The systematic reasons of the incompleteness of Fichte’s system

Abstract

For some years Fichte seems to have envisioned the possibility of presenting a definitive and final version of his Science of Knowledge. This article develops two reasons why such a project is structurally impossible. On the one hand, Fichte, inspired by the tradition of negative theology, challenges the capacity of language of being pure performativity: it always involves an element of letter which prevents it from being all spirit. On the other hand, the opening of the system to life implies a kind of incompleteness which is the only possible and consistent with the idea of the Doctrine of Science (understood as closed system of transcendental conditions of consciousness). More precisely, the specific completion of the Doctrine of Science cannot tolerate another kind of incompletion but that resulting of the opening to the life required by the system.