Daniel Breazeale

Daniel Breazeale - All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 665-667 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Daniel Breazeale University of Kentucky Paul W. Franks. All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. viii + 440. Cloth, $49.95. Paul Franks' All or Nothing is in no sense an introduction to or history of German idealism, but an immensely sophisticated philosophical engagement with a specific complex of problems that occupied Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and others—problems they believed themselves to have inherited from Kant's transcendental philosophy, as well as from its criticism by Jacobi, Maimon, Schulze, and others. According to Franks, these thinkers were involved in a common systematic project of "ultimate" or "absolute" grounding, while adopting various strategies to avoid "the Agrippan Trilemma," according to which any effort to justify an ultimate first principle must involve either the purely arbitrary assertion or stipulation of the principle in question, an infinite regress of explanatory principles, or a viciously circular justification of the principle in..

These original essays, never published before, suggest the breadth and richness of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's philosophy and are signs of the contemporary effort to explore the relationship between his system of thought and current philosophical debates. Some of the issues discussed included the relationship between "theoretical" and "practical" reason; the philosophy of language; antifoundationalism; the juridical status of women; duties toward natural beings; and the political implications of the Wissenschaftslehre. In addition, the volume includes an introduciton that surveys the history of Fichte interpretation in the English-speaking world and assesses the current state of Fichte studies.

The title of this volume is intended to emphasize that, in comparison with more westerly varieties, there was something particularly "consoling" or "comforting" about the German Enlightenment: e.g., its deep sympathy toward the religious aspirations of mankind and its abiding respect for the authority of "healthy common sense." Ample evidence for this assertion is provided by the contents of this volume, which is a collection of twelve previously published essays, plus a previously published ceremonial address. Of the thirteen selections, five are in English and the rest--including those of most interest to philosophers--are in German.

IN 1787, six years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, one year before the publication of the Critique of Practical Reason, and three years prior to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment, Duke Karl August of Sax-Weimar was persuaded to establish at the University of Jena the world's first university chair designated for the promulgation and explication of the new Critical Philosophy associated with Immanuel Kant. The first occupant of this chair was Karl Leonhard Reinhold, an Austrian ex-monk, whose main qualification for the new position was his fame as the author of a series of well-received magazine articles promoting the new philosophy. At Jena, however, Reinhold's own "Kantianism" underwent an interesting metamorphosis; in the books and lectures that he wrote during his seven year tenure there he profoundly revised the Kantian system and produced a new version of it which he called "Elementary Philosophy." It is altogether appropriate that when Reinhold finally left Jena his successor should have been an even more innovative follower of Kant and admirer of Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy, J. G. Fichte. Fichte arrived in 1794 and immediately began constructing and laying before the public what is perhaps the most imaginative and remarkable of all the great post-Kantian speculative systems: his Wissenschaftslehre, or "Theory of Scientific Knowledge." Concurrent with the widespread revival of interest in German Idealism generally, interest in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre has increased remarkably in recent years. Often viewed as the first step "from Kant to Hegel," Fichte's system was in fact not the first attempt to convert Kant's philosophy into a more consistent and thoroughgoingly speculative system. The honor--or onus--of making the "first step" in this direction belongs to Reinhold, and the aim of this essay is to indicate why this is so by surveying the Elementary Philosophy and examining those of its features which most influenced other philosophers, most notably Fichte. Though it may be claiming too much to say that one cannot properly understand Fichte's early presentations of his system without some acquaintance with Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy, it is certainly true that a familiarity with the latter is a tremendous aid to anyone trying to penetrate the former. Though the chief purpose of this survey is to emphasize Reinhold's contributions to the development of German Idealism, an ulterior aim is to introduce contemporary readers, especially English-language readers, to Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy and to suggest reasons why this neglected and all but forgotten system might still merit serious study.

If it is true, as Prof. Seidel contends, that “Fichte is a philosophical genius of the first water”, so too is it true that he remains for contemporary readers one of the more inaccessible philosophical authors and that even his most important and celebrated work, the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, “cries out for a commentary”. No one who has struggled to come to terms with this fabulously abstract and frequently impenetrable text is likely to disagree with this judgment, and hence the appearance of an English language commentary on it is certainly a cause for celebration.

