An examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte develops his ethical program in the Jena period and its immediate aftermath (1794–1800) reveals the determining presence of Leibniz, and the complex heritage of Leibnizian perfectionist thought from which Kantian, and post-Kantian, ethics seek to extricate themselves. While Kant blocks any reversion to the older, Leibnizian perfectionism, his criticisms leave open a space for a new kind of perfectionist ethic, one whose object is the promotion not of any determinate notion of eudaimonia or thriving, but of the possibility of free agency itself. The aim of post-Kantian perfectionism is to sustain the conditions of free, spontaneous action. Fichte’s ethical system is one example of post-Kantian perfectionism.

First in the Phenomenology and then in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel rejects Fichte’s notion of conscience on the grounds that it leads to despair (since the agent can never be sufficiently well-informed to know that he is doing the “right” thing). He also criticizes Fichtean conscience as purely “formal” and “abstract” and compatible with any content, which it can obtain only arbitrarily from the manifold of one’s natural drives and inclinations. For Hegel, there is an unresolvable tension between the claimed “universality” of a conscientious deed and the natural particularity of every moral agent, which ultimately leads to ethical egoism and hypocrisy. The aim of this paper is to show, first, that Hegel misrepresents key aspects of Fichte’s position and, second, that Fichte possesses the resources to respond successfully to most of Hegel’s criticisms. In order to grasp this one must closely examine Fichte’s subtle and often misunderstand account of moral deliberation and conscientious decision-making and the relation of the same to his larger account of I-hood.

This article defends the paradoxical thesis that neo-Kantianism is better described as neo-Fichteanism rather than neo-Kantianism. It maintains that neo-Kantianism is closer to Fichte than Kant in four fundamental respects: in its nationalism, socialism, activism, and in its dynamic and quantitative conception of the dualism between understanding and sensibility. By contrast, Kant’s philosophy was cosmopolitan, liberal, non-activist quietist and held a static and qualitative view of the dualism between understanding and sensibility. I attempt to explain why it took the neo-Kantians so long to recognize these profound affinities with Fichte: they were influenced by Fries conception of Fichte as a speculative metaphysician. I argue that the hold of Friesian interpretation of Fichte was first broken by Emil Lask in his Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte.

Independently of the discussions on the development of Fichte’s philosophy, there is something that does not seem to change throughout the more than a dozen presentations of his doctrine, namely, his constant concern with the meaning of philosophy. This concern is such a structuring one for Fichte that he even decides to replace the very name of “philosophy” by another one, less heavy in meaning and better suited to elucidate the nature of this particular activity that constitutes his own project. He calls it the Wissenschaftslehre. In this term created by Fichte three verbs can be found: wissen (to know), schaffen (to create) and lehren (to teach) – we would like to propose that Fichte’s conception of philosophy can be brought out as the orchestrated action of those three activities: knowing, creating and teaching. The point here being not to say that Fichte had the idea in mind of composing these three verbs (wissen, schaffen, lehren) when he created the term Wissenschaftslehre, but only that those terms offer useful landmarks for the exploration of Fichte’s philosophical landscape.Unabhängig von den Diskussionen über die Entwicklung der Philosophie Fichtes gibt es etwas, das sich in den zahlreichen Darstellungen seiner Lehre nicht zu ändern scheint, nämlich seine ständige Auseinandersetzung mit der Bedeutung der Philosophie selbst. Diese Sorge ist für Fichte so entscheidend, dass er sogar beschließt, den Namen Philosophie durch einen anderen zu ersetzen, weniger schwer in der Bedeutung und nach ihm besser geeignet, das Wesen dieser besonderen Tätigkeit, die sein eigenes Projekt zum Ausdruck bringt, aufzuklären. Er nennt es die „Wissenschaftslehre“. In diesem von Fichte geschaffenen Begriff lassen sich drei Verben auffinden: Wissen, Schaffen und Lehren. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz möchte ich vorschlagen, dass Fichtes Auffassung von Philosophie als die orchestrierte Handlung dieser drei Tätigkeiten angesehen werden kann: Wissen, Schaffen und Lehren. Ich will damit nicht behaupten, dass Fichte die explizierte Absicht hatte, diese drei Verben zu komponieren als er den Begriff „Wissenschaftslehre“ schuf, sondern nur, dass diese Begriffe nützliche Anhaltspunkte für die Erforschung von Fichtes philosophischer Landschaft anbieten.

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.