Leib, Anerkennung und Selbstbewusstsein in Fichtes Grundlage des Naturrechts

Zusammenfassung / Summary

This article analyzes Fichte's deduction of the human body and the existence of a plurality of human beings exclusively from the self. The author, due to his analysis, derives the conclusion that Fichte abruptly passes from the empirical to the transcendental level - and vice versa. He never really clarifies their relation toward each other. Furthermore, Fichte has to presuppose an ontological-anthropological part of the human body to facilitate the invitation to free action by another self, which is a condition of possibility for self-consciousness, but this other self must have been invited as well to be a self - and so forth. Moreover, the body, as the space of the free elaboration of the person posited by the self, cannot precede the self. Fichte encounters these two circles during his argumentation, which he is only able to surpass by god or nature. Later works could not solve those problems completely either; his conception was still extremely innovative and influential.