Abstract
This chapter introduces the volume by offering a basic overview of Fichte’s philosophy, integrated within which are brief treatments of the various more-specialized topics and problems that each of the subsequent chapters explores in depth. The discussion is structured according to the organization of the volume, and therefore spans each of the following seven areas: (1) Fichte’s historical and intellectual context, (2) Fichte’s metaphilosophy and method, (3) the transcendental fundamentals of the Wissenschaftslehre, (4) Fichte’s ethical theory, (5) his political and social theory, (6) his philosophy’s implications for metaphysics and epistemology, and (7) his thought’s later ramifications, including connections to existentialism, phenomenology, and discourse ethics.
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Notes
- 1.
The word “Wissenschaftslehre” is Fichte’s neologism and names his philosophy’s initial basic aim: “demonstrating the first principles of all the sciences which are possible—something which cannot be done within these sciences themselves” (EPW 108 [GA I/2:120]). Fichte’s project thus begins as a rigorous demonstration and delimitation—thus, a ‘doctrine’ or ‘theory’ (Lehre)—of ‘science,’ that is, of well-founded, systematically elaborated cognition (Wissenschaft). Nevertheless, in even the earliest statements of even its most basic claims, the Wissenschaftslehre broaches axiological and (arguably) ontological topics that are not ordinarily associated with the aforementioned epistemological concerns. For that reason, and also because the system’s epistemological essentials are not quite captured by any one English rendering (“Doctrine of Science,” “Theory of Scientific Knowledge,” “Science of Knowledge,” etc.), it is standard practice to leave Fichte’s coinage untranslated.
- 2.
The details are too complicated to go into here; instead, concerning the first major phase of Fichte’s career (1793–1799), see Daniel Breazeale, “Fichte in Jena” (EPW 1–50); and regarding its second major phase (from 1799 until Fichte’s untimely death in 1814), see Günter Zöller, “Fichte’s Later Presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre,” in The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, ed. David James and Günter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 139–67.
- 3.
Fichte’s most impactful works were all published during the 1790s and thus at a pivotal moment for classical German philosophy, insofar as this decade also saw Kant’s last major publications, a series of important early texts by Schelling, and the earliest (albeit then-unpublished) writings of Hegel. From 1800 until his death in 1814, Fichte produced a great deal of significant further work, but most of this material remained unpublished during his lifetime, and only a fraction has been translated into English (most notably: VM; CCS; CCR; WL1804; AGN; LTE; and the writings compiled in volume two of The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 4th ed., trans. William Smith, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Bristol: Thoemes Press, 1999)).
- 4.
For recent overviews of the period, see: Frederick Beiser, The Fate of Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Frederick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Eckart Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, trans. Brady Bowman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Paul W. Franks, All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 5.
For a sampling, including contextualizing commentary, see AD.
- 6.
In the text containing the first published presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre’s basic principles (“Review of Aenesidemus”: EPW 59–77 [GA I/2:41–67]), Fichte explicitly connects (1) those principles themselves, (2) his conception of pure reason as practical, (3) his account of the rational grounds for “belief in God [Glauben an Gott],” and (4) an affiliated analysis of the origin and content of the “idea of divinity [Idee der Gottheit]” (see especially EPW 75–76 [GA I/2:64–66]). He returns to these issues in the 1798 essay, “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World” (IWL 142–54 [GA I/5:347–57]), cited above, which figured prominently among the causes of the atheism controversy.
- 7.
See also EPW 75 (GA I/2:65); IWL 52 (GA I/4:221).
- 8.
As Günter Zöller notes (cf. Chap. 3, below), the term “transcendental idealism” has a much more restricted denotation for Kant than it does for Fichte. For Kant, the term pertains to the enabling conditions for empirical intuition specifically, whereas for Fichte, it far more broadly encompasses both the methodological standpoint and all of the main substantive findings of a philosophy constructed along post-Kantian lines.
- 9.
See, for example, Tom Rockmore, German Idealism as Constructivism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), chap. 3; Kienhow Goh, “The Ideality of Idealism: Fichte’s Battle against Kantian Dogmatism,” in Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy, ed. Tom Rockmore and Daniel Breazeale (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 128–42.
- 10.
See, for example, Steven Hoeltzel, “The Unity of Reason in Kant and Fichte,” in Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of Transcendental Idealism, ed. Halla Kim and Steven Hoeltzel (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 129–52. Cf. Daniel Breazeale, “The Problematic Primacy of the Practical,” in Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 404–39; cf. also Günter Zöller, Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chaps. 5 & 6.
- 11.
See especially Michelle Kosch, “Fichtean Kantianism in Nineteenth-Century Ethics,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 53, no. 1 (2015): 111–32.
- 12.
