This article reconstructs the reception of Fichte’s philosophy in the works of the physician and philosopher A.K.A. Eschenmayer between 1796 and 1801. In 1796/97, Eschenmayer was working on his project of a metaphysics of nature which would be capable of constituting a middle term between the empirical sciences and the transcendental philosophy. In doing so, he explicitly engaged with Kant, on the one hand, and with scientists of the time, on the other hand, while the influence of Fichte is comparatively slight and less easily discerned. In 1798, however, he introduced into his studies of magnetism an explicit recognition of Fichte and a reference to the third principle of the Wissenschaftslehre. In 1799, Eschenmayer adopted a higher standpoint from which it was possible to conceive the genesis of the concepts which up to that point had been merely analysed. This change of viewpoint coincided with a deeper engagement with the works of Fichte. The analysis of the Dedukzion and of Eschenmayer’s explicit references to Fichte that is attempted in the present study leads to the conclusion that Eschenmayer not only adopted some terminology typical of Fichtean philosophy but also integrated into his deduction several theoretical elements developed by Fichte (e.g. the concept of the I as interaction with itself; the idea of intersubjectivity as a necessary condition of self-consciousness, the concept of striving). The reconstruction of the influences that Fichte exercised on Eschenmayer’s thought is fundamental to an understanding of the theoretical position of Eschenmayer and the point of view from which in 1801 he formulated his criticism of Schelling’s idea of nature as autarchic and as its own legislator.Der Beitrag rekonstruiert die Rezeption der Philosophie Fichtes in den Werken des Arztes und Philosophen A.K.A Eschenmayer aus den Jahren 1796 bis 1801. 1796/97 verfolgt Eschenmayer das Ziel, eine Naturmetaphysik zu entwickeln, die als Mittelglied zwischen den empirischen Wissenschaften und der Transzendentalphilosophie fungieren soll. Dabei setzt er sich einerseits mit Kant und andererseits mit den Wissenschaftlern seiner Zeit auseinander. Der Einfluss von Fichte auf Eschenmayer ist hingegen vergleichsweise gering und nicht leicht festzustellen. Dennoch erkennt Eschenmayer bereits in seiner Studie zum Magnetismus aus dem Jahr 1798 das Verdienst Fichtes an und verweist auf den dritten Grundsatz der Wissenschaftslehre. Im Jahr 1799 erhebt sich Eschenmayer insofern zu einem höheren Standpunkt, als er nun die Genese der Begriffe entfaltet, die er vorher bloß analysiert hatte. Diese Änderung des Standpunktes führt Eschenmayer zu einer tieferen Auseinandersetzung mit den Werken Fichtes. Die in diesem Beitrag durchgeführte Untersuchung der Passagen aus Eschenmayers Dedukzion, in denen sich explizite Verweise auf Fichte finden, hat zu dem Schluss geführt, dass Eschenmayer sich nicht nur Fichtes Terminologie zu eigen macht, sondern auch mehrere von Fichte aufgestellte Theorien in seine eigene Deduktion integriert (den Begriff des Ich als Wechselwirkung mit sich selbst, die Theorie der Intersubjektivität als notwendiger Bedingung des Selbstbewusstseins, den Begriff des Strebens). Die Rekonstruktion der Einflüsse Fichtes auf Eschenmayer ist nicht nur für ein besseres Verständnis der Philosophie Eschenmayers unentbehrlich, sondern trägt auch zum Verständnis des Standpunktes bei, von dem aus Eschenmayer im Jahre 1801 Kritik an Schellings Idee der Natur als ihrer eigenen Gesetzgeberin übt.

In the present paper, i propose, first, to present some aspects of what we may call a type of "phenomenology" of the image contained in the Berlin lectures on transcendental logic – notably, in the second of these courses in Berlin. Second, i would like to return to the problem of the relationship between logic and philosophy, starting from these indications with regard to the "image", and, if possible, outline some parallel with certain theses on the same subject from the Jena years. Finally, in what i consider a novelty concerning these lessons, i would like to conclude my exposition by raising the question of the foundational character of Fichte’s project.

McDowell in Mind and World developed a post-transcendental understanding of some core philosophical puzzles of subjectivity, like consciousness, conceptual capacity and perception. One of the main assumptions in the background of his philosophical proposal is that all our possible experience has to be determined and therefore has to be acknowledged as conceptual, therefore this very experience has to be both relational and representational.After this statement of conceptual experience in the early 2000’s a debate started which still involves philosophers like Brandom, Gaskin, Wright, Heck, Stalnaker, Peacocke, Dreyfus.The discussion in the beginning was focused on the definition of the Space of Reasons, what is most lively today is the epistemological uncertainty of the possibility of perceiving imagines in a reductive view as perceptual (non-conceptual) experience. The proposal of McDowell is a quasi-Hegelian understanding of concepts. I think that is possible an alternative path, moving from a new understanding of conceptual spontaneity and of the determination in general, rooted in J. G. Fichte Sittenlehre (1812) and in the general framework of the Wissenschaftslehre (mostly the WL Nova methodo and some later expositions) in a broader and more nuanced understanding of the postkantian transcendental philosophy.

In this paper, my aim is to offer an approach to the practical meaning of the concept of image in Fichte’s Doctrine of the State of 1813. The word “image” (Bild) plays an important role within Fichte’s philosophical terminology, especially during the last period of his intellectual production and his academic life, after leaving the University of Jena. Even a superficial reading of the several different versions of the Doctrine of Science allows one to recognize that the above-mentioned term is used by Fichte more frequently during his years in Berlin (1800–1814). Despite this, the determination of the concrete meaning of the term “image” represents a difficult interpretative challenge for readers of Fichte’s philosophy. From my point of view, Fichte uses the term “image” not only at the level of theoretical or methodological reflection, but also at that of praxis. For this reason, Fichte’s transcendental reflection in the Doctrine of the State contains not only an analysis of the negative relationship between image and being, but also, necessarily, an analysis of the positive relationship between image and freedom (Freiheit). Although his Doctrine of the State is based on a theological-religious conception, which could be questioned from the perspective of a secularized rationality, Fichte maintains a consistent conception of knowledge as an image of a world ordered by the moral law. Definitively, this image plays a central role as an original model for the action of every rational being in the sensible world.