Though any talk about a "Reinhold renaissance" would be decidedly premature, it is nevertheless the case that his writings are currently being read and examined to a degree that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. The better-known works continue to be reissued in newly edited editions, and plans for the first collected edition of Reinhold's writings continue to proceed, albeit at a glacial pace. Reinhold has also been the subject of numerous recent articles and monographs. This new interest in Reinhold on the part of European scholars has yet to be matched by Anglophone authors. No doubt, this is to some extent a reflection of the simple fact that only one work of his has hitherto been available in English translation, namely, George di Giovanni's abridged version of The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge, included in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, which is now, unfortunately, out of print. A chapter of Frederick Beiser's The Fate of Reason was devoted to Reinhold, and there have also been a few essays on his philosophy published in English by other historians of philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 110-112 [Access article in PDF] Terry Pinkard. German Philosophy, 1670-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 382. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $23.00. In one respect, the story related in Terry Pinkard's new book on German idealism is a very old-fashioned one of the "from Kant to Hegel" sort, inasmuch as Hegel's system is here presented as the logical culmination of a single movement of thought, initiated by Kant and carried forward, first by Fichte and then by Schelling; and post-Hegelian philosophy is interpreted as a desperate reaction to the apparent failure of the grand idealist project. In other respects, however, Pinkard offers a welcome variation on this familiar tale by including chapter on less familiar figures and by interpreting the idealist project in the context of some current philosophical concerns.A distinctive feature of this new history is its powerful narrative thrust. Pinkard organizes his tale around a single, central issue, which he calls the "Kantian paradox." The paradox in question is that of self-legislation or self-authorization, a paradox implicit in Kant's claim that one can be bound by laws of which one is also the free author. Though this paradox obviously pertains to Kant's moral philosophy, Pinkard shows that it also extends to the application of any rational norms whatsoever. Pinkard's object is to show how each of the thinkers he discusses responded to this "Kantian paradox," culminating in Hegel's alleged recognition that this paradox is "the basic problem that all post-Kantian philosophies had to solve" (226) and in his effort to provide an essentially social solution to the problem of reason's self-authorization.The book commences with a superb essay on "'Germany' and German Philosophy," examining the relation of "German philosophy" to "Germany" during the period in question, an essay that would be an ideal first assignment for any course on nineteenth-century philosophy. Each of the four major parts of the book begins with a similarly useful, short historical/contextual introduction.Part One is a brilliant summary of the Kantian revolution, not just in epistemology and metaphysics, but also in moral philosophy, aesthetics, and teleology. Without bogging down in unnecessary details or arcane scholarly disputes, Pinkard manages to provide a nuanced account of Kant's arguments and conclusions, emphasizing those tensions and problems in Kant's writings that occupied the attention of the philosophers who followed.Part Two is devoted to the pre-Hegelian "post-Kantians," not just Fichte and the early Schelling, but also Jacobi, Reinhold, Hölderlin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Frederich Schlegel, and Fries. Pinkard's discussions of these lesser-known figures is welcome and illuminating. The same cannot, unfortunately, be said of his discussion of Fichte. Though the paradox of self-authorization is obviously a central Fichtean concern, Pinkard's account of the Wissenschaftslehre seriously distorts Fichte's project and accomplishments—beginning with Pinkard's failure to distinguish between the Wissenschaftslehre itself, as the name for a complete system of philosophy, and the 1794/95Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, which is concerned only with the rudimentary foundations of the same. (This leads him to the mistaken view that Fichte's treatises on right and ethics are "revisions" of the Wissenschaftslehre, [End Page 110] rather than systematic branches of the same.) The account of the Foundations is itself skewed, inasmuch as it fails to take account of how Part III of this text provides a "practical" solution to the "theoretical" impasse of Parts I and II. Instead, Pinkard offers an interpretation of Fichte's early system that simply ignores the centrality thereto of willing and striving, makes no mention of the key role of productive imagination, and characterizes Fichtean intellectual intuition as "an insight into the necessary structure of things themselves" (110). Though Pinkard is aware that the overwhelming majority of Fichte scholars reject such an interpretation, he nevertheless advances it, claiming the right to "argue the opposite view." Unfortunately, he keeps his "argument" to himself...

