Abstract
Rejecting the tendency to regard Fichte as merely a transitional figure in the development of German idealism, the following paper argues that, in the years following his dismissal from Jena, Fichte will come to map out a unique and compelling philosophical trajectory. This will be demonstrated, in particular, through a close reading of the Erlanger lectures Institutiones omnis philisophiae of 1805: in these texts, which undertake the pedagogical task of introducing his students to philosophy and indeed achieving a “transformation” of perspective, Fichte makes a fundamental philosophical breakthrough. This becomes possible precisely because his focus on the pedagogical task draws his attention to the most fundamental subjective or even “existential” conditions of philosophical insight, leading him, in turn, to a theorization of the capacity of understanding, by producing contradictions, to open up a space of negativity; a negativity that is itself the essence of human freedom, and through which truth is yielded rather than either discovered or produced. Whereas Hegel and Schelling regard Kant’s residual dualism as a philosophical scandal, Fichte, through this notion of a radical freedom born from the unresolved negativity of the understanding, will seek not to overcome dualism through a higher perspective but to recognize its absolutely binding character.
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Notes
- 1.
Hegel (1977, 155).
- 2.
Zöller (2000, 200).
- 3.
Beiser (2002, 10–14).
- 4.
Beiser (2002, 304).
- 5.
Pinkard (2002, 129–130).
- 6.
All references to Fichte’s work are to the Gesamtausgabe (1961–2012) of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, hereafter FGA. All translations, unless mentioned, are my own.
- 7.
Bertinetto (2009, 343).
- 8.
For a comprehensive account of the atheism controversy, see La Vopa (2001, 402–424).
- 9.
Perhaps the most striking example of this Platonic posture is Fichte’s Closed Commercial State, which conceives of politics as that which achieves the transition from the real and existing state to the ideal state (Fichte 2012).
- 10.
Fuchs (2009, 239).
- 11.
Fuchs (2009, 240–241).
- 12.
Fuchs (2009).
- 13.
FGA II:9, 330. For a comprehensive treatment of the Ideen, see Gerten (2009).
- 14.
FGA II:9, 359.
- 15.
FGA II:9, 359–360.
- 16.
- 17.
FGA II:9, 360.
- 18.
FGA II:9, 36.
- 19.
FGA II:9, 37.
- 20.
FGA II:9, 37.
- 21.
FGA II:9, 16.
- 22.
FGA II:12, 59.
- 23.
See Adler (2019, 200).
- 24.
FGA II:9, 45.
- 25.
FGA II:9, 46.
- 26.
FGA II:9, 47.
- 27.
FGA II:9, 95.
- 28.
FGA II:9, 55.
- 29.
FGA II: 9, 56.
- 30.
FGA II:9, 103–4.
- 31.
FGA II:9, 102.
- 32.
FGA II: 9, 146.
- 33.
FGA II: 9, 146.
- 34.
FGA II, 9: 140.
- 35.
FGA II:9, 167.
- 36.
Cf. Bertinetto (2009, 355).
- 37.
FGA II:9, 141.
- 38.
FGA II:9, 140.
- 39.
FGA II:9, 143.
- 40.
This “bureaucratic” vocation might also be understood, following Smith, as an understanding of the philosopher as “Mandarins,” “embodiments of a state’s ideal of culture” (Smith 2016, 198).
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Adler, A.C. (2023). Caput Mortuum: Truth, Freedom, and Negation in Fichte’s Institutiones Omnis Philosophiae. In: Moss, G.S. (eds) The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13862-1_7
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