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Daniel Breazeale

Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 62, Number 4, October 2001,

pp. 685-703 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2001.0033

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jhi/summary/v062/62.4breazeale.html

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Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

as a Pragmatic History of the
Human Mind and the
Contributions of Kant,
Platner, and Maimon
Daniel Breazeale

Readers of Fichtes first published presentation of the concept and

foundation of his new system (as presented, respectively, in On the Concept of
the Wissenschaftslehre [Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, 1794] and
Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre [Grundlage der gesamten
Wissenschaftslehre, 1794/95]) have often been struck by a single passage in each
of these texts that describes the transcendental philosopher as a pragmatic
historian of the human mind. Commentators on the early Wissenschaftslehre
duly repeat this phrase, though few indeed make any effort to analyze or to
understand it. Several scholars have offered conjectures about the possible
origins of this striking term, but all of them have overlooked what may well be the
most important such influence.
The first of the two passages in question occurs near the end of 7 of
Concerning the Concept, where Fichte asserts that we [transcendental
philosophers] are not the legislators of the human mind but its historiansnot, to
be sure, journalists but writers of pragmatic history (nicht Gesetzgeber des
menschlichen Geistes, sondern seine Historiographen. freilich nicht Zeitungsschreiber, sondern pragmatische Geschichtschreiber).1 The second occurs near
the end of Part Two of the Foundation in the context of a discussion of the
differences between the dialectical methodology pursued in most of Part Two and
1

J. G. Fichte, Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Reinhard

Lauth, Hans Gliwitzky, and Erich Fuchs (Stuttgart, 1964-), I/2, 147 (henceforth GA). All
translations by the author.

685
Copyright 2001 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.

686

Daniel Breazeale

the very different method employed in the Deduction of Representation at the

end of Part II and throughout Part III. Fichte glosses this difference by explaining
that whereas we have previously been consideringand rejectingvarious
hypotheses concerning the relationship between the limited I and the limited
NotI, this apogogic method of reflection will now give way to a different
method entirely, one made possible by the preceding derivation of the necessary
occurrence of a check or Ansto and the concomitant fact of the wavering
of the power of imagination (Schweben des Einbildungskraft). Thus he writes:
In the future series of reflection we will reflect upon facts. The object of
this reflection is itself a reflection, viz., the reflection of the human mind
on the datum shown to be present therein (which to be sure, can be called
a datum only as the object of this reflection of the mind thereupon,
otherwise it is a fact). Thus, in the future series of reflections the object
of the reflection is not first produced by this same reflection [as was
previously the case], but is merely raised to consciousness.From this
it immediately follows that from now on we will not be dealing with mere
hypotheses, in which a small amount of true content must be separated
from the empty remainder; instead, it follows that reality can, with
perfect justice, be ascribed to everything established from now on.The
Wissenschaftslehre is supposed to be a pragmatic history of the human
mind. Until now we have labored only to obtain entry into the latter,
simply in order to be able first to indicate a single undoubted fact. We
have obtained this fact, and from now on our perception can calmly
follow the course of eventsnot blindly, of course, but in an
experimental fashion.2
Once he has this new fact before him, the transcendental philosopher is in
a position to observe how this same fact (which is, of course, an act of the
observed I) is taken up into consciousness, that is, how the human mind explicitly
posits the same for itself. A description based upon such observations is,
presumably, what Fichte means by a pragmatic history of the human mind. This
cursory account, however, raises many questions: What is it exactly that the
philosopher is supposed to observe? In what sense do these observations
constitute a history? And why does Fichte feel it necessary to qualify the latter as
a pragmatic history?
The answer to the first question seems straightforward enough. The object of
philosophical observation is nothing less than the system of the human mind,
that is, the entire system of those lawgoverned acts of the intellect that are
required for experience in general and for conscious self-positing in particular.
2

GA, I/2, 364-65.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

687

The second question requires a bit more analysis, inasmuch as one must also
consider whether the term history here refers to a series of (past?) events
(historia res gestae) or refers instead to the description or presentation of the
same (historia rerum gestarium). As we shall see, Fichtes pragmatic history of
the human mind must be understood in both these senses. Indeed, the distinction
in question corresponds closely to Fichtes own favorite distinction between the
real and the ideal series present within or to consciousness itself: the first of which
designates what we might call the series of the intentional objects of
consciousness, while the second refers to the series constituted by the acts of
being conscious of or reflecting upon the objects in the first series. The
Wissenschaftslehre is a historia rerum gestarum which purports to describe the
historia res gestae constituted by the original and necessary acts of the human
mind.
But what kind of history is this, and how does it compare to other types of
history? Important clues for answering these questions may be found by
considering the probable sources for Fichtes use of the term pragmatic
history.
Kant, Platner, Maimon
The term pragmatic history was certainly not invented by Fichte. Indeed,
it was employed by Polybius and has been common in many European languages
since at least the sixteenth century. As Gudren Khne-Bertram has shown, the
terms pragmatisch and pragmatische Geschichte enjoyed widespread currency
during the later eighteenth century and continued to be employed by a variety of
authors throughout the nineteenth century.3 For our present purposes, however,
we can focus upon three authors with whose work Fichte is known to have been
acquainted in the period immediately preceding his own use of the term
pragmatic history: Immanuel Kant, Ernst Platner, and Salomon Maimon.
Kants best-known use of the term pragmatic occurs in the title to his
published lectures on Anthropology from a Pragmatic Perspective (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht), a work that was not actually published until
1798, but with which Fichte became acquainted in manuscript during his stay in
Knigsberg in the summer of 1791.4 In these lectures Kant explains that
anthropologyand presumably any scienceis pragmatic when it considers
3
Gudrun Khne-Bertram, Aspekte der Geschichte und der Bedeutungen des Begriffs
pragmatisch in den philosophischen Wissenschaften des Ausgehenden 18. und des 19.
Jahrhunderts, Archiv fr Begriffsgeschichte, 27 (1983), 158-86. Though he discusses Kants
use of the term pragmatic history, Khne-Bertram completely overlooks the use of this same
term by Platner, Maimon, and Fichte.
4
According to the 27 August 1791 entry in Fichtes own diary, he copied out excerpts from
Theodor von Schns copy of a manuscript of notes from Kants lectures on anthropology (see
GA, II/1, 416).

