Wood Fichte Philosophical Revolution

Fichte's Philosophical Revolution
Author(s): Allen W. Wood

Source: Philosophical Topics , FALL 1991, Vol. 19, No. 2, Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
(FALL 1991), pp. 1-28
Published by: University of Arkansas Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154101
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154101?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophical Topics
This content downloaded from

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS
VOL. 19 NO. 2, FALL 1991
Fichte' s Philosophical Revolution
Allen W. Wood
Cornell University
" The discovery of this philosophy has begun an

entirely new epoch in the history of the human
species - or, if you prefer, a wholly new and different
human species has arisen, for which all previous
forms of human nature and activity on earth have been
no more than preparatory. This is the philosophy to
which our age summons us all. " (Fichte, VGB 19)1
" With the Fichtean philosophy, a revolution was

made in Germany. " (Hegel)2
"[ Once the actual doctrines and motives of

Fichte' s philosophy are understood], people will no
longer be under the impression that something impor-
tant is being said when the alleged hubris of the
modern mind is imputed to Fichte. This imputation
itself is the fruit of a self-deceptive age continually
and ardently needing to define itself by way of opposi-
tion to its origins. In doing so, it fails to recognize what
paved the way for it, and to whom it is permanently
indebted for any self-understanding it might achieve. "
(Dieter Henrich)3

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
1.
FICHTE' S HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE
The crucial turning point in the history of modern philosophy took place
in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century. Because Kant made the
revolution possible, we are accustomed to speak of "Kant's Copernica
revolution." We thereby gracefully elide the obvious point that the aim
of Kant's epistemology were hardly revolutionary. They were those of
Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and other great modern thinkers before him: t
ground early modern science philosophically by providing an epistemo-
logica! rationale for its methods and its image of nature.
Kant's rightful claim to a share in the revolution has more to do with
his (still largely unappreciated) vision of human history, which is th
basis of his moral philosophy.4 In a radical break with the early modern
agenda, nineteenth-century philosophy turned away from external natur
toward the human self, whose deeply problematic character had begun to
show itself through the vast cultural changes which had occurred during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The philosophical revolution
made the self the central issue of philosophy, while at the same tim
changing the very conception of the self. Nineteenth-century philosophy
rejected the self as the epistemological "subject" confronting nature as
"object" of knowledge, in favor of an active self, a creator of its own dis
tinctive world - a social, cultural, artistic, historical world - one moder
natural science had certainly altered, but which it had failed to render
intelligible to its makers and inhabitants.5 Because the philosophical revo
lution was prompted by social dissatisfaction, it was at the same time the
birthplace of modern political radicalism. Behind even the most abstract-
sounding theoretical claims there is a subversive agenda, a radical vision
of human freedom and human community. This vision has haunted the
social struggles of the last two centuries, and continues to do so because
fundamentally, nothing has yet arisen to replace it.
The truly revolutionary figure, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1764-1814),
now not only attracts far less attention and respect than his great predece
sor, but has also been almost entirely overshadowed by his descendants
among whom we must consider all the main figures in modern continenta
philosophy - whether idealists, Marxists, existentialists, Romantics, or
critical theorists. As for English-speaking philosophy, if Kant is the las
continental philosopher to belong also to the Anglo-American tradition,
then Fichte is the first important continental philosopher Anglo-Saxon
philosophy has yet to appropriate, and the one whose appropriation is the
condition for appropriating all the others.
Most of the critical (and self- critical) themes in modern continental
philosophy - its rejection of early modern metaphysics, its attack on th

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
divorce of theory and practice, its critique of the monadic conception of
mind and emphasis on intersubjectivity, its critique of the subject itself -
are found in Fichte. It was Fichte, in fact, who first made them the central
themes of philosophy.
2.
CRITICS AND SKEPTICS
Kant prefaces his painstaking reply to philosophical skepticism in

Critique of Pure Reason by defending the skeptical temper of his age.
Modern skepticism, he says, is not due to shallowness and decadence, a
the dogmatists claim, but is rather a sign of mature judgment, which
refuses to be put off with time-honored pretensions and greets with
healthy suspicion any attempt to fetter the free and open examination
the foundations of our knowledge.6 Among Kant's immediate follower
this attitude only intensifies, turning even against Kant's own reliance
traditional logic and faculty psychology. For the first Kantians, the task
to establish the critical philosophy on a basis less vulnerable to skeptic
attack. The first to attempt such a reformulation is Karl Leonhard Reinh
(1758-1823). He seeks a transcendental deduction of experience from
single, fundamental self-evident "Principle of Consciousness," displayi
the necessary structure of "representation": "A representation is some
thing simultaneously distinguished from and referred to both the subje
who has it and the object it represents."7
In 1792, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), using the name of th
ancient skeptic Aenesidemus, anonymously published an influential skep
cal attack on the critical philosophy in its Reinholdian form.8 The burd
of his criticism is that Reinhold' s principle of consciousness is unfit to b
first principle, partly on the grounds of its ambiguity,9 partly because i
subordinate to logical principles,10 and partly because it allegedly appl
neither to "intuitions" (Anschauungen) - in which the subject is allege
not self-conscious11 - nor to self-consciousness itself - since the self a
representation cannot be referred to (another) subject from which it is d
tinguished.12 Even earlier, Salomon Maimon (1754-1800) directs skeptic
criticisms against Kant's philosophy.13 Based on Kant's own account in t
Transcendental Deduction, Maimon regards the synthesis necessary
experience as a product of the human imagination. Yet the sensory eleme
in experience is supposed to be given from outside, through the affecti
of our sensibility by an independent object. In view of this, Maimon ask
do the categories of understanding truly apply to what is given in expe
ence? Kant's transcendental cognition, according to Maimon, never reach
real objects, but extends only to the products of our imagination.14

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
Fichte' s first acquaintance with Kant's writings in the middle of 179015
occasioned what can only be called his "conversion" to the critical philoso-
phy. Fichte' s first book, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792),
published anonymously with Kant's assistance, was mistaken by reviewers
for the work of Kant himself, making its author - until then poor and
entirely unknown - immediately famous. Fichte underwent a further philo-
sophical crisis in 1793, when the writings of Schulze and Maimon con-
vinced him that the foundations of the critical philosophy were still to be
laid. At the end of 1793 Fichte was at work on his new system, when he
was unexpectedly offered the irresistible opportunity to teach at Jena as
Reinhold' s successor. After trying unsuccessfully to postpone the appoint-
ment, Fichte was forced to work out the system in his lectures on theore-
tical philosophy in 1794-95. The published text which resulted from this,
Foundation of the Entire Theory of Science (GWL), was to become his
best-known work. The disorganization and impenetrable obscurity which
make this text so difficult to read reflect the conditions under which it was
written. Fichte always regarded it only as a "prospectus" of his philosophy,

a text to be expounded and clarified through his lectures, and not a state-
ment of his system capable of standing on its own (AA 3: No. 283, EW
390). "This text," Fichte was later to say, "was never intended for anyone
but my students" (AA 3: No. 423/EW 426).
In a sense, Fichte spent the rest of his career attempting to complete
the system outlined in this text; he was apparently aware that the project
was beyond his powers to complete satisfactorily.16 In 1799, Fichte was
dismissed from his professorship at Jena, ostensibly on the grounds of
"atheism," but probably more on account of his notoriously Jacobin politi-
cal views. (It was Hegel who first articulated the thought, later repeated
by both Heine and Marx, that the political revolution in France had had its
German counterpart in the realm of philosophy.) After 1800, however,
Fichte' s thought took a different turn,17 whose influence on subsequent
thought was marginal at best; it was the Jena period writings, the flawed,
never completed system, that accomplished the last great revolution in
modern philosophy.
3.
THE CONCEPT OF A THEORY OF SCIENCE'
Before taking up his position at Jena, Fichte had written a somewhat clear
account of the general aims of his system in Concerning the Concept
a Theory of Science (BWL) (completed April 1794). The answer to skep
cism is to turn philosophy into a science: a body of propositions with
certain form. A science must be founded on something certain , and

