Abstract
This chapter offers a fresh perspective on Fichte’s controversial critique of dogmatism in the “First” and “Second Introductions” to the Attempt at a New Presentation of the Science of Knowledge. It argues that the issue at stake in Fichte’s anti-dogmatism is the demand that reason be thoroughly determined from within itself and hence not be determined by anything outside it. It then addresses the charge of Fichte’s two-mindedness about the effectiveness of his refutation of dogmatism, by arguing that the absolute autonomy of reason deprives the idealist of any objective foothold upon which to refute the dogmatist outside of moral belief, which furnishes him with the subjective ground of rational justification, by means of which the dogmatist can be refuted on his own terms.
I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.
—Martin Luther
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Notes
- 1.
John Lachs, “Preface,” in WL, x. J. Douglas Rabb then took issue with Lachs in a series of exchanges. See Rabb, “Lachs on Fichte,” Dialogue 12, no. 3 (1973): 480–85; Lachs, “Fichte’s Idealism,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 9 (1972): 311–18; Rabb, “J. G. Fichte: Three Arguments for Idealism,” Idealistic Studies 6 (1976): 169–77. Peter Suber discusses the same problem in “A Case Study in Ad Hominem Arguments: Fichte’s Science of Knowledge,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 23 (1990): 22–25.
- 2.
See Daniel Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte’s Early Jena Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 301–33.
- 3.
Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Philosophical Letters on Dogmatismand Criticism, in The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Essays by F. W. J. Schelling, trans. Fritz Marti (London: Associated Universities Press, 1980), 156.
- 4.
Ibid., 170.
- 5.
Ibid., 168, 170.
- 6.
Ibid., 173.
- 7.
Reinhard Lauth, “Die erste Auseinandersetzung zwischen Fichte und Schelling 1795–97,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 21, H. 3 (Jul.–Sep. 1967): 341–67. However, one should be careful not to overstate the extent of Schelling’s influence on Fichte. For example, the claim that idealism and dogmatism are the only two possible systems is already present in the 1794Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (see WL 118n [GA I/2:280n]).
- 8.
Fichte’s apparent efforts to incorporate realist elements into his system have led to some perplexity over the nature of his “idealism.” See Wayne Martin’s discussion of the debate between Thomas Rockmore and W.J. Douglas in “Fichte’s Anti-Dogmatism,” Ratio: An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (1992): 129–33. Martin proposes to solve the problem by distinguishing dogmatism from realism, identifying the former more narrowly with naturalistic accounts of subjectivity, since “there is no contradiction in saying, on the one hand, that idealism is wholly incompatible with dogmatism (i.e., with naturalistic accounts of subjectivity) and also, on the other hand, that idealism must come to terms with a realist ontology” (ibid., 143–44). But this leaves unanswered the question of how idealism can come to terms with a realist ontology without conceding some naturalistic account of subjectivity. In my view, the problem is more satisfactorily resolved in terms of the distinction between a transcendental and an empirical sense of the idealism/realism distinction. See Frederick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 52–55; Paul Franks, All or Nothing: (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 48–50. Viewing dogmatism as a form of transcendental realism, Fichte rejects it without reserve while acknowledging an empirical realism.
- 9.
See Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre, 308.
- 10.
Schelling, Philosophical Letters, 171.
- 11.
Ibid., 157.
- 12.
See Rabb, “J.G. Fichte,” 172–73, and Lachs, “Fichte’s Idealism,” 315.
- 13.
For further discussion of the issue, see Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre, 302–3.
- 14.
Schelling, Philosophical Letters, 176, translation modified.
- 15.
Suber, “Case Study,” 20.
- 16.
R.S. Kemp argues that Fichte is a “proto-existentialist” by highlighting Fichte’s view that dogmatism cannot be refuted for the dogmatist. See Kemp, “How to Become an Idealist: Fichte on the Transition from Dogmatism to Idealism,” British Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 no. 6 (2017): 1161–79. In my view, Fichte is no “proto-existentialist,” because a philosopher chooses idealism over dogmatism based on certain rational considerations, albeit considerations which are delivered by a non-voluntary act of spontaneity.
- 17.
Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre, 347.
- 18.
The view that dogmatism has moral underpinnings is not, as one might think, a result of Fichte’s encounter with Schelling’s Philosophical Letters, but is already advanced in theFoundation (see WL 118–19 [GA I/2:279–80]).
- 19.
