Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom Rockmore is professor of philosophy at Duquesne University. He is the author of many books, most recently Kant and Idealism. Daniel Breazeale is professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky.

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AFTER JENA

Northwestern University Press

Contents

Introduction...........................................................................................................................viiList of Abbreviations..................................................................................................................xiiiToward a Wissenschaftslehre more geometrico (1800-1801) Daniel Breazeale..............................................................3Structures of Imagination in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre 1794-1795 and 1804 Violetta L. Waibel........................................41Thinking and Willing in the Later Fichte Gnter Zller................................................................................51Toward or Away from Schelling? On the Thematic Shift in Fichte's Later Philosophy Steven Hoeltzel.....................................67Fichte's Reaction to Schelling's Identity Philosophy in 1806 Michael Vater............................................................81The Light That Lights the Seeing of the Light: The Second Wissenschaftslehre of 1804 George J. Seidel.................................91After Jena: Fichte's Religionslehre Yolanda Estes.....................................................................................99Fichte's Conception of the System of Philosophy in Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben Ernst-Otto Onnasch.................................115How Not to Read Fichte's Anweisung zum seligen Leben (1806): Against the Mystical Reading Kevin Zanelotti.............................131The Notion of Being in Fichte's Late Philosophy Johannes Brachtendorf.................................................................151Fall and Freedom: A Comparison of Fichte's and Saint Paul's Understandings of Original Sin Holger Zaborowski..........................162Fichte and the Ursprache Andrew Fiala.................................................................................................183"The Logic of Historical Truth": History and Individuality in Fichte's Later Philosophy of History Angelica Nuzzo.....................198Fichte on Knowledge, Practice, and History Tom Rockmore...............................................................................220Contributors...........................................................................................................................237

Chapter One

Daniel Breazeale

On the "Development" of Fichte's Philosophy and the Problematic "Unity of the Wissenschaftslehren"

The issue of the development of Fichte's philosophy-sometimes referred to as the problem of the "unity of the Wissenschaftslehren"-has long been central to Fichte studies. Even during his own lifetime, Fichte had to respond to charges-notably Schelling's-that he had abandoned the standpoint of his early, Jena system for a radically different one. Though some excellent scholars-for example, Loewe, Fischer, Lon, and Wundt-have agreed with Fichte on this point, and have argued that the differences between the various presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre concern only the external "form" of a philosophical system the underlying principles and content of which remained unchanged from beginning to end, many others have been convinced that the striking differences of vocabulary and of presentation between, for example, the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre of 1794-95, the Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre of 1801-2, and the Wissenschaftslehre of 1810, are indications of profound differences in the underlying contents of the same. These same interpreters, however, disagree among themselves concerning the precise number of significantly different "stages" or "periods" to assign to the development of the Wissenschaftslehre. Should one, for example, in the manner of Erdmann, Windelband, Medicus, Weischedel, Schmid, Heimsoeth, Janke, Rohs, and many others, simply distinguish between "earlier" and "later" Wissenschaftslehren, separated by an alleged "turn toward the absolute"? Or should one, in the manner of Rickert, Lask, and Drechsler, also distinguish a "middle period"? Or should one make even finer-grained distinctions within each of these two (or three) main periods, emphasizing the distinctive character of each of Fichte's fifteen or so individual presentations of his philosophy?

Even among those who concede that there are substantial differences among at least some of Fichte's presentations of his philosophy there is disagreement concerning the precise significance of these differences, with some concluding that they represent sharp breaks in the continuity of Fichte's thinking and others arguing for the slow and continual "evolution" of the Wissenschaftslehre from one presentation to the next. Interpreters of the former sort, of whom Gueroult is a good example, sometimes associate Fichte's apparent shift from one standpoint to another with certain external events, such as the "Atheism Controversy," or with the criticisms or initiatives of other philosophers, such as Jacobi or Schelling. In contrast, those who emphasize the continuity between the various Wissenschaftslehren usually interpret the differences between them as expressions of a certain immanent-"logical" or "dialectical"-development of Fichte's own thinking, and thus they try to show how each successive version represents an effort on Fichte's part to clarify issues left obscure in earlier versions and to solve new problems raised by his previous solutions to older ones. This is the course taken by, among others, Gurwitsch, Hartmann, Radrizzani, and Lauth.

What most "evolutionary" approaches to the Wissenschaftslehre have in common is a tendency to view the later versions as the more "definitive" ones and thus to interpret the earlier ones in their light-which is, no doubt, how Fichte himself eventually came to view them. This, however, does not mean that we have to read these texts in this way. Indeed, one might well argue that the "spirit" of the various versions is so different that one does irreparable violence to the same when one uses, say, the second Wissenschaftslehre of 1804 for clues for interpreting the 1794-95 Grundlage-a point to which I shall return at the conclusion of my remarks.

