Waibel / Breazeale / Rockmore Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-3-11-024528-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 425 Seiten

This volume is a collection of previously unpublished papers dealing with the neglected “phenomenological” dimension of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which it compares and contrasts to the phenomenology of his contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and to those of Edmund Husserl and his 20th century followers. Issues discussed include a comparision of the early phenomenological method in Fichte and Hegel with the classical phenomenological method in Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre, as well as special topics, namely the problem of self-consciousness and intersubjectivity, very important in Fichte's trancendental philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre but discussed as well in 20th century phenomenology. Fichte can be said to have invented the theory of intersubjectivity that was first developed by Hegel and then by Husserl, Sartre or Ricœur. Fichte can also be said to have in fact promoted a theory of intentionality based on tendencies, drives, purposes and will, that got a modern shape and language by Husserl and his followers. And even the deduction of the human body in Fichte's practical parts of the Wissenschaftslehre prepares the path for modern twentieth century theories of body, feeling and mind.

Zielgruppe

Academics, Libraries, Institutes

Autoren/Hrsg.

Waibel, Violetta L.

Breazeale, J. Daniel

Rockmore, Tom

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: Deutscher Idealismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Preface;6
2;Contents;8
3;List of Abbreviations;12
4;Introduction;16
5;On Fichte and Phenomenology;26
6;The Concept of Phenomenology in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre of 1804/II;40
7;Reduction or Revelation? Fichte and the Question of Phenomenology.;56
8;Fichte’s Phenomenology of Religious Consciousness;72
9;Fichte and Brentano: Idealism from an Empirical Standpoint and Phenomenology from an Idealist Standpoint;86
10;Phenomenologies of Intersubjectivity: Fichte between Hegel and Husserl;112
11;Tendency, Drive, Objectiveness. The Fichtean Doctrine and the Husserlian Perspective;134
12;Life-World, Philosophy and the Other: Husserl and Fichte;156
13;Self-Consciousness and Temporality: Fichte and Husserl;182
14;Body and Intersubjectivity: The Doctrine of Science and Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations;206
15;Martin Heidegger Reads Fichte;222
16;Fichte, Heidegger and the Concept of Facticity;238
17;Overcoming the Priority of the Subject: Fichte and Heidegger on Indeterminate Feeling and the Horizon of World and Self-Knowledge;276
18;How to Make an Existentialist? In Search of a Shortcut from Fichte to Sartre;292
19;Consciousness. A Comparison between Fichte and the Young Sartre in a Bio-Political Perspective;328
20;Fichte and Levinas. The Theory of Meaning and the Advent of the Infinite;342
21;The Other and the Necessary Conditions of the Self in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and Paul Ricoeur’s Phenomenology of the Will;356
22;Does the Methodology of Phenomenology Involve Dual Intentionality? Some Remarks on Conceptions of Phenomenology in Husserl, Fichte, Hegel, Sartre and Freud;372
23;Fichte’s Logical Legacy: Thetic Judgment from the Wissenschaftslehre to Brentano;394
24;Notes on Contributors;422

Leseproben

The concept of “Facticity” plays a key role both in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and in Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics – so much so that both philosophical undertakings regard themselves as radical attempts to tackle the question of facticity. But on the other hand they differ on what facticity is and how it can – and should – be dealt with. Our aim is to compare – or rather to grasp the link between – these two different approaches. No history of the concept of facticity can be written without this comparison. But besides their historical interest, the problems faced and posed by these two different approaches are ones no philosophy can safely ignore.

Our main concern is in the first place to outline Fichte’s radical critique of facticity and in particular to highlight the following key points: a) his understanding of facticity (what is it that in fact constitutes facticity?); b) his understanding of its negative role (why is it a hindrance?) and c) his assumption that it is possible to overcome facticity or to make a total and radical change in the way we are subject to it.

One fundamental characteristic of facts is that they are found (“etwas Vorgefundenes”). They are, so to speak, “already there” and force us to watch or confront them. Facts are undeniable, unyielding, uncompromising. There is something about them that makes them absolute. Fichte speaks of an “absolut Vorhandenes” (of something “absolutely there”). Facts are indubitably given, they impose themselves, “inscribe” themselves irrevocably. They form that absolute manifestation (and are endowed with that particular kind of indelibility) that Fichte expresses by saying: “Es ist, ist nicht nicht” (“it is, it is not not”). On the other hand, facts “are what they are” – that is, they have their own shape, their own characteristics. “Things are the way they are” – they have a kind of absolute “thisness”: the quality of being just how they are and not otherwise. This they impose upon us, so that we find ourselves confronted with the facts, that is, with the particular way they shape reality. Facticity means“Gebundenheit”/“Bindung”. It means that we are bound or constrained – in other words, that we are caught or immersed in the particular shape of reality facts force upon us. In principle it could be otherwise, but it isn’t. Reality as it were turned in a certain direction: “as a matter of fact “it is “like this” and not otherwise.

That being said, it must be added that this brief account of facticity does not emphasize those facets that are more characteristic of Fichte’s use of this concept. For Fichte, facticity does indeed mean something of this kind (not really altogether different from the usual meaning). And there is a very good reason for this: because in his view the characteristics we have stressed constitute the main features of normal consciousness: consciousness finds facts, understands itself as consciousness of facts, is caught or immersed in the particular shape of reality the facts force upon itself. In short: normal consciousness has the form of facticity.

Über Autor(innen)

Violetta L. Waibel, University of Vienna, Austria; Daniel Breazeale, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA, and Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA.