Abstract
I lay the groundwork for an anthropological reading of Fichte’s work based on contemporary anthropology that is critical, in a non-Eurocentric manner, of Western metaphysics. Taking seriously the ontological division between a free and enslaved/enslaving humanity repeatedly maintained by Fichte, I argue that what is at stake in the Fichtean practice of the Wissenschaftslehre, as a critical and liberating practice, is a becoming-other in the strong sense of the term: that is, the transformation of a subjugated being into an entirely different being. Insisting on the exclusively oral dimension of this practice and on Fichte’s bibliophobia, I offer an ethnological and decolonial interpretation of the political theory of the foreigner (Ausländer) developed in the Addresses to the German Nation and an ethnopsychiatric interpretation of the ‘medicinam mentis’ that is, according to the Berlin Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre, the main goal of Fichte’s lectures. Through this synthetic and original reading, I hope to bring the fore the fundamental traits of a new, decolonial practice of philosophy, showing how Fichte still resonates with us.
Translated by Kyla Bruff
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- 1.
See J.G. Fichte, ‘First Introduction to the Science of Knowledge,’ in Science of Knowledge [hereinafter cited parenthetically as WL-1794], ed. and trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1982), 8 ff. GA, I/4: 188 ff. Citations of Fichte provide the pagination of the English translation, where possible, followed by that of the J.G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 42 vols, ed. Erich Fuchs, Reinhard Lauth, and Hans Gliwitzky (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964–2012). References to the Akademie edition are given by the abbreviation GA, division, volume and page number.
- 2.
Literally, ‘Wissenschaft’ suggests a ‘production (schaffen)’ of ‘knowledge (Wissen),’ the latter of which presupposes consciousness. In this sense, we could translate ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ as a ‘teaching (Lehre)’ that deals with the ‘production of knowledge and consciousness,’ the two fundamental kinds of which are those of dogmatism and transcendental philosophy.
- 3.
J.G. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation [hereinafter cited parenthetically as AGN], trans. Gregory Moore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 86; GA, I/10: 184.
- 4.
This is, of course, a play on Fichte’s Die Anweisung zum seeligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre, translated into English as The Way Towards the Blessed Life; or, the Doctrine of Religion, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb, trans. William Smith, ed., and with an introduction by Daniel Breazeale (Bristol, England: Thoemes Press, 1999 [originally published between 1848 and 1889]).
- 5.
Étienne Balibar, ‘Fichte et la frontière intérieure. À propos des Discours à la nation allemande,’ in ‘Philosophie et politique en Allemagne (XVIIIe–XXe siècles),’ Special Issue, Cahiers de Frontenay 58–59 (1990): 75.
- 6.
J.G. Fichte, Science of Knowing: J.G. Fichte’s 1804 Lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre [hereinafter cited parenthetically as WL-1804], trans. Walter E. Wright (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), 106; GA, II/8: 202/203. The GA version contains the two known versions of second series of these lectures—the one published by I.H Fichte and a copy made in an unidentified hand—printed on facing pages to aid a comparison, given the lack of Fichte’s own manuscript (hence, the double pagination).
- 7.
Borrowed from the Fourth Lecture of the second version of the Wissenschaftslehre 1804. See, for instance, WL-1804, 40, 72; GA, II/8: 52/53, 122/123.
- 8.
Here I play on Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, trans. John and Dorren Weightman (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1966).
- 9.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: Dover, 1998), 341 ff.
- 10.
See ‘Zu der Einleitung in die gesammte Philosophie, die da ist Anleitung zum Philosophieren,’ in GA, II/11: 261.
- 11.
J.G. Fichte, The Closed Commercial State, trans. Anthony Curtis Alder (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012), 86 f.; GA, I/7: 43 f.
- 12.
In the last case, I am referring to the spirit that comes to visit the narrator. See The Vocation of Man, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 27 ff.; GA, I/6: 215.
- 13.
See, for instance, George Devereux, Ethnopsychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis and Anthropology as Complementary Frames of Reference (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) and Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Tobie Nathan, La Folie des autres. Traité d’ethnopsychiatrie clinique (Paris: Dunod, 1986).
- 14.
See Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2008).
- 15.
See Pierre F. Verger, Ewé: The Use of Plants in Yoruba Society (Sao Paulo: Obdebracht, 1995).
- 16.
See, for instance, Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, trans. Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2013), 66.
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Goddard, JC. (2016). The Beech and the Palm Tree: Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre as a Project of Decolonization. In: McGrath, S., Carew, J. (eds) Rethinking German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53514-6_7
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