Abstract

Frederick Neuhouser has attempted the impossible - a book about “the early Fichte” without mentioning, or engaging with, the third principle of the Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre of 1794-95. Neuhouser offers no satisfactory explanation of this surprising omission - the third principle is by far the most important structural moment of “the early Fichte.” Neuhouser hints that he is not prepared to discuss the absolute positing of quantifiability, and the systematic implications thereof, because “there is some doubt about the extent of Fichte’s commitment to this project in the later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre,” and, the aims of such systematic derivation “are almost certainly incapable of being carried out”. These reasons are quite baffling even within the parameters Neuhouser sets for his book. Yes, there is doubt whether Fichte remained committed to the type of systematic deduction elucidated in the Wissenschaftslehre after 1800. However, Neuhouser’s book is about the Fichte of 1790-99, and if he regards the system of 1797-99 as a further development of the systematic structuration of the Wissenschaftslehre, then evidence should have been supplied vis-à-vis a proper outline of the system of the Wissenschaftslehre. It must also be said that if one regards the Fichtean project of deducing the principles of theoretical reason from one principle as not worthy of serious comment then the motivation for writing a book on the early Fichte is not readily apparent.