688

Daniel Breazeale

what man, considered as a freely active being, makes of himself or what he can
and should make of himself.5
The term pragmatic also occurs in the Canon of the Critique of Pure
Reason, where Kant distinguishes between practical moral laws and merely
pragmatic practical laws. Unlike the former, pragmatic laws issue from the
motive of happiness and are based upon empirical principles.6 Kant further
describes as pragmatic all of those contingent beliefs, even false ones, which
underlie the actual employment of the means for certain actions.7
A similar sense of pragmatic underlies Kants sole use of the term
pragmatic history, which occurs in a footnote to his Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten). The purpose
of this note is to gloss the distinction between technical, categorical, and
pragmatic imperatives. Whereas technical imperatives provide handy directions
for performing specific practical tasks and categorical imperatives legislate
moral behavior, pragmatic imperatives provide guidance in obtaining an
empirical goal shared by all human beings: namely, happiness or welfare. Such
imperatives therefore take the form of prudential maxims. To illustrate this point
Kant chooses the example of history. Unlike the kind of purely scientific history
that is pursued purely for its own sake (that is, for the sake of pure knowledge),
A history is pragmatically composed when it makes one prudent [klug], that is,
when it teaches the world how to pursue what is advantageous better or at least
as well as the preceding age was able to do.8
Kants conception of pragmatic history thus involves two distinguishable
elements: pragmatic history considers man as active and self-productive, and
such a history is composed for a specific, ulterior purpose. Its aim is not
primarily to record what really happened. As we shall see, Fichtes conception
of pragmatic history bears some trace of both of these Kantian elements, and yet
it is by no means identical to Kants conception.
A more immediate influence upon Fichtes choice of the term pragmatic
history of the human mind to describe his own task may be found in the teachings
of one his Leipzig professors, Ernst Platner,9 whose Philosophical Aphorisms,
Part One (Philosophische Aphorismen, Erster Theil), Fichte subsequently
employed as the text for his own introductory lectures on Logic and Metaphysics
5

Immanuel Kant, Werke. Akademie-Textausgabe (Berlin, 1968), VII, 119 (henceforth AA).
See also Kants contrast of pragmatic anthropology with purely theoretical anthropology,
which treats human beings entirely as products of nature (120).
6
Critique of Pure Reason, A806/B834. See too the definition of pragmatic laws (A800/
B828) as well as the conclusion of the Rechtslehre, where Kant distinguishes the moral from
the pragmatic ends of practical action and describes the latter as purely artificial (AA IV:
354).
7
Critique of Pure Reason, A824/B852.
8
AA, VII, 417n.
9
Though it cannot be established with certainty that Fichte attended Platners lectures
during either of his sojourns in Leipzig, there is considerable circumstantial evidence for this.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

689

throughout his career at the University of Jena.10 The first book of Platners
Aphorisms bears the title Pragmatic History of the Human Power of Cognition,
or Logic. Though Platner never explicitly defines the term pragmatic history,
his understanding of it may be gleaned from his definition of logic, as in the
broadest sense, what is indicated in the above title: a pragmatic, which is to say,
a critical, history of the human power of cognition.11 In keeping with this
definition, the bulk of Part One of Platners Aphorisms is devoted entirely to a
careful, systematic description and analysis of the power of cognition
interrupted by frequent, usually sharply critical, discussions of the views of other
philosophers, past and present. For Platner, the proper way to go about
producing a pragmatic history of the human power of cognition is by means of a
more precise psychological and critical investigation of the power of cognition in
its entirety.12 Investigation of the origins or grounds of these powers and of our
representations of their objects is the subject of Book Two of the Philosophical
Aphorisms, Part One, Inquiry into the Grounds of Representations of the
World, or Metaphysics. Rather than offer his own transcendental account of the
powers of the mind and the ground of experience, however, Platner is content in
this section simply to examine and to criticize various philosophical efforts to do
just this. Instead of proposing a new metaphysical account of the grounds of
experience, he mounts a skeptical attack on the very possibility of the latter.
Platners pragmatic history of our cognitive powers is thus an empirically
based description and not a transcendental explanation of the same.
For all the differences between Fichtes and Platners approaches to
philosophy, Fichte was nevertheless favorably impressed by the latters use of the
term pragmatic history to characterize his description of our fundamental
cognitive powers, and he observes in his own lecture notes that pragmatic
history of the human power of cognition is a very apt term.13 This, of course,
does not imply that Fichte shared Platners understanding of the proper contents
and method of such a history, nor that he endorsed the distinction between a
10
Ernst Platner, Pragmatische Geshichte des menschlichen Erkenntnivermgens, oder
Logik, in Philosophische Aphorismen (Leipzig, 1793), I, reprinted in GA, II/4S. Fichte first
taught his course on Logic and Metaphysics during the Winter semester of 1794/95, i.e., during
his second semester at Jena, and continued to offer it every semester thereafter. His lecture
notes for these classes are contained in GA, II/4. A student transcript from the Summer semester of 1796, is included in GA, IV/1 and one from the Winter semester of 1796/97 in GA, IV/3.
11
GA, II/4S, 16. Though Platner was not a Kantian, his use of the term logic to describe
investigations into the origins and limits of human cognition is, as Fichte notes, plainly indebted to Kants transcendental logic (or rather, to Platners misunderstanding of the same).
Fichte points out that since Platners pragmatic history deals with the full extent of the
human powers of cognition it corresponds to philosophy as such and not merely to logic in
the broadest sense of the terma confusion Fichte attributes to Platners misunderstanding of
Kants distinction between transcendental aesthetic and transcendental analytic (GA IV/
3:84).
12
GA, II/4S, 11-12.
13
Notes from the Summer semester of 1796, GA, II/4, 46.

