Fichte's Aenesidemus Review German Idealism

FICHTE'S AENESIDEMUS REVIEW AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF GERMAN IDEALISM

DANIEL BREAZEALE

In 1792 there appeared anonymously a book entitled, Aenesidemus, or Concerning the Foundations of the Elementary Philosophy Pro

pounded in Jena by Professor Reinhold, including a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason.1 This curious work, which takes the form of series of letter exchanged be

tween an enthusiastic champion of the new transcendental philosophy

("Hermias") and a skeptical critic of this same philosophy ("Aenesi demus"),2 created something of a sensation, appearing as it did at the

height of the first wave of general enthusiasm for the Critical Philoso

phy. Though by no means the first published attack on Kantianism, Aenesidemus was distinguished from most of the other early criti

1 Aenesidemus oder ?ber die Fundamente der von dem Herrn Profes

sor Reinhold in Jena gelieferten Elementar-Philosophie. Nebst einer

Vertheidiguna des Skeptizismus gegen die Anmassungen der Vernunftkri tik, published anonymously in 1792, with no indication of publisher or place of publication. Some indication of the importance of this neglected work is that when, at the beginning of the present century, the Kantgesellschaft in

augurated a program of republishing "rare philosophical works" the first work selected for inclusion in this series was Schulze's Aenesidemus ("Neu drucke seltener philosophischer Werke," vol. 1 [Berlin: Reuther & Rei chard, 1911]).

References to Fichte's writings are to volume and page number of Jo hann Gottlieb Fichtes s?mmtliche Werke [=SW], ed. I. H. Fichte (Berlin: Veit & Comp., 1845-46). Fichte's letters are referred to by date and recip ient, as published in J.G. Fichtes Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Hans Schulze, 2d ed. (Leipzig: Haessel, 1930).

All translations in this essay are by the author. In the case of both Fichte's writings and letters, the translated texts have been checked

against the versions of the same texts published in the still uncompleted J.G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

[=AA], ed. Reinhard Lauth and Hans Jacob (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1964 to date).

The text of Fichte's review of Aenesidemus may be found in SW, 1: 3-25 and in AA, 1. 2: 41-67.

2 The name is derived from that of Aenesidemus of Knossus, a neo

Pyrrhonean skeptic who taught at Alexandria during the first century B.C.

Review of Metaphysics 34 (March 1981): 545-568 Copyright ? 1981 by the Review of Metaphysics

546 DANIEL BREAZEALE

cisms by the detailed character of its scrutiny as well as by its willing ness to examine the Critical Philosophy not only in its original form, but also in the more "advanced" version represented by K. L. Rein

hold's Elementary Philosophy. Aenesidemus claimed to be nothing less than a demonstration of the untenability of the new philosophy, specifically, of its failure to refute what the anonymous author called "Humean skepticism."

For a young and enthusiastic Kantian like Fichte the challenge presented by Aenesidemus was simply too great to ignore; indeed, it was the first book which he undertook to review after being invited to become a contributor to the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, where,

after considerable delay, Fichte's lengthy review was finally pub lished in February of 1794.3 The Aenesidemus review turned out to be much more than a defense of Kantianism against skepticism. It

implies a fundamental reassessment of both Kant's and Reinhold's work and?in tentative but unmistakable terms?announces the

discovery of a new standpoint and of a new foundation for transcen

dental philosophy. Fichte's review of Aenesidemus thus not only signals a revolution in his own philosophical development but marks a

genuine watershed in the history of German Idealism.

Though Aenesidemus was published anonymously, it was widely known to be the work of Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), who at the time of its publication was professor of philosophy at Helmst?dt. Schulze was not unknown to Fichte. The two had been fellow stu dents at Pforta and then again, briefly, at Wittenburg. Fichte's atti

tude toward Aenesidemus was further complicated by his belief that

3 At the time the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, which was published at Jena, was perhaps the leading literary journal in the German-speaking

world. Largely on the basis of his sudden fame as author of the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, Fichte was invited by C. G. Sch?tz (founder and coeditor of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung) in the fall of 1792 to be come a regular contributor. Fichte's letter to Sch?tz of 25 May 1793 ac

knowledges, "I have undertaken the review of Aenesidemus and will be

sending it to you from Zurich within a short time." More than half a year later he again wrote to Sch?tz concerning the promised review. In this letter he reports that, despite his efforts, the review remains unfinished "since I have been thrown into an unforeseen labor by Aenesidemus's skep ticism." In fact, it was not until mid-January of 1794 that Sch?tz received Fichte's manuscript. Thus, although Aenesidemus was the first review which Fichte undertook for the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, it was the last of his three reviews to appear in that journal. Like all contributions to this journal, Fichte's reviews were published unsigned.

FICHTE'S AENESIDEMUS REVIEW 547

Schulze was the anonymous author of a very harsh and sarcastic re

view of Fichte's Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation.4 Wounded

by the unconcealed hostility of this review, Fichte nevertheless re

solved to keep his feelings to himself and to avoid any public quarrel with Schulze?a resolution which, as events developed, was honored

primarily in the breach. Despite his determination "to treat the book

gently and considerately precisely because I consider its author to be the same person who reviewed my Critique of All Revelation," Fichte's published review o? Aenesidemus included some sharp per sonal attacks which he later declared to have crept in "quite contrary to my intentions."5 Good intentions to the contrary, the Aenesi

demus review proved to be another chapter in one of those acrimoni

ous literary feuds which were such an unfortunately characteristic

feature of Fichte's public career.6

The explanation for Fichte's long delay in completing his review of Aenesidemus is not to be found in any change in his private circum stances (in the spring of 1793 he moved from Danzig to Zurich, where he was married in October of the same year) nor in any personal quar

rel with Schulze. The true reason for the delay is apparent from a

passage in a letter which Fichte wrote to an old acquaintance in mid

November of 1793. After mentioning his recent marriage and the ac

cumulated work which has occupied his time, he adds: "In addition to this I immediately thereafter began a book by a resolute skeptic,

which led me to the clear conviction that philosophy is still very far

4 The review in question appeared in 1793 in the Neue allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (Kiel), 2. 1. Among other things, this review charges Fichte with having deliberately omitted his own name from the first edition of the Critique of All Revelation and of aping the Kantian manner simply in order to play a joke on the public. Fichte's reaction to this review is ap parent from his letter of 28 March 1793 to Gottlieb Hufeland: "It causes me

pain?great pain?that I should be the innocent cause of a literary feud car ried on in such a tone."

5 Letter to Hufeland, 8 March 1794. In the same letter Fichte states

"my plan is to win over by love those who especially hounded Reinhold with fear. By replying to none of the attacks on my Critique of All Revelation and by refusing to write a sharp preface [to the second edition] I have shown that I am no literary squabbler. Therefore, I would be very sorry if these two reviews [viz., the review o? Aenesidemus and an earlier published re

view of a book by A. L. Creuzer] should cast such an unwanted suspicion upon me."

