 147–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rockmore, Tom. 1994. “Anti-foundationalism, Circularity and the Spirit of Fichte.” In Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Controversies, edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, 96–112. New Jersey: Humanities Press. Rödl, Sebastian. 2007. Self-Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rödl, Sebastian. 2013. “The Single Act of Combining.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (2): 213–20. Rödl, Sebastian. 2014. “Intentional Transaction.” Philosophical Explorations 17 (3): 304–16. Rödl, Sebastian. 2018. Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rush, Fred. 2014. “Schelling’s Critique of Hegel.” In Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays, edited by Lara Ostaric, 216–37. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Fichte and the Contemporary Debate about Speculative Realism Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel

The last thirty years in philosophy are characterized by a strong realism, whereas the 1970s seemed rather dominated by relativism or deconstruction. One of the consequences of this current rush to realism is that the old quarrel between idealism and realism has vigorously resumed today. Certainly, in most texts that are “realistic,” the term “idealism” is used in a negative way: it is an example of an error to avoid, the prototype of the enemy to fight. Moreover, the idealist often appears in a caricatured way, as someone who denies the reality of the outside world and idealism is therefore akin to subjectivism and/or radical relativism. Nevertheless, in this plethora of “realisms” (ordinary, phenomenological, scientific, positive, “new,” etc.), speculative realism seems to be an exception. Indeed, it approaches “idealism” more rigorously and refers to specific authors. This difference in treatment is not simply due to the fact that one of the four representatives of speculative realism (Iain Hamilton Grant) is a scholar of Schelling. In fact, surprisingly, the true interlocutor of this speculative realism is, at the present time, Fichte. Admittedly, he still appears as an adversary; however, he is considered one of the most difficult philosophers to refute. Thus, one of the most important representatives of speculative realism (Quentin Meillassoux) makes his own brand of realism dependent on a well-argued refutation of Fichte’s position. It is this paradoxical reception (made of equal parts of glorification and refutation) of Fichte within speculative realism that I would like to discuss in this chapter. But, first, let us briefly recall what this speculative realism is. Its birth certificate dates from April 2007 and goes back to an exchange in London between Meillassoux, Grant, Graham Harman, and Ray Brassier. In their writings preceding this meeting, these authors developed relatively different positions. Nevertheless, all four agreed on one point: the criticism of what Harman, in 2004, called “the philosophy of access” and Meillassoux, in 2006, the “corrélationisme.” This term “correlationism” stigmatizes any philosophy which, in Kant’s wake, turns away from the “thing-in-itself ” and toward things for us. Correlationism is based on the idea that we never reach the world or the real as it is, but only the relation between our thought and the world, which becomes the simple correlate of a human instance (transcendental subject, Dasein, language, cognitive schemes, etc.). Correlationism

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includes, in the last instance, all the philosophies produced since the Critique of Pure Reason. This first restitution could make one believe that Fichte is likely to occupy a place of choice among the representatives of correlationism, since he is routinely thought, in the ordinary philosophical literature, to deepen the Kantian dependence of the object on the subject. But, surprisingly, Fichte is initially absent from the texts of representatives of speculative realism. It is therefore necessary to specify the moment of his emergence because it has consequences for the way in which he will be interpreted. In fact, the name “Fichte” does not appear before the formation of the group and the decision to bring together four participants under the banner of “speculative realism.” But Fichte intervenes at length at the time of their April 2007 meeting (known as the Goldsmiths Lecture) in a response by Meillassoux to an objection from Nihil Unbound (Brassier 2007). After this dispute, Fichte begins to occupy a more and more important place in their discussions. From Speculative Turn (2011), where Brassier responds to Meillassoux, through Harman’s study titled Quentin Meillassoux, Philosophy in Making (2011), Fichte gradually becomes a necessary passage for speculative realism as well as its secondary literature. I will begin with some remarks about “correlationism” before turning to the link to Fichte; I will then analyze refutations of his position due to Brassier and Meillasoux.

Correlationism without Fichte The Classification of Philosophies in After Finitude Meillassoux’s usage of “Correlationism” begins before the later turn to Fichte. His 2006 work Après la Finitude (After Finitude) offers a clear account of the different possible philosophical positions surrounding the concept. The first level is the “naive or dogmatic realism” that posits the independence of the real, without worrying about rationally justifying this ontological commitment. This is followed by “weak correlationism” (Meillassoux 2006, 42), epitomized by Kant. Weak correlationism admits the existence of things-in-themselves but denies that we have access to them. Things-in-themselves, which cannot be cognized, are only phenomena structured by the human faculties (forms of intuition and categories of the understanding). In Kant, knowledge worthy of the name (objective validity) depends entirely on the correlation (subject/object). In short, all knowledge is knowledge of what is for us and, ultimately, by us. Faced with this weak correlation, there is a “strong correlationism” (Meillassoux 2006, 42). This correlationism, which allegedly dominates the twentieth century, is exemplified by Wittgenstein and Heidegger, and, in its most acute version, by postmodernism. There is no question of Fichte here since, for Meillassoux, strong correlation is the “most contemporary form of thought” (Meillassoux 2006, 48). To understand the exact nature of this strong correlationism implies comparing it to the fourth level, the level that completes this mapping, namely the “speculative idealism” exemplified by Hegel. The difference between Kant and Hegel is simple: Hegel undertakes to deduce the general structures of thought (that is, to answer the question: why do we have such categories?), whereas Kant merely describes them as a factum that cannot be derived from any previous principle. Therefore, this factum

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cannot be considered necessary (Meillassoux 2006, 52). Speculative idealism deletes the thing-in-itself, but nonetheless bases the whole system of thought on an absolute (Hegel’s concept of Spirit); it does not therefore sink into a relativistic solipsism or a “subjective idealism,” which After Finitude classically identifies with Berkeley (Meillassoux 2006, 17, 168). Meillassoux enigmatically summarizes Hegel’s view by the notion of “absolutization of correlation.” This is enigmatic because Meillassoux acts as if Hegel did not go beyond the subject/object split, but rather hypostatizes it. However, this is not Hegel’s project, whose ambition was to overcome the division between subject and object. No doubt, Meillassoux believes that Hegel has failed in this task. He thus remarks, in a laconic way, that the Spirit is nothing but a “mental term” (2006, 51). Consequently, the term that is supposed to exceed “correlation” is still a subjective term.1 But, strictly speaking, the Spirit of Hegel is not a subjective term, but rather a negativity already active within material reality. In this sense, Spirit is less the sign of correlation than the form of its overcoming. This remark is not intended to reproach Meillassoux for not being a scrupulous commentator of Hegel. Such an objection would be meaningless. In fact, his goal is not to be a historian of philosophy; moreover, he is one of the few contemporary realists not to reduce idealistic positions to a caricature, or even, in some cases, to a mere schoolboy prank. Rather, I would like to emphasize that, from the outset, Meillassoux seems to have difficulty with German idealism.

The Shadow of German idealism Indeed, German idealism seems very close to at least three of the theses that Meillassoux provides as the basis of his speculative realism, namely: (1) the maintenance of the absolute. (2) An integral rationalism for which our knowledge is true and not merely probable or useful. (3) A critique of Kantian finitude. These three theses can be attributed to Fichte as well as to Hegel. This is undoubtedly what motivates the reservations of Harman (2011, 164) and Brassier (2011, 60), who reproach Meillassoux for conceding too much to German idealism; so much, in fact, that Meillassoux remains a prisoner of it. Moreover, if one adds that the notion on which Meillassoux intends to base his system is “intellectual intuition” (a Fichtean notion par excellence), and that the heart of his philosophy will be the notion of “what could not have been or could be otherwise” (in Meillassoux: contingency, in Fichte, freedom), then it is more than a simple echo of German idealism that we find in Après la Finitude. But before analyzing this point, I must answer the question: how is strong correlationism distinguished from speculative idealism? How does it differ from the Kantian distinction between phenomena (knowable) and the thing-in-itself (inaccessible and only thinkable). In fact, both “share an identical starting point— that of the unthinkability of the in-it-itself—but then go on to draw two opposite conclusions from it—that the absolute is thinkable or that it is unthinkable, respectively” (Meillassoux 2006, 53). Hegel, deducing the a priori forms, shows its necessity when he transforms it into a knowable absolute. In this way, he breaks with the Kantian theme of finitude. On the other hand, contemporary correlationists have accentuated finitude by postulating that no one can demonstrate the necessity of our

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thought-structures; we find them simply as a fact (theme of facticity). These thoughtstructures appear, therefore, as the limits within which we are confined. Outside these limits, anything is possible: that God exists, that he does not exist, that the soul is immortal or an aggregate of material particles, etc. In the eyes of contemporary correlationists, we have no rational way to support any of these assumptions. If the limitation of reason makes room for faith, the “absolutization” of finitude gives free rein to unlimited belief, which is not justifiable by rational argumentation. This is, in Meillassoux’s eyes, what explains the religiosity of most contemporary philosophy (Heidegger as well as Wittgenstein): “Fideism is merely the other name for strong correlationism” (Meillassoux 2006, 67). Such is Meillassoux’s initial classification of epistemologies, which does not address Fichte. If a reader, at the time of the publication of the book in 2006, had asked how this nomenclature would categorize Fichte, Meillassoux would have had difficulty responding. Subjective idealism, the traditional insult against Fichte, is here attributed to Berkeley. Fichte’s position does not correspond to it,2 insofar as the theme of the absolute is initially in Fichte. But this maintenance of the absolute is considered by Meillassoux as the mark of speculative idealism, although one should be able to distinguish it from “absolute” idealism. Let us recall that this adjective is traditionally assigned to Hegel, which Meillassoux also uses to describe his own view (Meillassoux 2006, 53). Fichte could thus embody the first post-Kantian form of strong correlationism. Nevertheless, two objections make such a characterization impossible. First, in the 2006 text, strong correlationism is based on the “absolutization of finitude.” Fichte, in criticizing the Kantian finitude, seems very distant from this configuration. Moreover, if Fichte is a representative of strong correlationism, the difference between strong correlationism and speculative idealism tends to become evanescent. Yet this distinction is decisive in the argumentation of After Finitude, as noted by Harman (2011, 85). In short, if Hegel’s assignment to the category of “absolutization of correlation” is inaccurate, Fichte’s idealism might muddle the difference between speculative idealism and strong correlationism. From the outset, the status of German idealism seems likely to disturb the classification of the past philosophies on which much of the argumentation is based in After Finitude.

The decisive importance of Fichte Reasons for Fichte’s Emergence in Speculative Realism As I have said, Fichte is mentioned at length in Meillassoux’s (2007) response to Brassier’s critique of intellectual intuition. He intervenes as a means for Meillassoux to show the superiority of his type of speculative realism as compared to other realisms, which also aspire to free themselves from the influence of correlationist thought. Thus, paradoxically, Fichte becomes an argument against other forms of speculative realism (Brassier, Harman, Grant). Let us summarize the reproach of Nihil Unbound (Brassier 2007), which sparked this curious defense. It deals with intellectual intuition (Chapter 3,

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section 7), which for Brassier constitutes a key moment in Meillassoux’s system. The argument is simple: Meillassoux claims that mathematics can know the thing-in-itself, for example a reality X prior to the presence of man on earth, called “ancestral reality.” Nevertheless, Meillassoux takes care not to say that the real is wholly mathematical. Otherwise he would fall back into a radical Pythagoricism, even an absolute idealism (Brassier 2007, 87). The reference therefore remains different from the meaning of my utterance, since reference is the order of the real. But mathematical utterance belongs to the ideal (Meillassoux 2006, 28, 29). Yet, writes Brassier, Meillassoux makes this difference between the reality and the ideality of the statement “dependent upon an intellectual intuition” (Brassier 2007, 87). From then on, he finds himself caught in the “correlational circle” since the structure of the real remains “enclosed by one of the poles of the distinction,” which is in this case thought. In short, not to be Pythagorean (being is mathematical) “is precluded only at the cost of the idealism which renders being the correlate of intellectual intuition” (Brassier 2007, 88). In this impasse, Brassier opposes his own realism (backed by the breakthrough that represents, in his eyes, the concept of reality of Laruelle). Meillassoux’s answer will consist in reformulating strong correlationism borrowed from Fichte. Before this date, Meillassoux did not refer to Fichte.3 His strategy can be broken down into three moments, which show: 1. The strength of Fichte’s argument against any form of a thing-in-itself. Meillassoux insists in the Goldsmiths Lecture on “the exceptional strength of this argumentation, apparently and desperately implacable” (Meillassoux 2007, 409). What Harman (2011, 164) understands, perhaps a bit quickly, is an outright acceptance of Fichte’s argument. But even if Meillassoux’s goal is not to say that Fichte is right, the fact remains that, through him, the German philosopher becomes a necessary passage of all realism worthy of the name, whose first task requires answer to his formulation of the “correlational circle.” 2. Laruelle’s position, on which Brassier leans, falls prey to Fichte’s argument; it cannot therefore claim to be a true realism. 3. It is less a question of refuting this type of correlationism by arguments that would remain external to it than to radicalize it. This is why Meillassoux, in his April 2007 intervention, seeks to demonstrate that the condition of the possibility of Fichtean idealism is in fact his own thesis according to which the necessary property of the real (thing-in-itself) is its irreducible contingency. It is not therefore an external criticism, which, in the eyes of Meillassoux, will never succeed in getting rid of the Fichtean difficulty, but an internal criticism. It is the specificity of this internal criticism that Brassier and Harman did not notice, which leads them to suspect that Meillassoux agrees with Fichte. Regardless, even if Meillassoux does not accept the Fichtean argument, Meillassoux has definitely linked the destiny of realism to Fichte, who becomes “the most rigorous expression of the correlationist challenge to the realism” (Meillassoux 2007, 410). But, more surprising still, Meillassoux, by his introduction of Fichte in the debate, seems to question part of his text from 2006.

