Transcendental Philosophy and Atheism

Abstract

Engineers test materials by subjecting them to stress: once a beam has been broken one can specify exactly how strong it was. The same method can be used in philosophy. In the Autumn of 1798 and the Winter of 1799, Fichte’s philosophical position was submitted to extraordinary stress in the extended episode known as the Atheism Controversy, culminating in his forced dismissal from his university post at Jena. The disputed issues explicitly concerned matters of religious faith and philosophical theology, but the stress of the controversy exposed fundamental tensions in Fichte’s broader philosophical position and provoked him to formulate a novel, proto-phenomenological account of the scope and structure of transcendental investigation. Recent years have seen an explosion of new interest in the writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte.1 This recent spate of scholarship has focused attention on Fichte’s distinctive contributions in an array of interrelated areas: the theory of self-consciousness, the theory of subjectivity, idealism, intersubjectivity, private property and political right, freedom, etc.2 In all these areas a common pattern has emerged: Fichte appropriates and radicalizes – sometimes beyond recognition – themes he found in Kant, often mediated by figures such as Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Friedrich Jacobi, or Salomon Maimon. What has been less systematically interrogated is Fichte’s contribution to the very idea of transcendental philosophy, transcendental inquiry or transcendental proof. There are a few notable exceptions, the most important of which is Gunter Zoller’s study, Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy. But this is one of those cases where the exception proves the rule. For while Zoller emphasizes Fichte’s departures from Kant on many key points, when it comes to the theme of his title he generally emphasizes continuity. Zoller: ‘Historically speaking, Fichte’s project of a Wissenschaftslehre continues Kant’s development of a transcendental philosophy; it aims at a comprehensive account of the principles governing human knowledge and its world of objects.’3 And elsewhere: ‘Fichte retains the Kantian understanding of transcendental philosophy as a theory of experience.’4 One might accordingly conclude that Fichte simply did not have much to contribute on this score. Although he was a radical innovator in many areas, he essentially took over an unmodified Kantian construal of the parameters of transcendental investigation: transcendental philosophy is opposed on the one hand to 1 In referring to Fichte’s writings I have made use of the two standard editions. Where possible, I refer to the volume and page of I.H. Fichte, (ed.) Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sammtliche Werke (Berlin: Veit & Comp, 1845-6; reprint: Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), using the abbreviation SW. The pagination of SW is provided in most modern editions of Fichte’s works. For works not included in SW, I refer to R. Lauth et al. (eds.) J.G. Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1964 ); page references to this edition are given with the abbreviation GA. English translations of many of the works cited here can be found in Breazeale 1988 and 1994. Citations to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason make use of the usual A and B numbering. 2 On Fichte’s contributions in these areas see inter alia: Henrich 1966 (on self-consciousness); Neuhouser 1990 (on subjectivity); Pippin 1989 (on idealism); Wood 2006 (on intersubjectivity); Merle, et al. 2001 (on political right). 3 Zoller 1998: 2. 4 Zoller 1998: 74.