6 The public controversy between Schulze and Fichte went on for

years, finally culminating in the hysterical polemics of Fichte's 1797 essay, Annalen des philosophischen Tons.


from being a science. Thus I was forced to abandon my own previous

system and think of a tenable one."7 The identity of this "resolute

skeptic" is made explicit in a letter which Fichte wrote during this same period to J. F. Flatt, professor of philosophy at T?bingen.

Aenesidemus, which I consider to be one of the most remarkable prod ucts of our decade, has convinced me of something which I admittedly already suspected: that even after the labors of Kant and Reinhold, philosophy is still not a science. Aenesidemus has shaken my system to its very foundations, and, since one cannot very well live under the

open sky, I have been forced to construct a new system.8

To be sure, Fichte had already begun to entertain some doubts

about orthodox Kantianism prior to residing Aenesidemus,9 but it was

not until he tried to answer Schulze's specific objections that he was

forced to confront his own misgivings in any fundamental way.

Aenesidemus forced Fichte to reconsider his general allegiance to Kantian philosophy as well as his more recent enthusiasm for the spe

cific version of that philosophy embodied in Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy. For the fact of the matter is that Fichte found himself in

substantial agreement with some of Schulze's most fundamental ob

jections to both Reinhold's and Kant's presentations of transcenden

tal philosophy. Despite this agreement, however, Fichte by no means wished to award victory to the skeptic in his quarrel with the Critical Philosophy. In order to defend the latter while at the same

time accepting some of the skeptic's objections he was forced to make

a distinction between the true "spirit" of the Critical Philosophy and

7 To Ludwig Wilhelm Wloemar, November 1793. Only a draft of this

letter survives. 8 To J. F. Flatt, November or December 1793. Again, only a draft of

this letter survives. Very similar passages may be found in Fichte's other

letters of this period, especially those of 6 December 1793 (to Niethammer), December 1793 (to Stephani), and 15 January 1794 (to Reinhard).

9 The degree to which Fichte was ever an orthodox Kantian is open to

question. Dissatisfaction with Kant's philosophy (as well as the familiar

distinction between its spirit and letter) is already evident as early as 20

February 1793 in Fichte's letter to F. V. Reinhard. Though additional rele

vant manuscript materials have since come to light, the best study of this

question remains Willy Kabitz, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der

Fichteschen Wissenschaftslehre aus der Kantischen Philosophie (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1902). For a valuable and well-informed recent dis

cussion of this question, see Peter Baumanns, Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre. Probleme ihres Anfangs (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974), pp. 56-69.


the particular form or "letter" of the same, as found for example in

the writings of Kant and Reinhold.10 With respect to these two au

thors (both of whom were of course still living) Fichte found himself in a somewhat delicate position. On the one hand, he had to agree that Aenesidemus had exposed crucial weaknesses in both Reinhold's and Kant's systems; on the other, he felt himself genuinely indebted to both Kant and Reinhold and considered himself their most staunch

ally in any battle against the critics of transcendental idealism. This

explains one of the most curious features of the Aenesidemus review:

the way in which Fichte concedes so many of Schulze's objections without ceasing for a moment to present himself a defender of the Critical Philosophy against the attacks of the skeptic.

By distinguishing the "spirit" of Kantianism from its "letter" Fichte was able to accept many of Schulze's objections without admit

ting that Aenesidemus was a successful refutation of the Critical Phi

losophy. But to make this strategy plausible Fichte had to incorpo rate the skeptic's valid observations into the Critical Philosophy itself. That is to say, the strategy of the Aenesidemus review de

manded a thorough revision of the very system which was ostensibly defended. The new system would have to be immune to Schulze's

?o "Beyond the spirit of Kantianism there is no room left for inquiry. I

am fully convinced that those first principles which I wish to establish

clearly and distinctly were already?though obscurely?placed by Kant himself at the basis of all of his inquiries. I do, however, hope to go beyond the letter of Kant." This passage is from Fichte's letter of 2 April 1794 to

Karl B?ttiger. Similar comments on the obscure nature of Kant's genius, which gave him the correct results without the correct reasons, may be found in the previously mentioned letters which Fichte wrote during the

winter of 1793/4 (see above, n. 8). The same theme recurs frequently in Fichte's early published writings, for example, in the following passage from the preface to the first edition (1794) o? Concerning the Concept of the

Theory of Scientific Knowledge:

"The author remains convinced that no human understanding can ad vance further than that boundary on which Kant, especially in the Cri

tique ofJudament, stood, and which he declared to be the final bound

ary of finite knowing?but without ever telling us specifically where it lies. I realize that I will never be able to say anything which has not

already?directly or indirectly and with more or less clarity?been indicated by Kant. I leave to future ages the task of fathoming the

genius of this man who, often as if inspired from on high, drove philo sophical judgment so decisively from the standpoint at which he found it toward its final goal" (SW, 1: 30-31).


objections while remaining at least compatible with the systems of

Kant and Reinhold.11 This was the imposing task which faced Fichte in the winter of

1973/4 as he struggled with Aenesidemus. Before the skeptic could

be rebutted and the review submitted, Fichte's own view of his rela tion to his predecessors would be transformed and the foundations

would be laid for a work which would absorb a lifetime of effort, the

11 There is an element of undeniable ambiguity in Fichte's comments

during this period concerning the compatibility of his new system with that of Reinhold. On the one hand it was from Reinhold that he derived the

most important formal clue for his own reconstruction of Kantianism (viz., the need for deriving philosophy from a single principle); on the other, his

disagreement with Reinhold is made much more explicit than his disagree ment with Kant. This is partly because Schulze's strongest objections are aimed at Reinhold, and also because Fichte worked out his new system in the specific context of a detailed re-examination of Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy.

How complicated?and anxious?Fichte's own attitude toward ex

pressing his differences with Reinhold actually was may be inferred from the following two passages, the first from his letter of 2 April 1794 to Karl

B?ttiger, the second from his letter of 1 March 1794 to Reinhold himself:

"I am pleased that the review o? Aenesidemus has aroused attention and that you approve of the manner in which I speak about Reinhold. I confess that for a long time I felt myself in a predicament concerning the manner in which I would have to treat this great independent thinker and worthy man. For I had to contradict him straightfor

wardly, and I had to demonstrate the untenability of his system."

"The review of Aenesidemus . . . will have indicated two things which I wish to be equally obvious to you: first, how highly I value

your inquiries and how much I owe to you; and second, where along the path which you have so laudably followed I believe I have to go further. I have already sketched at least the major portions of that

system to which I referred in the review, but it is still far from being clear enough to communicate. Nevertheless, we are already in such

close agreement that I am almost certain that one day we will reach

complete agreement."