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After Finitude’s Argumentation at Risk Let us explore this further. Fichte, in 2007, is used to reformulate the correlational circle in a relentless way, making the most accomplished expression of strong correlationism. Nevertheless, he has nothing to do with the correlationism of the twentieth century, which remains on the level of finitude and thus leads to fideism and the destruction of rationality. Through Fichte, the second chapter of the text of 2006 becomes superfluous. We remember that Meillassoux’s argumentative strategy consisted in rejecting correlationism because its inescapable consequence was fideism. Through Fichte, Meillassoux is confronted with another form of strong correlationism. This raises the question: Why, in After Finitude, did he fight against the correlationism of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, when there is another form of correlationism which, because it has nothing to do with fideism, brings about the disappearance of one of the three main reasons4 to show us the urgency to go beyond any form of correlationism? Fichte’s introduction to speculative realism, initially intended to counter the realism of Brassier and Laruelle, also weakens Meillassoux’s argument in After Finitude. In fact, strong correlationism can no longer be said to be definitively refuted by this book. Consequently, the need for the realistic thesis is not demonstrated. It is appropriate here to note the theoretical courage of Meillassoux because, to save the second chapter of his 2006 book (against strong correlationism), another solution could have been to argue that Fichte belongs to speculative idealism. Indeed, if Hegel can be said to be a prisoner of what Meillassoux will later call “subjectalism” (because the Spirit is still an “intellective” and therefore subjective instance), what can one say about Fichte and his famous “I”? Was it not easy to consider him, even more than Hegel, as projecting the famous I in all directions? Meillassoux did not succumb to this easy solution, which, however, many of his readers would have admitted because it seems to be established in the ordinary philosophical debate that Fichte is the purest representative of the “philosophy of subjectivity.” But in fact Meillasoux refers to a very different interpretation of Fichte. In so doing, he plunges into internal debates with Fichte scholars, again marking the considerable importance Fichte has acquired. Indeed, as Harman notes: “Meillassoux rejects … the long dominant French reading of Fichte by A. Philonenko … Against this reading, Meillassoux endorses the most recent French interpretation by I. Thomas-Fogiel. His far more plausible claim is that Fichte is a thinker of pragmatic contradiction” (Harman 2011, 82). I must therefore recall the main points that Meillassoux retains from this interpretation and then show how the speculative realists intend to refute this “Fichte” as reinterpreted.

The New Challenge of Speculative Realism: “Answer to the Fatality of the Pragmatic Contradiction” Let us recall the three features that define this interpretation:5 1. The origin of Fichte’s thought is not the desire to limit knowledge to make room for belief or action. His primary motivation is “the need for science.” In this sense, his philosophy can be seen as the implementation of uncompromising rationalism.

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2. Fichte, under the impulse of the skeptical critics of Aesidemus and Maimon, constantly reproaches Kant for not having reflected on the status of his own philosophical discourse, that is, of not being able to explain how the philosopher “can know what he knows” (e.g., that there are 12 categories, not 30, which are of such forms and not of another, etc.). Here we recognize a refutation of Kant, also carried out by Hegel, by saying that we must deduce the categories and not describe them as a factum. Meillassoux could have, since then, confined Fichte to the class of “speculative idealists” and reserved for him the same fate as Hegel. Nevertheless, he does not do so because Fichte’s request for “deduction/justification” is made in the name of an argument that, in Meillasoux’s eyes, cannot be linked to a mere desire for absolute necessity or extension of the principle of reason (which, for Meillassoux, was the position of Hegel). 3. Fichte’s central argument and main discovery is the argument of the performative contradiction, also called pragmatic,6 that Fichte will tirelessly express as the “contradiction between what the philosopher says and what he does.” Technically, Fichte says that the philosopher must not simply explain the representation (the subject/object relationship), showing for example that the subject’s thinking depends on the object (realistic configuration) or the object of the subject (idealistic configuration). He must also give an account of the philosopher’s activity that is not mere representation (subject/object relationship) but reflection. This reflection is strictly defined as the relation of the content of the philosopher’s propositions to the acts the philosopher must perform to express this content. An example that we can give is the canonical refutation of the skeptical proposition: “there is no truth.” The content of the philosopher’s proposition is: “there is no truth.” But he posited that there was at least one true proposition (that there was no truth). This “what he does” (to say that there is at least one true proposition) nullifies the content of his proposition, namely, “what he says.” The requirement to account for the conditions of possibility of discourse about truth, the relation to the subject/object, being, finitude, etc. is used by Fichte to refute previous philosophers (including Kant), and thereby produce positive philosophical statements himself. Meillassoux takes up this pragmatic contradiction7 and applies it to the realism of Laruelle and Brassier in showing that their type of realism falls under this argument. He writes: “What does a philosopher really do when he claims to have access to a reality independent of the I? He posits, says Fichte, an X, supposed to be independent of any position. In other words, he posits this X as non-posit” (Meillasoux 2007, 412). Between After Finitude and this text from April 2007, the refutation of the correlational circle evolved. Fichte intervened and made it virtually unsurpassable, whereas the 2006 text claimed to overcome strong correlationism by refuting Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian philosophies in a manner similar to Meillassoux’s unpublished text The Divine Non-existence, his thesis defended in 1997. Fichte was not mentioned, and the opponents at the time were clearly contemporary fideists. But now Meillassoux declares: “to be a contemporary realist means, in my view, to directly challenge the Fichtean fatality of the pragmatic contradiction” (Meillassoux 2007, 413).

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This result not only weakens the realism of Brassier and Laruelle, but also partially Meillassoux’s refutation of strong correlationism. Moreover, the turn to Fichte reveals the strange proximity of his theses with the speculative realism in After Finitude. Before demonstrating this point, it will be useful to analyze Brassier’s response when faced with Meillassoux’s objection, which proposes an interpretation of Fichte in order to refute him (Brassier 2011, 56–65).

Fichte’s Refutation by Brassier A Usual but Fictitious Fichte Fichte’s refutation by Brassier is traditional. Even though he relies on a contemporary, David Stove (1991), the fact remains that his argument has often haunted critics of idealism. It consists in making Fichte a “subjective idealist” who reduces the thing to the thought, the object to its concept, the reference to the sense. We return here to a mythical figure of idealism, introduced by Diderot, originally used to attack Berkeley. It is, moreover, Berkeley that Brassier effectively takes as his point of departure in his argument against Fichte. This consists in reducing them both to the same series of propositions that can be summarized as follows: “It is impossible for an un-conceived (or non-perceived) thing to exist,” or in terms (apparently) more Fichtean: the existence of an object depends on the act of an ego (of a subject who thinks and posits this object). But neither Berkeley nor Fichte supports these existential and radically solipsistic propositions. Let us hold on to Fichte and express this point by following the deliberately trivial manner Brassier uses. He explains that Fichte would confuse the sense of the concept of “Saturn” and its reference. For Brassier, Fichte would say that Saturn exists because we think so. To this supposed doctrine, he opposes this: “the planet which is the referent of the word ‘Saturn’ existed before we named it and it will probably exist after the human beings who named it ceased to exist” (Brassier 2011, 62). But Fichte would have conceded without difficulty this argument often advanced by realists today. Indeed, Fichte does not say that Saturn exists because we think it, perceive it, or posit it, but simply that the concept of Saturn needs to be posited by a subject to be conceived. Logically, the proposition: it is impossible for an unthinkable thing to exist (a proposition attributed both to Fichte and to the correlationists) is not equivalent to: it is impossible to conceive of an un-conceived thing. The first proposition is an instance of deductive reasoning that mobilizes a heavy ontological presupposition (of the type: if I cannot conceive/perceive it, then it does not exist); the second is a proposition whose opposite is a contradiction that asserts: the conceived is not conceived. What would Fichte say (in assuming the flatness of this affirmation) is that the concept of Saturn, in order to be determined, needs to be posited by us, by a human activity, that of knowledge. In short, Fichte does not say that the existence or the conditions of the existence of an object are dependent on the acts of a subject. He rather says that the knowledge or the conditions of knowledge of an object are dependent on the acts of a subject. Brassier commits here a confusion between a

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level that we can call ontological, in which we say: X exists or does not exist and an epistemological level, where we postulate X is knowable or not, is likely to be judged true or false, or is not. A thing can exist (to-be-there) and not be thinkable in terms of true and false. Conversely, a thing can be thinkable in terms of true and false, like a mathematical proposition, without obliging us to immediately apply to it the notion of being, of thing or reality, terms used to speak about concrete things (e.g., this horse which is there). In short, being and knowing are not necessarily the same. Two simple arguments are sufficient to show that Fichte never supported the affirmation falsely attributed to him today. 1. Fichte writes “Science of knowledge” (Wissenschaftslehre) and not “Science of being.” He insists on it not only by the repetition of this title, but also by clear warnings, such as this one from a year before his death: “The science of knowledge is not a science of being” (GA II/15: 133).8 One can certainly reproach him for delegitimizing ontology, but one cannot make him say that knowledge creates being, or that man, by his thought, produces the world and all that exists around him. This is a fictional account of idealism that no one in the history of philosophy ever defends. 2. Consider what Fichte says about sciences such as physics or biology. These sciences do not belong to the Science of Knowledge, which is the elucidation of the most general acts inherent in all knowledge (that is to say, without which knowledge would not be possible or would suppress itself). Physics and biology belong to the “particular sciences,”9 which are founded by the Science of Knowledge, though not with respect to their particular content. These particular sciences start from what Fichte calls “a world as it is to be found.” This claim simply means that this or that particular content is given empirically. To put the point in Brassier’s terms: the lung exists before the physician or biologist makes it an object of knowledge and they do not create it, for instance, by thinking or positing the tuberculosis they want to heal or analyze. The particular sciences are thus confronted with what exists in a determined way (“to be there”). This “being there” or “to be found” is first indicated as what resists our understanding; the notion of resistance is often for Fichte the mark of the “world such that it must be found.” The goal, if one embarks on a process of knowledge, will obviously be to go beyond this factual resistance to put in place procedures that allow us to reduce it, such as model construction, elaboration of a theory for integrating facts that resist, invention of protocols to verify the relevance of the theory, etc.. The experimental sciences are, in their particular content, instances of what Kant called synthetic a posteriori judgments: e.g., “the bodies are heavy,” that is, what the empirical world delivers us. A posteriori, these judgments are always revisable. These empirical judgments allow us, nevertheless, to have a knowledge of this world as it is found, but one that is revisable and not a priori (which, in Kant, is defined as necessary and universal).That information cannot be said to be always true in the sense of an a priori, however, does not mean that it is radically false. It may be probable, revisable, or improvable. To put it in the words of Fichte: there is no absolute knowledge in the particular sciences because they are dealing with the empirical world, as “being there,” as something determinate. Nevertheless, there is an absolute science, the science of knowledge in general: “The only doctrine and absolute science to be possible is the science of knowledge that is a

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transcendental idealism. Transcendental idealism: abstraction of being. The science of knowledge is exactly that Idealism” (GA IV/6: 133). Neither Kant nor Fichte nor Hegel tell us that the empirical sciences teach us anything about the world in which we are evolving; they only assert that their judgments are not universal and non-revisable judgments.

On Collateral Damage to Refuting Brassier: The Ancestral Reality of After Finitude In this last argument, we can perceive that it is not only Brassier’s fictional “Fichte” that is refuted but also, as unexpected collateral damage, Meillassoux’s argument about “ancestral reality,” the theme of the first chapter of his 2006 book, where it is used to demonstrate the failure of correlationism. Indeed, the experimental sciences, which try to know the age of the earth, its life, or the universe, begin from empirical facts: a characteristic of a rock, a piece of skeleton, a star’s behavior, etc. Meillassoux is therefore obliged to admit that the starting point of this investigation is a fact or a series of empirical facts. In this sense, there is no difference between research that seeks to date the age of the earth and that which supposes the likely action of tectonic plates. The action of these plates was not thought by anyone a century ago. A bundle of empirical facts resistant to an initial model forced the scientists to suppose their possible action. Then, they construct means and measures with the aim of verifying or falsifying this hypothesis. In the experimental sciences, the procedure invoked is often abduction. Because a fact (found, empirical) does not fit the available theories, a new hypothesis is formulated; next, protocols are invented to test it. Now, in what way is the theory of Kant, or another rationalist correlationist, destroyed by “reality such as is it is described by modern science” as Brassier tells us (2007, 59), in radicalizing Meillassoux’s view about ancestral reality? In order for the Kantian theory to be destroyed by the age of the earth hypothesis, it would be necessary: (​​1) not to use empirical fact to establish ancestral reality and (2) to prove that Kant said that a posteriori synthetic judgments did not teach us anything about the world or were all radically wrong. This is not the case. The particular content of these judgments (the earth is 4.45 billion years old) is simply probable and therefore revisable. They can sometimes be said to be highly probable. But they do not become judgments a priori, that is to say, according to Kant’s definition of a priori, universal and necessary judgments. Will one say, to counter our demonstration, that the ancestral phenomenon speaks of a world without us (before the emergence of man on earth), and hence contradicts the general conditions of knowledge analyzed by Kant (forms, intuition, and categories)? But how? What do we say when we talk about this ancestral phenomena? We say, “the ancestral phenomenon (the accretion of the earth) took place before our birth.” We therefore used this to determine the time (the notions of anterior and posterior are indeed temporal notions). We say, “This phenomenon is measurable, and is an amount of time of equaling about 4.5 billion years),” and so we use the category of quantity to determine this phenomenon. We know a priori that any phenomenon that is “known” and not simply thought will have a quantity and be determined in a time. But we do not know

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a priori that a particular phenomenon (for example the age of the earth) has such and such a quantity; we therefore need experience to determine it, as well as different investigative procedures, such as abduction or the creation of models widely used in the experimental sciences. The particular content of our judgment about this scientific phenomenon will be a posteriori. Because it is a posteriori, it cannot be said to be non-revisable (universal); it is not for all that radically false, but simply probable. Similarly, Fichte’s definition of a particular (experimental) science makes it possible to understand Meillasoux’s “ancestrality” and Brassier’s claim that all sciences are in no way objections to rationalist correlationists. It appears that Brassier’s refutation of Fichte not only fails to reach his target; it further reveals the ambiguities on which the anti-Kantianism concept of speculative realism rests. We must now consider the very different refutation proposed by Meillassoux.

