Fichte's 1804 Wissenschaftslehre: Essays on the "Science of Knowing" (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

Fichte's 1804 Wissenschaftslehre , or The Science of Knowing , consists of a series of lectures he delivered in his Berlin home to members of the city's political and cultural elite in 1804. The lectures mark a dramatic shift in the terminology and methodology he uses to explore the nature of knowledge and reality as presented in his philosophical system, the Wissenschaftslehre . Although not published during his lifetime, Fichte's 1804 lectures provide a systematic update to his philosophy of knowledge and being, which was only hinted at in print in popular presentations like Characteristics of the Present Age (1805) and The Way Towards the Blessed Life (1806). In fact, these lectures contain Fichte's first public articulation of his philosophical position in the wake of the professional disaster of the "atheism controversy." This volume of new essays not only offers readers novel interpretations of the lectures but also introduces and clarifies key concepts, debates the relationship of the lectures to Fichte's Jena presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre , and examines issues related to his method and system of idealism. Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Notes Part 1. The Continuity Question Chapter 1: The Absolute and the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Fichte’s Transcendent Turn and the Case against the Continuity View The Elusiveness of the Absolute The Case for the Continuity View Notes Chapter 2: “You Can’t Get There from Here”: Fichte’s (Unwritten) 1799 Review (nach der Principien der Wissenschaftslehre) of the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Similarities Importance of the Wissenschaftslehre The Task of Philosophy Method Activity and Life Questions Can philosophy really proceed beyond the I? Can theoretical insight stand on its own? What is the relationship of absolute being to the I? Objections The Inherent Limits of Transcendental Philosop.hy The Primacy of the Practical The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre Notes Chapter 3: The First Principle in the Later Fichte: The (Not) “Surprising Insight” in the Fifteenth Lecture of the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Introduction Subject-Object-Relations (SOR) The Unity of Subject and Object (S = O) The Structure of the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre The Duplicity of the Absolute Why This Duplicity? God and Pure Human Reason: Parallels Conclusion Notes Chapter 4: Fichte’s Reader and the Autopoiesis of the Wissenschaftslehre, 1794–1804 Reader as Collaborator: The First Formulations of the Wissenschaftslehre, 1794–1797 Metaphysics: Reader as System-Collaborator Ethics: Respect and the Freedom of the Reader Society: Reading as the Goal of Education Reform Reader as Host: The Wissenschaftslehre of 1804 Metaphysics: Reader as System-Witness Ethics: Annulling Freedom Society: Reading as the Goal of Education Reform Conclusion Notes Part 2. Key Concepts Chapter 5: Into Death’s Lair: Truth, Appearance, and the Irrational Gap in Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre The Wahrheitslehre: Gap and Projection The Bildlehre: Fichte’s Transcendental Phenomenology Conclusion: From Gap to Standpoint Notes Chapter 6: Nothing Remains: Notes on Fichte’s “Irrational Gap” in the 1804 The Tathandlung The Yin and Yang of Fichtean Disjunctions Disjunctions: Legitimate and Illegitimate The Irrational Gap and the Principle of Unprincipledness The Irrational Gap and the Paradox of the Supplement Notes Chapter 7: Pure Light and the Promethean Self of Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Kant, Pure Light, and the Transcendental Deduction Pure Knowing and Pure Light The Genesis of Pure Light Two Worlds Unity and the Constant Death of the Self-Recognitive Subject Notes Chapter 8: The Odyssey of the “Through” (das Durch) The Antithesis between Durch and Und: Hiatuses and Empty Fillers The Opposite of the “Und ”: Das Durch and its Cognitive Program “Und ” and Durch in Other Fichtean Texts from the Same Period A Bridgehead in the Realm of das Durch: The Durch between Image and the Imaged The Und within the Durch (the Odyssey Continues) Notes Chapter 9: The “We” of Speculative Philosophy Notes Part 3. System and Idealism Chapter 10: The Quintuple Quintuplicity of Forms of (Self-)Consciousness in Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Quintuplicity as Method On the Quintuple Quintuplicity of (Self-)Consciousness The Concrete Realization of the Quintuplicity of Forms of (Self-)Consciousness The Quintuplicity of the Sensualist (Self-)Consciousness The Quintuplicity of the Legal (Self-)Consciousness The Quintuplicity of the Moral (Self-)Consciousness The Quintuplicity of the Religious (Self-)Consciousness Notes Chapter 11: Immanent Thinking and the Activity of Philosophizing in Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre The Art of Philosophizing and Its Conditions—After Kant Transcendental and Phenomenological Immanence: Fichte and Hegel Conclusion Notes Chapter 12: Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre: A Possible Reply to Schelling’s Bruno Disagreements between Fichte and Schelling— and Conciliatory Moves Seeing or Being? Disjunction or Indifference? Performative Reason, Realism, and Idealism Notes Chapter 13: Fichte contra Idealism in the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre Notes Chapter 14: The Self-Justification of Fichte’s Philosophy I II III IV Notes Chapter 15: Blockchain as Fichtean Problem I II III IV Notes Chapter 16: Is Fichte a Kantian, a German Idealist, Both, or Neither? Leibniz Invents “Idealism” Epistemic Constructivism and German Idealism Kantian Idealism Fichtean Epistemic Constructivism in the Wissenschaftslehre From Kantian Anti-Psychologism to Fichtean Psychologism On Fichte’s Kantianism in the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre On the Projection per hiatum irrationale Lukács and Lask React to Fichte Kant, Fichte, and the Copernican Turn Conclusion: Is Fichte a Kantian, an Idealist, Neither, or Both? Notes Contributors Index Gabriel Gottlieb is Professor of Philosophy at Xavier University. He is the editor of Fichte's Foundation of Natural A Critical Guide . Benjamin Crowe is Lecturer in Philosophy at Boston University. He is the editor and translator of Fichte's Lectures on the Theory of Ethics (1812), also published by SUNY Press.