690

Daniel Breazeale

purely descriptive history of the minds powers and a metaphysical or

philosophical explanation of the same. On the contrary he flatly rejected
Platners identification of pragmatic history and logic, as well as his effort to
distinguish both from metaphysics, which he thought simply betrayed Platners
own dogmatic prejudices as well as his misunderstanding of Kant.
The actual question addressed by a Critique is this: how do we first
arrive at a world and at the representation of a relationship [between
ourselves and the world], and to what extent do these representations and
everything that can be erected thereupon by further reasoning acquire
validity?
To this question the Critique replies as follows: we first produce it
through the operation of our mind in accordance with rules that are
necessary and grounded in reason,[...] The demonstration of how this
happens is philosophy as a whole or metaphysics.[... ]That Platner calls
this logic is based on a misunderstanding of Kants transcendental
logic.14
Though Fichte certainly intended to replace Platners dogmatic account of
cognition as the product of an interaction between the mind and the world with a
genuinely critical account of objective cognition, he did not propose to repeat
Kants own presentation of the same. Instead, his careful study of Platner seems
to have stimulated him to consider an altogether novel method of presenting and
defending Kants conclusions: not in the form of an abstract transcendental
deduction, but rather in that of a pragmatic history. Despite the many errors and
false steps contained in Platners book, Fichte could nevertheless observe:
Yet Platner certainly does establish something (and does a lot with it
[und weiss sich viel damit]). What is this? It is his pragmatic history,
and I also want to sketch out something similaralbeit on the basis of
completely opposite first principlespragmatic, how it comes into
beinghistory [Geschichte], [this] is a fiction, [which] indicates the
genetic method of the presentation.15
Whereas Platner wanted to distinguish logic from metaphysics and limited his
pragmatic history to the former, Fichte proposes to apply the method of
pragmatic history to philosophy as a whole, even as he denounces Platners own
understanding of this method as nothing but a dogmatic mixture of psychology
and criticism.
14
15

Notes from the Winter semester of 1796/97, GA, II/4, 51-52.

GA, II/4, 52.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

691

Platner himself seems to have employed the term critical history as a

synonym for pragmatic history and thus did not understand the term critical
in the distinctively Kantian sense.16 Instead, he describes his pragmatic history
of the human power of cognition as a more exact psychological and critical
investigation of the human power of cognition, the purpose of which is to allow
us to criticize and to reject certain metaphysical claims.17 In other words he
generally uses critical in the sense of skeptical.
For Fichte, on the other hand, a truly critical account of our cognitive
powers will bear little resemblance to Platners; and yet it can still be described
as historical, inasmuch as it will includeindeed, as Fichte eventually came to
see, will consist entirely ofan account of the constructive process through
which the I comes to be. To use another term to which we shall soon return, the
proper method of philosophy must be genetic. But what is one to make of Fichtes
odd choice of the term fiction to describe such a history? In order to appreciate
this dimension of his conception of pragmatic history we must turn to a third, and,
in my opinion, decisively important, influence: namely, the writings of Salomon
Maimon.
Though Fichtes deep admiration for the excellent writings of Maimon is
well-known, scholars have still not adequately explored in detail the immense
influence of his writings upon the early Wissenschaftslehre, and particularly
upon the specific methodology of the same.18 Whereas other scholars have
mentioned Platner and Kant as possible sources for Fichtes conception of
philosophy as a pragmatic history of the human mind, none, to the best of my
knowledge, has weighed the possible influence of a passage from the introduction
to Maimons 1792 essay, On the Progress of Philosophy(Ueber den Progressen
der Philosophie),19 which was Maimons contribution to an essay competition
organized by the Berlin Academy on the question What progress has
metaphysics made since Leibniz? In the passage in question Maimon introduces
16

See, e.g., GA, II/4S, 16: logic in the broadest sense of the term is [...] a pragmatic
history of the human power of cognition, as well as Platners reference to the result of the
critical history of the human power of cognition (184).
17
GA, II/4S, 11-12.
18
ber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (1794; henceforth BWL), in GA, I/2, 109. See
too Fichtes remark, in his letter to K. L. Reinhold of March-April 1795 that My respect for
Maimons talent knows no bounds. I firmly believe that he has completely overturned the entire
Kantian philosophy, as it has been understood by everyone until now, including you, and I am
prepared to prove it. No one noticed what he had done; they looked down on him from their
heights. I believe that future centuries will mock us bitterly (GA, III/2, 282).
19
Maimon published his essay On the Progress of Philosophy twice in 1792, once as an
independent publication and again as the first chapter of his Streifereien im Gebiete der
Philosophie (Berlin, 1793). It is here cited from the photomechanical reprint edition of Streiferein,
published in 1970 by Culture et Civilisation (Brussels), as part of the aetes Kantiana
series. Fichte refers to this work in 1 of Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/
95; henceforth GWL) in GA, I/2, 261-62 and 264.

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Daniel Breazeale

the concept of a pragmatic history of philosophy, a concept to which he

devoted an entire essay just a few years later.20
Maimon prefaces his response to the essay question by remarking that the
Academy surely expects something more than a straightforwardly historical, that
is, chronologically ordered, survey of the history of modern philosophy. Though
such a history might convey some ideas of what philosophers have thought and
written, it could contribute nothing toward measuring their progress. What is
therefore demanded, concludes Maimon, is something else altogether: namely, a
pragmatic history of philosophy. Such a history is not simplyor even
primarilya factual, a posteriori record of a temporal sequence of philosophers
and books. Instead, it begins with the bare, abstract concept of philosophy itself
and then shows how various philosophical positions or systems develop from this
original concept, in an effort to complete, to perfect, and to realize what is
contained therein. A pragmatic history of philosophy, he writes, must present
not the opinions of philosophers, but ways of thinking; not texts, but methods;
not unconnected ideas, but systems.21 Such a history is therefore not empirical
at all, but must instead be constructed by the philosophical historian. As Maimon
later explained in his essay on the Pragmatic History of the Concept of
Philosophy, my project is now to provide a short sketch of a pragmatic history
of the concept of philosophy, the epochs of which are to be determined not
chronologically, but rather a priori, according to how this concept had to be
determined from its first hint to its complete development.22 The series presented
in such a history does not necessarily correspond to any actual, temporal series
of philosophical systems but represents an ideal, systematically ordered series,
the precise sequence of which is dictated by the inner logic of the very concept of
philosophy with which it commences. Such an a priori or pragmatic conception
of the history of philosophy, argues Maimon, is presupposed by the question
concerning the progress of the same.
To generalize Maimons point: a pragmatic history presupposes a concept of
the object whose genesis it is describing, and it relates this history strictly in
terms of the inner, logical development or systematic unfolding of what is implicit
from the start in the concept whose pragmatic history is being related. A
pragmatic historian is never a mere chronicler of past events but must actively
construct the very history he is relating.