The Refutation of Fichte by Meillassoux Principle and Starting Point of this Refutation Let us note a paradox. Since Fichte is not mentioned in After Finitude, he is not refuted by this book. In fact, his refutation only occurs in the April 2007 text (Goldsmiths Lecture). In the 2012 Berlin conference, he is not quoted; Meillassoux’s article in the Speculative Turn refers to Fichte only once in a purely historical enumeration, without any intention of refutation (Meillassoux 2011, 237). The paradox lies in the fact that very little room is made for a refutation that is, however, crucial for speculative realism. But “the valor does not wait” for the number of papers, and the paradox is attenuated if one recalls that the criticism of Meillassoux is supposedly internal. His intention is not to present a long counterargument, but rather to reveal the ultimate condition of his system. The argument, which is transcendental, can be summarized by a process similar to Fichte’s method, which consists in showing that Fichte cannot not pose the thesis formulated in After Finitude: it is necessary that everything (nature, spirit, subject, and object) be contingent. Fichte’s idealist system thus is speculative realism. The correlational circle, which is reputed to be unsurpassable, vanishes in giving way to the affirmation that we can and do know properties of things-in-themselves (their necessary contingency). Fichte’s idealism thus implies the realism of the thing-in-itself developed in After Finitude. This is the general structure of the refutation. Since this structure is understood, let us now return to the point of departure: Fichte’s circle, or the impossibility of postulating the radical independence of the object. Indeed, by positing an X without any relation (independence) to my act of thought, I posit it. The pragmatic contradiction in evidence here breaks down in the following way: the content of my proposition is: X is radically non-posited (nonthought); X is thus without relation (total independence). If now I analyze what the philosopher does when he utters this content, this content implies an act of position: I posit that X is not posited; I posit it as non-posited. It is for Fichte to question the acts that the philosopher performs to pose a radical independence (literally: an X without

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a relationship). This position of independence implies an act that is “put in relation.” Fichte’s philosophy consists in asking: what do we do (what acts, what cognitive procedures do we do) when we posit (think) an X as radically independent of any act of position (of all thought)? Fichte makes the different cognitive acts that we perform in thinking (position, opposition, connection, etc.) depend on an initial act of self-position of thought by itself. This self-position, Fichte tells us, is not deductible from an antecedent principle, which would make it necessary. It is an act of freedom, which a philosopher can accomplish or not accomplish. Freedom is the ultimate foundation and condition of all subsequent series of thought-acts. Freedom is the absolute, which is not deductible from an antecedent principle. Meillassoux’s argument begins from this point.

The Two Gestures of Meillassoux: The Association of “Contingency and Freedom” and the Imputation of a Contradiction Meillassoux’s first move consists of associating freedom and contingency, but he nowhere explains this move. Nevertheless, we can retrieve the basis of his approach, which was earlier invoked by Sartre. His approach is based on the fact that freedom and contingency can both be defined as “what could not have been or could not be.” A free act (or self-position) could not have been performed, but it could also not be carried out in the future. In short, it is unnecessary. Meillassoux, therefore, infers that the first principle of Fichte is contingency. The view that freedom is strictly synonymous with contingency evokes many reservations, such as: 1. The proposition: “X could not have been” says much more than “X could not have been done, thought, or posited.” We move from the plan of the act of the (free) subject to that of the (contingently) existing thing; or, to put it another way, we move from first person discourse (which, in Fichte, must include the act of enunciation by the philosopher) to third person discourse. “Third person” discourse is the discourse of the scientist who, unlike the philosopher, is not always required to incorporate his own position in his statement. For example, the naturalist who says that all swans are white is not himself a swan. For this reason, he does not have to apply to himself his own proposition. By contrast, self-referentiality is required in certain philosophical propositions, such as “All people are X” or “the truth is Z.” Henceforth, the passage between the act and the thing, or between speech in the first or third person, or again between philosophical or scientific propositions, is neither obvious nor immediate on the pretext that in both cases the consideration of “what could not have been” is central. 2. The proposition “a contingent thing is something that could or could not be” does not mean that this thing has, of itself, the power to initiate a signifying chain, where the non- contradiction between “to say and to do” will become the principle for discovering philosophical propositions (but not physical or biological a priori propositions). Yet this is included in Fichte’s notion of freedom. There is more in freedom than contingency. But let us temporarily concede the equivalence between “freedom = contingency” to Meillassoux and continue the analysis.

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As soon as the strict equivalence between freedom and contingency is invoked, Meillassoux will infer that Fichte’s system is contradictory. Why? Because Fichte, Meillassoux tells us, poses the necessity of the laws of nature. Now, the principle from which we began, because it “could not have been,” cannot establish either the necessary order of the world, nor of the laws of nature. According to A. Longo: “The act by which the ‘I’ is posited cannot be considered as grounding the necessity of the order of the world of which we experience” (2017, 72). Fichte ought therefore to posit, as an implicit condition of his first principle, the contingency of all things. Meillassoux’s refutation seems to attribute erroneous theses to Fichte: the laws of nature are necessary, and the ego is the totality of possibilities. This would make the ego, in my view, a kind of new Leibnizian God. His refutation combines two areas that Fichte distinguishes. The aim of the Science of Knowledge is certainly not to demonstrate the necessity of universal attraction or any regularity governing the empirical world. It is rather to identify the acts involved in the most general philosophical propositions. Examples might include that the object is deductible from the subject (dogmatic idealism) or that the subject is deductible from nature (dogmatic realism). Meillassoux’s error consists in attributing to Fichte a goal he does not have: to find the content of particular sciences, such as physics, and to demonstrate the necessity of the laws of nature. To put it differently, one could show: 1. The hypothesis that the laws of nature are not absolutely necessary does not mean that they are necessarily contingent; these laws could possibly, then, by comparison with the empirical world, be understood as probable. 2. It could be shown, on the other hand, that one or the other hypothesis (the necessity of the laws of nature or their absolute contingency) would not change a word of the Science of Knowledge. For this question is not Fichte’s question. One can, of course, reproach Fichte for not having been more interested in the physical or biological sciences,10 but one cannot attribute to him a basic contradiction in this respect. Nevertheless, I cannot, within the framework of this chapter, employ all of Fichte’s arguments. For my goal here is not to pretend that Fichte is always right but to understand his place as well as how he is refuted from within Meillassoux’s view. The point I wish now to bring out is that Meillassoux proposes what is in fact an inverted image of Fichte’s position.

Meillassoux’s Reversed Image of Fichte Indeed, in both cases, the thesis of “what could not have been or could not be” is at the heart of the system. Only the ultimate point of reference, that is, the freedom of thought or the contingency of the thing, differs. In both cases, the grasp of the first principle (or ultimate point of reference) depends on intellectual intuition (intuition of the act in Fichte, of the thing as contingent in Meillassoux). Moreover, in both cases, the first principle is defined as “absolute” because it cannot be reduced to an antecedent principle capable of accounting for it. Fichte calls this first principle “freedom,” and Meillassoux calls it “chaos or hyper-chaos” (Meillassoux 2006, 87).

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Finally, in both cases, the universal validity of the principle of non-contradiction rests on this absolute first principle, which makes it possible to deploy a rigorously rationalistic philosophy. In Fichte’s case, it is a question of the principle of noncontradiction between the act carried out by the philosopher and the content of what he says (non-pragmatic contradiction or reflexive identity). In the case of Meillassoux, it is the formal contradiction that states the structure of things-in-themselves through mathematics. All other propositions will be justified by their relation to these principal theses. Absolute freedom leads to a theory of knowledge, that is to say, to acts necessarily implied in all claims to the truth of philosophical knowledge; the theory of absolute contingency will produce a theory of things, that is, the inherent properties of all things. Fichte aims to highlight the conditions of philosophical knowledge and to ensure its specificity (absolute knowledge and not probable knowledge). Meillassoux intends to support scientific knowledge (mathematics and sciences depend on it) by showing that it points to “the great outdoors.” Although the architectonics of the two systems are surprisingly close, they differ in their purpose and especially in their ultimate point of reference: the freedom of reflection or the contingency of the thing. For Meillassoux, “hyper-chaos” refers to an absolute time in which everything in our current world takes place. This world can be transformed without reason by hyper-chaos, which is specified as an emergence (Ereignis) without cause or necessity. Meillassoux summarizes his approach as follows: “We must project unreason into things themselves and discover in our grasp of facticity the veritable intellectual intuition of the absolute … ; thought is capable of accessing it, just at it accesses the chaos that underlies the apparent continuities of phenomena” (Meillassoux 2006, 111). It is probable that the term “to project” and the act that it implies would have been commented on by Fichte and could, independently of him, be invoked against Meillassoux. The latter, in fact, does not do here what he criticized Hegel and Deleuze for: starting from our perspective, from the form of our understanding of the world, “to turn it into the veritable content of the world itself ” (Meillassoux 2006, 111). But it does not matter here, since our goal was only to reveal the strange proximity of two systems that differ only in the chosen ultimate point of reference: the world of things or the act of freedom, the absolute of time (hyper-chaos) or the absolute of philosophical reflection. Fichte posits as the first point the act of liberty, or the subject and not the thing, and shows that the principle that governs all philosophy is to be able to account at each stage of the act an enunciation of the philosopher or the status of his own speech. In short, the requirement is: not to contradict oneself. By contrast, the philosopher who poses as the first and absolute reference: the thing-in-itself (God, nature, history, hyper-chaos, etc.) will contradict himself at a moment in his system. Philosophy, as a specific discipline, is, for Fichte, not the preserve of the experimental sciences. It therefore does not have to deduce the specific contents, which are part of another type of speech; that is, that are perfectly legitimate but nevertheless other than that of philosophy. If Meillassoux posits the absolute of things and hyper-chaos, it is because his problem is not the specificity of philosophical discourse, but the truth (defined as access to a “great outside”) of scientific discourse. Fichte said that these absolutes or ultimate points of reference could not refute each other directly, that is to

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say by the sole consideration of their first principle (thing or act) (see IWL 18–19 [GA III/3:194–5]). Nevertheless, for him to pose the independent thing rather than the act of the philosopher was to condemn him for performatively contradicting himself at the time of the deployment of his system. Meillassoux’s demonstration seems to me to leave intact this diagnosis concerning the ultimate choice of the principle. Indeed, he seems less to refute Fichte’s system than to propose an inverted image, by choosing to posit, instead of the freedom of the act, an all-powerful hyper-chaos. Regardless of my view of these final reservations about the refutation of Fichte, I must conclude in saluting the real merit of speculative realism in the contemporary philosophical landscape. Unlike many forms of contemporary realism, speculative realism often proposes new approaches instead of the familiar, incessant variations on Wittgenstein or Heidegger. In this way, speculative realism restores meaning and vigor to the adjective “speculative” that was typical of German idealism. Fichte’s considerable importance in respect to speculative realism attests, paradoxically, to the urgency of reconsidering ways of philosophizing that during the twentieth century were often considered to be either obsolete or meaningless.

Notes 1 This is what Meillassoux will later call, in his talk at a conference in Berlin, “subjectalism,” a metaphysics that projects a subjective or human dimension (spirit, life, will) on the thing-it-itself (Meillassoux 2012). 2 Nor does Berkeley’s; he has never said he is an “idealist” and professes a form of ontological realism. He therefore postulates a great other (“a great outside”) outside our individual thought, i.e, God. 3 As Harman notes, the fact that Meillassoux suddenly invokes “strong corrélationisme” is surprising (Harman 2011, 81). In this book, Harman admits his amazement when he discovered, in the April 2007 conference, this analysis about Fichte. 4 The first reason is the so-called “ancestral reality” of Chapter 1, the third is the refutation of Kant in Chapter 4. I will return to the first at the end of this study. 5 For a detailed discussion about these three traits, see Thomas-Fogiel 1999, 2000, and 2004. 6 Fichte obviously does not use these two terms, which only arise later. Nevertheless, in my writings I refer to this formula as a “contradiction between what the philosopher says and what he does,” because it is, formally, the prototype of a performative contradiction. If Fichte is not the first to use this argument, he is, in my opinion, the first to have put it at the center of philosophy and to have made its avoidance the condition of positive philosophical statements. To put it differently, Fichte was not so much the “thinker of the ego” as of non-contradictory performative. That is Archimedes’ point in his Science of Knowledge. 7 “How must we read Fichte, consequently? According to Thomas-Fogiel, as a thinker of pragmatic contradiction” (Meillassoux 2007, 411). 8 In SW, we read: “the only theory and absolute science to be possible is the science of knowledge” (SW 10:4). Such a discrepancy between SW and GA editions is due to the fact that in SW, Fichte’s original text of Wissenschaftslehre [WL] of 1813 (SW 10)

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is not distinguished from the course notes written by students who attended Fichte’s lectures. In GA, Fichte’s own manuscripts have been separated from students’ notes of his lectures. Thus, Fichte’s original manuscript of WL 1813 is printed in GA II/15, while students’ notes (known as “Halle’s manuscript”) have been published in GA IV/6. 9 See WLnm[K], §19. 10 Fichte believes, of course, the status of all science. Philosophical knowledge (Wissen) is absolute. For it is the science of science (or theory of Wissen), but the knowledge (Erkenntnis) of particular sciences, which have an empirical content, such as the law, biology, or physics, are not “absolute.” Fichte was interested in certain particular sciences (such as the law), but not in physics and biology, which he classified as a whole of knowledge.

