Abstract
In this chapter I look at Fichte’s early philosophy in light of a general problem that connects the different endeavors of classical German thought in Kant’s aftermath. Although the question is a very broad one — and one raised time and again in the literature — I address it as part of a larger, more specific problematic constellation that starts at Hegel and turns back to Kant. At stake is, on the one hand, the question of the conditions and limits of the transcendental method inaugurated by Kant and, on the other hand, the connection between the claim that philosophy should be developed as a system and the method best suited to this aim. Ultimately, at issue here is, besides the meaning of philosophical method as a method for doing philosophy or for philosophical thinking, also the question of the parts of the system or the disciplines (and objects) with which philosophy should concern itself.
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Notes
G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, 20 vols., ed. E. Moldenhauer and H. M. Michel (Frankfurt a. M.: Surhkamp, 1986), VI, 569; hereafter TW.
See Nuzzo, “The End of Hegel’s Logic: Absolute Idea as Absolute Method,” in Hegel’s Theory of the Subject, ed. David G. Carlson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 187–205;
and Nuzzo, “Thinking Being: Method in Hegel’s Logic of Being,” in A Companion to Hegel, ed. S. Houlgate and M. Bauer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 111–139.
KrV, B860/A832. For a discussion of the topic of system, see Nuzzo, System (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2003; with the relevant literature). For the post-Kantian debate with regard to figures not directly addressed here,
see P. Franks, “All or Nothing: Systematicity and Nihilism in Jacobi, Reinhold, and Maimon,” in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. K. Ameriks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 95–116.
BWL, SW I, 32; see W. Schrader, “Philosophie als System — Reinhold und Fichte,” in Erneuerung der Transzendentalphilosophie im Anschluss an Kant und Fichte, ed. K. Hammacher and A. Mues (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1979), 331–344.
See, in general, H. F. Fulda, Das Problem einer Einleitung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann), 1965.
See T. Rockmore, “Fichtean Circularity, Antifoundationalism, and Groundless System,” Idealistic Studies 25, 1995, 107–124.
See TW 3, 22; see G. Di Giovanni, “‘Wie aus der Pistole’: Fries and Hegel on Faith and Knowledge,” in Hegel and the Tradition: Essays in Honor of H. S. Harris, ed. H. S. Harris, M. Baur, and J. Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 212–244.
This is the point in which the “ontology of things” yields to an “ontology of processes” (see D. Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 205. On this point Hegel and Fichte are in agreement.
See Nuzzo, “Kritik der Urteilskraft §§76–77: Reflective Judgment and the Limits of Transcendental Philosophy,” Kant Yearbook 1 (2009), 143–172.
The question, which I have raised and developed elsewhere, is whether transcendental philosophy can indeed be extended in this way without ceasing to be what it is. I think that both Kant and Hegel answer negatively to this question. See also G. Zöller, “From Transcendental Philosophy to Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte’s Modification of Kant’s Idealism,” European Journal of Philosophy 15, 2, 2007, 249–269.
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© 2014 Angelica Nuzzo
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Nuzzo, A. (2014). Transcendental Philosophy, Method, and System in Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. In: Rockmore, T., Breazeale, D. (eds) Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412232_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412232_5
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