Abstract

The aim of the dissertation is to examine Fichte's attempt at demonstrating the unity of theoretical and practical reason. Chapter 1 discusses the young Fichte's dissatisfaction with Kant's two separate accounts of reason in the First and Second Critiques. It also analyzes the relationship between the issue of the unity of reason and what Fichte takes to be another crucial problem in Kant's moral philosophy, the lack of a positive proof that pure reason is practical. ;Chapter 2 traces Fichte's development from his early criticisms of Kant through the Wissenschaftslehre of 1797-9 and examines the various strategies he considers in his attempt to demonstrate the unity of reason. The main concern here is to clarify the sense in which Fichte ultimately comes to regard theoretical and practical subjectivity as unitary. It is argued that his main strategy is to show that a single structure underlies consciousness in both its theoretical and practical forms, a structure which he intends to capture with his distinctive notion of the subject's "self-positing" activity. ;Chapter 3 examines Fichte's theory of the self-positing subject as it relates to the phenomenon of theoretical self-consciousness. It focuses on three reasons behind Fichte's central claim that subjectivity cannot be grasped by the same concepts employed to understand objects: The subject must be understood as an activity rather than as a thing. The subject's existence is distinct from that of an object, for in the former case self-awareness is essential to the subject's being. This implies that the subject, in a sense, constitutes itself through its own conscious activity. The self-referring activity which constitutes the subject must have a structure that is distinct from the dual, subject-object structure of representation. ;Chapter 4 investigates Fichte's use of the doctrine of the self-positing subject to construct a theory of practical self-determination which explains the autonomous subject's relation to itself without recourse to a "two-worlds" view in which the subject of experience is determined by a rational but unknowable noumenal self. ;The conclusion assesses the extent to which Fichte's theory succeeds in showing that an identical structure informs both theoretical and practical subjectivity