Bibliography Brassier, Ray. 2007. Nihil Unbound. Enlightenment and Extinction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Brassier, Ray. 2011. “Concepts and Objects.” In The speculative Turn, Continental Materialism and Realism, edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, 47–65. Melbourne, Australia: Re-Press. Harman, Graham. 2011. Quentin Meillassoux, Philosophy in Making. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Longo, Anna. 2017. “Relativité radicale: Fichte et la genèse du transcendantal transcendental.” In La genèse du transcendantal, edited by Jacinto Lageira and Anna Longo, 69–84. Paris: Mimesis. Meillassoux, Quentin. 2006. Après la Finitude, essai sur la nécessité de la contingence. Paris: Seuil. Meillassoux, Quentin. 2007. “Speculative realism.” In Collapse III, edited by Robin Mackay, 408–49. London. Meillassoux, Quentin. 2011. “Potentiality and virtuality.” In The speculative Turn, Continental Materialism and Realism, edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, 224–36. Melbourne, Australia: Re-Press. Meillassoux Quentin. 2012. “Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition: A Speculative Analysis of the Meaningless Sign.” www.spekulative-poetik.de, accessed March 2016. Stove, David. 1991. The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas-Fogiel, Isabelle. 1999. Nouvelle présentation de la doctrine de la science. Paris: Vrin. Thomas-Fogiel, Isabelle. 2000. Critique de la représentation, étude sur Fichte. Paris: Vrin. Thomas-Fogiel, Isabelle. 2004. Fichte: réflexion et argumentation. Paris: Vrin.

Part Six

Timeline and Chronology

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Notable Dates in Fichte’s Life

Early Life, 1762–1793

1762 May 19: Born in the village of Rammenau in Saxony, Germany. 1770 Receives the financial support of Baron Ernst Haubold von Miltitz for attending school. 1774–80 Attends the Princely Secondary School at Pforta, near Naumburg (the famous Schulpforta), with the funding of Baron von Millitz. 1780–84 Attends the universities of Jena, Wittenberg, and Leipzig. 1785–94 Private tutor in households in Leipzig, Zurich, and Krakow. 1785 First meets his future wife, Johanna Rahn. 1790  First serious study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. 1792 First personal meeting with Kant in Königsberg. 1793 Returns to Zurich. October: Marries Johanna Rahn in Zurich.

Jena Period, 1794–1799 1794  Accepts the Professorship (Chair in Critical Philosophy, as a successor of Karl Reinhold) at the University of Jena. 1795 Conflict with Friedrich Schiller over the content of Fichte’s “A Series of Letters concerning the Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy” submitted to Die Horen. 1796 His son, Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, is born. 1798 November: Atheism Controversy begins. 1799 Forced to resign his professorship position at Jena.

Berlin Period, 1800–1814 1800 Moves to Berlin. 1805 Obtains professorship at the University of Erlangen for a single semester; leaves for Berlin soon after. 1806 Flees to Königsberg due to French occupation of Berlin. 1807 Moves to Copenhagen after Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon. 1808 Returns to Berlin.

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1810 Holds first Chair in Philosophy at the newly established University of Berlin. Named the Dean of the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Berlin. 1811 First elected Rector of the University of Berlin. 1812 Resigns from Rectorship at the University of Berlin. 1814  January 29: Dies of typhoid fever in Berlin, Germany. Marina F. Bykova

Timeline of Fichte’s Publications and Lectures

Book titles are italicized, essays and articles are set in quotation marks, and lectures are placed in square brackets.

Early Life, 1762–1793 1790 “Some Aphorisms on Religion and Deism” (unpublished) 1792 An Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation 1793 “Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment of the French” “Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, Who Have Oppressed it until Now” 1793–94 “Review of Aenesidemus” (published in Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung) Winter: “Private Meditations on the Philosophy of the Elements”

Jena Period, 1794–1799 1794 Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Vol. 1)  [Fundamental features in the Wissenschaftslehre] (delivered privately in the Spring to a small group of intellectuals in Zurich) [Morality for Scholars] (delivered publicly, five of these lectures are published as Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation in 1794) 1795 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Vol. 2)  Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty 1796  Foundations of Natural Right, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (Part I) 1796–97 [Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo] (delivered privately in 1796/97, 1797/98, 1798/99) 1797  Foundations of Natural Right, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (Part II)

560

Marina F. Bykova

An Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre 1798  The System of Ethics, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” (published in Philosophisches Journal) 1799 “Appeal to the Public” “Juridical Defense”

Berlin Period, 1800–1814 1800 The Vocation of Man The Closed Commercial State 1801  Sun-Clear Report to the Public at Large concerning the Actual Character of the Latest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand 1804 [Three private lecture cycles on the Wissenschaftslehre] 1804–05 [The Characteristics of the Present Age] (delivered publicly in Berlin) 1806 [On the Essence of the Scholar] (delivered publicly in Berlin) The [Fundamental] Characteristics of the Present Age [The Way Towards the Blessed Life] (delivered publicly in Berlin) 1807 Machiavelli as Author 1808 [Addresses to the German Nation] (delivered publicly in Berlin) 1810 “Wissenschaftslehre in Its General Outlines” 1812 [Logic and Philosophy, System of the Doctrine of Right, System of Ethical Theory] (delivered at the University of Berlin) 1813 [The Facts of Consciousness, Doctrine of the State] (delivered at the University of Berlin) Marina F. Bykova

Index Abicht, Johann H. 399, 405n3 Absolute, the 7, 15, 34, 40n21, 54, 56, 68, 71, 83, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 135n13, 142–3, 147, 152, 170n13, 178, 181, 185, 191–2, 204, 213n25, 217, 221, 224–32, 235–7, 239, 240–2, 243n1–2, 262–3, 266, 310, 312–16, 330, 347, 371, 395, 424, 429n1, 465, 475–7, 479–84, 486–8, 489n5, 495–6, 509, 525, 534n3, 535n8, 536n13, 541–2, 550, 552 concept of 71, 228, 230, 240, 475, 479, 489n4 existence of 221, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 232, 316 in relation to the concept 480–2, 487 abstraction 54, 62, 88, 92–3, 99n6, 103, 140–1, 204, 208, 283, 339, 343n6, 348, 396, 418, 493, 495–6, 531, 548 Achelis, Henrich Nikolaus 23, 25, 38n5, 39n6 activity 11, 40n20, 54–5, 72, 74, 82–9, 91–2, 95, 97, 101, 103, 104, 107–16, 120, 122–5, 129, 133, 140–3, 146–7, 153, 163, 168, 177–82, 186, 190, 193n3–n5, 218, 221, 226, 229–32, 238, 242, 256, 263, 267, 285, 294, 311, 314, 316, 323–4, 327–33, 339, 341–2, 343n7, 346–50, 353–6, 358– 60, 364, 371, 375, 386, 399–401, 405, 410–15, 417n1, n3, n7, n9, 418, 425, 427, 435, 437, 468–9, 477, 492, 494, 496, 508–16, 523, 525–7, 531–4, 535n7, 545 self-reverting 72, 122, 125, 323, 324, 347, 509, 512, 514–15, 523, 526, 532–3 affection 51, 104, 158, 355 agency 4, 14, 37, 67, 101, 103–4, 111–16, 119–21, 124–5, 129, 132, 159–61, 166, 175–6, 185–6, 188, 193n11,

245, 311, 323, 327–8, 358, 383, 391, 439, 442, 523, 530–1, 536n13 human 245, 383 moral 14, 37, 120–1, 159, 185, 186, 188, 193n11 agent 5, 74, 120, 122–3, 135n4, 141, 148, 165–6, 180, 338–9, 342, 350, 377, 384–5, 387–8, 388n8, 439, 450, 521 moral 5, 15, 29, 116–17, 140, 165, 176, 188, 191–2, 193n10, 266, 450, 453 appearance (phenomena) 7, 46–8, 50, 53, 66, 91, 102–3, 105, 107–9, 121, 141, 143, 164–5, 168, 177, 180–1, 187, 189, 193n2, 203, 207–10, 235, 239–42, 283, 300, 314–16, 356, 411, 429n1, 475, 479–82, 486–8, 492, 494–5, 498, 500n5, 501n8–12, n19, n35, 513–15, 536n14, 544 See also thing-in-itself (noumena) and thing-in-itself (noumena) 50, 66, 102, 103, 107, 109, 208, 513 Aristotle 45, 347, 522 argument 5, 12–14, 45, 48, 54, 56, 63, 65–6, 101, 103–5, 108, 110, 122–5, 131, 136n19, 144, 146, 176, 186, 188–9, 192, 193n9, 194n12, 225, 227, 229, 237, 242, 267, 310, 320, 344n12, 354, 358, 371, 373, 374, 379n2, 4, 6, 7, 433–9, 443–5, 447n10, 509, 518, 522, 538n22, 542–6, 548, 550 regress (Fichte) 13, 373, 374 transcendental 14, 176, 182, 188, 192, 242, 433–4, 436, 439, 439n2 atheism controversy (Atheismusstreit) 6–7, 29, 30, 32–4, 40n30, 68, 156, 160, 165, 170n12, 175, 230, 237, 557 Athenaeum 41n34 August, Friedrich (III) 33 August, Karl 26, 33–4, 39n10, 218, 369n8 autonomy 26, 75n9, 331–2, 343, 351n5, 450–1, 454, 484, 512

562

Index

axiom(s) (Grundsatz) 10, 224–6, 228, 309–10, 316 See also principle, first of the Science of Knowledge 309 beautiful 62–3, 73–4, 98, 163–4, 256 concept of 75n6 Being 24, 67, 82, 85, 89, 90, 106, 152–3, 175, 184, 199–200, 208–11, 217, 223, 227–30, 232, 237–42, 315, 354–5, 422, 465, 469, 480–4, 487, 513–16, 534, 538n22, 545, 548 and concept 480–1 See also concept, the and knowledge / knowing 217, 226, 547 and not-being 213n13 and referring 537 and thought/thinking 45–6, 48, 192, 204, 206, 489n8, 535 emotion of 166 non-being 45, 92, 102 pure 7, 235 being absolute/divine 161, 163, 167, 211, 217, 226, 229, 236–7, 240–2, 315, 339 See also God a person 126, 166 finite 164 for-itself 514, 516–17 for-others/with others 516, 531 for-us (Fűrunssein) 488 free 4, 119–20, 122, 124, 126, 134, 143–6, 163, 190, 193n9, 266, 277, 280, 283, 297, 301, 382, 403, 423–5, 440n7, 531 human 14, 17, 46, 52, 54–5, 57–8, 74, 104, 115, 117, 121, 127, 131, 135n4, 139, 145, 149, 151, 163, 167, 177, 248, 252, 256, 259n6, 265–6, 268, 271, 286, 293, 302, 304n1, 325, 391, 395, 403–5, 427, 434–5, 450, 452–3, 510, 531, 546 See also individual, the; man; person, the in appearance 209–10, 514 in-history 278, 280–1 in-itself (Ansichsein) 350, 488, 514, 516 natural 159 one’s 166–7, 180

rational 5, 11, 66, 73, 113–14, 115–17, 120, 122–4, 127, 132–3, 144, 146, 148–9, 153, 162, 168, 170n9, 181, 190, 217, 223, 225, 230–1, 280, 304n6, 334, 339, 343, 349, 353–6, 358–60, 386–8, 395, 404, 419, 422–4, 426–8, 429n8, 434–8, 453, 476, 496, 504n33, 509–12, 519–20, 531–2 vs. acting 354–5 Beiser, Frederick C. 325, 460–2, 471n4 Bildung 9, 37, 87, 246, 281, 293–303, 304n6, 403, 405, 405n6, 467 See also cultivation, self-cultivation; education concept of 294–6, 302–3 blessedness 162, 167 Blumenbach, Johann F. 405n6 body 4, 13, 16, 33, 101–17, 125, 126, 135n9, 141, 144, 145, 147, 148, 159, 178, 280, 319, 338, 342, 381, 384, 385, 424, 427, 454, 493–9, 503n26, n27–8, n30–1, n33, 511–13, 519, 524, 537n19 Brassier, Raymond (Ray) 17, 539, 540–9 Breazeale, Daniel 102, 169n3, 182, 186, 194n13, 310, 351n4, 379n4, 403, 450, 507–8, 517 Buhle, Johann Gottlieb 439 causation/causality 13, 381–2, 385–6 agent 5, 74, 120, 122, 123, 135n4, 141, 148, 166, 180, 338, 339, 342, 350, 377, 384, 385, 387, 388, 388n8 concept of 186, 401–2, 426 mental 13, 381, 382, 385, 386, 388n1 check (Anstoß) 11, 14, 17, 85, 142, 164, 191, 221, 229, 332, 353–60, 409, 426, 478, 508, 509, 512, 514 Christianity 6, 156–8, 165, 237 coercion 5, 94, 95, 119, 126–8, 132, 144–6, 149, 270–4, 397n4, 450, 500, 502n16, 519 cognition 45–7, 49, 50, 52–3, 57, 62–3, 65, 69–71, 74, 75n6, n12, 102–5, 108–9, 141, 164, 178, 180, 188, 263–4, 272, 274, 286, 327–8, 333, 338, 346, 356, 376, 379n7, 397n2, 399 concept of 141

Index communication 5, 31, 146, 253, 365–6, 427 aesthetic 364 between consciousnesses 427 free 5, 31, 149, 152 process of 149 reciprocal 427, 504n36 community 4, 5, 16–17, 33, 40n27, 74, 105, 113, 119–22, 124, 126, 127, 130, 140, 143–6, 149, 152–3, 181–2, 188, 190, 251–2, 262, 266, 270, 272, 296, 298–9, 301, 382, 404, 424, 427, 442, 498–9, 519–20 of consciousnesses 424 of freedom 126 concept, the 72, 90, 152–3, 185, 202–3, 212n8, 226, 228, 232, 233n3, 239, 256, 314, 375, 476, 481, 484–6 of (absolute) freedom 13, 25, 39n7, 63–4, 120, 124, 144, 176, 278, 359, 426, 439, 441, 531 of (divine) revelation 25, 67 of divisibility 11, 333, 340 of end 122–3, 511 of goal 228, 509 Hell 518 in Fichte vs. Sartre 518, 520 of human being/individual/man/ person 40n21, 126–7, 279, 283, 296, 304n4, 509–11, 531, 535 See also I, the (Ich), concept of of intuition 87, 141 of morality 181 of representation (Reinhold) 27 of right See right, (the), concept of of substantiality 401–2 consciousness 3–4, 5, 7, 13, 36, 53–6, 63, 68, 74, 83–6, 88–94, 96–7, 99n5, n6, 101, 103–4, 107–12, 114, 117, 123, 127, 140–1, 143, 145, 147, 151, 175, 177–9, 182–4, 186–92, 199, 201, 206, 227, 238, 241–2, 257, 279–81, 284, 286–7, 311, 321, 323, 328–32, 341–2, 345, 347, 353–7, 364, 368, 371–5, 377, 379, 381, 385–7, 388n9, 393, 396, 399, 404–5, 412–16, 418, 422–3, 427–9, 440n6, 464–5, 468, 476, 478, 480, 483, 492, 495–7, 501n12, 508–10, 512–18, 523, 525, 527, 538n22 See also self-consciousness absolute/divine 480, 483

