Anstoß and the Thing in Itself in Fichte's Jena Wissenschaftslehre: An Interpretation of Fichte's Idealism Based on Two Key Terms of the Early Wissenschaftslehre
Abstract
In the lecture, I present Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre as the "strongest idealism" (Jacobi) in the sense of a consistent, completed, critical, transcendental idealism. In the first part, I outline Fichte's deduction of the systematic connection between the I and the world.
In the second part, I examine the status of the world, to which the real, existing consciousness is (according to Fichte) necessarily related. In this context, I focus primarily on the concept of the thing in itself, which constitutes in my interpretation an integral part of the Wissenschaftslehre as an "incomprehensible" and "negative" "Grenzbegriff".
Based on this key concept and its interpretation, I make a case for the proposition that the Wissenschaftslehre is in its essence a critical project whose aim is to systematically and rigorously mark the limits of finite human understanding.