Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Daniel Breazeale (Translator)

A central figure in the development of German idealism, J. G. Fichte (1762-1814) sought to base a systematic account of the transcendental structure of experience upon a morally unshakable confidence in human freedom. Fichte named his version of transcendental idealism, which he continued to develop over the course of his life, the "theory of scientific knowledge" or Wissenschafslehre.
Fichte immediately repudiated his first presentation of the theory, published in 1794 under the title Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre). Over the winter semesters 1796-97 through 1798-99 in Jena, he provided an entirely new formulation of the rudiments of his philosophy in a lecture course entitled Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo. In the present volume, Daniel Breazeale offers the first English translation of these lectures, which are believed to constitute the clearest and most cogently argued statement of the first principles of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, and which survive only in two student transcripts.
The English text is a composite of the two German versions, including the entire Krause transcript plus extensive passages from the Halle version. In addition, Breazeale provides a comprehensive introduction to the evolution of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, with particular attention to its relation to the published Grundlage and the later and uncompleted "Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre."
Fichte's Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy is highly relevant to ongoing discussions of the relationship of consciousness to human freedom and to current debates concerning foundationalism. Philosophers interested in German idealism and others working in the history of philosophy, German literature, and intellectual history will welcome this translation.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Germany

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1799

About the author

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Fichte is often perceived as a figure whose philosophy forms a bridge between the ideas of Kant and the German Idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Like Descartes and Kant before him, the problem of subjectivity and consciousness motivated much of his philosophical rumination. Fichte also wrote political philosophy, and is thought of by some as the father of German nationalism.
His son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, was also a renowned philosopher.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most important texts for finding the most explicit and fully developed accounts of intellectual intuition given by Fichte. He argues that we have an intellectual intuition of the ‘I’ as ‘subject-object’. It also contains an explicit critique of Kant for rejecting the notion of intellectual intuition when it is, according to Fichte, already present in Kant’s system:

‘Kant recognizes that self-consciousness occurs, i.e., a consciousness of the act of intuiting within time. How could he have arrived at such a recognition? Only by means of an intuition—and such an intuition is certainly intellectual […] Kant, in his system, merely failed to reflect upon this type of intellectual intuition. His system, however, does contain the result of this intellectual intuition: [in the recognition] that our representations are products of our self-active mind’ (WLNM 115).