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
must constitute a unified whole (BWL 39-40). To this end, it must begin
with a first principle which is certain, and which successively confers the
same degree of certainty on a series of propositions through their system-
atic connection with the first principle (BWL 41-42). Fichte operates
from the foundationalist assumption that no greater certainty can arise
from a system of propositions than is contained in the most certain of
them when they are taken individually (BWL 41). From this he infers that
any given science must proceed from only a single first principle, on
whose certainty that science must depend. If a science had more than one
such principle, then either it would not constitute a single systematic
whole (since the several principles would each be certain independently
of the others) or else some of its first principles would be certain only in
relation to others, so that they would derive certainty merely from their
interconnection (contrary to the foundationalist assumption) (BWL 41).
"Philosophy" is a plurality of such sciences, each with its own prin-
ciple; these principles, however, will be derivative in relation to a more
fundamental science (BWL 57-66). If human knowledge is to constitute a
single system, all principles must ultimately rest on a single fundamental
science, which Fichte calls the "science of science as such" or the "theory
of science" ( Wissenschaftslehre ). Its principle would be absolutely first,
grounding the certainty of all human knowledge whatever (BWL 43^5).
Fichte agrees that the possibility of such a theory of science can be demon-
strated only by making it actual (BWL 44), but insists - citing the axiom of
radicalism in all its forms - that the fact that it has not been successfully
actualized so far constitutes no proof at all that it is not possible (BWL 54).
Ostensibly Fichte' s sole interest in a theory of science is solely epis-
temologica! (anti-skeptical). But for Fichte, as for Kant, answering skepti-
cism is not an idle intellectual exercise; it is the response to an urgent
spiritual demand. The nature of the demand becomes clearer when Fichte
considers the possibility that there might be no such systematic totality in
human knowledge, no first principle which is immediately certain. In that
case, Fichte says, all our knowledge would be "begged and borrowed";
the human race would have to live merely from day to day, without a
secure "dwelling" of its own (BWL 52). Even if there were certainty in
particular finite sciences, human knowledge might be merely a "piece-
work," ungrounded by any unifying theory of science, "we could never
estimate our fortune" because it would never have the determinate com-
pleteness of a system; one part of our knowledge could not be used to
improve the others, and so there would be no general progress of the
human mind. Our "dwelling" would be nothing but an "aggregate of sepa-
rate chambers," "a building in which we would always feel lost and never
feel at home." And because "our mind would contain nothing but several
threads which have no point of connection and cannot be connected, we
would have no faculty to struggle against our nature" (BWL 53). For

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
Fichte, skepticism is a profound spiritual challenge because its effect is to
paralyze, dispossess, and alienate us as agents and as spiritual beings. And
Fichte' s answer is ultimately not theoretical but practical - a call to action.
4.
THE I AS FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
Fichte' s procedure in the Theory of Science of 1794 is so obscure tha

scholars disagree even about the most rudimentary issues of interpretatio
Frederick Neuhouser thinks that Fichte begins with theoretical self-awar
ness, the principle that "I am I," and argues from it to the reality of fre
dom or practical self-awareness.18 There certainly is much in the text
support this interpretation. Fichte' s actual starting point, however, is wi
three "logical" principles: "identity" (A = A), "difference" (-A is not = A
and ground (GWL 91-106). What is their status? How do they relate to th
first principle, which is to found the theory of science, and with it, th
entire edifice of human knowledge? In On the Concept of a Theory of
Science , Fichte seems to be treating them as three necessary forms of th
first principle itself: the first determined "simply by itself," the secon
"determined with respect to form," and the third "determined with resp
to content" (BWL 50). As Frederick Beiser points out, however, Fich
denies that the second of these three principles can be derived from t
first (GWL 101), and (apparently going directly contrary to his strong
foundationalist epistemology) he says that the first principle of the theory
science is vindicated only by the way in which the subsequent system ca
account for experience (BWL 74-77). 19 For this reason, Peter Baumann
takes the three "principles" not to be self-evident principles at all: they a
only "postulates" to be vindicated in the course of the theory;20 Alexis
Philonenko, on the other hand, argues that, on the contrary, Fichte' s
method aims at the dialectical destruction of all postulated speculative
starting points.21
In this paper I make no attempt to untangle these perplexing exegetic
issues. Whatever the status of his first principle, Fichte is at least empha
about what the principle is: it is the /. Yet Fichte states the first principle
various ways. Sometimes his formulations sound Cartesian: the principle
"the most immediately certain thing of all, 'I am'" (RA 20, GWL 95; cf
VMW 425, VBG 295). Other times it looks like the principle is supposed
to be the proposition "I am I" - an instance, perhaps putatively the parad
matic or founding instance, of the logical principle of identify ("A = A
(GWL 93-95, BWL 69). Fichte insists that we experience the first princ
ple's truth at every moment (BWL 48, ZE 460); he tells us that the princ
ple is nothing unless it is actually experienced (EE 445, ZE 458, SS 441,

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
AA 3: No. 294). His aim in getting his philosophy started is to enable his
readers to direct their attention properly to the experience he means.
It is equally clear, however, that Fichte does not think the first prin-
ciple is something reached easily or obviously by everyone (GNR 5/13,
SS 441). The difficulty is not that we may fail to think of the first princi-
ple, but rather that together with it we usually think of other things from
which Fichte wants us to abstract. The task is "to think only what we are
to grasp under the concept of I" (NWL 521). Getting at the first principle
requires of us an act of abstraction of which we are unaccustomed (GWL
91; EWL 338; SS 447; ZE 501; SB 345/55).22
Every state of consciousness involves an awareness of the I. "The
intellect observes itself (sieht sich selbst zu); and this seeing of itself is
immediately united with everything applying to it" (ZE 435). "No object
comes to consciousness except under the condition that I am conscious of
myself, the conscious subject" (NWL 526-27). By such statements Fichte
obviously does not mean that every mental state involves an explicit
attending to a certain special object whose name is T. Rather, its import
is that every awareness involves at the same time the awareness of being
aware. Sartre later expresses the same point by saying that every con-
sciousness, whatever its object, involves a consciousness of itself which is
"non-positional" or "pre-reflective," as distinct from the "positional" or
"reflective" consciousness we have of ourselves when we do focus atten-
tion on ourselves as distinct from other objects.23 1 am engaged in reading

a novel; the object "posited" by my consciousness is (for instance) some
event in the story. Now someone suddenly asks me what I am doing; my
attention shifts: I myself as reader, now become the object. Yet I do not
suddenly become aware of my earlier mental activity, as though I had
been ignorant or unconscious of it before. Rather, my reading already
involved a "looking at itself' or a "self-consciousness." This is what
Fichte claims to be immediately united with every consciousness.
To this it might still be objected that just because the "awareness of
awareness" pertains to every awareness there can be nothing philosophi-
cally significant in the experience to which Fichte wants to call our atten-
tion. Fichte' s reply is that awareness of the I, though present in every
consciousness, is both highly distinctive and of the greatest possible philo-
sophical significance. For it is an awareness of our own activity. In any
consciousness, even the most passive apprehending of some object, we are
aware of doing something; this doing is what Fichte means by T. In any
thought, he says, "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 ." What Fichte chooses to designate by
the word T is only this experience of acting, and nothing else. "I am
speaking only of the activity of which you are immediately conscious in
this state, and only insofar as you are conscious of it" (NWL 522).

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
"Nothing can pertain to [the I] which it does not ascribe to itself and toward
which, consequently, it is at the same time actively related" (VGB 15).
Fichte uses the word 'I' in a distinctive philosophical sense (ZE
502-03) to refer only to this necessary awareness of our own activity
immediately involved in every awareness. "What is it that is to be analyzed
here? The I: moreover, the I as it has been here established, that is, as sub-
ject-object, and insofar as it is both , that is, insofar as it acts" (SS 444).
The form and content of the I coincide in the sense that the I (its "content")
is nothing except what it gives to itself through its activity (its "form"). It
is simultaneously subject and object in the sense that in the I-experience
the only thing experienced (the object) is the acting of an active subject.
This is why Fichte most often formulates his first principle as: "The
I posits itself absolutely." "The I posits itself, and it is merely by means
of this mere positing through itself' (GWL 96). In the context of the prin-
ciple, T refers to precisely that which happens only because we are aware
of making it happen, hence to the active experience of "self-positing"
which pervades our every experience, and is fundamental even to the most
passive experiences. Fichte thus takes the T to resolve Maimon' s problem
of applying categories to sensibility, for it is an experience of active unity,
which grounds the experience of passivity or sensibility.
Fichte' s first principle has often been interpreted as (what Schelling
was later to make of it) a pantheistic supra-personal speculative Absolute.
Yet Fichte, taking the exactly contrary position, subscribes to the Kantian
principle that we know nothing beyond experience (RA 15-16; SB 333).
In the 1794 Theory of Science Fichte says that the I must be finite, aware of
itself as opposed to the not-I limiting it, and that this makes anything like a
divine consciousness "eternally inexplicable and inconceivable to us"
(GWL 253, 275). Instead of interpreting Fichte' s principle as a speculative
absolute, it would be better to think of the I as a conceptual structure,
which is shared among different finite rational beings only in the sense that
it is supposed to be necessarily instantiated in each of them.24 Beyond this,
as we shall see later in §§ 7-8, Fichte's "absolute I" is not a metaphysical
reality but an ideal posited by the I's practical striving (GWL 277).
5.
THE PRIORITY OF DOING OVER BEING
"Without self-consciousness there is no consciousness whatever; but self

consciousness is possible only in the manner indicated: I am simply
active" (ZE 466). Using Kant's own terminology against him, Fichte fre-
quently refers to the experience of the I as an "intellectual intuition" (ZE
463-67). For Kant, an "intuition" is an immediate awareness of somethin