There is also Schopenhauer to consider, but in this case the connection is more remote. See Günter Zöller, “Schopenhauer’s Fairy Tale about Fichte: The Origin of The World as Will and Representation in German Idealism,” in A Companion to Schopenhauer, ed. Bart Vandenabeele (London: Blackwell, 2012), 385–402.
- 13.
“In the material sense”—ergo, the empirical sciences, broadly construed (Ed.).
- 14.
Note that much of what we ordinarily count as philosophy does not satisfy this Fichtean standard. For example, to elaborate a relations-based metaphysics consistent with quantum mechanics, or to develop an account of mental states as multiply-realizable functional states in order to link psychology and neuroscience, would not be to think philosophically, per the criterion outlined above. This is because in both of those cases one would be working to “expand the sphere of ordinary thinking”—thoughtfully filling in the picture which our experiences merely sketch—as opposed to bracketing and questioning that sphere in its entirety and as such (stepping back from that whole picture and asking how any such picture can first come about). Evidently, for Fichte, philosophysensu strictissimo must be (or at any rate must begin with) such higher-order, transcendental reflection on “ordinary thinking” as such (including ‘the material sciences’), for the reason that, in the absence of “this separation from actual life,” our thinking remains in the grip of unexamined assumptions as to what there really is—tacit default commitments which transcendental philosophy deactivates and interrogates (see EPW 432–35 [GA III/3, no. 440]).
- 15.
For a classic treatment of this topic, see Daniel Breazeale, “Idealism vs. Dogmatism,” in Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre, 301–33.
- 16.
In a strikingly forward-looking argument, Fichte denies that such an explanation ever could be completely carried through, on the grounds that the self-transparency, intentionality, and normativity integral to I-hood are ‘dogmatically’ inexplicable—i.e., irreducible to any amount or arrangement of mindless objects and aimless processes (see especially IWL 20–25 [GA I/4:195–99]).
- 17.
Cf. IWL 17 (GA I/4:193): “The dispute between the idealist and the dogmatist is actually a dispute over whether the self-sufficiency of the I should be sacrificed to that of the thing, or conversely, whether the self-sufficiency of the thing should be sacrificed to that of the I.”
- 18.
For a more detailed treatment of the transcendental theory outlined here, see Steven Hoeltzel, “The Three Basic Principles (drei Grundsätze),” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Fichte, ed. Marina F. Bykova (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming).
- 19.
In Fichte, see e.g. IWL 149–50 (GA I/4:184–85); VM 99 (GA I/6:284–85).
- 20.
All quotations in this chapter that reference WL are my own translations; I provide the references for the benefit of Anglophone readers who wish to examine the indicated claims in context.
- 21.
Here the main puzzle is presented by “schlechthin,” which is often rendered as “absolutely,” but which can just as acceptably (from a purely verbal standpoint) be rendered as “purely and simply,” or just “simply”—which might put an interestingly different spin on Fichte’s principles. Many contemporary scholars are chary of “absolutely,” insofar as the term “absolute” (“the absolute I,” and so on) can seem to suggest an outdated, metaphysically inflationary interpretation of Fichte’s idealism. Still, there are philosophically significant but not disreputably-‘metaphysical’ senses in which the I’s positing of itself (etc.) might qualify as interestingly ‘absolute’—for instance, in being neither causally compelled by prior conditions nor rationally mandated by any prior commitments.
- 22.
For a helpful discussion of this concept, see pp. 376–83 in Paul Franks, “Fichte’s Position: Anti-Subjectivism, Self-Awareness, and Self-Location in the Space of Reasons,” in The Cambridge Companion to Fichte, ed. David James and Günter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 374–404.
- 23.
Two landmark earlier studies are: Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Zöller, Fichte’s Transcendental Idealism.
- 24.
On cognitive construction in Fichte, see also Rockmore, German Idealism as Constructivism, chap. 3.
- 25.
For a helpful discussion of this dimension of Fichte’s position, see pp. 82–87 in Allen W. Wood, “Deduction of the Summons and the Existence of Other Rational Beings,” in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, ed. Gabriel Gottlieb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 72–91.
- 26.
See Allen W. Wood, “Fichte’s Intersubjective I,” in The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 194–213.
- 27.
Concerning Fichte’s justification of those norms, see Frederick Neuhouser, “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality,” in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, ed. Gabriel Gottlieb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 32–51.
- 28.
See Kosch, “Fichtean Kantianism.”
- 29.
See Michelle Kosch, Fichte’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Allen W. Wood, Fichte’s Ethical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Owen Ware, Fichte’s Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Owen Ware and Stefano Bacin, eds., Fichte’s System of Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
- 30.
For further discussion, see James A. Clarke, “Fichte’s Independence Thesis,” in Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right: A Critical Guide, ed. Gabriel Gottlieb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 52–71.
- 31.