It is interesting to compare the circumspect tone of the above pas

sage with the much more blunt declaration contained in a letter which

Fichte sent to Reinhold barely one year later: "I myself, however," Fichte writes, "am a declared opponent of your system. ... I be

lieve that I have justified my opinion of Aenesidemus. From my review of it, it should at least be clear that I have acted in good faith. It is true that I now think much less highly of the literary merits of

Aenesidemus than I did even then; yet it does seem to me that it has refuted your Elementary Philosophy" (Fragment of a letter, March

April 1795).


Wissenschaftslehre, or "Theory of Scientific Knowledge."12 Again, Fichte's letters from this period are especially interesting and show

just how clearly he understood the significance of what was happen

ing:

[Aenesidemus] has overthrown Reinhold in my eyes, has made me

suspicious of Kant, and has overturned my whole system from the

ground up. One cannot live under the open sky. It cannot be helped; the system must be rebuilt. And this is what I have been faithfully doing for the past six weeks or so. Come celebrate the harvest with

me! I have discovered a new foundation, out of which it will be easy to develop the whole of philosophy. Kant's philosophy, as such, is cor rect?but only in its results and not in its reasons.13

Though there is some doubt concerning the alleged suddenness of Fichte's discovery during the winter of 1793/414 there can be no doubt that the discovery was of the highest importance for Fichte's self-im

posed task. As he wrote to Flatt in the previously quoted letter, Aenesidemus had not only convinced him that philosophy was not yet a secure science, but it also reinforced his conviction that it could be come such "only if it is generated from one single first principle." To this he added the boast: "I believe that I have found this first princi ple and I have found it to hold good, to the extent that I have ad vanced in my inquiries so far." This was written in November or De

cember of 1793. By mid-January of the next year he could write: "I

have already erected the framework upon my first principle, and have

12 Fichte's first use of the term "Wissenschaftslehre" t? describe his

new standpoint occurs in his letter of 1 March 1794 to B?ttiger. 13 To Heinrich Stephani, December 1793. 14 In his Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Lichtstrahlen aus seinen Werken

und Briefen nebst einen Lebenabriss (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1863), p. 46, Fichte's nephew, Edward Fichte, recounts the following: "Let us here men tion something which he later told his friends?how, before a warm winter stove and after he had been meditating long and continuously upon the high est philosophical principle, he was suddenly seized, as if by something self

evident, by the thought that only the /, the concept of the pure subject-ob ject, could serve as the highest principle of philosophy." (Henrich Steffans'

more elaborate version of the same story is quoted below, n. 42.) On the other hand, Fichte himself affirmed?most notably in 1797 in

the "Second Introduction" to the Theory of Scientific Knowledge (SW, 1: 473) but also in certain passages in his correspondence?that the idea of

constructing his philosophy upon the foundation of the pure I had already occurred to him in 1792. Willy Kabitz long ago substantiated this claim,

which has been more recently defended by Reinhard Lauth and criticized by Peter Baumanns. See Kabitz, pp. 32-55; Baumanns, pp. 69-70 n.; and

Lauth, "Gen?se du 'Fondement de toute la doctrine de la science' de Fichte ?

partir de ses 'M?ditations personelles sur l'?lementarphilosophie,'" Ar chives de Philosophie 35 (1971): 51-79.


already discovered how to make the transition [from the theoretical] to the practical part."15

Especially gratifying to Fichte was the way in which this new

system appeared to complement those of Kant and Reinhold. Whereas these earlier systems were in many respects correct, they were at the same time incomplete. Specifically, they lacked solid foundation in a self-evident first principle as well as the sort of sys

tematic structure which would ground the certainty of the whole in the certainty of this first principle. Fichte's discovery was meant to

remedy precisely these defects, to supply what was missing in?and

yet clearly presupposed by?the writings of Kant and Reinhold. Once this was accomplished, it would (or so Fichte hoped) become ob vious that his new system was only another and more tenable version

of the system. It is in this sense that Fichte understood his own ad vance beyond Kant and Reinhold as at the same time a defense of the Critical Philosophy.

What precisely was the "discovery" which Fichte made during the winter of 1793/4? What was the "new principle" upon which he

proposed to base his reconstruction of transcendental idealism? To answer these questions, let us look more closely at the content of

Schulze's criticisms and at Fichte's reply to these in his review. Aenesidemus describes himself as a "Humean skeptic," and ex

plains that by "skepticism" he means the view "that in philosophy nothing can be decided on the basis of incontestably certain and uni

versally valid first principles concerning the existence or nonexis

tence of things in themselves and their properties nor concerning the

limits of man's capacity for knowledge."16 Thus Aenesidemus's skep ticism is not one which involves the denial of the certainty of immedi ate consciousness (mental representations) nor of logical laws; what it

denies is the possibility of going beyond these to obtain "objective

15 To Stephani, December 1793. That this claim was no idle boast is made clear in a document from this period entitled Eigne Meditationen ?ber

ElementarPhilosophie/Practische Philosophic Though utilized by some

previous scholars (most notably Kabitz) this important text was only pub lished in 1971 in AA, 2. 3: 19-266. What this manuscript shows is how

Fichte developed the outlines of his own philosophy in the context of a de tailed re-examination of Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy. Though the term Wissenschaftslehre does not occur, this text really deserves to be called the first of Fichte's many published and unpublished presentations of his system. For further discussion of the content and importance o? Eigne

Meditationen, see the texts by Baumanns and Lauth mentioned in the pre vious note.

16 Aenesidemus (1911 ed.), p. 18.


knowledge." His basic objection to the Critical Philosophy is that it violates these skeptical strictures on the limits of knowledge and of

philosophy and is thus a new form of philosophical dogmatism. The aim o? Aenesidemus is to substantiate this charge by examining the Critical Philosophy, both in its original form and in the more ad vanced version represented by Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy? to a detailed analysis of which most of Schulze's book is devoted.17

As Aenesidemus presents it, the basic deductive strategy of the Critical Philosophy is to move from the fact of representation to the

reality of the thing in itself and the subject in itself as conditions nec

essary for explaining this primal "fact." But such a move from

thought to being is, according to Aenesidemus, illicit, for it does not follow from the fact that we must think of things in a certain way that

they must exist in conformity with the way in which we must think them. Aenesidemus argues that the Critical Philosophy violates this

principle insofar as it requires the doctrine of (unknowable) things in themselves and an (equally unknowable) subject in itself or transcen dental I. Furthermore, he finds completely unconvincing Kant's at

tempt to get around this difficulty by introducing a distinction be tween "knowability" and "thinkability." At the transcendental level no such distinction is permissible.