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
particular, while the "intellect" is the mind's active faculty. Kant denies
that we have intellectual intuition because he takes such a faculty to be
one which creates the existence of its object in the act of knowing it (as
God is traditionally thought to do in creatively knowing the world).
Fichte, however, thinks that this is precisely the relation of the I to itself:
The I is "at the same time the acting thing {das Handelnde) and the prod-
uct of the action, the active thing {das Thätige) and that which is produced
through the activity; action and deed are one and the same" (GWL 96).
To this we will want to object: "Don't I always have to be already in
order to act? But if I already am when I act, then clearly I cannot be pro-
duced solely through my own acting, and so my self-awareness cannot be
a true intellectual intuition." Fichte' s reply is to court paradox by answer-
ing our first question in the negative. The I "has no being proper, no sub-
sistence" prior to its acting; it is "an act , and absolutely nothing more; we
should not even call it an active something {ein Thätiges ), for this expres-
sion refers to something subsistent in which activity would inhere. But
idealism has no reason to assume such a thing, since it is not included in
its principle" (EE 440). "The I," says Fichte, "is nothing other than an act-
ing {ein Handeln) toward itself." He goes on to explain: "I don't want to
say: 'an active being' {ein Handelndes ), because I don't want to introduce
the representation of a substratum in which a power would be involved"
(GNR 1). A thing or an object, Fichte maintains, is always a "fact" (ety-
mologically, "deed-thing" {Thatsache))' to describe the I, however, Fichte
coins the neologism Thathandlung, "deed-action" - not a result of an
action but an action itself (BWL 8, SS 448, ZE 464, 468). As Neuhouser
says, the I produces itself not as a factory produces automobiles, but as
the motion of electrons produces electric current.25 Like Nietzsche's will,
Fichte' s I is nothing apart from its acting, in the same way that lightning
is nothing apart from its flashing.
As Fichte sees it, this is the fundamental difference between tradi-
tional "dogmatic" philosophy and the revolutionary "idealistic" principle
on which the new system is based. The old dogmatic system is founded
on the notion of a "thing." It assumes the independent existence of things
and seeks to explain everything in terms of things, including the reduction
of free activity to the causal interaction of things. The new idealistic phi-
losophy, however, begins from the immediate awareness of our own free
activity, rather than from any conception of a "thing" or "substance" in
which activity might inhere. (Thus Fichte dismisses Berkeley's philoso-
phy as not idealistic at all but fundamentally dogmatic, simply because it
takes mind or spirit to be a substance [EE 438].)
The modern Cartesian tradition conceives of mind as a sort of non-
spatial inner place inhabited by purely subjective entities which go by such
names as "perceptions," "ideas," or "representations." (Metaphysically,
the relation was usually conceived as the inherence of the subjective items

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
as modes in the mind as a substance.) Locke's metaphor for the inner place
was a "dark room," with the senses as "windows" letting light in from out-
side.26 Leibniz did not alter the metaphor fundamentally when he boarded up
the windows and declared the ideas to be innate.27 For Hume, the place was
a theater, where perceptions successively disport themselves before an audi-
ence so passive that there is serious doubt whether they are playing to an
empty house.28 Within this tradition, "idealism" (Berkeley's, for instance)
takes the form of denying that there is anything external to the inner place.
This is not what "idealism" means for Fichte. On the contrary, his pro-
ject is to begin with awareness of the I, and provide a transcendental
deduction of the not-I (the material world), of the body as the I's necessary
vehicle for interacting with the world, and of intersubjectivity (of "others"
or the "Thou"), all as necessary conditions for the possibility of the I.
Fichte' s I is not a microcosm, but the active center of a world. Fichte' s ide-
alism is based on a transformed conception of mind, which breaks deci-
sively with the Cartesian tradition. The twentieth century's vaunted
"critique of the subject" actually began before the nineteenth, with Fichte.
6.
IDEALISM AND REALISM
According to Fichte, realism - "the assumption that things exist outsid

and quite independently of us" - is the normal standpoint of every actin
subject. This is not to be regarded as a "basic and consistent realist sys
tem" opposed to his idealistic one. On the contrary, our everyday practic
realism "is itself rooted in idealism and is explained and deduced by it.
In this connection, Fichte distinguishes between a "way of thinkin
( Denkungsart ) which expresses our attitude in "life and scientific know
edge" from the "pure speculation" required in philosophy to ground bo
everyday and scientific thought. Realism is the inevitable way of thinki
which we all adopt, "for we are constrained to it by our own nature";
Fichte does not mean to deny realism in this sense, but on the contrary
defend it against skeptical doubts. On the other hand, "idealism can neve
be a way of thinking, it is merely a speculative standpoint" (ZE 455n.).
The realism Fichte opposes is not practical realism, but the dogmati
position which denies the speculative standpoint of idealism by trying t
eliminate the I or explain it away. Dogmatic realism conceives our agen
as the result of causal interactions in a world of things. The issue betwe
dogmatic realism and Fichte' s idealism is not whether there is an extern
world, but whether there is an active I at the center of the world. Fichte
idealism is not an attempt to reduce the material world to the mental,
but it is the point of origin for a host of modern doctrines founded o
10

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
the irreducibility of human agency to causal or "thinglike" processes.
This includes all views which take there to be a fundamental difference
between the natural sciences and the human sciences, as well as even the
most "materialistic" critiques of "reification."
As Fichte sees it, the real issues between his idealism and dogmatic
realism are not so much epistemological or metaphysical as moral, exis-
tential, or even political. He views the conflict as a revolutionary struggle
of free activity against a corrupt, complacent world of oppression (EE
435). We can see this most clearly if we look at Fichte' s philosophy of
history, made most explicit in a later work, but already operative, I think,
in his Jena period. Fichte divides humanity's history (past, present, and
future) into five ages (GGZ 7-8/9). First came (1) the "age of innocence,"
in which people lived in a merely animal condition, governed solely by
instinct. With the development of our faculties this gave way to (2) the
"age of authority," in which human affairs rested on positive doctrines
and institutions resting not on rational foundations but on mere compla-
cent habit and blind faith, supported where necessary by coercive power.
This is just now giving way to (3) the "age of liberation," in which the
shackles will be thrown off and everything will be submitted to the stan-
dards of autonomous reason. Inevitably, Fichte thinks, in its early stages
the spirit of liberation includes attitudes of skepticism, indifference, and
even moral degeneracy. With the advance of reason, however, freedom
will bring about (4) the "age of reason as knowledge," in which truth
(rather than comfort, or power, or selfish vanity) comes to be looked upon
as the highest object of human striving. Eventually, this will lead to (5)
the "age of reason as art," in which humanity will build a world according
to reason which is worthy of its creators.
Fichte' s rejection of dogmatic realism is bound up with his view that
it is characteristic of the age of authority. Dogmatic realism seeks to
explain away our fundamental and undeniable experience of agency; it
therefore expresses and supports the suppression of reason by passive
habit, superstitious faith, or despotic authority. The critical philosophy of
idealism is revolutionary because we are living at the dawn of a new age.
The true philosophy of liberation in the third age is idealistic, arising from
the certainty of our own activity. From the standpoint of its historical self-
understanding, therefore, Fichte' s idealism is intended to represent a radi-
cal departure from the past, just as the age of liberation is a radical
departure from the age of authority. It is important to Fichte that we leave
behind the traditional dogmatist's (implicit or explicit) denial of our free
agency and embrace a philosophy which is founded on the experience of
the Active I. At the same time, Fichte' s response to skepticism is intended
as a prelude to the next age, in which the skeptical chaos arising from the
destruction of despotic authority will be replaced by a new order of free
agreement founded on rational knowledge.
11

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
7.
REFLECTION AND THE NOT-I
In §4 it was argued that the F s original self-positing is best interpreted as

a pre-reflective self-awareness. This does not mean that Fichte' s first prin
ciple does not also involve reflective self-awareness. On the contrary, at
times Fichte even appears to identify "I-hood" or "self-positing" with the
"reflection on itself' through which the I "finds itself' (SL 3/2) or forms
concept of itself (GNR 17). When he is careful, Fichte distinguishes the
"act of self-positing" from the "reiteration of positing" (GWL 276)
through which the I reflects on itself. "Initially I am neither the reflecting
subject nor the reflected object, and neither of the two is conditioned by
the other, since I am both in combination , though I cannot think this union
because in the act of doing so I separate the reflected from that which
reflects" (ZE 489). Reflective self-awareness is not a feature of the I at
every moment, but neither is it merely a contingent addition to original
activity. Fichte maintains two theses here:
1. The I's "positing of itself' carries with it a "capacity for

reflection" (GWL 293). In other words, the act of self-
positing essentially carries with it the capacity to become
reflectively self-aware.
2. "If it is to be an I, it must also posit itself as self-posited"

