/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11743310]

I want to study the great systematizers in the West, should I include Fichte in this project?

What makes him worth reading?

[Anonymous No.11743754]

>>11743310
If I remember, he himself says that he doesn't bring anything new, but that Kant was right all the way. He only regards his own thought as some kind of explanation and better organization of that of Kant.
So, if you choose not to include him, at least you would have a decent reason.
Sorry not to know him enough to tell more. I was completely unable to read him. I only remember that all the professors would say : Start with one of these - The Vocation of the Scholar - Crystal clear report
(but even these I couldn't read)

[Anonymous No.11743822]

>>11743754
Thanks for the response!

I'll definitely give Vocation of the Scholar a read through at some point.

My only exposure to Fichte was through Kierkegaard, but even that was incredibly passing, and I could not recall any of it if I tried.

[Anonymous No.11743866]

Fichte is proposing a "subjective idealism" that is actually a supra-subjective idealism, because individual subjects (i.e., individual human minds) are part of a larger sphere of "subjectivity" in general. This is sort of Kantian in a way, in that Kant has intersubjectivity and universality as well, but for Fichte the intersubjectivity is supra-subjectively established by a kind of apodictic rationalism that looks more like pre-Kantian metaphysics than Kant.

If I were you I would read Beiser's treatment of him in The Struggle Against Subjectivism, where Beiser argues that he's basically a pragmatist Kantian with strong leanings toward absolute idealism, rather than just a batshit absolute idealist from the get-go. And I would read the two introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and other writings like the Vocation if you feel like it. There is also a good discussion of Fichte in Between Kant and Hegel, ed. di Giovanni, along with a translation of Fichte's pre-Wissenschaftslehre review of Schulze's Aenesidemus, which anticipates many of his ideas in the Wissenschaftslehre.

In my opinion, Fichte's thought is best understood as a 50/50 split between two essences: 50% of him is hyper-Kantian, meaning, he so thoroughly "got" some of Kant's most important, underlying insights about transcendental idealism, and in particular he "got" what Kant's immediate reception found so arresting about this form of idealism, that he's a very good window into that immediately post-Kantian craze. But the other 50% is absolute idealism, including outright misreadings of Kant. If you read the Wissenschaftslehre introductions, you'll notice he's defending himself against critics who have (rightly) said that he's misreading Kant as a Berkeleyan idealist and misreading the thing-in-itself ("X") as a merely formal aspect of subjectivity, necessary for everyday, empirical experience, which can be "seen philosophically" so that it reveals itself as illusory from the transcendental viewpoint. This is flat wrong.

The sweet spot between these two things, between Fichte's own, new, absolute idealist ideas and Fichte's high-Kantian insights, is occasionally very valuable. Fichte is a great thinker. But the "system" he proposes is bizarre, if taken as a whole, and not orthodox Kantian. Beiser has the most interesting reading of him IMHO.

Most interesting insight of the Wissenschaftslehre is his opposition of dogmatic vs. idealist "ways of seeing" the world. Big influence on Schelling's indifference point and natural philosophy, if you want to get into Schelling. When Fichte starts tearing into dogmatists and materialists in that intro, he is REALLY "getting" Kant, in a way that goes beyond Kant. Which is why it's so bizarre that just a few pages later he commits similar errors in elaborating a "subjective idealist" rationalist metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.11743867]

>>11743822
>dubs

I'll suck you off for free

[Anonymous No.11744095]

>>11743866
Damn, posts like these remind me of the joys of /lit/. I'm seriously thankful for your post.

Schelling is definitely on my list of systematizers as it stands now, so if doing a little Fichte reading post-Kant will help my understanding of S, then I shall do some.

In your opinion, do you think any of his 'misreadings' in this sense were intentional?

>>11743867
Suck the post above, he has dubs AND deserves it.

[Anonymous No.11745446]

>>11744095
No problem dude, just take it all with a grain of salt in case I'm totally full of shit or presenting a biased view based on the things I happen to have read.

Honestly I think most of his misreadings of Kant were not intentional, because he defends them in the introductions of the Wissenschaftslehre in an ineffective way if he's actually being duplicitous. Principle of embarrassment or whatever. If he wanted to claim a different interpretation of Kant he could have done so, but instead he sticks to a few points that is actually kind of embarrassingly wrong, and keeps footnoting to say defend it as in line with Kant. Mainly thinking of his misunderstanding of "intellectual intuition" as thetic intuition of one's own subjectivity, and his elimination of the thing in itself.