The phrase is made common by Karl Ameriks and Breazeale in their work on the primacy of practical reason in the Wissenschaftslehre. See Ameriks, The Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation of the Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Ameriks, “Fichte’s Appeal Today: The Hidden Primacy of the Practical,” in The Emergence of German Idealism, ed. Michael Baur and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1999), 116–30; Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre, 419–25; Breazeale, “Certainty, Universal Validity and Conviction: The Methodological Primacy of Practical Reason with the Jena Wissenschaftslehre,” in New Perspectives on Fichte, ed. Tom Rockmore and Dan Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996), 35–60.
- 20.
Martin, “Fichte’s Anti-Dogmatism,” 142.
- 21.
Martial Gueroult, “L’Antidogmatisme de Kant et Fichte,” Études sur Fichte (New York: Georg Olms, 1974), 19, my translation.
- 22.
Fichte notes quite rightly that although Kant has not actually constructed such a system, he could not have said some of the things he has said without having thought it. Consider, for example, Kant’s talk of a “supersensible nature” that serves as a “natura archetypa” of “sensible nature” (CPrR 174–75 [Ak 5:43]).
- 23.
Ameriks, Fate of Autonomy, 164.
- 24.
Fichte argues in Appeal to the Public that dogmatism is inevitably found together with “eudaemonism” or utilitarianism, which gives rise in turn to idolatry, while idealism is inevitably found together with “moralism” or deontology, which gives rise in turn to true religiosity (see GA I/5:434–39). For a thought-provoking account of what dogmatism could mean for one’s socio-economic, political and moral affiliations, see Allen Wood, Fichte’s Ethical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 40–43.
- 25.
Fichte:
Many people have simply not progressed in their own thinking past the point of being able to grasp the single series constituted by the mechanism of nature. So long as this single series is the only one present in their minds, then, naturally enough, even if they should desire to think about representations, they will consider them too to be part of this same series. (IWL 24 [GA I/4:198–99])
- 26.
Thus “not even the dogmatist … can pretend” that the system of experience is anything other than “thinking accompanied by a feeling of necessity” (IWL 13 [GA I/4:190]); “When a philosopher considers things from [the] standpoint [from which he is first impelled to philosophize], all he discovers is that he must entertain representations both of himself as free and of determinate things external to himself” (IWL 17 [GA I/4:193]). Dogmatists
undoubtedly do think of [the] concept [of the I]. For otherwise, how would they be able to compare it with and to relate it to other concepts? If they were really unable to think of this concept of the I, then they would also be unable to say the least thing about it. It would remain simply unknown to them in every respect. But, as we can see, they have actually succeeded in generating the thought of the I, from which it of course follows that they must be able to do this. (IWL 79 [GA I/4:246–47])
- 27.
See Luigi Pareyson, Il sistema della libertà (Milano: Mursia, 1976), 265–66, 273–75.
- 28.
Note that this rendering of the Reinholdian criterion of being “universally accepted” (allgemeingeltend) does not conflate it with the other Reinholdian criterion of being “universally valid” (allgemeingültig): a system is universally valid just as long as it is valid for everyone, regardless of whether it is recognized by anyone to be so or not.
- 29.
Suber, “Case Study,” 22.
- 30.
Recent examples of the former group include Frederick Neuhouser, Robert Pippin and Andrew Lamb, while those of the latter group include Ameriks, Matthew C. Altman and Kemp. See Lamb, “Fichte’s ‘Introductions’ as Introductions to Certainty,” Idealistic Studies 27 (1997): 193–215; Altman, “Idealism is the Only Possible Philosophy: Systematicity and the Fichtean Fact of Reason,” Idealistic Studies 31 (2001): 1–21. Breazeale takes the more subtle position that Fichte offers demonstrations of the superiority of idealism, albeit one with an indemonstrable basis. Somewhat differently, Wood holds that “the question is decided by reason, but a dogmatist cannot be convinced by reason because the dogmatist is trapped in a web of dishonesty and deception, refusing to listen to reason. The kind of reason that supports idealism, however … is one that supports faith rather than knowledge.” Wood, Fichte’s Ethical Thought, 72.
- 31.
As previously noted, the idealist’s choice of the first principle of his system is based upon, and informed by, an interest that is the Fichtean equivalent of Kant’s “interest of reason.” More precisely, it is what Kant would call an “interest of theoretical reason.” On Fichte’s view then, Kant’s “interest of theoretical reason” is already practical.
- 32.
Suber, “Case Study,” 13.
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Goh, K. (2019). Fichte’s Anti-Dogmatism and the Autonomy of Reason. 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_7
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