563

activity of 193n3, 414, 416 conception of 162 content of 55, 99n5, 356, 376, 381, 416 fact(s) of 6, 27–8, 39n14, 103, 109, 112, 152, 156, 198, 200, 278, 311, 468, 492, 523, 536n13, n15 false 150 historicity of 284 immediate 213n21, 341, 347, 412, 527 laws of 415, 417n10 moral 75n10, 148, 150, 159 multiplicity of 14, 421–2 natural 89, 342 of autonomy 512 ordinary 341, 346, 348, 356, 368 principle of (Reinhold) 161, 321 pure 476, 483 relationship between selfconsciousness and 514, 515 shapes of 162 stream of 3, 87 structure of 86, 199, 287, 373–4, 415, 515 subjective 3, 213n15 transcendental condition of 9, 12, 278, 281, 364, 415 constructivism 45–9, 51–3, 56, 57, 205 contingency 95, 110, 117n3, 165, 200, 210, 467, 516, 534, 541, 543, 549–52 contract 128–32, 134n3, 135n15, n16, 219 social 128–9, 132, 135n15, 266 contradiction 11, 66, 70, 93, 163, 170n14, 176, 241, 298, 331, 340, 342, 373, 376, 399–400, 404, 426, 444, 468, 477, 485, 499, 501n11, 519, 526, 536n12, 544–6, 549–52, 553n6/7 pragmatic 544–45, 549, 553n7 Copernican Revolution See revolution, Copernican (in philosophy) correlationism 539–46, 548, 553n3 cosmopolitanism 245, 247–9, 258n2 creativity 12, 28, 364, 365 Creuzer, Leonhard 392 Crusius, Christian A. 392 cultivation 9–10, 13, 37, 70, 74, 264, 293–8, 304n6, 395, 405 self-cultivation 9–10, 13, 37, 293–8, 395 See also Bildiung

564

Index

deduction 7, 14, 27, 29, 52, 53, 55, 57, 94, 96, 103–4, 111, 119–20, 132, 135n12, n13, 147, 221, 229–30, 237, 238, 240–1, 243n5, 253, 278–80, 284, 290n6, 316, 338–41, 345, 354, 357, 401, 418, 433–4, 437–8, 439n1, 446n3/4/5/6, 450, 468, 476, 493, 495–6, 499, 509, 522, 524, 531, 534n1, n3, 545 of the concept of right 14, 122, 433, 439, 442–3, 447n4, 509 See also right, (the), deduction of of historicity 278, 284 of marriage 132 of the principle of morality 5, 146 of property 135n12 of representation 82–3, 87–90, 92–3, 341, 347, 349 transcendental 52–3, 55, 65, 148, 237–8, 338–40, 357, 439, 442, 468 Descartes, René 6, 44, 52–5, 175, 182–5, 189, 190, 192, 193n7, n9, n10, 194n14, 199, 392 Meditations on First Philosophy 6, 175, 182–4, 192, 193n7 determination 11, 13, 14, 24, 37, 64–5, 81, 83, 84, 86–7, 90–4, 96–7, 99, 104, 109, 115, 126, 129, 166, 194n13, 201, 206, 209, 228, 236, 237, 239, 277, 279, 312, 325, 330, 333, 354, 356, 359, 371–4, 376–9, 383–7, 392, 394–6, 400–3, 416, 437, 440n7, 450, 482, 485, 488–9, 492, 495, 499, 504n33, 512, 524, 526, 537n18 self-determination 11, 13, 64, 86, 91, 92, 115, 126, 279, 354, 371–4, 376–9, 383–7, 437 determinism 24–6, 151, 177, 180, 186, 188, 193n6, 349, 391–2, 394–5, 468, 493, 535n11, 536n12 dialectic/dialectical 11, 15, 44, 55, 72, 93–4, 102, 104, 162, 176, 235, 284–5, 313, 315, 337, 340–1, 343, 343n5, n10, 367, 478–9, 483, 487–9, 499, 513, 517–9, 522, 533, 534n3 method 337, 340–1, 343 doctrine 6–8, 10, 16, 37, 75n10, 81–2, 88, 94, 101, 103–4, 121, 126, 131–2, 134, 134n1, 139–43, 152, 155,

158, 217, 219, 221–2, 225–30, 232, 233n3, 242, 243n2, 261–2, 264–5, 269–74, 280, 287, 289, 309, 312–16, 351, 363, 425, 441, 446n1, 475, 480, 486, 491–3, 500n3/5/12, 501n13, 502n16, 503n21, 510, 522, 547, 560 of the form 229 dogmatism 18, 31, 51, 58, 75n7, 141, 177, 179, 188, 190, 193n6, 203, 213n16, 280, 343n2, 349, 350, 371, 381–2, 468, 478, 527, 535n8/10, 536n10/14 drive (Trieb) 13, 65, 71, 73, 76n15, 147, 155, 169, 382, 383, 399–405 concept of 13, 399, 401, 403, 405n1, n2, n6 dynamics 7, 21, 104–7, 217, 220–1, 228, 232, 293, 313 education 10, 26, 32, 36, 64, 149, 156, 209, 249, 267–8, 272–3, 285, 289, 293–6, 298–303, 304n2, n6, 427, 436, 502n16, 519–20 See also Bildung efficacy 67, 76n17, 99n1, 107, 110, 122–5, 131, 181–2, 263, 279, 304n6, 354, 358–60, 383, 418–19, 425–6, 435–6, 440n7, 442–3, 509–11, 513–15, 524, 531 free 122–5, 360, 426, 435–6, 442–3, 509–10, 531 engagement 9, 11, 24, 64, 68, 104, 155, 202, 263, 281–3, 285–90, 341, 460, 508, 533 epistemic view 374, 376–7, 379n10 equality 267–9, 300, 303 Erhard, Johann Benjamin 135n13, 446n2, 447n9 ethics 4–5, 8, 13–15, 30, 101, 111, 114–16, 135n5, 139–43, 145–50, 152–3, 156, 159–60, 162–5, 167–9, 169n5, n6, 170n14, 191, 221–2, 232, 262, 264–7, 272, 274, 299, 302, 315–16, 319, 337, 342, 343n9, 363, 382, 395, 401, 404, 405n6, 412, 442, 445, 449, 451, 453, 483, 493, 494, 502n16, 508, 518, 521, 534n2 higher 162–5, 167–9 phenomenological 493 existentialism 16–17, 152, 507, 508

Index fact 10, 12, 27, 28, 56, 61, 67, 84, 89, 92, 98, 179, 194n15, 201, 221, 240, 279, 282, 291n7, 321, 325, 330, 334, 338, 343n7, 345, 346, 348–50, 364, 365, 385, 388, 393, 404, 410, 415, 468, 476, 487, 542, 548 evidence of 281 of consciousness See consciousness, fact(s) of of experience 170n13, 200 of the imagination 84 of reason 61, 67, 186, 191, 193n9, 208, 343n8, 351n4 original 89, 109, 112, 501 psychological 67 fact-act/deed-act (Tathandlung) 12, 28, 193n5, 198–202, 210, 211, 235, 237–9, 243n1, 322–4, 328, 339–41, 343n7, 345–51, 351n2, 364, 371, 465, 468, 492 concept of 345–6, 350 facticity 197, 200, 207–8, 211–12, 214n46, 223, 231, 241–2, 492, 513, 516, 542, 552 faith 26, 28, 152, 155, 157–8, 161, 169, 170n9, 176, 179, 180, 183, 186–8, 191, 224, 264, 536n14 appeal to 176, 180, 183, 185 practical 186, 191 fatalism 177, 468 feeling (Gefühl) 356, 394, 400, 414–16, 417n1, n11, 496 of necessity 53–5, 156, 178, 179, 322, 337, 377 Feuerbach, Ludwig 140, 157 Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm 441, 446n2 Fichte, Immanuel Hermann von 28, 40n17, 261, 557 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Life: early period 22–8, 212n6, 236 Berlin period 5–6, 10, 34–7, 101, 175, 181, 192, 237, 239, 557, 559 Jena period 3, 5, 13, 16, 22, 28, 79, 139, 152–3, 169n7, 175, 183, 221, 243n1, 288, 290, 391, 399, 405n4, 453, 557, 559 Select works:

565 Addresses to the German Nation (1808) 1, 8, 36, 156, 245, 246, 249, 250, 254, 262, 267, 287, 289, 296, 304n5, 364, 367, 369n7, 493, 559 An Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation (1792) 2, 559 An Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre (1797) 29, 559 Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre (1794) 27, 40n16, 68, 81, 309, 340, 559 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Grundlage) (1794/95) 3, 10, 13, 81–3, 88, 98n0, 179, 327, 355, 399, 559 Foundations of Natural Right, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796/97) 417n2, 421–2, 425, 427, 441, 559 Machiavelli as Author (1807) 560 On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the World (1798) 6, 181, 559 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (1795) 4, 29, 31, 81, 83, 84, 88, 108, 559 Review of Aenesidemus 3, 12, 27, 44, 53, 58, 330, 340, 348, 559 Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794) 28, 31, 191, 278, 294, 296, 298–301, 493, 503n19, 508, 519, 559 Sun-Clear Report to the Public at Large concerning the Actual Character of the Latest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand (1801) 35, 559 The Closed Commercial State (1800) 129, 218, 267 The Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) (1794–95) 7, 41n33, 44, 55, 68, 102, 108, 109, 112, 213n29, 235, 236, 240, 242, 243n5, 337, 340, 547, 548, 551, 553n8

566

Index

The System of Ethics, according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798) 4, 5, 13, 15, 30, 114, 139, 140, 142, 146–50, 169n6, 191, 264, 265, 274, 337, 342, 395, 401, 404n6, 412, 442, 445, 449, 451, 453 The Vocation of Man (1800) 6, 35, 36, 41n34, 175–7, 179, 181–3, 186, 187, 189, 191, 192, 193n5, n8, 218, 296–9, 304n1, n2, 313, 322, 337, 339, 367, 493, 508 Wissenschaftslehre (1804) 197, 201, 203, 211, 212n2, 235, 501n12 Wissenschaftslehre (1805) 217–33, 481, 482 Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (1796/99) 4, 29, 40n22, 107, 108, 112, 182, 193n8, 235, 311, 363, 364, 413, 415, 418, 422, 424, 495, 497, 509, 515, 523, 531, 533, 536n14 Zurich Lectures on the Concept of Doctrine of Science (1794) 309–10 Flatt, Johann Friedrich 27, 310 Forberg, Friedrich Karl 32, 33, 40n18, n32 foundation 3–4, 10, 13, 16, 27–9, 33, 35–6, 39n15, 81–4, 88, 92–5, 98n0, 142–4, 179, 180, 183, 200, 235, 237, 238, 241, 243n1, n3, 279, 296, 303, 322, 327–9, 337, 338, 342, 345, 350, 355, 360, 376, 384, 388n9, 399, 464, 465, 469, 472n18, 476, 492–4, 499, 501n12, 502n19, 523, 535n7, 550 foundationalism 53, 55, 104, 467–9, 535n7 Frank, Manfred 460–1, 464–6, 471n2, n4 Franks, Paul 334n3, 534n3, 535n4 freedom 3–5, 9, 13, 16, 17, 25, 26, 28, 30, 37, 61–74, 76n13, 84, 93, 98n1, 103, 104, 110–16, 119, 120, 122, 124, 126–8, 130–4, 134n2, 139, 140, 143–51, 159–60, 162–3, 166–8, 176, 180, 185–7, 190–1, 193n9, n11–12, n15, 213n32, 224, 232, 233n3, 236, 241, 249, 254, 263–9, 272, 274, 280, 282, 284–6, 289, 291n9, 312, 314, 337, 339, 341, 348, 350, 351n4, 359, 369n7, 373,

378, 382, 383, 386, 387, 391–9, 414, 423–7, 436–9, 441, 444, 447n5, 449, 453, 469, 470, 476, 484, 493, 497, 499, 503n20, 507–20, 522–4, 526, 527, 531, 536n14, 550–3 deduction of 71 formal 114–16, 166, 285, 453 human 17, 24, 25, 28, 63, 150, 151, 185, 304n6, 345, 379, 383, 507–20, 522–3 conditions of 128 material 114–15, 146, 396, 398n5 Fritzsche, Johann Friedrich 23, 38n4 fundamentum 484 See also ground/ grounding gambit 10, 319, 324–5 normativity 319, 324 genesis 13, 43, 198, 200, 209–11, 226, 227, 229, 280, 311, 329, 341, 405n2, 409, 459, 461, 497 primordial 227 self-genesis 210–11 German/Germans 23, 26, 28–9, 40, 156, 198, 212n1, 213n10, 218, 245, 246, 249–51, 253–8, 267, 270, 273, 287, 289–90, 293–6, 299, 304n1, n5, 309–11, 319, 322–3, 351n3, 364, 367, 369n7, 399, 439, 471n1, n.4, 475, 493, 499, 513, 521, 525, 528, 530, 532–3, 538n22, 541–3 Enlightenment 26, 33, 37, 198 humanism/Neohumanism 37, 293, 295, 297 idealism See idealism, German language 251, 253–4, 256 nation 8, 249, 251, 253–5, 258, 267–8 national education 156, 249 nationalism 245 philosophy See philosophy, German Romanticism See Romanticism, (early) German God 6–7, 24, 33, 62, 63, 68, 75n9, 152, 156, 160, 161, 164–8, 175, 181–5, 187, 189–92, 217, 223, 224, 227, 230, 232, 235–7, 240, 242, 243n2, n6, 248, 480, 481, 486, 503n21, 542 concept of 68, 156, 164–5, 240, 481 deduction of 67