(GWL 276). It is essential to being an I that the I should
(sometimes) exercise the capacity for self-reflection.
Kantian doctrine says that every cognition requires both an intuition and a
concept. In the Second Introduction of 1797, Fichte uses this doctrine to
elucidate the role of reflection in the I. The act of self-positing is the I's
"intellectual intuition" of itself which "occurs at every moment of [an I's]
consciousness" (ZE 463). But just as sensory intuition needs to be con-
ceptualized in order to yield cognition of an object, so the I's self-intuition
"must be brought under concepts"; only this renders consciousness of
oneself "complete" (ZE 464).
From this Fichte argues that an I is necessarily aware of an objective
world of objects distinct from itself. "The following is implicit in our
[first] principle: The I posits itself as limited by the not-F (GWL 126). To
conceive oneself is to posit oneself in contrast with a not-I (EE 459)
"One is what one is because something else exists in addition to oneself '
(VBG 296). In other words, as soon as we have reflective self-awareness,
we have the contrast between I and not-I. To posit an I is therefore at the
same time to "counterposit" a not-I (GWL 104, GNR 18). This means that
if we have one activity, we must have two: That of the I, which is directed
toward a not-I, and that of a not-I, which is directed back against the I, as
a "check" ( Anstoss ) on the I's activity (GWL 210). In this way, Fichte
12

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
thinks, we can show that Kant was mistaken to think that we need to sup-
pose a "thing in itself' acting on us in order to account for the fact that we
are passive or sensible beings (ZE 480-83). Because the I is necessarily
reflective, its experience of activity is inextricably bound up with the
experience of passivity (GWL 137).
In the Theory of Science of 1794, Fichte distinguishes two acts of the
I: one ("real activity") which posits the not-I, and another ("ideal activ-
ity") opposing the first. Real activity is "dependent" activity, which posits
the I as determinate by "counterpositing" a not-I; ideal activity is indepen-
dent, an activity not determined by the not-I but directed against it. True
to his starting point in the activity of the I, Fichte treats both as activities
of the I: even the I' s passivity to the world is treated as a function of the
I's activity. For transcendental philosophy, the objective world first has
meaning for the I as a necessary self-limitation; and it must be posited in
this guise by the I itself for it to have the status of a necessity transcenden-
tally deduced. (It is a separate metaphysical question - in which Fichte' s
transcendental idealism takes no interest whatever - how the objective
world may have come to be, or what sort of existence "in itself' it may
have over and above its necessary relation to the I's activity.)
Here again we must avoid ascribing to Fichte the gnostical meta-
physics Schelling was later to impose on his transcendental idealism.
Although Fichte speaks of "real activity" as activity of the "absolute I,"
this activity should not be thought of as the creation of the world by a
quasi-divine metaphysical subject. The point is rather that the real world
has meaning only in relation to the human selfs infinite striving. Because
the I is constituted by its striving, Fichte speaks of its activity as the activ-
ity of the ideal self toward which this striving is directed. "The I demands
that it encompass all reality and exhaust the infinite. This demand of
necessity rests on the idea of the absolutely posited, infinite I; and this is
the absolute I, [which] is only an idea that must be presupposed by the
practical demands [of] the I given in actual consciousness" (GWL 277).
Both real and ideal activity are in the I, yet they are different, other-
wise the I could not distinguish itself from the not-I, and so it could not be
at all. To make the I determinate is to draw the boundary line, so to speak,
between real and ideal activity. But this requires that the two activities,
which are irreconcilably opposed, should be united, "synthesized." This
synthesis is accomplished by the "wondrous power of our productive
imagination" (GWL 208), which "brings the bounding elements together at
the boundary" (GWL 215). The imagination "wavers" (schwebt) between
I and not-I, indeed, between all pairs of opposites; in this way imagination
is also the root of our freedom, which consists in our capacity to "waver"
between opposed possibilities (GWL 24 1).29 Opposites, according to
Fichte, have no determinate opposition to one another until they are
"fixed" as opposites by understanding (GWL 238), through judgment
13

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
( Urtheil , etymologically, "original division") (EWL 380-81; cf. GWL
242,216-17).
Fichte follows Maimon in viewing the imagination as the original
mental power, the unifying ground of activity and passivity alike (GWL
221', EWL 387). From it the I and the not-I emerge as distinct directions
of reciprocal activity. By uniting the opposed activities of the I, the imagi-
nation makes possible the distinguishing and relating involved in
Reinhold' s principle of consciousness (GWL 228); thus imagination "cre-
ates the material of representation" (VGB 2; cf. GWL 284), and "posits
what is intuited" (GWL 230). Fichte identifies imagination with "spirit"
0 Geist ), the capacity to "bring feelings to consciousness," to unite passive
feeling with active reason, which makes possible both beauty and sublim-
ity, hence the inspiration of art (VGB 2-5).
Fichte' s theory of the original identity of opposites is not Hölderlin' s
doctrine of the original unity of "being," rent and disturbed by "judgment"
( Urtheil ), nor is it Schelling' s philosophy of identity, nor Hegel's dialectic,
though it is the intellectual source of all three. By the same token, for rea-
sons we will see more clearly in §9, his theory of the productive imagina-
tion is not the same as the Romantic doctrines it immediately inspired.
8.
UNCONSCIOUS STRIVING; THE PROBLEM OF REFLECTION
In reflection the I is distinguished from the not-I, and the not-I is experi-
enced as a "check" on the I. Fichte infers from this that when the I
reflects, it must find itself already engaged in an activity which is resisted
by the world. Because the I's relation to the material world is fundamen-
tally one of reciprocal causality (acting/being acted upon, effecting/resist-
ing) Fichte argues that the I must also have a material vehicle for its
activity. In other words, to be an I at all is necessarily to be an active, liv-
ing body. "It is impossible to think of having an effect on [matter] except
through what is itself matter. When I think of myself as having such an
effect, as I must, I myself become matter; insofar as I see myself in this
way, I call myself a material body " (SL 1 1/11).
Through real activity, the I posits a not-I (an objective world); through
ideal activity, it posits an activity opposed to this (GWL 258-59). To this
activity Fichte gives the name "striving" ( Streben ) (GWL 261-62; cf.
BWL 65, EWL 359); when it takes some determinate form, Fichte calls it a
"drive" {Trieb) (GWL 287-88). The I's passivity or "feeling" is merely
the limitedness experienced by an "outward drive" (GWL 299-300).
Reflection yields the "centripetal activity" of the empirical I (GWL 276)
14

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
which confronts a world and unifies the imagination's manifold through
reason's laws (GWL 274). Opposed to this is the "centrifugal activity" of
the absolute I, which "demands that all reality be in the I" (GWL 275). Its
impulse is to say: "Let there be no not-I at all!" (GWL 144). But of course
the not-I is a condition for the I's reflection on itself.
Fichte' s conclusion is that an I is possible only as the reflective
awareness of a pre-existing state of striving or desiring. Because it is the
condition of every possible self-awareness, and yet seems to aim at the
abolition of the not-I (another condition of self-awareness), Fichte infers
that this striving must be without any definite object, and for this reason it
is essentially infinite, or insatiable (GWL 269, 291, 302). The conscious-
ness of this infinite striving, Fichte says, is called "longing" (Sehnen)
(GWL 303). Striving is not made possible by any of its determinate
objects, but on the contrary, endless striving makes possible determinate
objects of desire (GWL 262). "Longing" becomes "desire" when it is
determined through a particular object (SL 126).30
Fichte locates this striving in the I's organic body (SL §9, 122-28).
Because endless striving must pre-exist every awareness of it, Fichte insists
that it, like the original activity of the productive imagination, is essentially
unconscious (EWL 363; GWL 234, 284). "The I as such cannot come to
consciousness, since it is never immediately conscious of its own action"
(GWL 295, EWL 275-76). Even freedom itself - the basis of all con-
sciousness - remains fundamentally unconscious (VBG 305; EWL 371).
"As such [infinite striving] does not attain to consciousness, nor can it do
so, since consciousness is possible only through reflection, and reflection
only through determination. But as soon as we reflect upon it, it necessarily
becomes finite" (GWL 269). Though the I's striving in itself has no object,
it does have a tendency which manifests itself in every determinate form it
takes: it is a striving to overcome the not-I, to appropriate objects, or to
make them conform to the I (GWL 260, RA 75, VBG 298-99).
Fichte' s assertion that the I's self-awareness presupposes an uncon-
scious activity appears hard to reconcile with his thesis that the I exists at
all only insofar as it is conscious of itself (GWL 97). This is one aspect of
a problem, discussed in an influential article by Dieter Henrich, which
threatens Fichte' s whole theory of the self. Henrich thinks the problem
belongs to any "reflection theory" of the self, that is, any theory which
treats the self as coming about only through its reflective awareness of
itself. The problem is that the self as subject of reflection presupposes the
previous presence at hand of the self as object of reflection. Thus a
reflection theory of the self presupposes what it was supposed to explain.31
Henrich credits Fichte with discovering the vicious circularity in reflection
theories of the self, and traces the entire development of Fichte' s philoso-
phy from this standpoint.
15