20
Salomon Maimon, Pragmatische Geschichte des Begriffs von Philosophie, und
Beurtheilung der neueren Methode zu philosophiren, Philosophisches Journal einer
Gesellschaft Teutscher Geleherten, 6 (1797), 150-81.
21
Streifereien, 6. This passages ends with a promise by Maimon to undertake the task of
writing such a history on another occasion. And this is precisely what he did just two years
later, in the above-mentioned essay, Pragmatic History of the Concept of Philosophy, and
Evaluation of more Recent Methods of Philosophizing.
22
Pragmatische Geschichte, 375.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

693

Though Maimon does not explicitly pose the question concerning the truth of
such a history, an important clue for answering this question may be found later
in this same essay on the concept of a pragmatic history of philosophy and his
explicit effort to construe philosophical explanations and systemssuch as
Leibnizs Monadology23as illustrations of what he calls the method of
fictions. Unlike the a priori constructions of the mathematicians, those of the
philosophers cannot lay claim to objective reality or necessity. The necessity of
philosophical systems remains purely subjective; they provide us with purely
ideal, hypothetical, or fictional explanations of real experience. But a fictional
explanation, however useful it may be, is not the same as a real explanation, nor
can it provide us with any real and objective knowledge.
Wissenschaftslehre as Pragmatic History of the Human Mind
Fichtes earliest references to the connection between transcendental
philosophy and the history of the human mind occur in a set of notes written in
Zurich during the winter of 1793-94. In these Private Meditations on
Elementary Philosophy/Practical Philosophy (Eigne Meditationen ber Elementar Philosophie/Practische Philosophie) Fichte describes how the I posits its
own limitations as produced by the Not-I and then observes that this is actually
the history of the human mind;24 or rather, that this is the history of the nonphilosophizing mind, and philosophy merely relates [erzhlt] this history. It
reflects.25 Less than a year later Fichte was relating to his students in Jena, in his
lectures on the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, precisely such a
history of the non-philosophizing mind, a history that commences with the
Deduction of Representation at the end of Book Two and continues in Part
Three with the Foundation of the Science of the Practical.26
23

Leibniz thus speaks not of things in themselves as simple substances, but simply of
fictions (Streifereien, 30).
24
Eigne Meditationen ber ElementarPhilosopie/Practische Philosophie (1793/94; henceforth EM/PP), in GA, II/3, 107.
25
EM/PP, GA II/3, 120.
26
Six months before composing GWL, Fichte had already settled upon the three-part organization of the same, noting that the proper path of philosophy is first indicated in Part Three
(GA, I/3, 120). For a persuasive presentation of the case that the Wissenschaftslehre proper
begins with Part III of GWL (or, more precisely, with the Deduction of Representation with
which Part II concludes), see Ulrich Claesges, Geschichte des Selbstbewusstseins. Der Ursprung
des spekulativen Problems in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre von 1794-95 (The Hague, 1974). According to Claesges, The history of self-consciousness is transcendental philosophy (12, 155,
and 176). Claesges also includes the 1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the
Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Power (Grundri des Eigentmlichen der
Wissenschaftslehre in Rcksicht auf das theoretische Vermgen henceforth GEWL) in Fichtes
first history of self-consciousness (see 135-52), as does Klaus Dsing in his Einbildungskraft
und selbstbewutes Dasein beim frhn Fichte, in Kategorien der Existenz, ed. Klaus Held and
Joachim Hennigfeld (Wrzburg, 1993), 61-76.

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Daniel Breazeale

As indicated, the method of Fichtes pragmatic history of the human mind is

that of reflection. This method is described over and over in Fichtes Jena
writings, perhaps most memorably in his 1797 Introductions to the Attempt at
a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre (Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre). Such a history begins with a free act of
abstraction from everything that is not-I. What remainsnamely, the concept
of pure I-hood (Ichheit) or the pure I or the original subject-objectthen
becomes the intentional object of a lengthy series of philosophical reflections or
observations. According to Fichte, this first object of philosophythe bare
concept of the Ipoints to something that is not a concept at all, but is an act or
activity: namely, the original productive act (Tathandlung) through which the I
posits itself, for itself, as an I. This self-reverting act is in turn observed to
presuppose and thus to require a long, determinate series of additional acts,
including the positing of the Not-I, the positing of the finite, embodied I, and the
positing of an ultimate goal of human striving. It is the distinctive task of
philosophy to observe and to describe how each of these acts follows from and
leads to other acts. The manner in which the I works up, modifies, and
determines within itself this [original] fact, its entire manner of dealing with the
same, is from now on the object of our philosophical reflection.27
Inasmuch as the Wissenschaftslehre contains a complete inventory of all the
acts that constitute the system of the human mind, it is not only a pragmatic but
also a systematic history of the same. Displaying the genesis of one act from
another also serves to display the systematic interconnections between the
various acts of the mind. Indeed, this is precisely the goal of Fichtes pragmatic
history: to construct the system of the human mind in the form of a complete
description of the series of necessary acts of the same. The Wissenschaftslehre
can thus be described as the systematic history of the human mind in its
universal modes of acting.28
The philosophers role in this matter is described by Fichte in purely passive
terms: We are spectators before the theater of our mind.29 Our task is to deliver
or to construct an accurate portrayal of the system of the latter,30 and what
27

GWL, GA, I/2, 364.

