Abstract
What does Fichte’s philosophy, especially in writings relating to the “atheism dispute [Atheismusstreit]” (1798–1800), actually say about the intellectual basis and philosophical tenability of theistic belief? Fichte found himself at odds with his own audience on exactly this issue,1 and puzzlement on this point persists to this day. In 1798, he published the chapter “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World.” This text’s derivation of pre-philosophical religious conviction from ineluctable acts of ideation, coupled with its identification of God with the moral world order, can give the impression (and prompted the objection) that Fichte philosophically accounts for belief in God in a way that proves to be completely corrosive of any genuinely theistic commitment. And his attempts to rebut that objection, especially in Book III of 1800’s The Vocation of Man (hereafter, “VM III”), depict and defend properly philosophical belief in a supreme being in a way that has perplexed and divided scholars right down to the present, and so seriously as to raise doubts about how well we have understood the essential content of his Jena-era transcendental idealism — from which, according to Fichte himself, The Vocation of Man does not radically depart.2
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Notes
I will elide the historical details of the atheism dispute here. For a detailed treatment, see Yolanda Estes, “Commentator’s Introduction: J. G. Fichte, Atheismusstreit, Wissenschaftslehre, and Religionslehre,” in J. G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798–1800), trans. Curtis Bowman, ed. Yolanda Estes (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), 1–16.
For an overview of this text’s conflicted recent reception, see Daniel Breazeale, introduction to Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013), 1–17.
In this connection I am particularly indebted to Andrew Chignell, “Belief in Kant,” Philosophical Review 116, no. 3 (2007): 323–60.
I will be speaking specifically of the philosophy of the Jena era (1794–1801). Fichte’s later work is more markedly metaphysical in tone and replete with religious references. For an overview focused on his theory of religion, see Yolanda Estes, “After Jena: Fichte’s Religionslehre,” in After Jena: New Essays on Fichte’s Later Philosophy, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 99–114.
For further discussion, see Daniel Breazeale, “The ‘Standpoint of Life’ and the ‘Standpoint of Philosophy’ in the Context of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre,” in Transzendentalphilosophie als System: Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen 1794 und 1806, ed. Albert Mues (Hamburg: Meiner, 1989), 81–104.
For more on Fichte’s first principles and the associated account of reason, see Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
See also Günter Zöller, Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
See Matthew C. Altman and Cynthia D. Coe, The Fractured Self in Freud and German Philosophy (Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 27–52.
For further discussion, see Wayne M. Martin, “‘Without a Striving, No Object is Possible’: Fichte’s Striving Doctrine and the Primacy of Practice,” in New Perspectives on Fichte, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Prometheus Books, 1996), 19–33.
For more on these issues, see Steven Hoeltzel, “Finite and Absolute Reason in (and beyond) Fichte’s System of Ethics,” Philosophy Today 52, nos. 3–4 (fall–winter 2008): 259–69.
For more on transcendental theology in Fichte, see Benjamin D. Crowe, “Fichte’s Transcendental Theology,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 68–88.
For more on Fichte’s notion of certainty, see Günter Zöller, “‘Das Element aller Gewissheit.’ Jacobi, Kant, und Fichte über den Glauben,” Fichte-Studien 14 (1998): 21–41.
For further discussion, see Daniel Breazeale, “How to Make an Idealist: Fichte’s ‘Refutation of Dogmatism’ and the Problem of the Starting Point of the Wissenschaftslehre,” Philosophical Forum 19, nos. 2–3 (winter–spring 1987–88): 97–123.
On this vexed question, see Benjamin D. Crowe, “Revisionism and Religion in Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16, no. 2 (May 2008): 371–92.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel “Allwill”, trans. and ed. George di Giovanni (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 514. German edition: Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Werke, 6 vols., ed. Friedrich Roth and Friedrich Köppen (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1812–25. Reprint: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 3:33.
For a reading along these lines, according to which Fichte’s position thus “can be neither theistic nor atheistic,” see Wayne M. Martin, “Transcendental Philosophy and Atheism,” European Journal of Philosophy 16, no. 1 (April 2007): 122.
Such a rebuttal is clearly ill-suited to the court of public opinion — in which case, perhaps The Vocation of Man serves to rhetorically drape an ontologically unencumbered idealism in metaphysically respectable guise. For a detailed reading to this effect, see Ives Radrizzani, “The Place of The Vocation of Man in Fichte’s work,” in New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 317–44.
VM III is often read as a radical reversal of Fichte’s prior position. For a detailed example of that sort of interpretation, see Martial Guéroult, “La destination de l’homme,” in Études sur Fichte (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1974), 72–96.
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Hoeltzel, S. (2014). Transcendental Idealism and Theistic Commitment in Fichte. In: Altman, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-33475-6_19
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