Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Modern European Philosophy) [Paperback]

Frederick Neuhouser (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521399386 | ISBN-13: 978-0521399388 | Publication Date: October 26, 1990

This is the first book in English to elucidate the central issues in the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), a figure crucial to the movement of philosophy from Kant to German idealism. The book explains Fichte's notion of subjectivity and how his particular view developed out of Kant's accounts of theoretical and practical reason. Fichte argued that the subject has a self-positing structure which distinguishes it from a thing or an object. Thus, the subject must be understood as an activity rather than a thing and is self-constituting in a way that an object is not. In the final chapter, Professor Neuhouser considers how this doctrine of the self-positing subject enables us to understand the possibility of the self's autonomy, or self-determination.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] very substantial piece of scholarship which analyzes a number of important historical and systematic issues with great clarity and perception. The presentation and treatment of the basic historical and philosophical issues is magisterial." Raymond Geuss, Columbia University

"I wholeheartly applaud what Neuhuser has done. He has shown that there is something philosophically interesting (i.e., intellectually respectable by our present standards)...." Dialogue

Book Description

The first English text to elucidate the central issues in the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), a figure crucial to the evolution of philosophy from Kant to German idealism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (October 26, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521399386
• ISBN-13: 978-0521399388
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,756,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars one more review, November 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Modern European Philosophy) (Paperback)

While the above review is of course very helpful, potential buyers and readers may want to know from someone who has actually read the book that it is indeed excellent. Neuhauser's book is in fact a "must-read" for anyone looking for a clear, well-written, and theoretically-informed treatment of Fichte's cryptic but groundbreaking account of self-consciousness. Readers with a healthy background in Kant will benefit most from the book. However, it is not written for specialists in the field. Anyone interested in understanding some of the basic moves in post-Kantian idealism would do well to start here.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, July 3, 2010

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Brian C. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Modern European Philosophy) (Paperback)

Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity is easily the best book I have ever read on Fichte (an admittedly short list); but, it is also probably one of the best books I have ever read on any philosopher (a much longer list).

Neuhouser's book is valuable for a number of reasons. First, it presents an extremely helpful and enlightening analysis of Fichte's development from his pre-Wissenschaftslehre reviews, up through his System of Ethics. Fichte's own writings can be extremely obscure and this genetic analysis of his thought and the problems which he was attempting to solve with the various incarnations of his thought is extremely helpful at shedding some light on the obscurity.

Neuhouser's book is also valuable because it presents Fichte's thought in a way that is relevant to discussions taking place in philosophy today. The central focus of Neuhouser's book, as the title suggests, is Fichte's theory about what it means to be a subject as opposed to a thing. We could say that Fichte is interested in providing an ontology of the subject which immediately brings him into proximity with many of the existential phenomenologists (Sartre, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty).

So I would definitely recommend this book, not only to those who are interested in Fichte or German Idealism but to anyone who is interested in the existential phenomenologists as well. I would also recommend this book to anyone who is working in ethics because Fichte is interested in a question that is fundamental to ethics, namely, what kind of a being would be subject to moral (as opposed to natural) laws? What must the subject be like in order for its actions to be determined by an `ought' rather than an `is'? This question is foundational for ethics since it must be taken for granted in all discussions of ethics. In order for moral principles to be more than smoke in the air it is necessary for there to be a being who is capable of acting on them. This is the question Fichte attempts to solve and his solutions are still relevant.

So this book has my wholehearted endorsement! The rest of my review is a more detailed analysis of the contents of Neuhouser's book and can be safely skipped by anyone who is uninterested.

The historical context from which Fichte's philosophy emerged was one that was dominated by the rise of Spinozism within Germany during the latter half of the eighteenth century (pg. 3). In particular F.H. Jacobi had claimed, in his book on Spinoza and Spinozism, that any rational interpretation of the world necessitated the denial of human freedom. The notion of reason that Jacobi uses to make his argument is ultimately grounded in the principle of sufficienct reason which states that any event or state of affairs finds its necessary and sufficient conditions in some prior event or state of affairs.

Kant attempted to resolve this dilemma but only by resorting to a dualism between the phenomenal and the noumenal. The principle of sufficient reason applied only to appearances, and not to noumenal reality. In other words, Kant makes room for freedom by positing a noumenal self which lies outside the realm of nature and the dominance of the principle of sufficient reason.

Fichte will ultimately reject Kant's notion of the noumenal self since a self which existed before it was conscious of itself would not be a self at all but a thing. But this raises the question of freedom again, namely, how can there be free-acts in a nature that is determined by natural laws?

Fichte will agree with Kant to the degree that he will limit the universal applicability of the principle of sufficient reason which will allow him to maintain the existence of freedom. In order to counter Jacobi's claim Fichte is, therefore, required to provide a more adequate account of reason; one that is not dominated by the principle of sufficient reason. Kant limited the applicability of the principle of sufficient reason to the theoretical employment of reason while denying its applicability to the practical employment of reason. But for Kant there is still an irresolvable duality between these two forms of reason.