On the Distinction Between Spirit and Letter within Philosophy (Ueber den
Unterschied des Geistes von Buchstaben in der Philosophie) (1794), in GA, II/3, 334 (emphasis added). See also 336,where philosophy is simply defined as the systematic history of the
human mind.
29
EM/PP, GA, II/3, 70. See also Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (Kollegnachschrift K.
Chr. Fr. Krause 1798/99) (henceforth WLnm), GA, IV/3, 480: The Wissenschaftslehre itself
does not generate any new cognition. It merely observes the human mind in its original generation of all cognition.
30
In 7 of BWL Fichte describes the content of the Wissenschaftslehre as the system of
the human mind or the actions of the mind. The Wissenschaftslehre itself should be an
accurate portrayal [Darstellung] of this system (GA, I/2, 141, 142, 146).
28

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

695

guarantees the accuracy of our portrayal is precisely its historical character

i.e., the fact that it is based upon inner perception or intuition (Anschauung) of
certain acts that really occur. Philosophizing thus becomes simply a matter of
allowing our perception (Wahrnehmung) to follow calmly the course of events
(der Gang der Begebenheiten).31 In sharp contrast with every variety of empty
or purely analytic philosophizing (leerer Formular-Philosophie), the Wissenschaftslehre, according to Fichte, is a system of real thinking (reelen Denken),
inasmuch as it describes a series of real acts of the mind.32 The Wissenschaftslehres claim to truth is thus absolutely dependent upon its claim to be a
mere description of something that exists apart from it: that is, upon its status as
a history of the human mind.
For the Summer Semester of 1795 Fichte announced a series of lectures on
Philosophia religionis pragmatica, which he described as follows in the
university catalog: It will set forth a practical philosophy of religion [that is, the
foundations of a religious sensibility] and of the opinions that pertain to religion,
opinions that have been held to be true from all time forward and how it profits
to use them for shaping the minds of mankind.33 But because of turmoil in Jena,
he was forced to take refuge in Osmannstedt and did not teach at all during the
Summer Semester of 1795. The only occurrence of the term pragmatic history
in Fichtes later writings is in a prospectus for the Jahrbcher der Kunst und
Wissenschaft (Yearbook of Art and Science), published in September of 1800, in
which Fichte describes his projected new journal as an effort to provide an
account of the progress of the human mind, its steps forward, backward, or in
a circle. It will follow this progress critically, step by step, and raise to clear
consciousness certain matters within this domain that are not always clearly
recognized by the agents in question. It will, continues Fichte, assess the level of
scientific and artistic spirit present in a particular era, and it will accomplish this
by focusing upon the most important representatives of the characteristic spirit of
the age. It will not, however, attempt to chronicle every passing occurrence in
every field of human endeavor; nor does it need to do this in order to achieve its
distinctively practical goal, which Fichte describes as providing a pragmatic
temporal history [pragmatische Zeitgeschichte] of the human mind.34 Here,
31

GA, I/2, 364-65.

GWL, GA, I/2, 363 and 365: From this it follows that, from now on, we will no longer
be concerned with mere hypotheses, in which a small amount of true content must first be
separated from the empty remainder; instead, we can with full justification ascribe reality to
everything that is established from now on.
33
As cited by Hans Jacob in his introduction to Fichtes Nachgelassene Schriften (Berlin,
1937), II, xli-xlii. See Erich Fuchs, Verzeichnis der Lehrveranstaltungen, Predigten und Reden
J. G. Fichtes in Chronologischer Folge, in Philosophie als Denkwerkzeug: Zur Aktualitt
transzendentalphilosophischer Argumentation, ed. Martin Gtze, Christian Lotz, Konstantin
Pollock, and Dorothea Wildenburg (Wrzburg, 1998), 61. This usage of the term pragmatic
obviously comes directly from Kant.
34
GA, I/6, 425.
32

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Daniel Breazeale

however, as in the title of his announced lectures on the pragmatic philosophy

of religion, the terms pragmatic and pragmatic history are employed in the
more restricted sense in which they were previously employed by Kant and do not
possess the richer meaning they acquired in Fichtes earlier philosophical
writings.
Indeed, after 1795 Fichte never again described the Wissenschaftslehre as a
pragmatic history, though there is a passage in his 1798-99 lectures on
Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo in which he characterizes his efforts to
explain the origin of our concept of an objective goal of all our actions by
remarking that one would thus be able to begin a description of the history of
consciousness in its coming to be.35 It is difficult to determine precisely why
Fichte dropped the term pragmatic history of the human mind as a description
of his philosophical project, though one clue might be contained in a passing,
contemptuous reference in his 1801 polemic against Nicolai to the latters wellknown pragmatic method.36 Perhaps he simply wanted to avoid guilt by
association with the thought of one of his most bitter opponents, or perhaps he
wanted to prevent any confusion between his own project and the epochally
segmented history of self-consciousness presented by his erstwhile disciple,
Schelling, in the latters System of Transcendental Idealism (1800).
Whatever Fichtes reasons for abandoning the expression pragmatic
history of the human mind may have been, this should not be taken to suggest
that he in any way abandoned the conception of transcendental philosophy and of
the proper method of the same that is indicated by this expression. Here, as
elsewhere, he simply altered his terminology and began to describe the
Wissenschaftslehre not as a pragmatic history of the human mind, but as a
genetic description or genetic presentation of the same.
The goal of theWissenschaftslehre is not to justify any system of things,
but rather to describe a series of acts. It allows the I to act before its eyes,
while it observes this acting. The I it observes is not what might be called
the philosophizing I, which, as always happens when one contemplates anything, is lost in contemplation; instead, it is the common,
ordinary I. All descriptions that occur in the Wissenschaftslehre are,
therefore, genetic descriptions. Thus the curtain that keeps the
unconsecrated from entering the Wissenschaftslehre veils the entire
domain of this science as well; for those who are unable to produce
within themselves the act we have described and who do not actually
produce this act really do see nothing and obtain nothing [from this
science].
35
36

WLnm, GA, IV/3, 464.

