Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge

Introduction

Fichte wrote the work as a handbook for the students of his lectures in Jena and had it printed in instalments in 1794–1795. It starts from three principles: the I posits itself; the I opposes to itself a not-I; and within the I, a divisible I and a divisible not-I limit each other. From these Fichte derives a theoretical part, in which the productive imagination generates the world of objects, and a practical part, in which the I appears as infinite striving. He later rewrote the Wissenschaftslehre many times. In an Athenaeum fragment Friedrich Schlegel named it, with the French Revolution and Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister”, as one of the greatest tendencies of the age.

Connections

Builds on

• Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant
• Critique of Practical Reason1788 · Immanuel Kant

Taken up in

• Athenaeum Fragments1798 · Friedrich Schlegel
• Pollen1798 · Novalis
• System of Transcendental Idealism1800 · Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
• Phenomenology of Spirit1807 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Criticized in

• Judgment and Beingc. 1795 · Friedrich Hölderlin