With respect to Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy Aenesidemus has many additional specific objections to raise. He launches a with

ering attack on the ambiguity of Reinhold's technical vocabulary, on

the arbitrariness of some of his fundamental propositions (such as the correlation of multiplicity with "content" and of unity with "form"), and on his illicit use of causal inferences. Singled out for special criti cism is Reinhold's proposed highest principle of philosophy, the so

called "principle of consciousness,"18 which, according to Schulze, nei

17 The easy manner in which Schulze uses Reinhold's system as the main text case in his examination of Kant's Critical Philosophy is striking confirmation of the truth of Nicolai Hartmann's observation that "contem

poraries viewed Kant's philosophy in the light of Reinhold's, and thus at first the differences between the two theories could seem to vanish." Die

Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, 3d ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974), pp. 14-15.

18 Reinhold's "principle of consciousness" was meant to be no more than a statement of the alleged fact that all consciousness involves the dis tinction between a subject and an object, as well as representations, and that in every act of consciousness the representation is distinguished from and related to both the subject and object. From this innocent-appearing principle Reinhold proposed to derive (as the condition for its possibility) the entire Critical Philosophy.


ther is the highest philosophical principle (since it stands under the

principle of contradiction) nor can provide the Critical Philosophy with an adequate foundation.

Most o? Aenesidemus is concerned with the theoretical portion of the Critical Philosophy; it concludes, however, with a brief examina tion of Kant's practical philosophy. The entire theory of the postu lates of practical reason is rejected as going far beyond the demands of moral reasoning. Furthermore, the postulates, as well as the

moral theology founded upon them, are held to be incompatible with the most basic (theoretical) principles of the Critical Philosophy. Ar

guing that before we can know what we ought to do we first have to know what we can do, Schulze curtly dismisses Kant's famous claim

concerning the priority of practical reason.

Though Aenesidemus directs his various objections to specific texts, his conclusions are meant to apply quite generally to transcen

dental idealism in all of its possible forms. He does profess a certain admiration for the Critical Philosophy "as a work of philosophical art,"19 but his final verdict is that this philosophy is an abject failure,

primarily because of its illegitimate confusion of subjective with ob

jective necessity. Stripped of the "thing in itself and the "transcen dental I," the Kantian system turns out, according to Schulze, to be

indistinguishable from Berkeleyean phenomenalism. That there is no legitimate place within the Critical Philosophy

for any doctrine of things in themselves is a point readily granted by Fichte. Indeed, the point seems to him so obvious that he cannot

quite bring himself to admit that such a doctrine is indeed to be found in the writings of both Kant and Reinhold; instead, he contents him self with the remark "that neither Kant nor Reinhold has by any

means declared himself loudly and strongly enough against this mis

chief, which has been the common source of all the objections?skep tical as well as dogmatic?which have been raised against the Critical

Philosophy."20 Just as Fichte finds it obvious that the very thought of a thing

apart from any relation to representation was "a piece of whimsy, a

pipe dream, a nonthought,"21 he also sees clearly that "the skeptic

will always be victorious so long as one holds on to the thought of a

19 "ein Kunstwerk des philosophischen Geistes" (Aenesidemus, p. 305).

20 "Aenesidemus Review," SW, 1: 19. 21

Ibid., p. 18.


connection between our knowledge and some thing in itself which is

supposed to have a reality entirely apart from our knowledge." From this, with characteristic directness, he concludes: "Therefore,

one of philosophy's first aims is to demonstrate clearly the futility of such a thought."22 If this point has not been made clear in previous

versions of the Critical Philosophy, then surely it must be a feature of central emphasis in some future version of the same. In clear antici

pation of his own Wissenschaftslehre Fichte, in the Aenesidemus re

view, describes some of the consequences of clearly dismissing the

ancient pipe dream concerning knowledge of "things in themselves."

Suppose that further advances in the future along the way which Rein

hold, to his credit, has opened up for us should reveal the following: that the most immediately certain thing of all, "I am," is also valid only

for the I; that all that is not-I is for the I only; that it [i.e., the not-I] receives all of its determinations a priori and only through its relation to an I; that, however, all of these determinations, insofar as they can be known a priori, become absolutely necessary upon the mere condi tion of a relation between a not-I and any I at all. From this it would follow that the notion of a thing in itself, to the extent that this is sup posed to be a not-I which is not opposed to any I, is self-contradictory, and that the thing is actually constituted in itself in just that way in

which it must be thought to be constituted by any conceivable intelli

gent I (i.e., by any being which thinks in accordance with the principle of identity and contradiction). It would also follow that what is logi cally true for any intellect which is conceivable by a finite intellect is at the same time true in reality and that there is no other truth but this.23

Yet the construction of a truly consistent idealism would not be

without its cost. Even at this early date Fichte showed a remarkably clear grasp of the elusive relationship between systematic philosophy and the circularity of thought. On this point he is refreshingly can

did: one can possess a truly scientific philosophy (i.e., a genuinely sys

tematic transcendental idealism) only if one is willing to admit the ul

timacy of "the circle of understanding within which every finite

understanding, i.e., every understanding that we can conceive, is

necessarily confined."24 But once one is willing to admit this, one will

22 Letter to R. V. Reinhard, 15 January 1794. 23 "Aenesidemus Review," SW, 1: 20. 24

Ibid., p. 11. Typically, Fichte goes on to credit the discovery of this circle to Kant himself?an attribution which tells us more about Fichte than it does about Kant (SW, 1: 19-20):

"But no matter how often one pretends to the contrary, no person has ever had or can have Aenesidemus's thought of a thing which has re

ality and distinctive properties independently, not merely of the


then discover how little has really been lost. It is true that without

things in themselves it is no longer possible to look for some "higher" or "external" ground for subjective necessity ("the unconditional ne

cessity which is discovered in our minds"). But philosophy requires no such external ground, for:

This passage from the external to the internal or vice versa is pre cisely what is in question. It is precisely the task of the Critical Phi

losophy to show that no such passage is required, that everything which occurs in our mind can be completely explained and compre hended on the basis of the mind itself. The Critical Philosophy does not even dream of trying to answer a question which it considers con

tradictory to reason. This philosophy points out to us that circle from which we cannot escape. Within this circle, on the other hand, it fur nishes us with the greatest coherence in all of our knowledge.25