Index Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 31, 39n9, 466, 467, 471n16 ground/grounding 3, 8, 10, 15–17, 25, 27 48, 53, 55, 58, 62, 64, 65, 67–9, 72, 74, 81, 84, 87, 101, 102, 108, 119–21, 128, 140, 142–4, 146, 150, 152, 153, 156, 160–2, 179, 181, 185, 187–92, 202, 205, 208, 211, 227, 237–9, 253, 254, 264, 267, 272, 274, 279, 290, 295, 296, 298, 324, 328, 333, 337, 340, 347–9, 354, 355, 358, 359, 372–4, 376, 377, 379, 383, 384, 392, 394, 396, 399, 400, 404, 422, 426–7, 435, 437, 440n7, 450, 463, 465–6, 468–9, 475, 478, 481–2, 484–7, 504n33, 509, 513, 515–16, 518, 521–7, 530–3, 535n9, 537n18, 551 See also fundamentum concept of 484–5 self-grounding 339, 345, 348 harmony 71, 73, 74, 110, 113, 146, 148, 169n6, 281, 297–9, 397, 401, 404, 449, 452, 462, 464–5, 494, 498–9, 503n21, 519 Heidegger, Martin 18, 49, 98, 236, 241, 472n18, 542 hiatus irrationalis 202–3, 208, 225 history 6, 8–11, 18, 22, 36, 43, 44, 75n4, 156, 212n6, 245–8, 253, 257, 258n2, n3, 259n7, 265, 268–71, 277–90, 302, 311, 319, 338, 342, 357, 368n1, 395, 467, 492, 502n16, 547, 552 deduction of being-in-history 278 objectivity of 278 universal plan of 278 philosophy of See philosophy, of history pragmatic 11, 311, 341, 342 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 15, 16, 39n15, 43, 46, 63, 103, 106, 193n3, 313, 348, 367, 462–4, 475–89, 508, 516–19, 523, 534n3, 540, 541, 544, 548, 552 Select works: Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences 40n19

567

Phenomenology of Spirit 162, 193n3, 492, 534n3 The Science of Logic 484, 486 Henrich, Dieter 325n7, 347, 468 Herder, Johann Gottfried 8, 246–9, 258n2, 504n36 Herz letter 48 Hölderlin, Friedrich 15, 461, 463, 464, 471n9 Horen, die 32, 557 Horenstreit 32 humanity (Humanität) 8, 70, 117, 123, 157, 163, 167–9, 170n11, 180, 256– 7, 268, 279, 284–9, 295, 297–9, 303, 339, 466, 493–4, 498–9, 502n16 concept of 8, 245, 248, 258n6, 259n6 formula of (Kant) 443 goal of/end(s) of 8, 157, 167, 245–8, 254, 256, 258n2, 287, 499 Hume, David 11, 47, 49, 187, 198 Husserl, Edmund 55, 57, 98, 491, 493, 495–9, 500n3, 503n28, 504n32, n34, n35, 513 Cartesian Meditations 16, 493, 496–8, 503n22, n24, n28, 504n32, n35 I, the (Ich) 11–15, 17, 36, 40n20, 55, 61, 65, 71, 82–90, 92–3, 95–7, 109, 120, 122–3, 140–4, 146–8, 152–3, 176, 178–82, 188, 190–2, 193n5, 221–2, 228, 230, 235–9, 242, 243n2, 278–81, 310–11, 314, 316, 322–4, 326n8, n10, 327–33, 337–42, 343n7, 345–50, 354–60, 364, 371–2, 374, 376–7, 379n2, 381, 385, 393–4, 399–401, 403, 405n5, 409, 412–14, 417n9/11, 418n13, 422–8, 428n1/2, 468, 469, 475–9, 492–6, 498, 502, 508–15, 518–19, 522–6, 529–33, 535n6, n7, n8, n9, 536n15 See also individual, the; man; self, the concept of 71–2, 316, 339, 375–6, 379n2, 523, 530, 535n6 observing/observed 337, 341 self-positing 29, 40n21, 122, 340, 348, 399, 468, 482, 510, 513 See also positing, self-positing vs./and Not-I (Nicht-Ich) 11–12, 14, 74, 83–6, 88, 92–8, 102–4, 109–11,

568 122, 141–4, 148, 191, 199, 210, 221, 228, 230, 239, 310–11, 316, 327, 330–4, 340, 342, 346, 349, 354, 356, 358, 399–401, 405n5, 409, 412–13, 417n6, n12, 418n13, 422, 477–9, 496, 508, 524–6, 535n9, 536n13 I-hood 12, 40n20, 103–4, 109, 122, 148, 339, 355–6, 371, 374–6, 383, 385–7, 426, 435, 437, 523–4, 526–8, 531–3 See also subjectivity idealism 1, 11, 18, 22, 33, 38, 43, 46, 51, 58, 61, 66–7, 69, 75n7, 79, 84, 94, 101–4, 112, 151, 175–6, 179–83, 185–6, 188–9, 198, 201, 203, 206–8, 210, 213n21, 221, 235–7, 295, 332, 334, 338, 341–2, 345, 349–50, 460–6, 468–9, 471n3/9, 480–91, 493, 522–3, 533, 535n10, 538n22, 539, 541–3, 547, 549 German 1, 17–18, 43, 46, 51, 103, 170n15, 182, 312, 459–61, 463–4, 471n3, n9, n10, 522–3, 533, 541–2, 553 speculative 541, 542 identity 15, 17, 36, 45–6, 55, 56, 75n6, 125, 161, 227–8, 238, 250, 267, 301, 310–12, 326n10, 343n7, 347, 395, 468, 475–6, 480–2, 485–8, 498, 524–5, 528–30, 537n18 of subject and object 17, 326n10, 347, 476 image (Schema) 4, 94, 108–9, 131, 152, 158, 202, 206, 207, 213n10, 235, 236, 239–42, 243n2/6, 258n4, 281, 284, 294, 415, 449, 480, 482, 484, 489n5, 498, 551 imagination 3, 81–98, 98n1, 104, 110, 111, 281, 396n3, 496, 498, 504n35 concept of 81 impulse (Anstoβ) 65–6, 85, 221, 229, 492, 545 indifferentism 392 individual, the 5, 16–17, 28, 87, 113, 116–17, 122, 131, 146, 149, 167, 168, 185, 265, 278, 280, 295–6, 299, 304n6, 494, 500n7, 520, 536n12 See also I, the; man; person, the; self, the conscious 516

Index rational 181, 311, 354 individuality 117, 131, 143, 168, 428n2, 429n7, 433–4, 437, 439, 440n6, 443, 451, 494, 504n30, 511, 525, 531–2, 535n6 interest 1, 13, 18, 23, 25, 37, 46, 49, 69, 90, 112, 116, 157, 166, 179, 197, 218, 261, 267, 284, 293–4, 302, 391, 397, 405, 405n7, 409, 439, 446, 460, 491, 493 intersubjectivity 14, 16, 73–4, 76, 111, 263, 278, 301, 358–9, 363, 421–8, 436, 493–4, 510, 512, 518–19 See also subjectivity; summons, the (Aufforderung); recognition (Anerkennung) deduction of 16, 278, 358–9 intuition 3–4, 47–8, 54, 62, 69, 81–98, 103–5, 108–11, 117n3, 140–2, 168, 184, 187, 191, 192n2, 207, 213n22, 226, 243n1, 251, 252, 255–7, 258n6, 278, 316, 329–30, 333–4, 340–1, 343n7, 347–9, 371–9, 379n3, n5, 386–7, 388n9, 401, 412, 416, 476, 477, 493, 496, 498, 503n36, 504n29, n31, 519, 521–5, 527–8, 530, 532–3, 534n3, 535n3, 536n15, 537n18, 540–3, 548, 551–2 concept of 87, 141 deduction of 88, 94, 96 intellectual 12–13, 36, 47, 48, 54, 141–2, 213n22, 243n1, 278, 316, 329–30, 340–1, 343n7, 348–9, 371–9, 379n3/5, 386, 387, 388n9, 476, 521–5, 527–8, 530, 532–3, 535n3, 537n18, 541–3, 551–2 synthesis of concept and 35–6 irony 368, 464 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 33–5, 41n33, 50, 51, 117n3, 170n14, 181, 182, 188, 197, 203, 209, 213n28, 218, 367, 504n33 Joch, Alexander von (Hommel, Karl F.) 392 Kant, Immanuel 1–2, 11, 18, 22, 25, 27, 34–5, 37, 39n11–12, n15, 40n17, 43, 45–53, 55–8, 61–74, 75n12,

Index 76n13, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 92–4, 98, 101–12, 117n2, 122, 141, 147, 155, 158–60, 163, 169n8, 170n10, 179, 182, 185–7, 191–2, 192n2, 193n11, 194n15, 198–201, 204–5, 208, 213n23, 235, 237–8, 242, 243n4, 266, 270, 311, 313, 319, 322, 328, 338–9, 343, 343n11, 388n1, 396, 399, 459, 462–3, 484, 491–2, 500n3, 533, 540, 545, 547–8, 553n4 Select works: Critique of Judgment 3, 61–74, 75n3, n6, n8, n12, 76n12, n13, n15, n17–18, 101, 188, 194n15, 394, 399, 401 Critique of Practical Reason 25, 39n7, 61–2, 71, 160, 163, 186, 189, 391 Critique of Pure Reason 1, 11, 24–5, 47, 49, 52, 62, 65, 73, 81, 83, 89, 92, 98, 99n3, 101, 104, 186, 188, 237, 321–2, 397n2, 492, 540 Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics 339, 501n9 Kierkegaard, Søren 140, 151 Klotz, Christian 379n10 knowledge/knowing 7–8, 10, 12, 16–17, 27, 29, 34, 44–8, 51–2, 55, 57, 64, 68, 71, 81, 83, 93, 105, 108, 112, 114, 142, 156, 161, 164, 175, 177–8, 180, 182–5, 189, 193n9, n10, 200, 202–5, 210, 213n29, 217, 221, 223–32, 235–40, 242, 243n1/3/5/6, 247, 252–3, 255, 262–4, 272, 277, 279, 281–2, 285–7, 294, 297–303, 309, 311, 313–14, 316, 333, 337–8, 340, 345, 348, 363, 375, 377–8, 379n7, 382, 385–8, 434, 436, 438, 465–6, 468, 476–7, 480–1, 486, 488, 508, 521–33, 534n2, 537n18/19, 538n22, 540–1, 544, 546–8, 551–2, 554n10 absolute 224, 226–8, 232, 488, 547, 552 conception of 224, 277, 383 first-person 17, 522–5, 528–30, 532, 537n18 light of 486 second-person 17, 521–2, 524–5, 530–3 self-knowledge 13, 193n10, 224, 230, 375, 378, 381–2, 386–8, 388n4, 388n10

569

theoretical and practical 221, 232 Kojève, Alexandre 508, 517–18 Lambert, Johann Heinrich 492, 500n5 language 8, 12, 45, 88, 94, 131, 153, 158, 197, 248, 250–8, 258n4, n5, 259n7, 261, 267, 271, 310, 363–8, 368n1–3, 369n7, 417n9, 470, 515 as a transcendental condition of consciousness 12, 364 discursive 88 French 248–9 German See German, language natural 250–3, 254 non-original 8, 255 original 8, 251–5, 258, 259n7, 368n1 theory of 251, 354 symbolic 252 Lavater, Johann Kaspar 33, 181, 309 law 7–9, 16, 30, 65–8, 75n9, 99n1, 110–11, 115, 117, 121, 127–8, 132, 141, 146–8, 159, 162–4, 166–7, 176, 178, 180–1, 190–1, 217, 221, 224–5, 227, 229–32, 241, 253, 262, 264–9, 272, 274, 283, 286, 291n7, 298, 312, 316, 342, 350, 360, 391–2, 394, 401, 402, 406n9, 419, 441–6, 447n7–8, 449, 450, 452–3, 470, 484, 494, 496, 500, 503n21, 504n33 conception of 267 moral 7, 62, 65–8, 70–1, 75n6, n9, 117, 121, 127, 146–8, 159–60, 162–8, 190, 194n13, 217, 263, 266, 272, 274, 350, 373, 387, 391–2, 443–5, 447n4–5, n7–8, 450–1, 453–4, 484, 496, 504n30 natural law theory 446 permissive 121, 444, 450, 452 legal 14, 128, 133, 259n6, 262, 266–9, 272, 433–4, 441–2, 446, 447n10, 449, 453, 494, 500, 514 duty 453 positivism 446 life 2–3, 9, 21–2, 28, 36, 38, 38n2–3, 62, 66, 104, 107, 114–16, 147, 151, 157, 159, 161–4, 166–8, 170n12, 180, 184, 192, 193n6, 201–2, 217, 219, 230, 232, 240, 245, 249, 251, 253, 262–8, 273–4, 284, 286, 293, 300,

