Fichte's subjective idealism revisited

a possible inventory of questions arising from Peirce's idealism

Abstract

Often considered a philosophy of the ethos, the thought of Fichte is, in fact, a conciliation effort between the theoretical and practical reasons split in the idealism of Kant. This paper deals with the implicit theoretical framework present in the principles of Wissenschaftslehre (Doctrine of the Science), from 1794, showing how they give rise, on one hand, to the denial of the genetic character of the Cogito, and, on the other, to the anticipation of acting with regard to knowledge. Given their interesting origins stemming from distinct idealisms—namely, Fichte's subjective idealism and Peirce's objective idealism—these questions share theoretical objects, albeit under different assumptions, confronting the nominalist and realist ontologies of Fichte and Peirce, respectively. Based on these questions and others that may arise from the very proposition of this confrontation between the authors, further investigation is suggested as the subject of a future essay.