Kant and Fichte on Belief and Knowledge

Abstract

One of the most venerable distinctions in philosophy is the one between knowledge and belief. Knowledge has been typically associated with genuine or scientific cognition that can provide truth whereas belief has been thought to present mere appearances or subjective opinion, usually founded on sense perceptions. In this paper, I will argue that for both Kant and Fichte, this standard view is mistaken and that they present belief (Glaube) as more important than knowledge. Even though Kant admits that knowledge is prior, and superior, to belief as well as opinion in their purely epistemic dimension, he nevertheless ends up holding that belief in the more significant sense of a ‘postulate,’ is more important than knowledge. I will also argue that this is the fundamental point of his well-known doctrine of the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason. The standard view is also challenged by Fichte’s thoroughgoing transformation of our epistemic enterprise. According to Fichte, belief (Glaube) is prior to knowledge (Wissen), since it has something to do with “a resolution of the will” to admit the validity of knowledge. Belief here is equated with the practical act of the self that expresses its true nature as Tathandlung. In the course of the paper, I will also show that Kant and Fichte seem to argue for their view in a different way. For Kant, the superiority of belief is presented as part of his architectonic concern, i.e., as an answer to the question “what may I hope” in the context of his elaborate theory of postulates. For Fichte, the doctrine is presented as part of his transcendental-ontological project of securing the reality of the self and the world from our moral vocation.