This is my paraphrase of Fichte’s reasoning, but for this understanding of his position, I am particularly indebted (albeit not perfectly faithful) to Wood, “Deduction of the Summons,” and Neuhouser, “Fichte’s Separation of Right from Morality.”
- 32.
For further development of this point, see (in addition to Chap. 16, below) David James, Fichte’s Republic: Idealism, History and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 38–39. For an overview of cosmopolitanism in Fichte (and Kant), see Emiliano Acosta, “Revisiting Kant and Fichte’s Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism,” Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte 16 (2018): https://journals.openedition.org/ref/805.
- 33.
Indeed, Fichte is so thoroughly convinced of the concept’s obvious inadmissibility that he repeatedly claims that Kant himself never seriously affirms that there are things in themselves that ground our sensations. See especially IWL 65–71 (GA I/4:234–39).
- 34.
Fichte himself liked to describe his relationship with Kant’s work in exactly these terms. See especially IWL 63–64n (GA I/4:231n).
- 35.
On transcendental ontology in German Idealism more generally, see Markus Gabriel, Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
- 36.
See Steven Hoeltzel, “Fichte and Existentialism: Freedom and Finitude, Subjectivity and Striving,” in The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism, ed. Jon Stewart (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
- 37.
See the essays collected in Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, ed. Violetta L. Waibel, Daniel Breazeale, and Tom Rockmore (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010).
- 38.
For a classic statement of this view, see Allen W. Wood, “Introduction,” in ACR, xxiv–xxviii; cf. Allen W. Wood, “Fichte’s Philosophical Revolution,” Philosophical Topics, 19, no. 2 (1991): 1–28.
- 39.
See David J. Kangas, “J. G. Fichte: From Transcendental Ego to Existence,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries Tome I, Philosophy, ed. Jon Stewart (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 49–66.
- 40.
In addition to Kangas, “J. G. Fichte,” see: Michelle Kosch, “Kierkegaard’s ethicist: Fichte’s role in Kierkegaard’s construction of the ethical standpoint,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 88, no.3 (2006): 261–95; Samuel Loncar, “From Jena to Copenhagen: Kierkegaard’s Relations to German Idealism and the Critique of Autonomy in The Sickness unto Death,” Religious Studies 47, no. 2 (2011): 201–16.
- 41.
See, for example, James G. Hart, “Husserl and Fichte: With special regard to Husserl’s lectures on ‘Fichte’s ideal of humanity,’” Husserl Studies 12 (1995): 135–63.
- 42.
See Marion Heinz, “Die Fichte-Rezeption in der südwestdeutschen Schule des Neukantianismus,” Fichte-Studien 13 (1997): 109–29.
- 43.
Martin Heidegger, Towards the Definition of Philosophy, trans. Ted Sadler (London: Continuum, 2008), 111.
- 44.
Ibid., 75.
- 45.
Cf. Alfred Denker, “The Young Heidegger and Fichte,” in Heidegger, German Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism, ed. Tom Rockmore (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000), 103–22.
- 46.
Heidegger, Towards the Definition, 69; for further context, see Theodore Kisiel, “Heidegger—Lask—Fichte,” in Rockmore, Heidegger, German Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism, 239–70.
- 47.
See Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe: Abteilung II, Band 28: Der deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), ed. Claudius Strube (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1997), 65. For discussion, see Jürgen Stolzenberg, “Martin Heidegger reads Fichte,” in Waibel, Breazeale, and Rockmore, Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, 207–22.
- 48.
See Dorothea Wildenburg, Ist der Existentialismus Ein Idealismus?: Transzendentalphilosophische Analyse der Selbstbewußtseinstheorie des Frühen Sartre Aus der Perspektive der Wissenschaftslehre Fichtes (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003); cf. Daniel Breazeale, “How to Make an Existentialist? In Search of a Shortcut from Fichte to Sartre,” in Waibel, Breazeale, and Rockmore, Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, 277–312.
- 49.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism” (reprinted as “Existentialism”), trans. Bernard Frechtman, in Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Citadel Press, 1985), 13; cf. 15f.
- 50.
Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft, 5th enl. ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 96–97n.
- 51.
For a sympathetic presentation of Henrich’s position vis-à-vis that of Habermas, see Dieter Freundlieb, Dieter Henrich and Contemporary Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
- 52.
For an overview of Apel’s approach, see Matthias Kettner, “Raising Validity Claims for Reasons: Transcendental Reflection in Apel’s Argumentative Discourse,” in Transcendental Inquiry: Its History, Methods, and Critiques, ed. Halla Kim and Steven Hoeltzel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 209–32.
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Hoeltzel, S. (2019). Introduction: Fichte’s Post-Kantian Project. In: Hoeltzel, S. (eds) The Palgrave Fichte Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26508-3_1
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