If Kant and Reinhold could not have been guilty of clinging to the

self-contradictory demand for knowledge of things in themselves, who then is guilty of such hopes? In fact, it is the skeptic himself. What Aenesidemus really objects to is not the doctrine of things in

themselves but the weakness of what he takes to be Kant's and Rein hold's attempt to infer the existence of such things from our mental

representations. The skeptic simply takes it for granted that gen uine knowledge must be knowledge of external things in themselves, and he treats this assumption as if it were rooted in human nature

itself, without pausing to ask whether such an assumption can have

any meaning whatsoever. "Thus, here at the foundation of this new

skepticism, we clearly and distinctly have that old mischief which, until Kant, was perpetrated with the thing in itself."26 Conse

quently, insofar as Schulze's objections to Kant's talk about things in themselves have any merit, they do not drive one into skepticism but rather toward a more consistent idealism.

human faculty of representation, but of any and every intellect. In

addition, one always thinks of oneself qua intellect striving to know the thing. This was why the immortal Leibniz, who saw a little fur ther than most of his followers, necessarily had to endow his thing in

itself, or monad, with the power of representation. And if only his inferences had not transcended that circle within which the human

mind is enclosed (which was the only thing that Leibniz, who saw

everything else, failed to see), then they would have been incontest

ably correct: the thing would be constituted in itself just as it repre sented itself to itself This circle was discovered by Kant." 25

Ibid., p. 15. 26

Ibid., p. 19 (also p. 17). See too Fichte's discussion, in his "Second Introduction" to the Theory of Scientific Knowledge of the dogmatism hid den in the skeptic's demands upon philosophy. (SW, 1: 482.)


Regarding Schulze's elaborate criticism of Reinhold's "principle of consciousness" and its claim to be the sought-for "highest principle of philosophy," Fichte again found himself in the delicate position of

having to agree with many of the skeptic's specific objections while at the same time defending the fundamental correctness of Reinhold's

project. The most original and historically influential feature of Rein

hold's Elementary Philosophy was its emphasis upon the indispens ability of systematic form in philosophy. In book after book Reinhold

argued that the only way in which philosophy could become truly "sci entific" was by becoming rigorously systematic, and that the only

way that it could become rigorously systematic was by being derived in its entirety from a single, self-evident first principle.27 The Ele

mentary Philosophy is the result of Reinhold's application of this method to the Kantian philosophy.

The Elementary Philosophy begins with a principle which is meant to be no more than the statement of a self-evident fact: "in con

sciousness the subject distinguishes the representation from both the

subject and the object and relates it [the representation] to them both."28 This activity of distinguishing and relating is assigned to what Reinhold calls the "faculty of representation" (Vorstellungs verm?gen), and the first?and by far the most original?portion of the Elementary Philosophy is entitled "Theory of the Faculty of Rep resentation," the explicit task of which is to show how Kant's "two roots of knowledge" (viz., thought and intuition) can both be derived from the single "principle of consciousness." The Elementary Philos

ophy thus claims to uncover that "common root" of all knowledge,

concerning which Kant could merely speculate,29 and in the absence

of which Kant's presentation of his philosophy had to fall short of rig orous systematic form. In the second portion of the Elementary Phi

losophy (which Reinhold calls "Theory of the Faculty of Knowledge"

27 Reinhold's most succinct discussion of the nature of systematic form and the need for a single first principle in philosophy is to be found in his

Beytr?ge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverst?ndnisse der Philosophen, vol. 1 (1790). See especially chaps. 2 and 5.

28 Beytr?ge, 1: 267. In the space of three years Reinhold published

three separate expositions of his Elementary Philosophy. The first was en titled Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vor Stellungsverm? gens (1789); the second is contained in chap. 3 of the previously mentioned

Beytr?ge, 1 (1790); the third is in Ueber das Fundament des philosophi schen Wissens (1791).

29 See Critique of Pure Reason, A15/B29 and A51/B75.


and which is in turn divided into a "Theory of Sensibility," "Theory of

Understanding," and "Theory of Reason") the main doctrines of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are derived from the results of the

preceding analysis of the faculty of representation (for which there is no analogue in Kant's writings). Finally, in a very sketchy and

unsatisfactory third portion, entitled "Theory of the Faculty of De

sire," Reinhold attempts to derive the will as a necessary condition for the possibility of the principle of consciousness, thereby proving rather than merely asserting the priority of practical reason.

Though frequently lapsing into superficiality, Reinhold's version of the Critical Philosophy (at least in its theoretical portion) possesses several undeniable virtues. First, it is far clearer and easier to grasp

than Kant's own presentation of his philosophy. Second, it shows an

admirable awareness of the unresolved tensions in Kant's work and a

courageous willingness to do whatever is necessary to resolve them.

Third, it begins with and clings fast to what many consider to be the central insight of Kant's analysis of knowledge: that all consciousness

(i.e., all representing) involves both a priori and a posteriori ele ments.30

Even before his discovery of Reinhold's writings31 Fichte showed a strong interest in the problem of the unity of Kant's critical

writings, and especially of the relation of the various Critiques to each other. The great, indeed decisive, contribution which the study of Reinhold's works made to the development of Fichte's own think

ing was to convince him of the need for finding a single first principle to serve as the starting point for a philosophical system, a system

30 Reinhold's essential contributions to the development of transcen dental idealism have been badly neglected (especially among English speak ing students of this subject). For an excellent recent reassessement of his

importance, see the collection edited by Reinhard Lauth, Philosophie aus einem Prinzip. Karl Leonhard Reinhold (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974), especially the two articles contributed by the editor, both of which are concerned with

Reinhold's relation to Fichte. By far the most complete study of Reinhold's

Elementary Philosophy remains Alfred Klemmt's mammoth, Karl Leon hard Reinholds Elementarphilosophie. Eine Studie ?ber den Ursprung des spekulativen deutschen Idealismus (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1958).

31 It is certain that Fichte was already acquainted with Reinhold's work (probably Beytr?ge, I) in the fall of 1792, for the second edition of At tempt at a Critique of All Revelation included a new section ("theory of the

will") written under the obvious influence of his study of Reinhold. By the fall of 1793 he was familiar with the other published versions of Reinhold's

Elementary Philosophy as well.


which then had somehow to be derived in its entirety from the first

principle in question. Fichte never made any attempt to conceal his

debt to Reinhold on this score; indeed, his early published writings contain frequent and prominent acknowledgement of the importance of Reinhold's "immortal service" in "calling the attention of philoso phizing reason to the fact that philosophy in its entirety has to be traced back to one single first principle, and that one will not discover the system of the human mind's permanent modes of acting until one

has discovered the keystone of this system."32 Where Fichte disagrees with Reinhold is not over the need for a

single first principle in philosophy, but rather over Reinhold's insis tence that his own "principle of consciousness" constitutes the

sought-for first principle which could serve as the "keystone of this

system." It is interesting to compare Fichte's reservations con

cerning Reinhold's principle of consciousness with Schulze's pub lished objections to the same principle. Schulze finds Reinhold's statement of the principle?along with the attendant distinctions be tween the representation, the representing subject, and the repre

sented object?to be filled with ambiguities, ambiguities which are reflected in the arbitrariness of the entire "Theory of the Faculty of