The scholarly debate over the relationship between the earlier and later Wissenschaftslehren has been complicated by several factors, including the incomplete and unsatisfactory state of the documentary evidence. Not only were many of the later manuscript versions of the Wissenschaftslehre unavailable to earlier scholars, but those that were available were often published in incomplete and defectively edited form. Another complicating factor is a tendency to confuse questions concerning the internal, systematic development of the Wissenschaftslehre with biographical issues concerning external, often highly dramatic, changes in Fichte's external circumstances and career. Dazzled by the visibility and drama of many of these biographical events, some scholars have felt an almost irresistible temptation to employ Fichte's biography as the key to his philosophy.

Though it would be absurd to suggest that the dramatic changes in Fichte's external circumstances had no consequences whatsoever for the development of his philosophy, the dangers of such an approach should also be readily apparent. Whereas it is impossible to overlook the direct connections between, on the one hand, the dramatic changes in Fichte's political views between his 1793 Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publicums ber die franzsische Revolution and his 1808 Reden an die deutsche Nation and, on the other, certain even more dramatic events in European history that occurred during this same period, there is no such clearly evident linkage between, for example, Fichte's loss of his position at Jena in 1799 and his decision, more than two years later, to begin the 1801-2 Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre with the concept of Wissen rather than with an injunction to "think the I." At the very least, it is the responsibility of those who would appeal to the influence of such external factors upon the internal development of Fichte's philosophy to demonstrate-in detail-the linkage in question.

The remarks that follow are intended as a modest contribution to the ongoing discussion of the evolution and unity of Fichte's thought. They are concerned with what is surely one of the least-known and most neglected versions of the Wissenschaftslehre: namely, the fragmentary and unfinished Neue Bearbeitung der Wissenschaftslehre, or, as I shall more often refer to it, "the Wissenschaftslehre of 1800-1801"-a designation that includes both the unpublished Neue Bearbeitung and the published Sonnenklarer Bericht, a text that was originally intended by Fichte to bear precisely the same "introductory" relationship to the Neue Bearbeitung that the two "Einleitungen" of 1797 have to the unfinished Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre. Reasons for the relative neglect of the Neue Bearbeitung are, of course, not difficult to identify, beginning with the fact that this text remained wholly unknown to scholars for almost two centuries and was first published in 1979. Furthermore, the manuscript itself, which occupies only seventy-one pages in the Gesamtausgabe, was evidently abandoned by its author after only a few months' work and is thus no more than a fragment of the full-scale "New Presentation" confidently described by Fichte in a public announcement dated "4 November 1800" and published in January 1801.

For all of its shortcomings, the Wissenschaftslehre of 1800-1801 is of special interest not only in its own right, but also to anyone concerned with Fichte's philosophical development, since it was written precisely during the period which, for many scholars, represents the dividing line between the "early Wissenschaftslehre," with its focus upon the structure of self-consciousness and its elaborate account of the I and the "later Wissenschaftslehre," with its focus upon the structure of Wissen or Wahrheit and its new emphasis on the relationship of these to "the absolute." As Gnter Meckenstock, in one of the rare scholarly publications devoted explicitly to the Neue Bearbeitung, puts it: "Between the fragmentary Neue Bearbeitung der Wissenschaftslehre and the Wissenschaftslehre of 1801/2 that followed it, there lies a gap." The purpose of the following remarks is to explore this "gap" in some detail.

"Streiferein im Gebiete der Philosophie"

Despite certain misgivings about appealing to external or extraphilosophical circumstances to explain or to illuminate the doctrinal development of the Wissenschaftslehre, I now propose to call attention to a series of public criticisms that are, I believe, of special importance for understanding the internal evolution of Fichte's conception of his own project during the period that concerns us-namely, the period between his conclusion of his final series of lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, in Jena in the spring of 1799, and his commencement of a new series of private lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre in Berlin at the end of 1801.

Fichte's philosophy was, of course, controversial from the start, and it seems he was always being criticized from one side or another and always making plans to reply to such criticisms. But the years 1799-1801 were surely something of a high point in this respect. The public criticism advanced against the Wissenschaftslehre during these years is distinguished not only by its enormous volume and often intemperate tone, but also by the philosophical stature of many of Fichte's critics, who included Kant, Jacobi, Reinhold, Hamann, Herder, Nicolai, Schleiermacher, and Jean Paul, in addition to a host of lesser-known professional philosophers. In the following survey I shall ignore the purely personal attacks on Fichte by critics such as Nicolai, as well as the public ridicule to which his philosophy was subjected by authors such as Jean Paul and Schleiermacher. I shall also ignore the specific charge of "atheism" and the baroque details of the Atheism Controversy. Instead, I shall focus on a few of the more significant theoretical objections to the Wissenschaftslehre. I will then try to indicate how Fichte, in his writings of this period, responded to these criticisms. The point of this exercise will be to determine whether such information helps to illuminate the peculiarities of the unfinished Neue Bearbeitung of 1800-1801.