IN 1792 there appeared anonymously a book entitled, Aenesidemus, or Concerning the Foundations of the Elementary Philosophy Propounded in Jena by Professor Reinhold, including a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason. This curious work, which takes the form of series of letter exchanged between an enthusiastic champion of the new transcendental philosophy and a skeptical critic of this same philosophy, created something of a sensation, appearing as it did at the height of the first wave of general enthusiasm for the Critical Philosophy. Though by no means the first published attack on Kantianism, Aenesidemus was distinguished from most of the other early criticisms by the detailed character of its scrutiny as well as by its willingness to examine the Critical Philosophy not only in its original form, but also in the more "advanced" version represented by K. L. Reinhold’s Elementary Philosophy. Aenesidemus claimed to be nothing less than a demonstration of the untenability of the new philosophy, specifically, of its failure to refute what the anonymous author called "Humean skepticism."

This collection of 13 essays on the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte is the first volume in English to focus upon Fichte's most celebrated and influential philosophical text, his Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre ("Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge"). Fichte's Grundlage is an audaciously original effort to recast the Kantian philosophy into a full-blown system of "transcendental idealism." Rejecting all reference to "things in themselves," Fichte described his work as "the first philosophy of human freedom" and as a faithful expression of the true "spirit" of Kant's critical philosophy. For all of its deficiencies, the Grundlage occupied an absolutely pivotal role in the development of German idealism after Kant. Both Schelling and Hegel, for example, were profoundly influenced by the Grundlage. Most of the essays in this collection address specific themes and problems in the context of the Grundlage, such as imagination, time, representation, reflection, deduction, and transcendental methodology. Others examine the relationship of Fichte's philosophy to Kant's and the influence of the Grundlage upon such philosophers as Jacobi, Schelling, and Hegel. Collectively, these essays constitute an ideal introduction to the reading of Fichte's notoriously difficult but deeply rewarding work.

Seit vielen Jahren schon behaupte ich gelegentlich vor Freunden, Kollegen und Studenten, daß die frühe Wissenschaftslehre und Sartres Existentialismus, ungeachtet ihrer offensichtlichen Unterschiede, viele Gemeinsamkeiten aufweisen und daß es möglich sei, von der ersteren zur letzteren auf mehr oder weniger direktem Wege zu gelangen: »Direttissima« sozusagen. Die folgenden Bemerkungen stellen nun den Versuch meinerseits dar, die Gründe für diese eher oberflächlichen Behauptung nachzugehen. Mit diesem Ziel im Sinn werde ich so viele Punkte etwaiger Übereinstimmung untersuchen, wie es die Zeit erlaubt. Dies bedeutet, daß es mir unmöglich sein wird, eine vollständige Übersicht aller Vergleichspunkte zu bieten und daß ich jene, die ich herausgreife, nicht mit der Sorgfalt behandeln kann, die sie verdienen. Keinesfalls aber werde ich Indizien unterschlagen, die meine These widerlegen mögen; vielmehr werde ich versuchen, zu einem ausgewogenen Schluß zu kommen, zumindest was die fraglichen Punkte anbelangt.

