Daniel Breazeale

Kant’s primarily negative account of his own method as a transcendental philosopher presented a challenge to his idealist followers. In response, Fichte made a sustained effort to clarify and to apply his own conception of the proper method of transcendental philosophy. Like Kant, Fichte conceived of this method as a priori, synthetic, and progressive. He also claimed that it was descriptive of certain constitutive acts of the I. What is described by the Wissenschaftslehre is a process by means of which I-hood comes into being in the first place. Hence the method of transcendental philosophy can also be described as genetic. Fichte contended that a genetic description of consciousness required an a priori construction of the same on the part of the philosopher in the medium of pure intuition. Unlike Kant, Fichte stressed the similarities between the methods of philosophy and mathematics.

The first part of this paper traces the evolution of Fichte’s complex attitude toward Spinoza’s philosophy in an effort to understand what Fichte himself characterized as his and Spinoza’s “common standpoint” as well as the “essential difference” between their systems. The second addresses the question of why Fichte continued to devote so much attention to Spinoza. I conclude that Fichte’s use of Spinozism was primarily heuristic, as a uniquely appropriate means for introducing readers and students to the Wissenschaftslehre.

A surprising explosion of interest in J. G. Fichte's system of transcendental philosophy--the so-called Wissenschaftslehre or "Theory of Scientific Knowledge"--has occurred in recent decades. Whereas previous interest in Fichte centered primarily upon the early works which he published while in Jena and was concerned to establish his position on the mythical stairway stretching from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, the most interesting recent work focuses upon his later, often unpublished, writings and makes large claims concerning the originality and contemporary relevance of the WL. Despite a blizzard of new monographs and essays, a general overview of Fichte's entire work from the perspective of current research has been lacking. This lack is now remedied with the publication of this new Introduction to Fichte's thought by a noted exponent of the prevailing "Munich school" of Fichte interpreters, Joachim Widmann, who is best known for his highly original and rigorously formal study of Fichte's spring 1804 lectures on the WL.

Feeling (Gefühl) is central to Fichte’s genetic account of consciousness in his Jena writings. Feeling provides the I with the raw material from which it then constructs representations of objects, and it does the same for the philosopher. “Spirit” (Geist) is the general ability to raise feelings to consciousness, but the philosopher requires the special ability to raise to consciousness feelings of those spontaneous acts by means of which the I originally posits itself. One obtains access to such “deep lying” feelings by means of abstraction and reflection. Only a philosophy that obtains its raw material from immediate feeling can claim to provide an accurate portrayal of its object, the necessary actions of the I. Only then can a philosophy claim to be “real.” The products of philosophical reflection are concepts, concepts of those actions of the I that are required as conditions for the possibility of its own “unconditionally posited” self-positing as an I. Such concepts are products of the philosopher’s creative power of imagination, operating, as always, in conjunction with his powers of intuition, understanding and judgment, but beginning with the content provided by feeling. The main difference between philosophical and non-philosophical concepts lies entirely in the peculiar and rare species of feeling upon which the former are grounded.