Friederich Nicolais Leben und sonderbare Meinungen, GA, I/7, 398; also 460.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

697

It is only in this way that the Wissenschaftslehre is able to

accomplish what was demanded of philosophy. We have, for example,
been told frequently enough which predicates apply to representation.
But what we wanted to know was what representing really is. But this
is something that can be presented only genetically, that is, insofar as
ones own mind is engaged in this very act of representing.37
The goal of a genetic presentation or deduction of the transcendental
grounds of ordinary experience is exactly the same as that of a pragmatic history
of the same: to portray accurately the entire system of those self-constitutive acts
by means of which the pure I raises itself to empirical self-consciousness and to
experience of the world.38 That genetic explanation is a synonym for
pragmatic history is already indicated in Foundation of the entire Wissenschaftslehre, where, immediately, after completing his pragmatic history of how
and why the I necessarily demands and strives for infinite causality, Fichte
observes that such a demand for causality has thereby been genetically derived
from a series of previously derived principles and that the corresponding
productive power of the I will be genetically deduced at once.39
The method remains unchanged: the author of a genetic explanation of
consciousness is a mere observer, who passively describes how the entire system
of experience is brought into being under his eyes, in order that he can become
acquainted with the manner in which it originates.40 Philosophy simply is the
37
Vergleichung des vom Hern Prof. Schimd aufgestellten Systems mit der Wissenschaftslehre
(1796; henceforth VSS), GA, I/3, 256-57.
38
This point is disputed by Ulrich Claesges, who maintains that, with the changes that
came after 1795, the Wissenschaftslehre ceases to a history of consciousness. (See Claesges,
Geschichte des Selbstbewusstseins, 4.) Though Claesges presents a compelling and sophisticated analysis of the first presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre and offers a particularly insightful account of how the project of a history of consciousness is implicit in the Kantian
distinction between transcendental idealism and empirical realism and in Kants use of the
former to establish the latter, as well as a convincing explanation of how Fichtes project of
writing a history of consciousness is intimately related to his effort to provide Reinholds
Principle of Consciousness with an adequate foundation, he fails to offer a fully satisfactory
account of the concept of a pragmatic history of the human mind. Indeed, in the course of over
200 pages devoted to the concept of Fichtes history of consciousness he has nothing at all to
say about the pragmatic character of the same. This omission is perhaps one of the reasons
why he fails to appreciate the continuity between the pragmatic history of the 1794/95
Wissenschaftslehre and genetic demonstration or constructive method of the 1796/99 version.
39
GA, I/2, 432. See too Fichtes notes for his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics during the
Winter Semester of 1796/97, in which he comments that the term pragmatic history simply
designates the genetic method (Gang) of the presentation (GA, II/4, 52).
40
Versuch einer Neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797/98, henceforth VWL),
GA, I/4, 213. See Fichtes description, in Wlnm, GA, IV/3, 481, of the main idea of the
Wissenschaftslehre: all consciousness is nothing but self-consciousness. As part of our presentation of this point, we must provide a genetic demonstration thatand howthe sort of consciousness with which we are ordinarily familiar flows from our consciousness of ourselves.

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Daniel Breazeale

quest for a genetic explanation of ordinary experience; its explicit goal is to gain
genetic insight into the foundations of the same and to exhibit or to describe
these foundations genetically. Genetic proof as provided by the method of
pragmatic historyis thus the only sort of proof that is appropriate within
philosophy.41
Nor is genetic demonstration Fichtes only synonym for pragmatic history. During the Jena period he frequently described the method of the Wissenschaftslehre as synthetic and sometimes as constructive (or reconstructive). A careful analysis of these terms would reveal that they are
simply alternative ways of designating the same method of free reflection,
passive observation, and systematic description that was discussed above. Here,
however, we will forego such an analysis.42
One important question concerning Fichtes conception of philosophy as
pragmatic history still remains to be discussed: namely, what distinguishes a
pragmatic from an ordinary or real history? As we have noted, Fichte placed
great importance upon the claim that the history recounted by the Wissenschaftslehre is real, in the sense that it is grounded upon the evidence of
immediate, inner intuition. For the transcendental philosopher, the acts he
describes really do occur, and hence the Wissenschaftslehre deserves to be called
a real philosophy or system of real thinking.
This entire act through which the I posits itself, while at the same time
positing within itself everything that exists, is an act that actually

This is echoed in VWL: It is, however, the task of philosophy to demonstrate this and to
provide a genetic explanation of how the I comes to think of itself in these ways (GA, I/4, 248).
A similar account of the genetic method of the Wissenschaftslehre re-appears in the System of
Ethics (System der Sittenlehre, 1798), which Fichte describes as of utmost importance for our
entire system, inasmuch as it genetically shows the origination of the empirical I out of the pure
I and finally posits the pure I completely outside of the person (GA, I/5, 229). See too the title
of the subsection of 2 of Part One of The System of Ethics: Genetic description of the consciousness in question (GA, I/5, 47).
41
In his 1800 Concluding Remark (SchlussAnmerkung) to an article by Ritter, Fichte
calls attention to the nature of genuine proof in philosophy by insisting that such a proof must
always be a deduction, a genetic explanation of a determinate state of consciousness which
is presupposed to be already presentfrom the system of reason as such (GA, I/6, 412).
42
See Daniel Breazeale, Reflexives philosophisches und ursprngliches Setzen der
Vernunft: ber die Methode und Methodenlehre der frherer Jenenser Wissenschaftslehre, in
Der Grundansatz der ersten Wissenschaftslehre Johann Gottlieb Fichtes, ed. Erich Fuchs and
Ives Radrizzani (Neuried, 1996), 95-110; Fichtes nova methodo phenomenologica: On the
Methodological Role of Intellectual Intuition in the later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, Revue
Internationale de Philosophie, 206 (1998), 587-616; Fichtes Philosophical Fictions, in Essays on the Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre of J. G. Fichte, ed. Breazeale and Rockmore (Evanston,
Ill., 2002); and Die Neue Bearbeitung der Wissenschaftslehre (1880): Letzte frhere oder
erste sptere Wissenschaftslehre? Fichte-Studien, 17 (2000), 43-67.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

