The Science of Knowledge: With the First and Second Introductions (Texts in German Philosophy) by J. G. Fichte (PDF)

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A modern translation of J. G. Fichte’s best known philosophical work (including his two explanatory Introductions), which contributed to the development of 19th Century German Idealism from Kant’s critical philosophy.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The introductions are well-written, Fichte gives enough detail as to why his philosophy can indeed stem from Kant; Kant does deny intellectual intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason, however it seems necessary in his ethics to make sense of how we know we have intellectual volition.The first few sections of the actual work are interesting, in how he moves from A=A to “I am I” and back to A=A. I would recommend this series of paragraphs essential for post-Kantian, as he proposes the “I” is not merely about synthesis but is an absolute thesis.However when the book moves onto explaining the origins of experience and the dialectic between thesis/anti-thesis producing an endless series of syntheses, the book does seem to get lost in an endless series of arguments (sadly this is 60% of the book). When he moves onto morality the book heads back to the beginning of the dialectic but the book doesn’t cleanly resolve whether the “check” is a brute fact of experience or genuinely a priori in origin.I ultimately have to go back to Kant on the pure self that it is without a manifold, sensible or intellectual – “. . . not conscious of myself as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but conscious only that I am.” (CPR – B157).

⭐If I wanted a PDF that couldn’t be utilized with voiceover, I would have stolen it.

⭐What if it really was just what you thought about things?In that case, Johann Gottlieb Fichte would have gotten closest to the truth of reality with his 1794 *Wissenschaftslehre*, which Heath and Lachs render in English as *The Science of Knowledge* (more about the title later). Fichte’s idealism came hard on the heels of Kant — he even claimed to merely be elaborating the Kantian system in a different way, a claim Kant denied — but his relentless focus on the importance of subjectivity to thought has influenced many subsequent philosophers with a wider “fan base”: certainly we would never have had Sartre without Fichte, and Freud as well derived much impetus from Fichte’s radical psychologism. Fichte has had major opponents, too. Ayn Rand is charitably interpreted as an impassioned denier of Fichtean theses, and Theodor Adorno counted him as one of the precursors of fascism on theoretical grounds alone: Fichte’s later “practical” agitation against Napoleon earned him major plaudits in the *Nazi-Zeit*, but Adorno claimed that an ego without any genuinely objective resistance from a world which could be seen veridically or unveridically was a recipe for a stormtrooper already.*The Science of Knowledge* begins with two famous introductions, sometimes printed separately from the work itself: in them Fichte sets himself the task of explaining knowledge and truth solely by reference to the operations of a single thinker, who (Descartes-style) makes no ontological suppositions beyond the ability to think itself. In the book proper, the operations of the Fichtean ego (*das Ich*) are slyly expanded to account for scientific knowledge through its ‘positing’ (*setzen*) something outside of it (*Nicht-Ich*) while remaining completely autonomous; the next section discusses the problem of morality on this basis alone. This is not the only *Wissenschaftslehre* Fichte ever wrote; there are several other later editions where Fichte radically revises his principles to take a more theological view of things. However, this is the one that had a “historically effective” influence on European thought and literature.Other reviewers rag on the Englishing of the title: *Wissenschaftslehre* literally means “doctrine of science”, but “doctrine” in the sense of scientifically established facts rather than, say, religious principles. The 19th-century logician Bernhard Bolzano also wrote a (very different) book called *Wissenschaftslehre*, which was translated into English as *Theory of Science*, so I think we can cut the translators a break. The translation is very readable and the Cambridge paperback (it originally appeared with another publisher) solid enough; if you have an interest in the intellectual ferment in Germany around 1800 it’s a must read.

⭐You know when the title is mistranslated that you are in for trouble. “Wissenschaftslehre” is correctly translated as “Doctrine of Science,” not “Science of Knowledge.” Fichte wants to convince us that there is no thing-in-itself. There is only a phenomenal, appearing, world. Your Ego “posits” itself and creates an image of an external world (an Id). Schopenhauer likened this philosophy to a spider’s philosophy. The Ego, like a spider, spins the known world out from itself in the way that a spider spins its web. Was Fichte right? Is there no thing-in-itself?

⭐Comprehensive, deep, perhaps even intellectually orgasimic. The Science of Knowledge contains the most stunning criticisms, elaborations, and evolutions of the Kantian line. Anyone who is disenchanted with modern philsophy and thinks that critical metaphysics is dead should read this book first. Practically every significant problem that is posed in modern philsophy of mind is addressed and solved! Fichte’s Transcendental Idealism should become a western Zen Mantra!Oh yeah, and follow the white rabbit.

⭐

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