The temptation to interpret transcendental claims as factual, empirical claims about the human mind, and hence to view philosophy as a branch of psychology or as a kind of introspective anthropology, is as old as transcendental philosophy itself. Indeed, some of Fichte's earliest polemical works were directed against efforts to base philosophy on "the facts of consciousness." In the wake of the Atheismusstreit, the Wissenschaftslehre was once again criticized on precisely this score by several authors, beginning with Johann Heusinger, whose 1799 tract, ber das idealistisch-atheistische System des Herrn Professor Fichte, was judged by Fichte himself to be one of the more philosophically substantial contributions to the Atheismusstreit. As is clear from his later comments, Fichte was particularly provoked by Heusinger's charge that the Wissenschaftslehre's account of the self-construction of the I, qua intellectual intuition, as presented in chapter 1 of the Versuch einer neuen Darstellung, was based on nothing more than a series of "psychological delusions."

Nor was Heusinger the only critic to interpret the Wissenschaftslehre in a straightforwardly "psychological" manner; this was also how it was often characterized by empiricists and Popularphilosophen. Thus Nicolai, in his book of 1799, Ueber meine gelehrte Bildung, describes transcendental idealism as teaching that each person creates his own, private world by the mere association of ideas. A similar charge was eventually repeated by Reinhold, an erstwhile exponent of the Wissenschaftslehre.

More worrying to Fichte than Reinhold's endorsement of the charge of psychologism, however, was the latter's startling conversion, in the spring of 1799, to C. G. Bardili's conception of philosophy as a system of "rational realism," based purely upon "thinking qua thinking." According to this conception, philosophy should be understood as a type of pure logic, which stands in no need of any appeal whatsoever to the evidence of "intuition" (Anschauung). In embracing this new conception of philosophy, Reinhold publicly announced that the Wissenschaftslehre had been superseded by Bardili's system, which he described as occupying a standpoint "between Fichte's philosophy and Jacobi's."

Ironically, at the very moment that Reinhold was chastising Fichte for his failure to embrace Bardili's conception of philosophy as pure logic, others were interpreting the Wissenschaftslehre in precisely this manner: namely, as a purely "formal philosophy," or system of pure logic, and were criticizing it accordingly. This was the gravamen of Kant's charge against Fichte in his public "Declaration" of August 28, 1799. A similar charge was also made by critics such as Jean Paul and Nicolai, who accused Fichte of illicitly smuggling all of the Wissenschaftslehre's alleged "conclusions" into its first principle, from whence they were subsequently "derived" by nothing more than sheer logical analysis.

The publication, in 1799 and 1800, of Herder's and Hamann's "Meta-critiques" of transcendental philosophy was viewed by Fichte as yet another attack upon the Wissenschaftslehre. Herder and Hamann criticized transcendental philosophy for failing to recognize the extent to which all thought is conditioned by natural language and thus for its failure to preface its critique of reason with a critique of language. Another linguistically based criticism was applied explicitly to the Wissenschaftslehre by Jean Paul, who characterized Fichte's philosophy as "mere language, free of concepts and intuitions."

But of all the philosophical criticisms to which Fichte was subjected during the period 1799-1801, none seems to have affected him more deeply and more personally than the famous charge of "nihilism" leveled against the Wissenschaftslehre by Jacobi in his "open letter" of 1799. No sooner, according to Jacobi, does transcendental reflection set to work on reality than it transforms the latter into a mere "construction," lacking any reality of its own. Adding insult to injury, Jacobi rebuked Fichte for his "logical enthusiasm" and characterized him derisively as motivated by "the solitary spirit of the philosopher for whom there is only one possible philosophy."

Hostile reviews of Die Bestimmung des Menschen began to appear in the spring and summer of 1800, and some of these were very fresh in Fichte's mind as he set to work on the Neue Bearbeitung later that year. Of these critical reviews, he seems to have taken most seriously one that appeared anonymously in the Erlangen Literatur-Zeitung, the author of which was probably Johann Heinrich Abicht. This reviewer rejected the account of "knowing" (Wissen) found in book 2 of Die Bestimmung des Menschen on the grounds that it presupposes something that is in fact impossible: namely, that we can be consciously aware of our own activity of intuiting. Instead, this critic claimed that we are only passively conscious of external "perceptions" and never directly aware of our own inner acts and therefore issues to Fichte the following challenge: "Just explain your own explanation!"

(Continues...)

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