Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Idealism from Kant to Hegel
- 1 The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy
- 2 Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism
- 3 Is the Critique of Judgment “Post-Critical”?
- 4 The “I” as Principle of Practical Philosophy
- 5 The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After
- 6 From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism
- 7 Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism
- 8 The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre
- 9 The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature
- 10 The Nature of Subjectivity: The Critical and Systematic Function of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature
- 11 Substance, Causality, and the Question of Method in Hegel's Science of Logic
- 12 Point of View of Man or Knowledge of God: Kant and Hegel on Concept, Judgment, and Reason
- 13 Kant, Hegel, and the Fate of “the” Intuitive Intellect
- 14 Metaphysics and Morality in Kant and Hegel
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Idealism from Kant to Hegel
- 1 The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy
- 2 Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism
- 3 Is the Critique of Judgment “Post-Critical”?
- 4 The “I” as Principle of Practical Philosophy
- 5 The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After
- 6 From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism
- 7 Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism
- 8 The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre
- 9 The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature
- 10 The Nature of Subjectivity: The Critical and Systematic Function of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature
- 11 Substance, Causality, and the Question of Method in Hegel's Science of Logic
- 12 Point of View of Man or Knowledge of God: Kant and Hegel on Concept, Judgment, and Reason
- 13 Kant, Hegel, and the Fate of “the” Intuitive Intellect
- 14 Metaphysics and Morality in Kant and Hegel
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Both systematically and historically, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre represents a further development of Kant's Critical philosophy, prepared and inspired by the latter's earlier reception through Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, and Salomon Maimon. Fichte's relation to his illustrious predecessor is a curious mixture of unconditional allegiance and metacritical distancing. By applying such hermeneutical devices as the distinction between the letter (Buchstabe) and the spirit (Geist) of an author's philosophical system and the separation of the system itself from its various presentations (Darstellungen), Fichte establishes a precarious balance between loyalty and patricide in his relationship to Kant. In so doing, Fichte is supported by Kant's own claim, originally raised with respect to Plato, that it is possible for an author to be better understood by someone else than by himself or herself.
The basic direction of Fichte's move with Kant beyond Kant points toward a completion of what is prepared, begun and partially executed in the latter's Critical philosophy. Fichte's project aims both at a more radical foundation and at a more extensive elaboration of the investigation of reason initiated by Kant, thereby integrating Kant's work in the three Critiques into a comprehensive, systematically unified account of (finite) reason. In drawing on Kant's own architectonic distinction between the “propaedeutic” and the “system of pure reason,” Fichte asserts his claim of transforming the “critique of pure reason” into the “system of pure reason”, which, he maintains, Kant never provided.
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- The Reception of Kant's Critical PhilosophyFichte, Schelling, and Hegel, pp. 129 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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