Representation" which Reinhold proceeds to erect upon this princi ple. What Schulze does not object to is the underlying claim: that if

philosophy is to be systematic it must begin with some fact. Accord

ingly, Schulze interprets the principle of consciousness as an empiri cal generalization, though not as a genuinely universal one (since, ac

cording to him, there are some kinds of consciousness to which this

principle does not apply). Thus, Reinhold's insistence to the con

trary notwithstanding, Schulze concludes that the principle of con

sciousness must be a synthetic principle based upon abstraction from

experience. The fundamental disagreement between Reinhold and

Schulze, however, concerns the success of the Elementary Philoso

32 "Aenesidemus Review," SW, 1: 20. In the preface to the book in which Fichte offered his first public presentation of his new system (Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre [1794]) the same high praise is reiter ated: "I am just as sincerely convinced that nothing, following Kant's spirit of genius, could contribute more to philosophy than Reinhold's systematic spirit, and I believe that I recognize the honorable place which Reinhold's

Elementary Philosophy will always be accorded, despite the progress which

philosophy must necessarily make under the guidance of whomever it may be." (SW, 1: 31).


phy in "deriving" its various theorems and conclusions from this first

principle. With some of Schulze's criticisms?especially those concerning

the fatal ambiguity of certain of Reinhold's key terms and the equivo cal character of some of his most basic "derivations"?Fichte makes

no attempt to conceal his agreement. He agrees as well that the

principle of consciousness "is based upon empirical self-observation

and certainly expresses an abstraction." At the same time, Fichte

grants that this principle possesses a certainty which is more than

empirical, but from this he concludes?not that the principle is ana

lytic (which is what Reinhold had held)?but rather, "that it must be

based upon something other than a mere fact."33 On this all-impor

tant point (all-important, that is, for the subsequent development of

German Idealism), Fichte diverges from both Reinhold and Schulze:

Though the skeptic and the Elementary Philosopher are agreed upon this point [viz., that the highest principle of philosophy is the one

which fixes the concept of representation], it remains questionable to this reviewer whether philosophy itself profits from this unanimity. Suppose, for instance, that those objections which can justifiably be raised against the principle of consciousness as the first principle of all

philosophy should lead us in the future to suspect that there must be a

concept for all philosophy as a whole (and not merely for theoretical

philosophy) which is even higher than the concept of representation.34

It is not that Fichte wishes to reject the principle of conscious

ness; on the contrary, the Aenesidemus review suggests that most of

Schulze's objections to this principle can be met, but only if we are

willing to sacrifice the claim that this principle is indeed the first prin ciple of philosophy. Its certainty can only be defended by deriving it from something more certain.35 Regarding such a possibility Fichte

says, "this reviewer anyway is convinced that the principle of con

sciousness is a theorem which is based upon another first principle,

33 Ibid., p. 8.

34 Ibid., p. 5.

35 "If I may risk asserting something which can be neither explained nor proven here: insofar as Aenesidemus must, as was previously indicated, consider this theorem [viz., the principle of consciousness] to be a proposi tion derived from experience, then one naturally has to admit with him that there are experiences which might contradict this proposition. If, how

ever, this same proposition is derived from incontrovertible first principles and if it can be shown that the denial of the proposition in question involves a contradiction, then any alleged experience which would be incompatible

with the principle of consciousness would have to be dismissed as inconceiv able." (Ibid., p. 8.)


from which, however, the principle of consciousness can be strictly

derived, a priori and independently of all experience."36 But what is the "higher" principle from which the principle of

consciousness is now to be derived? With this we come to the most

original aspect of Fichte's Aenesidemus review: "The initial incorrect

presupposition, and the one which caused the principle of conscious

ness to be proposed as the first principle of all philosophy was pre cisely the presupposition that one must begin with a fact. We cer

tainly do require a first principle which is material and not merely formal. But such a principle does not have to express a/aci [Thatsa

che]; it can also express an Act [Thathandlung]."37 With this sur

prising suggestion, the pieces begin to fall into place. The highest act of the mind, the supreme Act with which all phi

losophy must begin, cannot be the act of representing or perceiving.

Since, on Reinhold's own admission, representation involves the ac

tivities of "distinguishing and relating," then the act of representing already involves a synthesis. "Thus arises the very natural question:

36 Ibid. See also p. 10: ". . . insofar as Aenesidemus's objections are aimed at the principle of consciousness in itself they are groundless. They are, however, appropriate objections to the principle of consciousness con sidered as the first principle of all philosophy and as a mere fact, and they

make it necessary to establish a new foundation for this principle." "In the Theory of Scientific Knowledge the I is represented. But it

does not follow that the I is represented merely as & representing I. Other features may well be found in this I. Qua philosophizing subject, the I is

indisputably only a representing I, but it might well be more than this qua object of philosophizing. Representing is the highest and absolutely first act of the philosopher as such. But the absolutely first act of the human

mind might well be something else. In advance of all experience it is al

ready probable that this is so, since representation is something which can be completely exhausted and which operates in a thoroughly necessary man ner. Consequently, there must be an ultimate foundation for the necessity of representation, a foundation which, qua ultimate foundation, can be based upon nothing further" (lieber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, SW, 1: 80).

37 "Aenesidemus Review," SW, 1: 8. The term "Thathandlung" is a technical term of Fichte's own coinage (which is here translated simply as

"Act," but with a capital A). This is the term which, in his published ver sions of the Wissenschaftslehre, he employs to designate the self-positing of the I. As conceived of by Fichte, the I has no existence at all apart from this "Act"; the self is its self-activity. The Thathandlung is identical to the I recognized in its full freedom, which is not the same as the theoretical I

("intellect"). For this latter facts are indeed ultimate, which explains why Fichte held that Reinhold's principle of consciousness was the first principle of theoretical philosophy only.


how is it possible to trace all the actions of the mind back to an act of

connecting? How is synthesis conceivable without presupposing the sis and antithesis?"38 Indeed, Fichte implies that this is not conceiv

able, which leads him to the conclusion that "prior to all other percep

tion, the intuition can be related to an object originally opposed to the

subject, i.e., it can be related to the not-I, which is not perceived at

all, but which is originally posited [gesetzt]."39 Thus the activities of

distinguishing and relating are not themselves representations; they are acts of positing which make representation possible.