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
In his "Second Introduction to the Theory of Science" (1797), how-
ever, Fichte appears to me not only to have stated Henrich' s problem, but
also to have provided a solution to it. "The I, we say, goes back into itself.
So is it not therefore already present for itself before this going back and
independently of it? Must it not already be there for itself, in order to make
itself the object of an act? And if so, doesn't your philosophy in that case
presuppose what it was to explain?" Fichte replies by distinguishing the I
"as it originally comes to exist for itself' from the I as it is for the transcen-
dental philosopher. Only for the latter is it there "beforehand," "since he
himself has already run through the whole course of experience" (ZE 459).
This reply clearly does involve a retraction, in a sense, of the claim
that the I is only what it is aware of being; (in that sense, it is an abandon-
ment of a "reflection theory" of the I). The proposition that the I is only
what it is aware of being seems to be true for the I only "as it originally
comes to exist for itself," hence for the I as it serves as the first principle of
a theory of science. (The fact that the claim is true of the I in this special
guise explains why Fichte gives it so much emphasis.) Investigation of the
transcendental conditions of this I, however, reveal to the philosopher that
the I has to be and do more than is given "originally" in this principle.32
9.
THE DRIVE FOR WHOLENESS
For Fichte, reflective experience emerges from the productive imaginatio

in which all opposites are originally united. The I is based on a fund
mentally unconscious, insatiable organic striving or desire to subordinate
the objective world. This of course strongly anticipates German Romanti-
cism, as well as Schopenhauer's doctrine of the will and Nietzsche
theory of the will to power. As we will now see, however, Fichte himself
took quite a different path from all of these, and with good reason.
In order to be determinate, the I must be distinguished from a not-I
or objective world. Further, in order to act reciprocally on this world, it
must be identified with a material body. But since the I is essential
activity , its determinate conception of itself must be a conception of deter-
minate, limited activity. The I's activity must be limited not only exter
nally, by a world, but also as activity. In other words, in order to be an I,
must be able to distinguish among the practical options open to me
those that express my proper self and those that do not. This means that
determinate I must be able to act on determinate projects, commitments,
and principles, and limit its own activity by requiring itself to fulfill them.
"Who then am I, really ( eigentlich )? That is, what sort of individual?
And what is the ground of my being this? I answer: From the moment
16

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
become self-conscious, I am the one I make myself to be through freedom,
and I am this one because I make myself into this one " (SL 222/233-34).
The I into which I make myself must be self-limited. This means that the I
cannot be characterized only by an indeterminate, insatiable striving, but
has also a basic drive to "determinacy" - that is, to unity and coherence,
through which alone its identity as an I becomes possible. I cannot remain
with the imagination, at that inchoate point of origin in which all oppo-
sites are indistinguishable. Instead, I must present myself with an either/or
and make my choice. Moreover, I must identify myself with that choice; I
only deceive myself when (like Kierkegaard's Romantic aesthete) I try to
disperse myself among imagined possibilities or detach myself ironically
from whatever I have actually made of myself.
In fact, the I's most fundamental drive for Fichte is a "drive toward
absolute unity, completeness of the I within itself' (GWL 326; cf. SL
40/45-46). I define myself as a determinate system of drives, desires,
plans, ends, projects, and principles. To be an I at all is to exemplify the
fundamental drive to be an I, which is a drive to bring one's strivings into
agreement with each other, so that they form a system, express a single
identical drive. Self-limitation thus involves a drive to self-coherence or
self-focus. "The ultimate characteristic of all rational beings is, accord-
ingly, absolute unity, constant self-identity, complete agreement with one-
self. This absolute identity is the form of the pure I" (VBG 297). For
Fichte, this drive is the "absolute thou shalt" (GWL 327), the fundamental
categorical imperative for every rational being (SL 54/59).
Fichte' s moral theory is in many ways strongly reminiscent of Kant's,
but it is characterized by a (distinctly un-Kantian) totalitarian spirit of sin-
gle-minded moral fanaticism. For Fichte, every act is either a duty or else
it is wrong (SL 264/280); if in doing my duty, I am motivated by anything
except the thought of duty, my act is not merely lacking in moral worth
(as Kant would say of it), it is positively immoral (SL 154/163); as a
moral agent I must make myself into nothing but an instrument or tool of
the moral law (SL 255/270). For Fichte the moral life is not merely a
conflict within the self between duty and inclination; it is an unrelenting
struggle of the I's fundamental selfhood against the forces of disunity and
inertia which threaten the I's very identity. If the demands of Fichtean
ethics often seem excessive, they also afford Fichte the opportunity to
express some influential psychological insights. Nearly a half century
before Kierkegaard, Fichte provides a detailed analysis of the role of self-
deception in the moral life (SL 186/195, 194/205), and an account of
"despair," the condition of "self-contempt" or "conflict of the I with itself'
as the basis of moral evil (SL 319/333, 352/366).
The unity or identity for which the I strives is also a unity with the
objective world, or a wholeness in which the not-I has been included
(SL 42/46). The drive to subordinate objects is therefore not merely
17

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
a drive to exploit or dominate, but a drive to use objects rationally, to inte-
grate them into the I as a coherent system. This occurs when objects con-
form to the I's practical concepts of them, concepts of them as they ought
to be (VBG 298), or what Fichte calls their "final end" (Endzweck) (SL
171-73/180-83). The dignity of humanity consists in the fact that it is the
rational human will which is the final measure of how things ought to be
(VWM 412-14). It is human concepts, aiming at a harmony between the I
and the world, that make it true that this clay should become a pot, this
tree a piece of furniture. This does not mean, however - as some para-
noiacally appear to suppose - that Fichte' s philosophy is to blame for the
irrational human spoliation of nature that has characterized the last two
centuries. For equally, it is only the conformity with rational human con-
cepts of what is good that makes it true that people should not waste their
resources or pollute their environment, that people should not hunt a cer-
tain species of living things to extinction, or that some stretch of wilder-
ness should remain free from human exploitation. (To suppose that these
truths have a source outside rational human thought about nature is to
embrace some sort of nature-mysticism with which the Aufklärer Fichte
would quite correctly want nothing to do.)
10.
INTERSUBJECTIVITY
From the I's necessary self-limitation, Fichte derives not only its relatio
to the external world, its embodiedness, and its fundamental drive towar
unity, but also its intersubjectivity. "The consciousness of individuality i
necessarily accompanied by another consciousness, that of a thou , and
possible only on this condition" (ZE 467). "No Thou, no I" (GWL 189).
Fichte' s first detailed argument for this conclusion, in the Founda-
tions of Natural Right (1796), is based on the idea that self-limitation i
possible only if there is a "reciprocal causality" ( Wechselwirkung ) withi
the I (GNR 34-35/54-55). Fichte calls the influence which imposes a self
limitation a "demand" ( Aufforderung ) (GNR 33/52). He argues that
demand cannot be grounded originally in the free activity of the I
whom the demand is addressed, because its original meaning is to limit
that I, so the demand must come from outside the I (GNR 35/55). Yet a
demand must be conceived as the act of a being which can have the lim
tation of the I's activity as its end, and hence of a being which can form
conception of free activity. These properties can belong only to anothe
free being, another I (GNR 36-37/56-57). Our capacity to determine our
selves by limiting our free activity thus presupposes the experience of
demand made on us by someone else. Fichte' s argument appears to
18

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
transcendental, but his characteristic way of putting it is genetic: As
Philonenko stresses, Fichte does not say that a human being can be human
only among others, but that "a human being becomes human only among
others" (GNR 39/60, emphasis added).33 To be an I requires "education"
( Erziehung ) (GNR 39/61) through interaction with others.
In the System of Ethics (1798), Fichte presents another argument for
the same conclusion, claiming that it is based on a "higher principle" than
the argument of the Foundations of Natural Right (SL 218/229). This
argument proceeds more directly from the idea of the I's limitation. As an
object of reflection, the I's free activity must be limited. "That free activ-
ity is limited means: a certain quantum of it is posited over against free
activity in general, and to that extent over against other free activity."
Hence the I cannot ascribe free activity to itself "unless along with that
thought it simultaneously posits other free activity which does not pertain
to it" (SL 218-19/229-30).
Fichte immediately warns us that by itself this argument establishes
the necessity only of the possible free activity of others, not its actuality
(SL 219/230). To fill the gap, the argument again takes a genetic turn.
Fichte claims I can form a conception of possible free activity other than
my own only through an experience which I take to be that of an actual
free activity external to me (SL 219-20/230-31). This is because I cannot
form the conception of self-limited activity by merely finding that activity
present in myself. Rather, I can acquire such a conception only through
the "imitation {Nachbildung) of an activity which is present at hand" (SL
220/231). Once again, the argument turns on the claim that the concept of
my own self-determination, which is necessary to my being a determinate
I, can be acquired only through the educative influence of others.
As Andreas Wildt has suggested, Fichte' s theory of intersubjectivity
anticipates the insight of developmental psychologists that people acquire
the capacity to limit their actions through making demands on themselves
only by internalizing the demands that others (originally, their parents)
have made on them.34 To read Fichte this way is perhaps to compromise
the transcendental status of the argument. But, on the other hand, if Fichte
is right, it might be that the developmental psychologists are merely locat-
ing in experience the way in which one of the transcendental conditions of
being an I comes to be satisfied.
These are not arguments for the "existence of other minds" in the
usual sense, but rather arguments for intersubjectivity. That is, their con-
clusion is not merely that other minds exist, but more specifically that any I
must stand in certain determinate relationships to others. First, we must
recognize (< anerkennen ) others as free selves (some of) whose demands on
us we must be prepared to imitate or internalize if we are to define our own
determinate selfhood. Recognition accords the other an "external sphere"
of freedom (beginning with the other's body, but extending to all the
19