One of the major goals of Fichte's account, according to Neuhouser, is to provide a unified account of reason, one that will be capable of perceiving a unified structure of reason behind both its theoretical and practical employments.

But it is not enough to simply deny the universal applicability of the principle of sufficient reason. If we simply deny that the principle of sufficient reason is applicable to free acts we are left with acts that are merely random or undetermined and there is no compelling reason to consider such acts as truly being free. According to Neuhouser, "What is also needed is an alternative account of reason, one that makes it possible to understand freedom as a kind of self-determination and that is able to conceive of actions as grounded in reasons without at the same time making them into externally determined, unfree events" (pg. 5-6)

So Fichte attempts to provide an account of reason that will achieve these goals. Fichte's account of reason must unify structurally the different employments of reason (theoretical and practical), it must be able to provide an adequate account of self-determination, and it must avoid treating the subject as a thing.

The structural unity Fichte is searching for will ultimately be based on his notion of self-positing. The existence of the self, or subject, is different from the existence of a thing because, according to Ficthe, the self has no existence apart from its own self-awareness. The existence of the self is, therefore, self-grounded since "its act of self-intuition constitutes its being" (pg. 46). This is part of what Fichte means by his notion of self-positing.

Fichte is also attempting to resolve a difficulty that was introduced into philosophy by Reinhold, an early interpreter of Kant. Reinhold claimed that all conscious states share a single underlying structure, that of representation (pg. 70). All consciousness involves a subject that is distinct from its object, as well as a third element, a representation. The problem arises from the fact that the representation is both distinguished from the subject but at the same time belongs to the subject. But in order to relate a representation to myself as subject I must be aware of myself as subject in some way. This awareness cannot, however, also be based on the subject-object structure or we wind up with an infinite regress.

In order to avoid these difficulties Fichte rejects Reinhold's thesis that the structure of representational consciousness is the structure of all consciousness (pg. 72). According to Fichte we must be aware of ourselves in all of our awareness of objects but this must be an immediate and nonrepresentational form of awareness. In this form of awareness consciousness is both subject and object. This is what Fichte means by intellectual intuition. It is intellectual because it is not sensuous, and it is intuition (as opposed to thought) because it provides us access to the actual existence of its object (the self). The nonrepresentational nature of self-awareness is another area in which Fichte's thought is still relevant in my opinion.

[As a sidenote: Schopenhauer famously claimed to be unable to find such an intellectual intuition in himself. But if Schopenhauer maintained that the subject-object structure was therefore the nature of all consciousness he would be open to the same criticism that Fichte leveled against Reinhold. Fichte admitted that the intellectual intuition was not a self-contained consciousness but merely a part of every empirical act of consciousness. Perhaps that is why Schopenhauer missed it?]

Fichte's notion of the self-positing subject also provides an adequate reason for Fichte's rejection of Kant's noumenal self since for Fichte it is impossible for the self to exist prior to its own act of self-intuition (pg. 104).

It remains to connect Fichte's notion of the self-positing subject to the question of self-determination (the question that motivated the entire discussion). According to Neuhouser, "It is possible to arrive at a coherent conception of self-determination, but only if one starts with an adequate notion of the subject, that is, with one that recognizes the fundamental differences between a self and a thing, and thereby avoids the pitfall of thinking of the subject as a kind of object. This is precisely what is supposed to be accomplished by the conception of the self-positing subject. In its most general form, then, Fichte's thesis will be that self-determination is a coherent possibility only for a subject - that is, only for an entity capable of entering into the kind of self-relation that he characterizes as `self-positing.'" (pg. 120).

Only a being which is characterized as a self-positing subject will be capable of self-determination. But what precisely does self-determination entail? Self-determination involves willing on the part of the subject. Willing in turn involves more than simply an incentive to act; it involves a positive resolution on the part of the will. While the incentive to act can be given externally to the self the resolution to act must arise from the self itself (pg. 124). The subject's capacity for reflection is what allows the self to tear itself from all natural incentives to action and to make its own free resolution or determination.

This freedom from natural incentives is only possible for an intelligence which would be capable of determining its action based on concepts (pg. 126). These concepts imply that the subject submits its action to norms of behavior, and freedom in the true sense implies that these norms themselves be freely chosen by the subject... Read more ›

2 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Author, February 7, 2001

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"catsup1" (Ithaca, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Modern European Philosophy) (Paperback)

I actually haven't read this book but Professor Neuhouser is my writing professor at the university I go to and he is a wonderful writer and wonderful philosopher. All of his ideas he presents to us in class are well-formulated and thought out and he cultivates this same thought and philosophy in us. I am going to read this book as soon as I have a chance.