The summer of 1989 was an especially eventful one for Poland, but in the midst of all the political ferment some two dozen scholars from 10 countries —including the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, China, Bulgaria, Italy, Israel, and the USA—spent five days together in a guest house owned by the Polish Academy of Sciences in the tiny village of Mogilany, a half-hour’s drive from Krakow. They were assembled for a conference organized by Prof. Marek Siemek, Director of the Philosophical Institute of the University of Warsaw. Though the conference bore the general title, “Transcendental Philosophy and Dialectic,” almost all of the contributions were specifically concerned with aspects of the philosophy of J. G. Fichte. This was only fitting, since the ostensible occasion for the conference was to celebrate the 70th birthday of the world’s best-known Fichtean, Prof. Reinhard Lauth of the University of Munich. Since the majority of the participants had also participated in the two International Fichte Conferences held in Austria in 1977 and 1987 there was something of an air of a class reunion about the gathering, which made for an especially congenial conference.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will by Günter ZöllerDaniel BreazealeGünter Zöller. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 169. Cloth, $49.95.The subtitle says it all: “Original Duplicity,” which is to say, interdependent duality, or perhaps “equiprimordiality.” The thesis defended by Günter Zöller in this meticulously documented and elegantly written new book is that the traditional emphasis upon the “primacy of the practical” in Fichte’s thought is seriously misleading and obscures one of the most striking aspects of his highly original transcendental analysis of consciousness and experience.Limiting his exegesis to the period of the “early” or “Jena” Wissenschaftslehre, Zöller carefully explains how “practical” and “theoretical” elements are inextricably linked at every stage of Fichte’s analysis. While it is certainly true that Fichte made a brilliant effort to demonstrate the dependence of “thinking” upon “willing,” of “knowing” upon “doing,” and hence of “theory” upon “practice,” it is no less true that, in doing so, he also established that there can be no “willing” without some prior awareness, and hence some “knowledge,” both of one’s present condition (“what is”) and of some particular goal to be accomplished by free activity (“what ought to be”). The Kantian distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” reason is, therefore, on Fichte’s analysis, simply a reflection of a more fundamental distinction between the “theoretical” and “practical” activities or powers of the I, neither of which can function in the absence of the other. [End Page 374]What Fichte proposes is, in Zöller’s phrase, a truly “integrated theory of reason,” one that begins by positing a pure and original unity of intellect and will in the mere concept of selfhood, that proceeds to a discursive, transcendental analysis of the dynamic and dialectical interplay between “theoretical” and “practical” moments in the constitution of experience (or of empirical self-consciousness), and that concludes by positing, albeit only as a regulative ideal, or as a necessary but unobtainable goal of infinite striving, the final, empirically achieved unity of theory and practice: an ideal of a self that is no longer divided against itself or others and of a world that has been wholly transformed by intellectually guided human activity. As Fichte’s account proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear not only that we must distinguish the will from the intellect—even as we continue to insist upon their systematic interdependence—but that we must also modify our original understanding of both. This conclusion is most unambiguously presented in those works of 1796–99 that collectively constitute the “second” or “revised” version of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, including the lectures on Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo and the System of Ethics, and it is upon an analysis of these texts that Zöller’s interpretation is chiefly based. According to the latter, an adequate theory of willing must not merely contrast and relate “the will” to “the intellect,” but must recognize that even pure volition contains a certain cognitive core and presupposes some guiding law that is simply integral to the will itself. Similarly, “mere cognition” will always be found to contain within itself, in the form of “feeling,” a certain “practical” dimension of its own.Zöller’s careful account of Fichte’s genetic deduction of the necessary interplay between theoretical and practical elements in the constitution of selfhood and experience is by far the most detailed and accurate one available in English, and forms the core of his book. It is by no means, however, the only topic he discusses. The first two chapters, for example, constitute an excellent general introduction to Fichte’s entire Jena project and include a fine discussion of the relationship between Kantian and Fichtean idealism. Chapter 3, which explicates the key notions of “positing” and “determining,” will be of immense help to anyone trying to understand German idealism in general and Fichte’s philosophy in particular. Like Kant’s ethical theory, Fichte’s is often treated in isolation from his larger system, but Zöller’s Chapter 4 clearly explicates the...

Karl Ameriks has recently devoted an entire volume to defending what he calls "orthodox" Kantianism against what he judges to be the "errors" of such post-Kantian idealists as K. L. Reinhold and J. G. Fichte and to exposing what he claims is the frequently unnoticed but always deleterious influence of post-Kantianism upon certain prominent strands of contemporary philosophy. In response, this paper challenges Ameriks' interpretation of Kantianism itself and of the "post-Kantian project", as well as his construal of transcendental idealism. This is followed by some remarks concerning Reinhold's and Fichte's actual "arguments" for transcendental idealism and a rejection of Ameriks' characterizations of the same. Ameriks' interpretation of "the primacy of the practical" within Fichte's philosophy is also analyzed and criticized, as are his unsubstantiated claims concerning the powerful "indirect" influence of the writings of Reinhold and Fichte upon contemporary philosophy.

This volume is a collection of previously unpublished papers dealing with the neglected "phenomenological" dimension of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which it compares and contrasts to the phenomenology of his contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and to that of Edmund Husserl and his 20th century followers. Issues discussed include: phenomenological method, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, temporality, intentionality, mind and body, and the drives. In addition to Fichte, authors discussed include: Hegel, Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Ricur.