In Über den Unterschied des Geistes u. des Buchstabens in der Philosophie, Fichte writes that man’s most fundamental tendency to philosophize is simply the drive to represent for the sake of representing—the same drive which is the ultimate basis of the fine arts. The process of representing for the sake of representing is grounded in “spirit”, which is nothing other than the power of the imagination to raise to consciousness images of das Urschöne. In this paper, I suggest that the affinity between artistic activity and Fichte’s transcendental philosophy is closer than previously thought. I further suggest that for Fichte, transcendental philosophy is a performance and that such an interpretation of Fichte’s thought points to a way out of the circularity in his transcendental project.

This essay argues for the applicability and importance of the notion of the unconscious (in the limited sense of any form of mental activity of which one is not or cannot be aware) in Fichte’s Jena period, with a focus on the ,second’ Wissenschaftslehre (1796–99). The essay begins by arguing for the existence of a fundamental tension in Fichte’s philosophy: namely, between a ,transcendence’ principle – that the conditions for consciousness cannot themselves be present within experience, since they ground that experience – and an ,immanence’ principle that there is no genuine reality outside of consciousness. It is shown that this tension is particularly evident if one observes some of the conflicting ways in which Fichte employs the notions of ,intellektuelle Anschauung’ and ,unmittelbares Bewusstsein.’ Fichte seems to violate the immanence principle especially insofar as he characterizes the conditions of the possibility of consciousness as a series of ,actions,’ which, qua actions, must be ,real’ in some sense: insofar as they are both real and not present to consciousness, it is argued, they must be unconscious. Although Fichte does not wholly embrace the notion of unconscious mental activity due to his adherence to the immanence principle, his conception of the ,two series’ of the Wissenschaftslehre as well as some of his uses of the notion of ,unmittelbares Bewusstsein’ in particular allow the recognition that Fichte has a rich but inchoate conception of the unconscious.

In Aenesidemus, G.E. Schulze adopts the skeptical voice of Aenesidemus and engages in critical dialogue with Hermias, a Kantian, in the hopes of laying bare what he views as the fundamental issues of K.L. Reinhold’s version of critical philosophy. While some attacks reveal a deep misunderstanding of Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie on Schulze’s part, others hit their mark. In the Aenesidemus Review (1794), J.G. Fichte at times agrees with criticisms raised by Aenesidemus and at times defends Reinhold against them. On Fichte’s view, Schulze succeeds in proving that the first principle of Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie, the principle of consciousness (Satz des Bewußtseins), is neither self-evident nor self-determining. Therefore, it cannot be the first principle of philosophy. However, Schulze fails to dissuade Fichte from viewing Reinhold’s principle of consciousness as the pithiest expression of human consciousness of the time. For these reasons, Fichte holds that Reinhold’s principle of consciousness must be deduced from an even higher principle. The goal of this paper is to assess whether Fichte puts forth his own candidate for the first principle of philosophy in his Aenesidemus Review.

The idea of a “first principle” looms large in Fichte’s thought, and its first real appearance is in his “Aphorisms on Religion and Deism” (1790), which has received little attention. I begin this paper by providing some context on that piece, and then developing a reconstruction of the position presented within it. Next, I establish that Fichte’s views at the time of writing, and for some years prior, are those of the “deist,” and clarify why he sensed he had to leave this stance represented in the “Aphorisms” behind. I conclude that understanding Fichte’s shift away from “deism,” a species of what he would eventually call “dogmatism,” can also help us understand Fichte’s critique of the latter kind of thinking and so shed light on Fichte’s better-known views; and I emphasize that Fichte’s transition from a strict rationalism to a form of Kantianism may be of interest not only to scholarship on Fichte and the period, but likewise to work on rationalism in contemporary metaphysics. Finally, in an appendix I supplement the paper with a first English translation of the entire text of the “Aphorisms,” complete with annotations.

In this paper I inquire into the role of general logic in Fichte’s early formulations of his first principle. This inquiry contains three main parts. First, I summarize the role of general logic in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, as well as Gottlob Schulze’s critical claims regarding their relation in Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie. Second, I examine the first three sections of Fichte’s private notes on the Elementarphilosophie, called the Eigene Meditationen, and closely follow his early attempts to provide a basic principle that is systematically prior both to Reinhold’s principle of consciousness, as well as the logical principle of contradiction. I examine Fichte’s struggles with relating the principles of a foundational transcendental philosophy to those of general logic, in order to emphasize his own doubts in systematically motivating the use of logical rules in the exhibition of his first principle. In the third section, I examine the manner in which these principles are introduced in the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre via the logical principles of identity and contradiction, and argue that Fichte’s procedure is problematic given the programmatic constraints on general logic put forward in the meditations on the philosophy of the elements. I conclude by briefly relating Fichte’s doubts in such a procedure, as well as an alternative procedure he already proposed in his private notes, to the method that he would later adopt in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo.

This article aims at a new interpretation of paragraph §1 of Fichte’s main work of 1794/95, the Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. This well-known text of the early Jena period explicitly introduces a number of thought motifs that will prove to be valuable for the later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre – including the second version of 1804 – and these motifs will furthermore illuminate the significance of the first principle for Fichte’s entire Wissenschaftslehre.