This essay presents the fundamental problem of the meaningfulness of language, which is explained by the structure of linguistic signs itself and afterwards solved by Fichte’s theorem of pure will from the “Doctrine of Science nova methodo”. In this respect, Fichte’s philosophy can make an essential contribution to the foundation of a philosophy of language.Der vorliegende Aufsatz nimmt seinen Ausgang vom grundsätzlichen Problem der Bedeutungsfähigkeit der Sprache. Dieses wird auf die Struktur sprachlicher Zeichen selbst zurückgefuhrt, um es anschließend mithilfe von Johann Gottlieb Fichtes Theorem des reinen Willens aus der „Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo“ aufzulösen. Auf diese Weise kann Fichtes Philosophie einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Begründung einer Philosophie der Sprache leisten.

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.

Four points are discussed in this paper. 1: A long lasting issue in the WL. This point tries to show that the WL in its different versions contains a demonstration of incompleteness as a necessary condition of human consciousness and forms of knowledge. The necessary form of the system of human experience is conditioned by the impossibility of a purely conceptual explanation of human knowing. 2.1: From the Grundlage to the Nova methodo. This point explains the main errors in the exposition of the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, which led to the conception of the WL Nova methodo. 2.2: From the Nova methodo to the Exposition of 1801/1802. The main changes in the exposition of the WL 1801/1802 are discussed in the light of the new philosophical challenges from 1799 onwards. 2.3: The emergence of the Image theory in the first WL of 1804 is addressed in the last point. In accordance with the point 1 above, it is finally shown that Fichte’s Theory of image is both a transformed critical and transcendental philosophy, and an answer to questions raised in the preceding development of the WL.

The Wissenschaftslehre 1804-ii does not end with absolute knowledge in the 25th lecture, because this absolute knowledge is as sealed off from the common knowledge as the Absolute itself in the 15th lecture was. As matters stand in the 25th lecture the Wissenschaftslehre can neither meet its own claim to unify all knowledge in one system nor can the genesis of the absolute knowledge, which had to begin with common knowledge, be understood by means of the Wissenschaftslehre itself. The problem in linking absolute knowledge and common knowledge is that, on the one hand, absolute knowledge is hermetically closed. Therefore, nothing and especially not common knowledge can derive or result from it. On the other hand, absolute knowledge is not supposed to depend on anything but the Absolute itself. Therefore, it cannot be understood adequately as a condition for common knowledge. Fichte’s solution to this problem is to differentiate between the genesis of absolute knowledge and absolute knowledge itself. Common knowledge is necessary only for the genesis of absolute knowledge. However, the validity of the common knowledge depends on the pursuit of the absolute knowledge.

The accusation of Nihilism, which Jacobi expressed in his Letter to Fichte, marks a caesura in Fichte’s production. Reputed to be the paradigmatical representantive of a philosophical tradition letting any reality dissolve in a simple game of shadows, Fichte sees himself constrained to clarify the status of the image in his system. This paper aims to examine the strategy to which he has recourse in the Destination of Man, in order to find an answer to the attack.

Also in the latest versions of the Science of Knowledge Fichte considers explanation of the structure of consciousness a central task of philosophy. In his late explanation of consciousness, the concepts of life and image (or schema) play a central role – two concepts that in Fichte’s account are inseparable and mutually elucidate each other. By interpreting the 1810 Science of Knowledge and Fichte’s introductory lecture The facts of Consciousness from 1810/11, this article aims to show that the pair of concepts “life” and ‘image’ occur on two different theoretical levels in Fichte’s late philosophy: first, in the formulation of a view of consciousness that Fichte characterizes as ‘idealist’ and that he considers to be in continuity with Kant’s transcendental philosophy; and, second, in the exposition of the conception of consciousness as an image of a non-constructible absolute that goes beyond the idealist explanation without, however, denying its validity within its own sphere. The second step, which occupies the major part of the 1810 Science of Knowledge, can be understood as Fichte’s late reply to Jacobi’s critique of the Science of Knowledge as a ‘nihilism’. Its final step is the introduction of the concept of ‘sober- mindedness’, in the sense of a self-interpretation of moral consciousness which goes beyond any constructible content. The concluding part of the article interprets and discusses the conception of sober-mindedness as involving Fichte’s final reply to Jacobi’s criticism.

The late Fichte transforms transcendental philosophy into ontology, without transcendental philosophy ceasing to be transcendental philosophy. The center of his philosophy is no longer the transcendental self, but rather concepts like existence, light, image, from which the transcendental self can be derived. Against dogmatism, for which being is to be considered as an absolute fact, Fichte tries to show that being can be deduced and explained from the light, and that means: from transcendental freedom. Whatever exists is made from the substance of appearance, from the substance of visibility and light, from the material of the image. But the appearance, the image, the light, can only derive their creative power from the fact that they are (in absolute terms) the existence of the Absolute. And precisely at this point, under the idea that only the Absolute is, Fichte has repeatedly to cope with the question of the relation between the being-character of this substance and the being-character of the Absolute. Against his reiterated attempts to proceed this way, the difference between being and existence can not so easily be traced back to the concept of an absolute Being, in whose inner essence lies the fact that nothingness becomes itself an ‘apparent something’ (the world), against the background of which, and by which, the Absolute cannot be, and cannot be understood, except as absolute.