570

Index

303, 311, 313–14, 364, 367, 368n3, 371, 379, 399, 404, 405n2, 445, 454, 470, 472n18, 488, 493, 502n16, 511 light (Licht) 7, 18, 22, 86, 129, 151, 158, 186, 190, 201–2, 204, 207, 209–11, 214n49, 217, 219, 228–9, 232, 265, 278, 285, 311, 314–15, 331, 350, 355, 410, 446, 459, 482, 486, 488, 503n21 limitation 11, 17, 24, 103–4, 109, 110, 112, 115, 142, 144, 191, 221, 241, 278, 283, 287, 333, 341, 353, 358–9, 394–5, 400–1, 410, 415, 417n12, 418n13, 419, 426–7, 436, 468, 479, 499, 508, 510, 512–13, 542 Maimon, Salomon 3, 11, 44, 68, 108, 127, 135n13, 212n7, 333–4, 334n7/8, 343n11, 441, 446n2, 545 marriage 5, 24, 132–4, 157 mechanism 72, 94, 127, 198, 298, 382–3, 535n12 Meillassoux, Quentin 540–5, 548, 549–2, 553n1, n3, n7 method 7, 11, 38, 94, 112, 117n2, 141, 182, 194n13, 197–200, 202, 207, 240, 297, 316, 337–43, 343n5/9, 344n12, 349, 491–2, 522 analytic 11, 337–9, 343 dialectic See dialectic/dialectical, method genetic 344n12, 492 synthetic 11, 103, 112, 141, 337–3, 343n5 Miltitz, Ernst Hauboldt von 22–3 mind/minds 3–4, 11–13, 22, 25, 31, 34, 45–53, 55, 58, 66, 81, 83, 86–90, 93, 95–6, 98n1, 103–5, 108–10, 116, 120, 122–3, 126, 156–7, 161–3, 165, 175–7, 180, 182–4, 186–9, 191–2, 198–9, 205–6, 212n6, 219, 223, 236–8, 243n4, 248–9, 252, 264, 271–2, 282–3, 302–3, 311, 313, 320–1, 323–4, 329–30, 332–4, 338, 341–2, 349, 353–8, 360, 365, 374, 381–8, 405n3, 411, 413, 433–4, 443, 509, 517, 521, 528 other 156, 192n1, 353, 354, 358 monism 7

moral law See law, moral deduction of 62 morality 4–5, 14, 25, 33, 35–6, 62, 66–7, 70, 115–17, 119, 121–2, 143, 159–61, 163, 165–6, 170n10–11, n14, 188, 190, 208, 266–7, 285, 297, 300, 302, 338, 397n5, 441–6, 446n1, 449–54, 493 and right See right, the, and morality concept/conception of 166, 181, 445 deduction of the principle of 146, 152 higher 6 morality-free 446n3, 447n4 principle of 449, 551 science of 14 separation of right and 135n5, 446 vs. legality 450 Moran, Richard 382, 387, 388n10 mythology 463–4, 466, 471n11 Napoleon, Bonaparte 37, 220, 262, 268–70, 289, 323–5, 393–4 nationalism 1, 8, 245–259, 258n1 nature 4–5, 11–14, 21, 24, 36, 62–74, 76n12, 94, 101–7, 122, 125, 127, 132, 134, 135n13, 147, 155–6, 158–61, 164, 166–9, 169n6, 170n12, 177, 179–80, 187, 198, 205–6, 225, 227, 229, 232, 250–1, 254, 258n6, 262–4, 267–8, 272, 274, 277, 282, 287, 315, 339, 341, 345–6, 348–9, 353, 355, 374, 381–3, 387, 391, 394, 399, 401–3, 414–15, 418, 423, 446, 462–4, 476, 478, 480, 485, 497, 509, 529, 551 concept of 72, 401 deduction of 71 natural law theory 446 See also law, the, natural negation 83, 170n14, 201, 211, 229, 238, 241, 311, 359, 477, 479, 481–2, 486, 487, 514, 516, 522–3, 534n3 Neuhouser, Frederick 135n5, n11, n14, 143, 146, 398n5, n7, 439n1, 440n4, 445, 446n1, 447n5, 449–51, 536n13 Niethammer, Friedrich Immanuel 29, 32, 34, 219 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 15, 98n1, 104, 368, 459–60, 464–6, 470, 471n2

Index objectivity 9, 28, 102, 108, 153, 200, 223, 227–30, 278, 281, 283, 311, 312, 332–4, 355, 359, 424, 434, 476, 498, 499, 501n10, 517, 538n22 O’Brien, Lucie 377, 378, 379n1/11 one/oneness 204–5, 207, 209, 214n34/49, 236–8, 241–2, 487 vs. many 202–5, 207–8, 211 ontology 16, 105, 236, 328, 461, 472n18, 493, 499, 513, 516, 547 other(s), the/otherness 17, 200, 412, 429, 479, 482, 487–9, 493, 497, 499, 537n19 problem of 507 ought (sollen) 67, 71–2, 75n6, 102, 116, 131, 135n16, 141, 146–8, 151, 164, 166, 182, 185, 189, 208–10, 217, 223, 226, 231, 283, 469, 499 pure 226, 231 of the factual unity 226, 231 Parmenides 2, 43, 45–7, 56, 58n2 “On Nature” 45 patriotism 36, 245, 248–9 performativity 365 person, the 124, 126, 128, 133, 134n1, 160, 165, 167–8, 237, 247, 258n5, 273, 314, 511–12, 526 See also individual, the; I, the; man Pezold, Christian F. 392 phenomenology 16, 93, 98, 110, 162, 193n3, 381, 391, 491–500, 500n5, 501n10, 503n22, 518, 534n3 philosophy 1–6, 8–13, 15–18, 21, 24–30, 32, 34–7, 39n13–15, 40n19, 43–5, 47–50, 53, 56, 58, 61–3, 67–8, 75n10, n12, 98n1, 101–5, 107–8, 112, 119–34, 139–42, 146, 149, 151–2, 155–9, 161–9, 169n2–3, n7, 175–92, 193n6, 198, 200, 209, 217–18, 220–1, 225, 227–30, 235–7, 239, 242, 246, 248, 258n3, 261–9, 271–3, 277–89, 309–16, 319–22, 330, 332–3, 337–42, 343n2/3, 345–6, 350, 351n4, 354, 358, 363–5, 368n2, 381–9, 391–2, 409, 421, 423, 425, 439, 441, 445, 449, 459, 461–8, 470, 471n1/2, 472n18, 475–80, 482, 484, 486, 488, 491–5, 497, 500n3/7,

571

501n9, 507–8, 510, 513, 518, 521, 523, 526, 535n8, 536n12, n14, 538n22, 539–42, 544, 547, 550, 552, 553n6 Critical 2, 4, 10, 25–7, 43, 47–50, 53, 56, 61–2, 139, 158, 169, 186, 192, 330, 332, 343, 468, 535n8 German 15, 26, 28, 57, 259n7, 312–13, 484, 491 moral 6, 30, 83, 119, 121, 159 of history 9, 18, 36, 246, 277–90 of nature 3–4, 101–2, 104, 107, 112, 221, 227, 315–16, 476 of right 3–5, 119–34, 146, 149, 265, 266, 315, 358 of religion 3, 5, 30, 155–69, 169n3, n7, 221, 315–16 political 8–9, 14, 120, 134n1, 144, 153, 156, 261–74, 433, 439, 441, 446, 509–10, 513 post-Kantian 1, 3, 15, 44, 51, 57, 107, 182, 262–3, 295, 325n1, 327, 331, 355, 441, 445–6, 459, 513, 521–2, 537n16, 542 practical 4, 14, 25, 35–7, 61–2, 67, 74, 75n3, n12, 76n13, 113, 139, 142, 153, 159, 235, 264, 296, 350, 409, 434, 439, 441, 445–6, 449 speculative 36, 193n6, 218, 475, 535n9 Hegel’s 15–6, 475 theoretical 4, 10, 14, 35, 37, 61–2, 67–8, 75n12, 76n13, 82, 84, 88, 92–4, 98, 107, 142–3, 221, 228, 232, 235, 263, 333, 350, 409, 434 transcendental 7–8, 10, 14–15, 16, 28–30, 101, 103, 105, 108, 112, 140–1, 182, 227, 229, 236, 262, 277, 280, 286, 287, 314, 337, 343n3, 475–6, 486, 488, 495, 497, 500n3 plan 9, 37, 217, 220, 223–5, 269, 278, 284–5, 289–90, 294, 550 universal plan of history 9, 278, 284–6, 289 Plato 45–9, 102, 241, 273, 347 Republic 273 Sophist 102 pluralism 536n14 poetry 462–70 polyglotism 366

572

Index

positing (setzen) 10–11, 13, 29, 40n20/21, 54–5, 82, 86, 89, 112, 122–3, 140–1, 143, 161, 178–9, 183, 191–2, 193n5, n9, 200, 208, 210, 221, 226–8, 237–8, 263, 280, 311, 319, 323–5, 326n11, 328–34, 334n3, 340–2, 343n7, 346–8, 355, 358–60, 372–6, 379n5, 399–400, 416, 422–8, 436–8, 468–9, 478–80, 482, 487–8, 500n7, 509–10, 512–14, 523, 525–6, 536n13, 547, 549 self-positing 10, 29, 40n20, n21, 112, 122, 140–1, 143, 161, 191, 193n5, 228, 238, 319, 323–5, 326n11, 331–2, 340–2, 343n7, 348, 372–6, 379n5, 399–400, 423–4, 427, 468–9, 482, 500n7, 510, 513–14 See also I, the, self-positing postulate practical 166, 176, 183, 186, 189–90, 193n8 principle 5–7, 10, 12, 13, 17, 27–9, 37, 39n12, 40n20, 53, 55–6, 62, 64–5, 69–71, 75n9, 84, 98n1, 119–22, 128, 130–3, 135n4, 139–44, 146–7, 160, 170n9, 176, 184, 186, 189, 193n11, 199, 201–2, 206, 208–9, 214n46, 217, 226, 229–32, 239–40, 274, 277–8, 280–1, 283, 289, 296, 312, 314, 316, 319–34, 337–8, 340, 345–7, 350–1, 382, 385, 404, 412, 421–2, 438, 442, 449–51, 464–5, 467–8, 476, 479–80, 484, 488, 493, 496–7, 503n21, 519, 521–2, 526, 533, 534n3, 535n10, 536n13, 537n18, 538n22, 545, 549–52 first 10, 12, 17, 27–8, 37, 40n20, 56, 119, 140, 142, 239, 277, 314, 319–31, 338, 340, 346, 412, 442, 465, 467, 522, 526, 533, 534n3, 535n10, 538n22, 550, 551, 553 See also axiom(s) (Grundsatz) purpose/purposiveness 62–3, 69–71, 382, 388n5, 401, 403, 522–7, 530–3, 536n13 nature’s 14 the concept of 63–4, 70–1 quintuplicity 220–4, 226, 229–32, 316 concept of 221

Rahn, Marie Johanna 22–5, 37, 557 ratio essendi/ratio cognoscendi 231, 238, 484 realism 45, 84, 175–6, 180, 185–6, 189–90, 193n6, 197, 198, 201, 203, 206–7, 213n12, 221–2, 235–6, 333, 342, 465, 499 speculative 17–18, 539–53 reality 13, 18, 33, 45–8, 51–3, 56, 69, 86, 88, 90–1, 103–4, 162–3, 175–92, 194n13, 198, 201, 226–8, 236, 262, 281, 293, 311, 316, 332, 340, 346, 349–51, 351n4, 356–8, 373–4, 384, 386–7, 415–16, 417n12, 418n13, 419, 427, 462, 465, 468, 478, 482, 492, 499, 501n8/11, 513–14, 516, 524, 538n22, 539, 543, 545, 548 reason 8–9, 11–12, 23–4, 28, 31, 37, 39n8, 40n23, n27, 49, 61–2, 64–7, 70, 73– 4, 75n8/9, 81–4, 88–90, 92–3, 95, 98, 101, 104, 113, 116–17, 119, 121, 123, 132, 141, 144, 146, 149, 152, 155, 158–60, 163, 167, 169, 176–77, 180–2, 185–8, 190–2, 194n13, n15, 204, 227, 232, 237–9, 242, 247, 253, 262–4, 268, 274, 284–6, 304n6, 309, 311–12, 316, 321–22, 339, 345, 350, 359–60, 364, 374, 376, 382, 393–5, 403–4, 415, 424, 439, 450, 454, 462–4, 470, 478, 480, 488, 494, 500n6, 501n12, 509–10, 513–14, 523–4, 526–9, 531, 538n22, 542, 545, 553n4 practical 61, 64–7, 70, 74, 155, 159, 160, 163, 169, 182, 190–1, 232, 263, 312, 350, 509–10 pure 9, 92, 194n15, 262, 394, 480, 500n6 theoretical 28, 67, 70, 180, 185, 187, 263, 345 recognition (Anerkennung) 4–5, 36, 74, 95, 115, 119, 121, 124, 128, 130, 132–4, 134n3, 143–5, 164, 183, 198, 200, 202, 206, 246, 265, 268, 358–9, 377, 379n10, 397, 425, 427–8, 429n6, 433, 434, 436–9, 443, 497–9, 503n21, 504n36, 512, 517–19, 521–2, 525, 531–3 See also intersubjectivity; subjectivity; summons, the (Aufforderung)

