David W. Wood

Throughout different versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, J. G. Fichte uses the term ‘experiment’ in reference to his philosophical method. This paper presents an account of Fichte’s methodological understanding of experiments in philosophy and their role in the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95). I show that Fichte in Part One and Two of the Grundlage describes and conducts a type of philosophical experiment that draws on key elements of Kant’s conception of an “experiment of pure reason” in the Critique of Pure Reason. On this account, Fichte introduces the notion of a philosophical experiment to explain how the Grundlage can establish its foundational principles by virtue of a synthetic method. Moreover, I argue that Fichte in Part Two further distinguishes between explorative and demonstrative experiments, each serving a distinctive role in proving the possibility and reality of theoretical knowledge. By way of this reading, I arrive at new conclusions concerning Fichte’s conception of the synthetic procedure to be employed in philosophy and the argumentative strategies employed in the Grundlage.

Fichte’s first principle is commonly understood as the absolute or self-positing I. Although this interpretation is not incorrect, it captures only a partial truth. The I that posits itself is intrinsically related to reason: the I is itself reason, and self-positing is the essence and original act of reason. This article argues that only a reason-contextual reading of the first principle reveals its full significance. The argument unfolds in two parts. The first examines a corpus of passages in which Fichte employs the term ‘reason’ and the conceptual frameworks that underlie it. The second addresses three questions arising from this analysis: whether the I is identical with reason; whether Fichte proposes a model that redefines the relation between reason and the I beyond Kant’s; and what strategies can be developed to sustain the reason-contextual reading.