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
other's property). When considered in its mutuality, recognition becomes
the foundation of the "relation of right" which must hold between any two
free rational beings (GNR 41^7/62-68). But secondly, and more impor-
tantly, Fichte takes it to be a condition of my self-awareness as a free
being that I stand in a reciprocal relation of "education" to others. The
possibility of satisfying my drive to unity or wholeness depends on actual-
izing some determinate form of my reciprocal relationship to other free
selves. This means that the freedom of the I can be realized, the human
vocation fulfilled, only through a certain form of society.
11.
THE SOCIAL UNITY OF REASON
This point is made explicit in a third argument for the I's intersubjectivit
from Fichte's Lectures on the Scholar's Vocation (1794). This argument
is based not on the I's self-limitation but on its drive for wholeness, whic
(Fichte contends) is not restricted to the self-determination of an individ
ual I, or to realizing the end-setting concepts of things in an objective
world. A higher self-harmony and actualization of these practical con-
cepts is achieved only when they "have an expression or counterpart in
the not-I." This happens when the rational being's practical concepts are
actualized "not only in himself, but outside him as well. Thus one of th
things that the human being requires is that rational beings like himse
should exist outside him" (VBG 304). We need other rational being
because our drive to wholeness requires us to share practical concept
with them, forming an intersubjective whole, based on shared activities
toward common ends. I need others not merely to help me achieve my
ends, but more fundamentally to help me constitute my ends, as objects o
the rational drive to wholeness.
All such ends are founded on the mutual recognition of rational
beings: the relation of right. Thus when I seek harmony with another, this
is fundamentally different from harmony with a mere object. Objects are
"subordinated" to rational concepts of the I, but a rational relation to an
other rests on "co-ordination" (VBG 308). This means I must not employ
rational beings as means to ends they do not share - not even as means to
their own ends, as by trying to make them virtuous, wise, or happy against
their will (VBG 309). It means also that every rational being has natural
rights to external freedom (GNR §§5-6, 56-85/87-125), requiring exter-
nal enforcement (GNR §§13-14, 136-45/153-59). Fichte provides for
this through a series of social contracts: the "property contract" (GNR
196/215), the "protection contract" (GNR 197/218), and the "union con-
tract" (GNR 204/227).
20

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
Fichte is not an orthodox social contract theorist, however. For him
the social contract is part of a transcendental argument, whose overall
intent is more communitarian than contractarian. The gist of the argument
is that the contracts necessary to enforce individual rights cannot be bind-
ing unless the parties can be assured that others will perform, and they
cannot be sure of this unless there is a common power able to enforce the
contract. From the need for such a common power, Fichte deduces that
the state must be founded on a "union" ( Vereinigung ) of the wills of all its
members. This union Fichte regards as the same "organic whole of rea-
son" which is the object of the I's fundamental striving.
Humanity is a single organizing and organized whole of rea-

son. Separated into many members, independent of one
another, the natural form of the state already abolishes this
independence in a provisional way and melts individual
groups into one whole, before morality transforms the whole
human race into a unity. (GNR 203/225-26)
Fichte views the state as an instrument, first for protecting the neces-
sary conditions of social life (chiefly, individual rights), but second and
more importantly, for. promoting unification, creating a higher and more
unified form of human society in which state power will no longer be nec-
essary. Fichte' s political theory proposes an undivided sovereign power,
checked only by an institution he calls the "ephorate," with the power to
dissolve the state on grounds of injustice or contravention of the popular
will (GNR 158-66/240-52). Fichte favors quite strict protections of indi-
vidual rights of privacy (GNR 240-49/322-32), and an absolute right of
citizens to emigrate (GNR 384/491). But outside the private sphere the
state is empowered to exercise considerable control over the behavior
of individuals. Fichte interprets the state's right over external property
broadly, empowering the state to regulate economic activity very strictly
(GNR 232-37/312-17), and giving it a mandate to redistribute wealth
with the aim of eliminating all forms of poverty and economic depen-
dence (GNR 210-15/289-95, 257-60/340-43).
It may sound like classical bourgeois liberalism when Fichte says that
protecting the rights of individuals is to give them what is rightfully theirs.
But Fichte' s meaning is more subversive: In the first place, the right of
property for Fichte is fundamentally not a right to things, but a right to
actions (GH 401). To protect my property is to protect my way of life as
a free member of a well-ordered economic system. It is in this sense that
Fichte says that the state must be guided by the principle "Live and let
live!" (GH 402). But it directly entails that the state's first obligation,
as the protector of individual property, is to determine what things, and
possibilities for agency, rightfully belong to each individual. And that
means that the state's first responsibility is to take care that none of its citi-
zens should be in a state of need. Until this is done for every member of
21

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
society, Fichte asserts, no member of society can claim the right to any
property in excess of what is necessary.
First all must be well-fed and securely housed before any

dwelling is decorated; first all must be comfortably and warmly
clothed before any can be dressed finely. ... It counts for noth-
ing that someone may say: 'But I can pay for it.' For it is an
injustice that anyone can pay for luxuries while there are some
of his fellow citizens who cannot acquire necessities, or cannot
pay for them; that with which the former pays is not rightful
property; in a rational state, it would not be his. (GH 409)
Thus there really is no rightful division of property in any society where

poverty exists. For if I have more than enough, and others are needy, then
by that fact (what I consider to be) my property ceases to be mine, and
becomes rightfully theirs: "Each possesses his civil property only in so
far, and on the condition that, all citizens of the state can live from what is
theirs; insofar as they cannot live, it becomes theirs" (GNR 213/293; cf.
SL 295/311-12).
Fichte charges the state with regulating economic activity, demand-
ing an account from each citizen of his means of livelihood, and assigning
the right number of citizens to each branch of the economy, so that no cit-
izen will be found in a condition of want. In Fichte' s rational state, there
is to be no free trade between citizens of the state and anyone external to
it, and production within the state is to be regulated, and prices fixed, so
that no one will ever be unable to afford the necessities of life.
The system of state-controlled commodity production which pre-
vailed in Eastern Europe for most of this century, and is now in the pro-
cess of being dismantled, has of course been associated by both its
practitioners and its opponents with the name of Karl Marx, despite the
fact that one would look in vain in Marx's writings for any recommenda-
tion of such a system. It does, however, bear quite a tolerable resemblance
to the economic proposals advanced a half century earlier by Fichte, and
defended solely on the ground that the state's function is to protect the
individual's right to his own private property.
Yet Fichte might sooner be seen as an anarchist in light of his concep-
tion of the state's role in human progress. Fichte calls the existing state the
"state of necessity" ( Nothstaat ) (SL 238/252). For him it is only a provi-
sional form of social organization, whose very legitimacy rests on its ten-
dency toward self-change: "Any constitution of the state is in accordance
with right which does not make impossible to progress toward something
better. . . . Only that constitution is completely contrary to right which has
the end of preserving everything as it presently is" (SL 361/375). Yet
because it subjects free rational beings to external compulsion, even the
state itself is only a provisional form of social organization: "The state is
22