699

occurs. And in this act the I and everything that exists are posited in their
original unity and wholeness. It is only the philosopher who destroys the
unity of this act and allows it to occur only in part. He does this in order
to understand the act in question. This act is all that ever was, is, or will
be; as soon as anything exists, this act exists. The Wissenschaftslehre is
therefore a thoroughly real philosophy [eine durchaus reell Philo
sophie], in which, by its very nature, there is no room for any free
fabrication whatsoever.43
Yet there is undeniably something quite unusual about the reality of the
history or genesis of the I described by Fichte. Indeed, as he himself explicitly
concedes, there is something distinctly artificial about the series of selfconstitutive acts depicted in the Wissenschaftslehre. Every actually existing I
exists only as a synthetic totality and thus does not and cannot, as a matter of fact,
come into being in the gradual, step-by-step manner described by the
Wissenschaftslehre.44 Only by means of a radical act of sheer abstraction,
followed by a sustained effort to remain at this level of reflective abstraction, can
each of the additional acts of the I described by the Wissenschaftslehre be
separately observed. Such acts thus possess reality only within the
extraordinary context of philosophical reflection and only for the philosophical
observer. For everyone else they are a mere invention or fabrication
(Erdichtung).45
This is precisely what makes Fichtes history of the human mind
pragmatic: it is a history that makes sense only in the context of a reflective
quest for a transcendental explanation of the origins of consciousness and only
for the philosopher who is engaged in this quest. In contrast, the realm of real
history is the realm of contingent human experience, and there is nothing
necessary or a priori about chronicles of what actually happened or about
accounts of how things came to be what they are. The history contained in the
Wissenschaftslehre is, in contrast, an artificial, rational reconstruction of the
genesis of the I and is grounded upon the freely constructed concept of the same.
Such a history is not an instance of knowledge for its own sake, but has a specific
purpose (namely, to explain the grounds of human experience in terms of the a
priori constitution of consciousness) and requires a specific method (abstraction,
reflection, and intense inner awareness of ones own process of thinking).
43

VSS, GA, I/3, 261. See too 4 of the Second Introduction to VWL, as well as GA, IV/2,
182. For a particularly forceful reiteration of this point (intended, no doubt, to distinguish the
Wissenschaftslehre as sharply as possible from Bardilis philosophy of thinking qua thinking
and perhaps also meant as an indirect response to Kants public repudiation of the
Wissenschaftslehre as mere logic), see Fichtes November 1800 public announcement of a
projected new version of the Wissenschaftslehre, which is filled with references to the intuitions upon which the Wissenschaftslehre is based (Seit sechs Jahren [...], GA, I/7, 153-64).
44
See WLnm, GA, IV/3, 328 and GA, IV/2, 129.
45
VSS, GA I/3, 254.

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Daniel Breazeale

Though the philosophers relationship to his object is supposed to be that of

a mere observer, Fichte repeatedly warns his readers not to confuse such
transcendental observations with factual reports concerning actual states of
affairs, including empirical observations of so-called mental events or facts of
consciousness. This is why he insists that theWissenschaftslehre must never be
confused with empirical psychology. Whereas the latter deals with experienced
facts and describes them in the temporal sequence in which they actually occur,
transcendental philosophy deals with the a priori acts of the mind and describes
these acts in their order of systematic interdependence.46 Such acts never occur,
as such, within ordinary consciousness and experience. If they are nevertheless
to be observed and described, this can occur only within the exotic domain of
philosophical reflection, that is, only within a theoretical domain that has been
explicitly abstracted from the field of empirical experience in toto. This is why
Fichte describes the pragmatic historian of the human mind as engaged in
experimental perception (experimentirende Wahrnehmung).47
Nor does the particular temporal sequence in which these acts are actually
observed and recorded by the philosopher correspond in any way to their actual
order or sequence within real consciousness.48 Even as we distinguish these acts
from one another and, by following the synthetic series of the same, observe how
one necessarily leads to the next, we must also concede that, within actual
consciousness itself, all of these acts occur simultaneously.49 The acts described
earlier in this pragmatic history do not actually precede those described later.
Their sequence within a philosophical history is determined purely pragmatically: that is to say, it is determined by the particular starting point of such
a history (the concept of the I, which is the product of the initial act of free
abstraction), the particular goal of the same (the deduction of the concept of
actual, individual self-consciousness from the bare concept of Ichheit), and, most
of all, by the limitations of the philosophers finite intellectual capacities, which
are able to grasp a synthetic totality such as the I only step-by-step and one
element at a time.

46

See Reply to Prof. Reinhold (Antwortschreiben an Herrn Professor Reinhold, 1801),

GA, I/7, 296-97, and From a Private Letter (Aus einem Privatschreiben, 1800), GA, I/6,
387n.
47
GWL, GA, I/2, 365.
48
It is, however, by no means necessary that the temporal order in which these acts occur
in our minds should actually correspond to that systematic order in which they are derived from
one another. In philosophical reflection, these necessary actions are torn from the sequence
in which they themselves might occur and are set forth in a pure, unmixed form (BWL, GA, I/
2, 141-42).
49
GEWL, GA, I/3, 186.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