Index mutual/reciprocal 4–5, 115, 120, 122, 126, 132, 136, 145, 358, 425, 427–8, 429n6, 433–4, 436–9, 443, 515, 518–19, 522, 525, 530–3 concept of 433, 436 deduction of 438, 531 system of 119, 121–2, 127–30, 132–4, 134n3, 135n6 reflection 11, 13, 15–16, 68, 82, 89–90, 93–6, 103–4, 109–11, 115, 117n3, 155, 158–9, 199, 201–2, 222, 227, 229, 240, 262, 338–9, 342, 348–9, 373, 383, 393–6, 400, 403, 465–6, 485, 491, 493, 497, 504n29, 515, 545, 552 Reinhold, Karl Leonhard 26–8, 39n13, 41n34, 53, 87, 89, 108, 218, 291n10, 321, 325n4, 330, 366, 392, 405n3, 406n9, 501n10, 523 representation 14, 47, 48, 52–3, 56, 58n3, 69, 75n9, 81, 83, 87–9, 93–4, 96, 99n6, 168, 170n10, 179, 311, 321–2, 328–30, 333, 354–5, 357–8, 360, 371–2, 376, 377, 396, 411, 421, 423–4, 428, 477, 480, 496, 501n11, 509–10, 545 representationalism 47–9, 51–2, 57 resistance (Widerstand) 14, 409–19 responsibility 9, 16, 114, 283, 299, 491, 494, 512 revelation 25, 65, 67, 75n6, n10, 157, 159, 229, 232 concept of See concept, the, of (divine) revelation revolution 2, 25–6, 31, 43–58, 63, 119, 135n13, 262, 269, 287–9, 339, 447n5, 449, 469, 503n20 Copernican (in philosophy) 2, 43–9, 51, 57–8, 339 French 26, 31, 119, 135n13, 262, 287, 289, 447n5, 449, 469, 503n20 Rickert, Heinrich 500n2 right, (the) 4–5, 8–9, 14–15, 30, 33, 35, 39n15, 45, 65–7, 74, 113–14, 119–34, 134n1, n3, 135n5, n13–15, 136n18, n20, 139, 141–5, 148–50, 152, 162, 223, 247, 255, 262, 265–7, 269, 271, 274, 310, 337, 342, 357, 363, 364, 397, 416, 422, 425, 433–9,

573

441–6, 446n1, 447n4–5, n10, 452–4, 466, 493, 509–10, 513, 518–19, 528–29, 533, 551 concept of 4, 14–15, 119–27, 425, 433, 438–9, 442–3, 447n4, 509, 510, 518, 531 deduction of 5, 14, 122, 124, 135n13, 433–9, 442–3, 447n5, 450, 509 juridical 449–52, 454 law of 127–8, 132, 441–2, 444–5, 449–50, 452–3 moral 14, 449–55 and morality 14, 121, 135n5, 446, 447n10 natural 134, 135n13, 136n21, 267, 363, 447, 452, 454 original 126–7, 144 philosophy of See philosophy, of right property 144, 451 rule of 128, 397 theory/doctrine of 119, 126–7, 134, 134n3, 136n20, 143, 145, 433, 441–3, 445–6, 446n2, 447n11, 449–51, 534n1 risk 286, 324, 501n9, 544 Romanticism 312, 459–70, 471n3–4, n10 (early) German 140, 459–71, 471n3/4/10 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 24, 130, 134n1, 157, 272–3, 296 Rödl, Sebastian 521–2, 525, 528–33, 537n17–18, 538n22 “ruse of language” 367–8 Russell, Bertrand 45, 319, 529 Sartre, Jean-Paul 17, 507–20 Being and Nothingness 513–14, 517–18 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 1, 36, 39n15, 41n34, n36, 43, 50–1, 63, 101–3, 106, 114, 140, 152, 157, 170n12, 175, 197, 201, 203, 211–12, 212n9, 218, 227, 236, 241, 300, 313, 367, 445, 462–4, 471n8, n9, 523 534n3, 536n12 Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich 290n5, 459–61, 464–7, 469–70 Schiller, Friedrich 32, 37, 40n29, 459, 557 Schmid, Carl E. 169n2, 392, 405n3

574

Index

self, the 5, 29, 50–1, 54–5, 57, 71, 98n1, 146, 155, 158–9, 162, 165, 169n6, 238, 279, 295, 373, 379n7/10, 480, 507, 512, 516, 522, 525 See also individual, the; person, the; I, the autonomous 25 self-consciousness 5, 7, 17, 36, 38, 65, 76n12, 94, 104, 111, 122–3, 145, 199–200, 224, 227–9, 231, 236, 277, 311, 341–2, 347–9, 351, 357–9, 371–4, 376, 379n10, 403, 416, 422–7, 435–7, 440n6, 442, 468, 498, 504n33, 508–9, 512, 514, 516, 518, 520–2, 525, 529, 532 See also consciousness concept of 221 condition of (possibility of) 120, 358, 401, 422–4, 434, 436–7 God’s/divine 480, 483 immediacy of 193n4, 373–4 principle of 347 pure 343n7, 428, 476, 483 relationship between consciousness and 514, 515 structure of 221, 228 unity of 38, 65, 76n12 sentiment 157–9, 162, 168, 193n10 Shoemaker, Sydney 378, 388n10 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 41n34, 104, 157, 236, 298–9, 303, 459, 463 Schopenhauer, Arthur 140, 236, 243n5 Schulpforta 23, 38n3, 155, 157 Schulze, Gottlob Ernst 11, 27, 39n13/14, 53, 68, 108, 331, 332 Aenesidemus 27, 39n13, 58, 345 science (Wissenschaft) 4, 7, 9, 14, 16, 27, 41n33, 44, 47, 55, 68, 83, 102, 104–5, 108–9, 112, 119, 127, 134n1, 139, 140, 142–3, 152, 158, 168, 197, 199–200, 203, 205, 212, 212n2, 213n21–22, n29, 214n34, 217, 221, 223, 225–9, 232, 233n3, 235–40, 242, 243n1/3/5, 273, 278, 282–3, 288, 309–10, 312–15, 319, 337, 340, 399–401, 406n9, 425, 446n1, 462–4, 467, 470, 475, 476, 480, 482–4, 486, 491–3, 500n3–4, n6, 501n12, 502n13, n16, 503n21, 518, 538n22, 547–9, 551, 553n6, n8, 554n10

sense 7, 12–13, 23–4, 33, 35, 37, 45–6, 54–5, 58, 63, 66–9, 74, 75n6, 96–7, 125, 127, 131, 135n10, 140, 142, 146, 152, 156, 158, 159, 162, 168, 175–6, 180, 183, 185–90, 192n2, 193n8, n11, 198–200, 204, 207–8, 212, 238, 242, 243n4, 245–7, 250–1, 254, 256, 258n6, 264, 270, 282, 285, 294, 296, 302, 304n1, n3, 311, 319–20, 323–4, 328–9, 342, 343n8, 347–8, 357, 359, 364, 367, 371–2, 376–9, 379n1, 381, 384–5, 391, 393, 400, 402, 404, 413, 429n1, 435, 463–4, 470, 478, 481, 484–6, 488, 492, 494–6, 502n16, 504n35, 508, 513, 518, 528–30, 537n18, 546–7 aesthetic 463, 466 sign 64, 365, 368n3, 541 solipsism 354, 355, 421, 494, 497, 499, 503n22, 510, 541 transcendental 421 Spinoza, Baruch 15, 103, 117n2, 166, 170n13, 204, 207, 214n43, 237, 240, 319, 349, 461, 468, 483, 526 Spinozism 197–213, 522, 535n8 spirit 18, 32, 37, 40n27, 51–2, 175, 178, 192, 193n10, 249, 287, 311, 338, 347, 364–5, 368, 368n3, 405, 405n7, 460, 462–3, 470, 478, 500n7, 541, 544 as Geist 155, 178, 405, 424, 460 state 8–9, 23, 82, 89, 91, 93, 95, 98, 119, 127, 130–3, 135n13, 145–6, 149, 163, 168, 176, 180, 261–2, 264, 266– 73, 281, 284, 301, 346, 363, 374–5, 385, 397, 410–11, 434, 451–2, 454, 494, 499, 511, 519, 537n19 striving 14, 21, 54, 72, 104, 111, 142, 146–8, 151, 230, 297–8, 301, 302, 312–13, 356, 395, 399–400, 402, 404, 465–6, 477, 515–16, 520 as intentionality 91 subjectivity 10, 18, 24, 68–9, 89, 98n1, 122, 197, 200–3, 223, 227–8, 231–2, 236, 240, 242, 243n1, 263, 283, 309, 312, 314, 324–5, 339, 477, 493–4, 496, 501n10, 515, 544 See also I-hood sufficiency 5, 115–16, 147–9, 163, 165, 167, 178, 181, 188, 236, 267, 334, 342, 348, 450, 464, 484

Index self-sufficiency 5, 103, 114–16, 147–9, 163, 165–7, 178, 181, 188, 236, 267, 342, 348, 383, 402, 450, 464, 484, 534 summons, the (Aufforderung) 3, 11, 16–17, 74, 119, 123, 144, 353–60, 421, 425– 6, 435, 498, 507–8, 510, 512 See also intersubjectivity; subjectivity; recognition (Anerkennung) as a condition for freedom 508 as a limit to freedom 508 synthesis 24, 35–6, 55, 83–4, 86–7, 102–3, 112, 206, 221, 228, 235, 237, 243n4, 245, 281, 323, 343n10, 417n9, 425, 468, 477, 497–8, 521, 532 system 3–7, 9–13, 15, 22, 27–30, 34–6, 38, 39n7, 50–1, 53, 55, 67, 70, 101, 104, 106–7, 109, 113–15, 119, 121–2, 127–30, 132–4, 134n3, 135n6/14, 139–40, 142, 145–50, 156, 160, 162–3, 169n6, 170n12, 180–1, 188, 191, 211–12, 217, 221, 223, 233n4, 235, 240, 263–5, 274, 277–8, 284–7, 294, 298, 302, 309–10, 313–15, 320–2, 327, 333, 337–8, 341–2, 345, 350, 357, 360, 363–6, 383, 391–5, 401–3, 405n3–4, n6, 412, 445, 449, 451, 453, 462–3, 470, 471n10, 475–7, 484, 494–5, 498, 503n20–1, 513, 519, 526, 534n2/3, 535n10, 536n13, 541, 549, 551, 553 of knowledge 12, 186, 277 of mutual recognition 4–5, 119, 121–2, 127–30, 132–4, 134n3, 135n6 philosophical 1, 6, 9, 10, 22, 26–7, 35–6, 38, 67–8, 217, 293–4, 310, 319–20, 322, 337, 391, 422, 526, 533 thesis 9, 12, 103, 134n3, 176, 192, 217, 224, 262, 313, 315, 350, 372, 377, 442, 445, 446, 446n2, 465, 484, 489n1, 503n21, 509, 529, 530, 532, 543–5, 549, 551 antithesis and synthesis 103, 340, 343n10, 479 equiprimordiality 509 Fichte’s 14, 82, 87, 120, 152, 160–1, 236, 277, 284, 350, 363–5, 433, 439, 441, 465, 503, 530

575

independence 441–2, 445–6, 446n2 Kant’s 63, 74, 372, 484, 487 metaphysical 162 ubiquity 372, 377 thing-in-itself (noumena) 38, 103, 200, 345, 349–50, 468–9, 477–9, 493, 539, 541, 543, 549, 552 See also appearance (phenomena) and appearance (phenomena) See appearance (phenomena), and thing-in-itself (noumena) concept of 50 tradition 1–2, 23, 37, 43–5, 48, 101, 103, 153, 156–7, 266, 270, 293, 295–6, 351n3, 404, 459, 521–2, 528, 530, 533 Eleatic 2, 43–4 German 140, 439 tragic, the 287 Tugendhat, Ernst 146, 376 unity, the 5, 10, 13, 37–8, 46, 53, 55–7, 62, 65, 68, 70–2, 75n12, 86, 105, 112– 13, 141, 145, 149, 155, 157–9, 161, 169, 169n6, 179, 192n2, 199–200, 228, 230–2, 236–8, 242, 243n4, 247, 294, 312–16, 350–1, 375, 384, 399, 403, 418, 468, 470, 476, 481, 483, 485, 496, 499, 503n28, 509, 515, 526, 538n22 concept of 72 of the self 5, 155, 157–9, 169n6 See also self, the University of Berlin 5, 37, 156, 175, 233n2, 239, 290 of Erlangen 7, 36, 217–20, 316 of Jena 2, 26, 31–4, 175, 218, 403 reform 293–303 viewpoint 4, 73, 108, 165, 291n7, 337, 392, 480 empirical 392–3, 395, 404 ordinary 11, 342 transcendental 11, 13, 342, 392–3, 395 Voigt, Christian Gottlob 26, 31, 34, 40n25 Weiβhuhn, Friedrich August 23, 25, 38n3, 39n7 Wildt, Andreas 376, 379n9

576 wisdom 273, 303 Wissenschaftslehre 3, 5–7, 10–11, 13, 15–16, 22, 27–9, 33–5, 37, 41n34, 54, 61, 65, 68–73, 76n14, 81, 83–4, 88–9, 91–4, 98, 99n5, 101–3, 108–10, 112, 116, 119–20, 122, 139, 142, 152, 160–1, 164, 170n10, 179, 181–2, 186–8, 191–2, 193n8, 197, 203, 210–12, 217–18, 220, 235, 243n5, 263–5, 269, 309–17, 319–23, 325n2, 326n9, 331, 337–8, 340, 343, 345–6, 364–7, 371–2, 374, 376–6, 381, 386, 388n9, 391–2, 394, 399–401, 405n5, 413, 425, 459–61, 466–70, 475–9, 481–8, 491, 508–9, 514–15, 521, 524–5, 527–8, 534n2, 535n7, 547, 553n8 See also system, philosophical as the pragmatic history of the human mind 11, 311, 341–2, 492

Index three basic principles (Grundsätze) of 10, 327–8, 331, 334 world, the 6, 9, 13, 16, 21, 28, 45–7, 49, 52, 63, 66–8, 73, 75n6, 107, 113, 120, 123, 125–6, 128, 141, 143–4, 146, 148, 152, 155–6, 160–3, 165, 167, 169, 170n10, 175–7, 179–92, 194n13, 212, 230–2, 238, 246, 248–50, 254, 263–4, 285–7, 289, 293, 295, 297, 299–300, 303, 325, 340–2, 346, 353, 357, 369n7, 382, 385, 392–5, 402, 423–4, 427–8, 434–5, 442, 470, 486, 493–9, 503n28, 504n32, 509–10, 514, 516, 539, 547–8, 551–2 external 47, 49, 53, 141, 144, 147–8, 156, 183–4, 189, 191–2, 357, 433–4, 497–8, 509, 514 worldview 177, 180, 222–3, 226, 230–2, 316

577

578