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
only a means for establishing a perfect society. . . . Like all human institu-
tions which are mere means, the state aims at abolishing itself. The goal of
all government is to make government superfluous " (VBG 306, cf. SL
253/266).
The state is necessary only because people do not always agree in
their ends (VBG 306-07). According to Fichte, it is the fundamental pre-
supposition of practical reason that "reason is one," that "all rational
beings necessarily have the same end"; only on this assumption can we
reconcile the I's rational drive to subject the world to its final end with the
self-limitation imposed on it by its recognition of other rational beings
(SL 230-31/242-43). It follows that "the final and highest end of society
is the complete unity and unanimity of all its members" (VBG 310). Thus
the perfection of the human species lies in achieving the perfect equality
of all human beings: "The final aim of all society is the complete equality
of all its members" (VBG 315), and "the true vocation ( Bestimmung ) of
human beings within society is "unification" ( Vereinigung ), the endless
approximation to unanimity and equality (VBG 310).
People fulfill this social vocation through "free interaction" (VBG
307), that is, through rational communication and mutual education: "The
social drive aims at interaction , reciprocal influence, mutual give and
take, mutual passivity and activity" (VBG 308). This involves the twofold
drive to communicate and to receive communication from others (VBG
315) through a process involving mutual respect, whose final aim is ratio-
nal agreement on the truth (SL 232-33/244-46). Fichte's more detailed
account of this process will no doubt strike us as distinctly elitist, stress-
ing as it does the special role of a privileged community of scholars
(< Gelehrten ), whose freedom of expression and opportunity to be heard are
both considerably broader than those of the general populace (VBG
323-34; SL 248-52/261-65, 344-47/358-62). But like Fichte's theory of
the state, this account needs to be understood in relation to the social and
political conditions of a time when the principle of free public communi-
cation was not firmly established even for an elite.
Ignoring this excuse, however, Fichte's views on public communica-
tion have one distinct virtue in comparison to most prevailing liberal views
on this topic. Their primary aim is not merely to protect the formal free-
dom of individuals to vent private opinions (to "have their say" - whether
or not what they say is ever heard, or even worth hearing). He has not for-
gotten that the main point of rational communication is the advancement
and dissemination of human knowledge. Fichte has quite a strong theory
of human rights, but it is not the basis of his theory of public communica-
tion. Instead, Fichte views freedom of communication instrumentally, as a
way of achieving the vital social good of having people discover - and
come to rational agreement on - the truth.
23

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
12.
FICHTE' S IMPORTANCE FOR US
Of course Fichte' s philosophy won't appeal to a counter-revolutionary

age like our own - complacent and despairing, cynically weary and not a
little afraid of inspirations and grand social visions, since we know in
advance that they all inevitably end in disastrous failure. Fichte was frus-
trated in repeated attempts to capture his original radical vision, until (per-
haps as he became disillusioned with post-revolutionary developments in
France) the vision was eventually transformed more into a religious vision
than a radical social one. Yet if we think of Fichte' s revolution only as a
road to be avoided, then we pretend that we ourselves have found some
other road, one which does not lead either back behind Fichte' s revolution
or forth from it. A proper understanding of Fichte' s philosophy and its
relation to the subsequent tradition will expose that pretense.
For example, in our century the philosophy associated with Fichte' s
revolution has sometimes been spoken of disparagingly as "the philosophy
of the subject." Such condescension is quite misplaced, since Fichte is in
fact the first to overturn the modern contemplative and dualistic notion of
subjectivity in favor of a new, practically oriented conception of mind, its
relation to body, to the external world, and to others. What is even more
decisive, Fichte sees that the question of the individual's alienation from
self cannot be separated from issues of intersubjectivity and alienation
from others. The I's freedom can be actual only through its free unity with
others, a unity achieved through a process of rational communication. In
this way, a direct line of descent leads from Fichte through Hegel and
Marx to critical theory and Habermas' s theory of communicative action.
For over a century now, since the writings of Nietzsche, one influen-
tial movement in continental philosophy has been engaged in the project
of destroying the Western tradition, of which it correctly takes the
German idealist revolution to be the last great flowering. Despite these
efforts, the problems of our culture are still the problems raised by
Fichte' s revolution. ("Post-modernists" have no solutions; they don't even
have any new problems. No one makes a credible claim to the future
merely by scorning every thought of which the present is capable.) By now
it is plain that the destroyers of the tradition have not made any headway
with those problems in their hundred years of trying, simply because their
only venture is the wanton dissipation of the intellectual capital they have
borrowed from the tradition itself. The time has surely come to call in the
loans and declare the enterprise bankrupt. As soon as we accept the fact
that our only option is to carry forward the Fichtean revolution rather than
to undo it, we will begin to see its problematic character as a sign only
that its revolutionary promise still remains radically unfulfilled.
24

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
NOTES
1. Translations from the writings of Fichte are my own. Standard English translations,
where they exist, will be cited along with the original, according to the following sys-
tem of abbreviations:
SW Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte. Berlin: deGruyter,

1971. Cited by volume and page.
AA J. G. Fichte Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed.
R. Lauth, H. Jacob, H. Gliwitsky. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1964-. Correspondence
from Volume 3 cited by Volume and Entry Number.
EW Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. D. Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1988. Where marginal page numbers from SW are not given in this vol-
ume, it will be cited according to its own page numbers.
BWL Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (1792), SW 1.
Concerning the Concept of a Wissenschaftslehre, SW 1. Cited by page number in
SW.
DWL Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1801), SW 2.

EE Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre (1797), SW 1.
First Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, The Science of Knowledge, trans,
by Peter Heath and John Lachs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Cited by page number in SW.
EWL Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre (1795), SW 1 .
Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre, DW. Cited by
page number in SW.
GH Dergeschlossene Handelsstaat ( 1 800), SW 3.
GNR Grundlage des Naturrechts (1796), SW 3.
Science of Rights, trans. A E. Kroeger. London: Truebner, 1889. Cited by page
number in SW and translation.
GWL Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794), SW 1.

The Science of Knowledge, trans, by Peter Heath and John Lachs. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970. Cited by page number in SW.
GGZ Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters ( 1 804), SW 7.
Characteristics of the Present Age, trans. W. Smith. Fichte 's Popular Works
(London: Trubner, 1889), Volume 2. Cited by page number in SW and the trans-
lation.
NWL Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797), SW 1 .

RA Recension des Aenesidemus (1792), SW 1 .
"Review of Aenesidemus EW. Cited by page number in SW.
SB Sonnenklarer Bericht ( 1 80 1 ), SW 2.
Crystal Clear Report, trans. J. Botterman and W. Rauch, in Ernste Behler, ed.
Philosophy of German Idealism (New York: Continuum, 1987). Cited by page
number in SW and the translation.
SL System der Sittenlehre (1798), SW 4.

Science of Ethics, trans. A.E. Kroeger. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and
Truebner, 1897. Cited by page number in SW and translation.
SS Vergleichung des von Herrn Prof Schmid aufgestellten Systems mit der Wissen-
schaftslehre (1795), SW 2.
"A Comparison between Prof. Schmid' s System and the Wissenschaftslehre
EW. Cited by page number in SW.
VBG Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794), SW 6.
Lectures on the Scholar's Vocation, EW. Cited by page number in SW.
25

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
VGB Vorlesungen über den Unterschied des Geistes und des Buchstabes in der Philo-
sophie (1794), ed. S. Berger (Leipzig: Meiner, 1924).
The Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy, EW. Cited by page number in the
original edition.
VWM Vorlesung über die Würde des Menschen (1794), SW 1.
Concerning Human Dignity, EW. Cited by page number in SW.
ZE Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre (1797), SW 1.
Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, GWL. Cited by page number in
SW.
2. Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971), 20:414; cf. Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
trans. E. Haldane and F. Simson (New York: Humanities Press, 1955) 3:504.
3. Dieter Henrich, "Fichte' s Original Insight" (1966), trans. D. Lachterman, in D.
Christensen, et. al., eds. Contemporary German Philosophy, Volume 1 (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982), 16.
4. See my article "Unsociable Sociability: the Anthropological Basis of Kantian Ethics,"
Philosophical Topics 19, No. 1 (1991).
5. Kant's reflections on the emerging issues (in his historical and his religious writings,
and in the Critique of Judgment) anticipated the coming revolution with uncanny fre-
quency, but he never made these issues the primary focus of his philosophy. Kant
made the revolution possible chiefly because his way of solving the old problems was
profoundly anthropocentric, and thus it forced philosophy to address the new questions
about human selfhood and agency.
6. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A xi and note.
7. "Consciousness compels us to agree that to each representation belongs a represented
subject and a represented object, and that both must be distinguished from the represen-
tation to which they belong" (Reinhold, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen
Vorstellungsvermögens [1789] [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963],
214); "Representation is distinguished in consciousness by the subject from both subject
and object, and referred to both" (Reinhold, Neue Darstellung der Elementarphilo-
sophie [1790], Beiträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverständnisse der Philosophen
[Jena: Mauke, 1790], 1: 167). For some recent discussions of Reinhold's principle see
Daniel Breazeale, "Between Kant and Fichte: K. L. Reinhold's 'Elementary Philo-
sophy,"' Review of Metaphysics 35 (1981-82); George DiGiovanni, Introduction to
DiGiovanni and Harris, eds. Between Kant and Hegel (Albany: SUN Y Press, 1985),
10-19; and Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1987), chapter 8, esp. 252-62. There is a translation of an excerpt from
Reinhold's The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (1794) in DiGiovanni and
Harris, eds. Between Kant and Hegel 53-103, where the principle of consciousness is
stated on 70.
8. Schulze, Aenesidemus, oder über die Fundamente der von Herrn Prof Reinhold in
Jena gelieferten Elementar- Philosophy (Göttingen: 1792); reprinted in Aetas Kantiana
(Brussels: Culture and Civilization, 1969). An excerpt is translated in Between Kant
and Hegel, 104-35. Cited below by page number in the original edition.
9. Schulze, Aenesidemus, 63-69.
1 1 . Schulze, Aenesidemus, 70-80.
13. Maimon, Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie (1790), Gesammelte Werke, ed.
V. Verra (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970).
14. Unlike Schulze, Maimon aims not so much at the skeptical rejection of critical philo-
sophy as at reforming and strengthening it. In the process, however, he questions the
tenability (within the critical philosophy) of Kant's distinction between sensibility and
understanding, and Kant's notion of the thing in itself; and he suggests that we can
ascribe objective validity to the products of our finite understanding only if we regard
it as the manifestation of an infinite understanding, actively constituting the world we
26

