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Fichte's Early Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

J. Douglas Rabb
J. Douglas Rabb
Affiliation:
Lakehead University
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Extract

Josiah Royce relates the following story concerning the writing and publication of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's first major work, the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation.

Fichte … called upon Kant at Königsberg, in July, 1791. The aged, prudent, and … highly economical philosopher regarded this reverent, fiery, but obviously impecunious young disciple with a certain suspicion, and received his confidences coolly. The rebuff only heated Fichte the more. He tarried in Königsberg two months, in order … to write, for presentation to Kant, a work on religious philosophy, which, once finished, proved to be so thoroughly in Kant's spirit that, when in the spring of the next year the book was published anonymously, it was very generally hailed by Kant's admirers as a new production of the master's own genius. Kant himself had to correct this misapprehension, and in doing so named, and now with warm praise, the real author.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 261 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1982

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References

1 Royce, Josiah, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), 150.Google Scholar

2 Fichte, J. G., Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, trans. Green, Garrett (London, 1978), Introduction, 18.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 This occurred in 1799. See Seth, Andrew, The Development from Kant to Hegel (Edinburgh, 1882), 18Google Scholar.

5 Fichte, Critique of All Revelation, Introduction, 20.

6 Fichte, Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) with First and Second Introductions, ed. and trans. Heath, Peter and Lachs, John (New York, 1970), First Introduction, 4Google Scholar

7 Fichte, Critique of All Revelation, Introduction, 21.

8 Heath and Lachs, Wissenschaftslehre, Second Introduction, 55 and 58. (From Green's footnotes it seems likely that in his misreading of the Wissenschaftslehre he is simply following the misleading interpretation found in the preface to the Heath-Lachs translation. My own reading of the Wissenschaftslehre is defended in: “Lachs on Fichte”, Dialogue 12/3 (1973), 480–487, and “J. G. Fichte: Three Arguments for Idealism”, Idealistic Studies 6/2 [1976], 169–177.)

9 Fichte, Critique of All Revelation, Introduction, 21–22. The reference in the quotation is to the Heath-Lachs translation.

10 Admittedly Fichte claims to present it in a much more systematic form. See Heath and Lachs, Wissenschaftslehre, Second Introduction, 51.

11 Ibid., 49–50.

12 See note 9.

13 Fichte, Critique of All Revelation, 111.

14 Ibid., 96.

15 Ibid., 144. See also 142–143.

16 Ibid., 145.

17 Ibid., Introduction, 14.

18 Heath and Lachs, Wissenschaftslehre, Second Introduction, 78.

19 As Green quite rightly points out this is one point on which Fichte differs from Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. Kant “recognizes a universal need for religion” whereas Fichte does not. See Fichte, Critique of All Revelation, Introduction, 16.

20 Heath and Lachs, Wissenschaftslehre, First Introduction, 15.

21 Lachs, John, “Fichte's Idealism”, American Philosophical Quarterly 9/4, 317.Google Scholar

22 Cf. Fichte, , Critique of All Revelation, 103–106Google Scholar and Heath and Lachs, Wissenschaftslehre, 15 and 162. Note, the sixth line of the muddled footnote on 162 should read “understand this presentation even though the ground of all philosophy is placed before them”.

23 Fichte, Critique of All Revelation, 122.

24 “On the Foundation of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe”, trans. Edwards, Paul, in 19th-century Philosophy, ed. Gardiner, Patrick L., (New York, 1969), 24–25.Google Scholar It is this work which brought about the charge of atheism and Fichte's subsequent dismissal from the University of Jena. It has been noted, somewhat uncharitably, that it was during this controversy that Kant “went out of his way to dissociate his philosophy from the ideas of his embarrassing follower”. Ibid., 17.

25 Fichte, , Critique of All Revelation, 37.Google Scholar

26 See for example Heath and Lachs, Wissenschaftslehre, 198–199, 208, and the index under “reflection”.

27 Ibid., 256 and 258.

28 Ibid., 273. (Fichte gives a similar account of God's consciousness of himself, 242.)

29 Frederick Copleston identifies reflection with intellectual intuition and hence with our grasp of the moral law and the realm of the absolute ego. Such an identification would certainly support my thesis. Although I suspect that it is on the right track, unfortunately not one of the passages Copleston refers to in support of this identification actually mentions the word reflection; nor have I found a passage in which Fichte states it explicitly. Cf. A History of Philosophy, vol. 7 (New York, 1963), Part 1, 60–66 and 102Google Scholar.

30 Fichte, , Critique of All Revelation, Introduction, 19.Google Scholar

31 Fichtes Werke, ed. Fichte, I. H., vol. 5 (Berlin, 1971), 13.Google Scholar

32 See Fichte, J. G.Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Lauth, Reinhard and Jacob, Hans, vol. 3/1 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1968), 379.Google Scholar

33 Fichte, , Critique of All Revelation, 109.Google Scholar