Such an originary Act is not simply an act of positing: it is at the same time one of self-positing. This is the only explanation for the

origin ofthat "subject" and "object" which are already presupposed in the principle of consciousness: "The absolute subject, the I, is not

given by empirical intuition; it is, instead, posited by intellectual in tuition. And the absolute object, the not-I, is that which is posited in

opposition to the I."40 To be sure, this implies the ultimacy of the

previously-discussed idealistic circle:

The mind is a noumenon insofar as it is the ultimate foundation for any particular forms of thought at all. It is a transcendental idea, insofar as these forms of thought are considered to be unconditionally neces

sary laws. But it is a transcendental idea which is distinguished from all other transcendental ideas by the fact that it is realized through intellectual intuition, through the "/ am," and indeed, through the "/

simply am, because I am. "... The I is what it is, is because it is, and is for the I.41

What is announced in the Aenesidemus review is nothing less than Fichte's discovery of the winter of 1793/4: philosophy can be

38 Ibid., p. 7.

39 Ibid., p. 9.

40 Ibid., p. 10.

"Intellectual intuition," therefore, is not a form of consciousness at

all. Fichte is explicit on this point: "Neither [the absolute I nor the absolute

not-I] occur in empirical consciousness except when a representation is re

lated to them. In empirical consciousness they are present only indirectly, as the representor and what is represented. One is never conscious of the

absolute subject (the representor which could not be represented) nor of the

absolute object (a thing in itself, independent of all representation) as some

thing empirically given." (Ibid.) Neglect of this important point is responsi ble for the wide-spread (romantic) misinterpretation of "intellectual intui

tion" as a privileged faculty of philosophical knowledge. Fichte's actual

view is that the structure of I-hood (the I's presence to itself as an absolute

self-positing) has the form o? an intellectual intuition. This is something that the philosopher learns by means of abstraction and reflection; it is not

discovered by intellectual intuition. 41

Ibid., p. 16.


come a science only if it can be presented as a system founded upon

nothing but the indubitably certain self-positing Act of the I, which

provides the first principle from which everything must be derived.42 Philosophy must begin, not with consciousness, but with

self-consciousness; not with any fact, but with an Act. Here?in the

self-positing activity of the I?we encounter that which Kant's re

sults seemed everywhere to presuppose but nowhere to state unam

biguously: the point of unity between thought and being. Once this has been clearly grasped and made into the necessary starting-point of philosophy, then skeptical objections like Aenesidemus's?the heart of which, it must be remembered, was the charge that the Criti cal Philosophy depends upon an illicit move from subjective to objec tive necessity, from thought to being?can be laid to rest once and

for all. Understood as an Act of self-positing, the I is no mere idea; it is an idea which is at the same time its own realization. Thus (though

without calling any attention to the fact) Fichte has to deny, not only Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves, but also his insistence that all of our intuition is sensible. This absolute

42 Readers unfamiliar with Fichte's published Wissenschaftslehre of

1794/5, might find helpful the following description, by one of Fichte's for mer students, of the discovery in question:

I recall how, in a close, intimate circle, Fichte used to tell us about the

origin of his philosophy and how he was suddenly surprised and seized

by the fundamental idea of this philosophy. For some time he had

dimly realized that truth consists in the unity of thought and object. He had realized as well that such unity could never be found within the realm of the senses and that where, as in mathematics, it was to be found it produced only a rigid and lifeless formalism completely alien to life and to action. At this point he was suddenly surprised by the

thought that the act by which self-consciousness seizes and holds onto itself is clearly a type of knowing. The I recognizes itself as some

thing produced through its own activity; thinker and thought, knowing and its object, are here one and the same. All knowing pro ceeds from this point of union, not from the sort of unfocused contem

plation which is supposed to yield time, space, and the categories. "Now," he asked himself, "if one were to isolate this first act of self

knowing, an act which is presupposed by every human thought and deed and is contained in the most divergent opinions and actions, and if one were to trace the pure consequences of this act, would this act

not reveal and display the same certainty which mathematics pos sesses, though in a form which is living, active, and productive?"

This thought seized him with so much clarity, power, and assur

ance, that he could not give up trying to establish the I as the principle of philosophy. It was as if he were forced to do so by the spirit which had grown mighty within him. (Henrich Steffens, Was ich erlebte

[Breslau: J. Max, 1841], pp. 161-62.)


self-positing of the I is intellectual intuition. One of the most promi nent features of subsequent post-Kantian speculation is the attempt

to rehabilitate the doctrine of intellectual intuition?a project an

nounced for the first time in Fichte's Aenesidemus review.

Unsurprisingly, none of these themes are worked out in any

great detail in the Aenesidemus review, and without the benefit of

hindsight it would be easy to overlook entirely the importance of this

essay. Yet it remains remarkable how much of Fichte's system is

already discernable in his review o? Aenesidemus. This is especially true of his concluding comments on Schulze's criticism of Kant's moral

philosophy. Whereas Fichte was forced to acknowledge a certain amount of

agreement with Aenesidemus's criticisms of the theoretical portion of the Critical Philosophy, with the tetter's remarks on the practical portion of the same he betrays no sympathy at all. Especially galling to Fichte is Schulze's rejection of Kant's principle of the priority of

practical reason on the grounds that before we can know what we

ought to do we must first know what we can do. In replying to this

(rather ignorant) objection, Fichte points out that the ethical law is not directed first at the physical world, but is instead a law for deter

mining the will, and as such, is by no means dependent upon prior theoretical knowledge concerning what is possible in the world of ap pearances.43 Not for nothing did Fichte characterize his own emerg

ing system as a "philosophy of freedom."44 The guiding thread of his

own attempt to systematize the Critical Philosophy was precisely Kant's dictum concerning the priority of practical reason. Indeed, as

a letter written during this period clearly shows, the basis of Fichte's

objection to Reinhold's attempt to make the principle of conscious

ness the first principle of philosophy was not theoretical at all

43 "The ethical law is not at first supposed to produce an action at all, but only the constant endeavor toward an action, even if this action, hin dered by the force of nature, should turn out never to have any efficacy in the material world." ^Aenesidemus Review," SW, 1: 22.)

44 "My system is the first system of freedom. Just as France has freed

man from external shackles, so my system frees him from the fetters of

things in themselves, which is to say, from those external influences with which all previous systems?including the Kantian?have more or less fet tered man. Indeed, the first principle of my system presents man as an in

dependent being." (Draft of a letter from Fichte to Bagggesen, April or

May 1795.) See, too, the remark in Fichte's letter to Reinhold, 8 January 1800: "From beginning to end my system is nothing but an analysis of the

concept of freedom. ..."