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
know. For good discussions of Maimon' s philosophy, see Samuel Atlas, From Critical
to Speculative Idealism. The Philosophy of Salomon Maimon (The Hague: Mārtiņus
Nijhoff, 1964); and Beiser, The Fate of Reason, chapter 10. An excerpt from Maimon's
Essay Towards a New Logic or Theory of Thought, Together With Letters of Philalethe s
to Aenesidemus (1794) (Werke, Volume 5) is translated in Between Kant and Hegel,
158-203.
15. Not much is known about Fichte' s philosophical views before 1790, but they appar-
ently included a fatalistic form of determinism. See Peter Baumanns, Fichtes
Wissenschaftslehre: Probleme ihres Anfangs (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974), Erster Teil: Der
Weg zur Wissenschaftslehre.
16. When Kierkegaard comically depicts the speculative philosopher eternally hastening
onward toward the completion of the system but never reaching the goal, he is usually
taken to be describing Hegel. So regarded, his account is surely quite inappropriate;
but he might have very well been drawing a caricature of Fichte with a good deal of
verisimilitude.
17. There are no detailed accounts of Fichte's development after 1800 in English. The best
recent discussion is H.-J. Verweyen, "New Perspectives on J. G. Fichte," Idealistic
Studies 6:2 (1976). The best treatment is Martial Gueroult, L'évolution et la structure de
la doctrine de science chez Fichte (Paris: Société de l'Edition, 1930), 2 vols. See also
Gunter Schulte, Die Wissenschaftslehre des späten Fichtes (Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1971) and Joachim Widmann, Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Einführung in seine Philosophie
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982).
18. Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
19. Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism: the Genesis of
German Political Thought 1790-1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992),
chapter 2. At this writing, Beiser' s book is still being revised and even the title is only
tentative. I have benefited greatly, however, both from a manuscript version of chapter
2 ("Philosophy and Politics in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre of 1794"), as well as from
its author's helpful comments on a draft of the present paper.
20. Peter Baumanns, Fichtes ursprüngliches System (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog,
1972), 92-93.
21. Alexis Philonenko, La liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte (Paris: Vrin,
1966), 183-85.
22. For example, Fichte holds that the I cannot be present in consciousness without an
object distinct from it, but the I is precisely that which is to be distinguished from such
an object (RA 21; BWL 71; GWL 247; SS 449; ZE 492; SL 18/23); or again, the 'I'
could not exist without its body, and I am accustomed to applying the word 'I' to my
body, but my body is not what Fichte means by the I as first principle (VBG 295, 302).
In the case of the I, however, there is a complete coincidence of subject and object (SS
442), or of form and content (BWL 49).
23. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), 1 1-15.
24. Hegel was clearly aware of this when he noted that Fichte's philosophy "recognizes
only the finite form of spirit" (Hegel, Werke [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971], 20: 409; cf.
Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. Haldane and F. Simson [New York:
Humanities Press, 1955], 3: 499).
25. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay I 13. The helpful analogy of the motion
of electrons producing current is taken from Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of
Subjectivity, 108.
26. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.XI.17.
27. A notable dissenter from the tradition is Malebranche, who (like a lone sighted person
among the blind) perceives that mind by its very nature must relate itself to items out-
side itself; but it is not easy to view him as a precursor to later critics of the tradition
because his version of the relation involves a wondrous theocentric metaphysics.
Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth III, 2, 6-7.
27

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC
28. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.IV.6.
29. Fichte' s doctrine of the "wavering" of the imagination seems to have been derived,
ironically, from Spinoza {Ethics IIP44S) where our (erroneous) notion that there is
contingency in the world is attributed to the wavering (fluctuatio ) of the mind between
different images, when, in the mode of imagination, it conceives things inadequately,
and remains uncertain which of two imagined events will actually occur. What Spinoza
takes to be an illusion resulting from ignorance, Fichte regards as foundational to expe-
rience, and hence as no illusion. In Maimon too Fichte found the doctrine that, follow-
ing Kantian principles, all reality is a product of imagination, hence a deception; and
here too Fichte argues that where imagination is a condition for the possibility of expe-
rience, it should not be regarded as a source of illusion (GWL 227; EWL 387).
30. Fichte says, however, that since it has no object, indeterminate striving should not
really be called "striving" - he does not know what to call it: "We neither have nor can
have a name for it, since it lies beyond all determinability" (GWL 269).
31. Dieter Henrich, "Fichte' s Original Insight," Contemporary German Philosophy,
Volume 1, 15-53. The presentation of the problem for reflection theories is on 19-21.
32. This solution to the problem, however, raises some deeper questions about the first
principle itself and its epistemic status. The principle of the I was supposedly chosen
for its immediate certainty. Though it was abstracted from the rest of experience, the
I's self-positing was supposed to be something entirely evident and self-transparent.
This status is not necessarily compromised by further deductions from the principle,
such as that the I requires a not-I for its determinacy; but it does seem to be compro-
mised by our discovery that there is more to the I itself than first appears in the princi-
ple. This suggests that the principle itself, for all its vaunted "certainty," is, strictly
speaking, not even true. This paradoxical result raises some deep questions about
Fichte' s procedure, but it does not necessarily discredit it. Hegel, for instance, accepts
the paradox, admitting and then exploring its consequences: in the Phenomenology of
Spirit, what consciousness is "for itself' is clearly separated from what it is "in itself'
or "for us (philosophers)," "certainty" is systematically distinguished from "truth,"
which is to be found only in the whole system, so that a philosophical starting point is
declared false simply because it is a correct starting point. (Hegel, Phenomenology of
Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977], % 24.)
33. Alexis Philonenko, L'oeuvre de Fichte (Paris: Vrin. 1984), 46.
34. Andreas Wildt, Autonomie und Anerkennung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), 259-83; cf.
Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932);
Calvin S. Hall and Gardner Lindzey, eds., Handbook of Social Psychology (New York:
Addison Hall, 1954), 143-80.
28

74.64.205.234 on Thu, 08 Sep 2022 11:01:11 UTC

Wood Fichte Philosophical Revolution

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Wood Fichte Philosophical Revolution

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Wood Fichte Philosophical Revolution

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Fichte's Philosophical Revolution

Author(s): Allen W. Wood

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154101

This content downloaded from

Fichte' s Philosophical Revolution

" The discovery of this philosophy has begun an

" With the Fichtean philosophy, a revolution was

"[ Once the actual doctrines and motives of

This content downloaded from

FICHTE' S HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE

This content downloaded from

CRITICS AND SKEPTICS

Kant prefaces his painstaking reply to philosophical skepticism in

This content downloaded from

written. Fichte always regarded it only as a "prospectus" of his philosophy,

THE CONCEPT OF A THEORY OF SCIENCE'

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

THE I AS FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY

Fichte' s procedure in the Theory of Science of 1794 is so obscure tha

This content downloaded from

tion on ourselves as distinct from other objects.23 1 am engaged in reading

This content downloaded from

THE PRIORITY OF DOING OVER BEING

"Without self-consciousness there is no consciousness whatever; but self

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

IDEALISM AND REALISM

According to Fichte, realism - "the assumption that things exist outsid

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

REFLECTION AND THE NOT-I

In §4 it was argued that the F s original self-positing is best interpreted as

1. The I's "positing of itself' carries with it a "capacity for

2. "If it is to be an I, it must also posit itself as self-posited"

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

UNCONSCIOUS STRIVING; THE PROBLEM OF REFLECTION

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

THE DRIVE FOR WHOLENESS

For Fichte, reflective experience emerges from the productive imaginatio

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

THE SOCIAL UNITY OF REASON

This content downloaded from

Humanity is a single organizing and organized whole of rea-

This content downloaded from

First all must be well-fed and securely housed before any

Thus there really is no rightful division of property in any society where

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

FICHTE' S IMPORTANCE FOR US

Of course Fichte' s philosophy won't appeal to a counter-revolutionary

This content downloaded from

SW Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte. Berlin: deGruyter,

DWL Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1801), SW 2.

GWL Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794), SW 1.