701

It is in this context that Fichte occasionally describes the explanations

provided by the Wissenschaftslehre as mere fictions, as a way of interpreting
consciousness as if it had actually come into being through a process of selfconstruction similar to the one described by the Wissenschaftslehre.50 In fact
actual consciousness is always finished and complete, just as it is, and the actual
(empirical) genesis of the same must never be confused with a philosophical or
pragmatic history of consciousness berhaupt. To take this just as if for a
categorical that, to take this fiction for a narrative of a true event that once
occurred at some point in time is a gross misunderstanding. Whatever else it
may be, writes Fichte, the Wissenschaftslehres effort to construct the fundamental operations of consciousness is certainly not a risible attempt to write a
history of the acts [Thathandlungen] of consciousness before there was any
consciousness or the biography of a man prior to his birth.51
The Wissenschaftslehre is a real philosophy in the sense that the
philosopher really must act in a certain way and that, when he does so, he really
does find (at least according to Fichte) that there is something to observe within
himself. But only if he acts in this way will he discover the objects in question; i.e.
he will find them only if he first produces them. But if he is to produce them at all,
claims Fichte, he can produce them only in the manner and in the sequence
described by the Wissenschaftslehre.52
To summarize, Fichtes history of the human mind is pragmatic in the
sense that it is not a chronicle of past events nor a journalistic description of the
empirical facts of consciousness; nor does it describe a series of self-constitutive
acts that are supposed to occur an sich. A pragmatic history of the I must be
artfully constructed a priori for the specific task of explaining ordinary
experience as a whole. Nevertheless, such a history is also objectively true,
necessary, and capable of being recognized as such by others, inasmuch as they
too can act in the manner prescribed by the Wissenschaftslehre and thereby
construct for themselves those objects of inner intuition that guarantee the
reality of this philosophy. And this is why Fichte insists that philosophers are
merely historians of the mind and not its legislators, who would attempt to
dictate, on the basis of pure thinking, how the mind ought to act. The concept
of philosophy as pragmatic history thus permits Fichte to steer a middle course
50

This absolutely present, actual consciousness thus allows itself, according to our philosophy, to be dealt with and judged just as if it had come into being through a process of
original construction like the one carried out in the Wissenschaftslehre (Sonnenklarer Bericht
an das Grssere Publikem ber das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophie [1801; henceforth SB], GA, I/7, 249).
51
SB, GA, I/7, 249.
52
While assuring us that anyone who follows the path of synthetic reflection prescribed by
the Wissenschaftslehre will become conscious of what he does inwardly, Fichte also concedes that all that lies between these endpoints occurs only on the condition that one posits it
(VSS, GA, I/3, 260-61).

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Daniel Breazeale

between purely rationalist and purely empiricist conceptions of the task and
method of philosophy and to defend a conception of philosophizing as both
synthetic and a priori. Understood in this way, the term pragmatic history
seems to be particularly well chosen to characterize the Jena Wissenschaftslehre,
inasmuch as it calls attention to the frankly artificial and experimental character
of the philosophical observations reported therein, as well as to the problematic
ontological status of the series of acts described by such a history.53
Fichtes Originality
As the preceding sketch of the methodology of the early Wissenschaftslehre
is intended to show, Fichtes conception of philosophy as a pragmatic history of
the human mind combines in a new and original manner elements derived from
Kants, Platners, and Maimons conceptions of pragmatic history. With all
three of these authors, he shares the basic contrast between ordinary or real
history and pragmatic history. With Kant, he conceives of the latter as a history
written for a certain purpose: not simply to record what actually happened, but
to serve some ulterior goal. Furthermore, Fichtes pragmatic history resembles
Kants in treating man as an active or self-determining being, though most of the
acts described in the Wissenschaftslehre are performed neither consciously nor
voluntarily. Nor is the ulterior purpose of Fichtes pragmatic history of the
human mind that of a pragmatic history in the Kantian sense. The Wissenschaftslehre is a purely theoretical construction, and as such it does not aim at
providing us with prudential wisdom, nor can it guide us in the pursuit of
happiness and practical self-interest.
The explicit task of Fichtes pragmatic history is to provide a transcendental
explanation of the grounds of everyday experience by offering a genetic
description of the various functions or acts of the mind that are presupposed by
the same. The idea of using the term pragmatic history to characterize this kind
of critical exposition of our capacity to have any experience at all was
undoubtedly suggested to Fichte by Platners use of the term pragmatic history
of the human power of cognition. But however greatly indebted Fichte may have
been to Platner for the term itself, and even for the idea of recasting Kants
transcendental logic and deduction of the categories in an explicitly genetic form,
he utterly rejected Platners own empirical-psychological method of constructing
such a pragmatic history.
As we have seen, the contrast between a real history, in the sense of a
chronological narrative of past events in the order in which they actually
53
For a systematic and critical exploration of these themes, see Breazeale, What is a
Pragmatic History of the Human Mind? Some Methodological Remarks Concerning Fichtes
Jena Project, forthcoming in the proceedings of the colloquium, Fichte: Crena, Imaginao
e Temporalidade, Lisbon, 26-28 October 2000.

Fichtes Conception of Philosophy

703

occurred, and a pragmatic history was particularly emphasized by Maimon, to

whose conception of pragmatic history Fichte is strongly indebted. Unlike an
ordinary history, a pragmatic history is constructed a priori and follows the
development of what might be called the logic of the concept whose history it
is tracing, from its origin (that is to say, from its purest and most abstract form)
to its final, fully articulated development.
Maimon, however, would surely have objected to Fichtes application of this
term to transcendental philosophy, since, according to Maimon, a pragmatic
history (such as his own pragmatic history of philosophy) is always a matter of
pure conceptual analysis, whereas Fichtes pragmatic history is grounded in
synthetic reflection and inner intuition. Following Kant, Maimon restricted the
possibility of the latter to the domain of mathematicsa difference that also
explains why Maimon was so skeptical about the very possibility of philosophy
and Fichte so optimistic about the same. Fichte and Maimon agree that all
concepts without construction are mere thought entities (blosse GedankenDinge),54 even as they sharply disagree about the possibility of constructing
the fundamental concepts of philosophy, and hence about the capacity of
philosophy for providing us with real cognition.
University of Kentucky.

54

Maimon, Streifereien, 168.