(though, as we have seen, he had ample theoretical objections to

offer), but practical. "It is," he writes, "amusing when Reinhold

tries to make everything that happens in the human soul into a repre

sentation. Anyone who does this can know nothing of freedom and

the practical imperative. If he is consistent, he must become an em

pirical fatalist."45

For Fichte, it amounts to one and the same thing to say that phi losophy must begin with the I and to say that it must begin with free dom. Furthermore, it is the necessary priority of practical reason

which furnishes Fichte with the essential clue for constructing a phil osophical system upon his proposed new first principle. In fact, the

Aenesidemus review includes a remarkable, albeit very general, sketch of just such a system. The passage in question is so interest

ing and so significant for our understanding of what Fichte was trying to accomplish in his subsequently published versions of just such a

system, that it deserves to be quoted in full:

If, in intellectual intuition, the I is because it is, and is what it is, then it is, to that extent, self-positing, absolutely independent and autono

mous. The I in empirical consciousness, however, the I as intellect, is

only in relation to something intelligible, and is, to that extent, depen dent. But the I which is thereby opposed to itself is supposed to be, not two, but one?which is impossible, since "dependence" contra dicts "independence." Since, however, the I cannot relinquish its ab solute independence, a striving is engendered: the I strives to make

what is intelligible dependent upon itself, in order thereby to bring that I which entertains representations of what is intelligible into

unity with the self-positing I. This is what it means to say that reason is practical. In the pure I reason is not practical, nor is it practical in the I as intellect. Reason is practical only insofar as it strives to unify these two. This is not the place to show that these are the first princi ples which must underlie Kant's own exposition (granted that he never establishes them specifically). Nor is it the place to show how a prac tical philosophy arises when the striving of the intelligent I (which in itself is hyper-physical) is represented, i.e., when one descends the same steps which one ascended in theoretical philosophy.46

A more succinct summary of the organizational strategy behind

Fichte's first Wissenschaftslehre can hardly be imagined. This radical revision of transcendental idealism has one further

consequence which Fichte mentions in his review: a clarification of

the relation between practical belief and theoretical knowledge. Just because the postulates of practical reason are "beliefs," does not

45 Letter to Stephani, December 1793. 46 "Aenesidemus Review," SW, 1: 22-23.


imply that they are "mere beliefs." For "such belief is far from being merely a probable opinion. On the contrary, it is the innermost be

lief of this reviewer anyway that this belief has the same degree of

certainty as the immediately certain 'I am'?a certainty which infi

nitely transcends that objective certainty which only becomes possi ble through the mediation of the intelligent [i.e., knowing] I." Such

certainty may indeed be called "subjective," but this by no means im

plies any inferiority to so-called "objective" certainty, since "the T

am' itself has only subjective certainty, and, so far as we can conceive

of the self-consciousness of God, He himself is for Himself subjec tive. Far from practical reason having to recognize the superiority of

theoretical reason, the entire existence of practical reason is founded

on the conflict between the self-determining element within us and

the theoretical-knowing element."47 The implications of this radical

application of the principle of the priority of practical reason are pro found and far-reaching; indeed, in order to see its ultimate conse

quences we have to look well beyond the history of German Idealism

itself, to the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The foregoing discussion of Fichte's review o? Aenesidemus has

been intended to call attention to the importance of this interesting and neglected essay. Of course, any serious analysis of Fichte's phi

losophy, even one which is limited to his early system, will have to be based upon Fichte's public presentations of and commentaries on his

Wissenschaftslehre. The value of the Aenesidemus review is above

all propaedeutic: it provides us with a unique?and very instructive

?glimpse into the specific context within which he developed his life

long interpretation of the Critical Philosophy and out of which grew his own, highly original and influential philosophical system. If Fichte later came to regret the degree to which his first published presentation of his sytem was itself a product of the philosophical style and problems of its immediate age,48 that is all the more reason

for contemporary readers of his Foundations of the Entire Theory of Scientific Knowledge to become more familiar with the context in

question; and for this purpose there is no text better suited than his

Aenesidemus review.

47 Ibid., p. 23.

48 Letter to Friedrich Johannsen, 31 January 1801. Only a fragment of this letter survives.


The effect of Schulze's book on Fichte's own intellectual develop ment is perhaps comparable to Hume's influence upon Kant, though in Fichte's case the slumbers from which the skeptic awoke him might

best be called "critical-dogmatic."49 At the very least, Aenesidemus

provided Fichte with the occasion to focus his own doubts about the

Critical Philosophy and provoked him into a detailed re-examination of Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy. The effect of this, as we have now seen, was to encourage Fichte to set about the construction of

own system. This is what happened in the winter of 1793/4, in the course of which Fichte made a series of "discoveries" which he spent the rest of his life trying to digest and articulate and which he an

nounced for the first time in his review o? Aenesidemus. It is no wonder, therefore, that despite any personal antago

nisms between Fichte and Schulze, Fichte was always willing to ac

knowledge the special debt he owed to this "sharp-witted skeptic."50 He prominently displayed this debt by beginning his first public pres entation of the Wissenschaftslehre with the following sentence:

"Reading the modern skeptics, in particular Aenesidemus and the ex

cellent writings of Maim?n, has convinced the author of this treatise

of something which already appeared to be most probable, namely: that despite the recent efforts of the most perspicacious men, philoso

phy has not yet been raised to the level of a clearly evident sci ence."51 More poignant?and?candid?is the following passage

from an unpublished and unfinished essay: "Anyone who has not yet understood Hume, Aenesidemus (where he is right), and Maim?n and has failed to come to terms with the issues they pose is by no means

49 "Fichte's relation to Schulze is an historical replication of Kant's re lation to Hume." Jules Vuillemin, L'h?ritage kantian et la r?volution co

pernicienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954), p. 17. Vuille min's interpretation of Fichte deserves mention here as one of the few to call

explicit attention to the role played by Aenesidemus's skepticism in the de

velopment of Fichte's "genetic method." See Vuillemin, pp. 17-29. 50 "A critical skepticism, such as that of Hume, Maim?n, or Aenesi

demus . . . reveals the inadequacy of the reasons that have been accepted so far, and in doing this it indicates where more tenable ones are to be found. Science always benefits from such skeptics; if it does not benefit in

respect of its content, it surely does in respect of its form. Anyone who denies the sharp-witted skeptic the respect which he deserves has a poor grasp of what is in the interest of science." Grundlage der gesammten Wis

senschaftslehre, SW, 1: 120 n.) 51 Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, SW, 1: 29.

568 FICHTE'S AENESIDEMUS REVIEW

ready for the Theory of Scientific Knowledge: it answers questions which he has not yet raised and bandages him where he has suffered no injury."52

University of Kentucky.

52 AA, 2. 3: 389; emphasis added. According to the editors of AA, 2.

3, this untitled fragment was probably written in April of 1795.

Preliminary work on this essay was completed in the Federal Republic of Germany under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Founda tion. Additional support was provided by a grant from the Program for

Translations of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an indepen dent Federal agency. The author gratefully acknowledges the support

which both of these foundations have provided for his continuing Fichte studies.

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Fichte's Aenesidemus Review German Idealism