In my contribution i would like to consider a thesis of Reinhard Lauth, according to which Fichte’s Doctrine of Science must be properly characterized as theory of the Bilden (formation), as “Bildenslehre”. In his late Berlin lectures Fichte understands Wissen (knowledge), in its actuality, as “Bild” (image). Knowledge is image and identifies itself as an image. The image as such shows a reflective and relational structure. The image presents an essential self-reflexivity and does not exist in isolation, but is a relationship to something else which Fichte designates as being, life, light, one, God. The basic idea of Fichte is that we have access to reality (to being) only through the image and in it, within a transcendental unity of being and thinking that must be conceived not as a fact (Tatsache), but as an act (Tathandlung). The term and concept Bilden (formation) expresses well the dynamic and active nature characteristic of the image. i try to explain this on the basis of certain passages of the Doctrine of Science of 1804 (second exposition).

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.

Images are usually understood as something perceived: as something presented to us and different from us. But since Antiquity the concept has also been given a different meaning: it has been used to describe our own being, and indeed so much so that it also stands for our essential nature: we are ourselves an image (we are ourselves but an image); and being an image (being but an image) is what is what really defines us. The experience of being oneself an image (as opposed to just perceiving something else as an image) – or, as one might also say, this basic understanding of oneself as being just an image – plays an important role inter alia in Pre-Platonic thought, in the corpus platonicum, in the Christian idea of the imago Dei (of the notitia Dei as capacitas Dei) and, not least, in Fichte’s late philosophy.This paper focuses on two ancient Greek forerunners of some aspects of Fichte’s understanding of image, namely pre-platonic and platonic views on our own being-just-an-image.

The paper has two aims: firstly, to present Fichte’s transcendental ontology as a theory of the analogia entis. This allows to comprehend in which sense his Doctrine of science is different from Kant’s or Hegel’s thought. Secondly, i aim to outline the twofold nature of Fichte’s analogical ontology, depending on whether the intellectual concept or the concept of love is in the foreground. i distinguish these two approaches and evaluate them both with regard to the relation between the Absolute and his manifestations and to the immanent connections among the creatures.

The aim of the „Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre“ is to analyse the theoretical faculty. The starting point of this analysis is the proposition that the I posits itself as determinated by the Non-I. My thesis, which can be proven in Fichte´s text, is that it is the notion of the picture which serves as a point of orientation in the analysis of the cognitive faculty, as Kant calls it. The cognition of an object comes about as a dialectical relationship between the picturing i, the picture and the pictured object, which Fichte calls the real thing. I would like to investigate how much Fichte follows the Kantian analysis of the cognitive faculty on the one hand and how much he differs from it on the other hand. This investigation will take into account a question which is very important for every epistemology taking its starting point in subjectivity, namely the question of how the i can recognize that the objects of its cognition are real things and not the products of his phantasy. Fichte explicitly raises this very question. At the end of this paper, I attempt to show what kind of answer Fichte gives to this questionee.

This paper examines the underdetermined relation between the absolute and absolute knowledge. Fichte not only claimed that he provided the correct reading of Kant’s critical philosophy but also that his Wissenschaftslehre constructively addressed and resolved its systematic problems. By discussing Kant’s notion of a “transcendental substrate” and its relation to the “thing-in-itself” it will be shown that this claim has to be taken seriously even from a Kantian standpoint. Moreover, it will be shown that Fichte's critical assessment of Kant's philosophy at the beginning of his second private lecture on the Wissenschaftslehre given in Berlin in 1804 and his philosophical reflection of the highest principle of all knowing and its relation to the absolute can be understood as a solution to problems that historically originated with Kant and were left unsettled by him.

The inquiry into the nature of truth plays an important role in Fichte's thought, especially following his departure from Jena, and indeed in the WL-1804-ii the doctrine of truth emerges as the centerpiece of the WL. The following paper argues that the conception of truth evolves significantly after the WL-1804-ii, and that, in such texts as the Erlanger Metaphysik, the Spekulation zu Koppenhagen, and the 1812 WL, Fichte, building on the account of the hiatus in the WL-1804-ii while moving away from its notion of absolute truth, seeks to understand truth in terms of freedom, or indeed, as what »yields to freedom«, wherein freedom, through the negativity of the concept, produces an emptiness, a clearing, that is »fulfilled« with truth. Anticipating the phenomenological account of truth yet without abandoning a strong sense of normativity, Fichte’s alethology remains a compelling alternative to contemporary positions.

In Fichte research, there is no consensus on the interpretation of a topic of fundamental importance for Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre: the relationship of the absolute ‘in itself’ to its appearance. In addition to the difficulty of the matter in itself, the problems of understanding might also be related to the linguistic and terminological form of its presentation.My paper starts with the hypothesis, that an adequate understanding is actually decisively dependent on the dissolution of the ambiguity of the terminus “being”, which also occupies a prominent position in Fichte’s prima philosophia. Taking a distinction from Rudolf Hermann Lotze, I consider in a type of thought experiment whether and how Fichte‘s concept of the absolute qua absolute being (“Sein”, as a counter-concept to appearance / image / existence of the absolute) can be explained or replaced by the term validity (“Geltung”). It is also necessary to consider to what extent the idea of validity is already contained in Fichte’s “Theory of Truth”.