Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre

The 1794 invitation to his Jena lectures in which Fichte first named his project and set out its rules.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte80 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie – als Einladungsschrift zu seinen Vorlesungen über diese Wissenschaft
First published: 1794(aged 32)
Original language: German

Overview

Two sceptics had convinced Johann Gottlieb Fichte that philosophy was not yet a science, and his preface names them. One was G. E. Schulze, whose anonymous Aenesidemus of 1792 had attacked both Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold, the Kantian who had tried to rest Kant's philosophy on a single first principle; the other was Salomon Maimon, another sharp critic of Kant, whose writings Fichte calls excellent. This short book of 1794 was his answer, and it is a programme rather than a system. Philosophy, Fichte argues, has to become a Wissenschaftslehre, a "doctrine of science": the science of what makes any science possible. That means one system resting on a single principle certain in itself, from which everything else must follow, and he sets out what such a principle would have to be like before promising to supply it. The book also had a practical job, announced in its full title, which calls it an invitation to his lectures. Fichte had been appointed to Jena as an extraordinary professor, which meant he lived largely on the fees of students who chose to attend his private courses. The last pages speak directly to the students he hoped to win, and that summer his lectures were packed. A second edition followed in 1798.

Key concepts

What is a Wissenschaftslehre?

A Wissenschaftslehre, literally a 'doctrine of science', is the science of science as such: the inquiry into what makes any body of knowledge possible. Every other science takes its first principle for granted; this one is to establish those principles, and its own, from a single starting point. Fichte offers it as the new and proper name for what had been called philosophy, which on his view had not yet earned the title of a science.

What makes something a science, on Fichte's view?

Systematic form resting on a ground that is certain. Single true statements are not yet a science, and neither is a strictly reasoned system built on a groundless claim: Fichte's example is a carefully argued natural history of spirits living in the air. A science needs both, a certain first proposition and everything else connected to it, so that the certainty of the first passes to the rest.

What is a first principle (Grundsatz)?

A first principle is a proposition that is certain before the system built on it and does not get its certainty from any other proposition. Inside its science it can be used but not proved, because there is nothing earlier to prove it from. Fichte argues that human knowledge as a whole can have only one absolutely first principle, and the Wissenschaftslehre's task is to find it and show what follows.

How does the Wissenschaftslehre differ from logic?

Logic gives only the empty form that every science must have; the Wissenschaftslehre gives form and content together and never separates them. That difference leads Fichte to a surprising conclusion: logic is not part of philosophy at all but a separate science of its own, valuable in its place, whose rules ultimately depend on what the Wissenschaftslehre establishes.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

One Firm Ground

What turns a heap of true statements into a science? Fichte's answer sets philosophy a task no one had yet completed.

A science, Fichte argues, is a whole whose parts all rest on one ground certain before the system begins, as a building stands firm because every wall rests on its foundation. Strict reasoning alone is not enough: a perfectly connected natural history of air spirits would still not be a science, because its first claim is groundless. Philosophy therefore has to become a Wissenschaftslehre, the science of what makes every science possible, and even logic, which supplies only the form of thought, turns out to be a separate science outside it.

philosophy of science
first principles
systematicity
systematic philosophy
foundations of knowledge
foundationalism
scientific method
logic
knowledge
science
definition
completeness
epistemology

Enter a dialogue

A System That Could Be Wrong

Can a philosophy that promises certainty admit it may have made a mistake? Fichte builds the admission into the programme.

The first principle cannot be proved without using the very rules it is meant to ground, and Fichte says so openly: there is a circle here that the human mind can never leave, and no reason to be embarrassed by it. What he will not claim is that his own presentation is infallible. Checking the chain from principle to result raises probability, never to certainty. Philosophers, he concludes, are not the legislators of the human mind but its historians, and only pragmatic historians at that.

certainty
proof
circularity
probability
fallibility
skepticism
reflection
self-consciousness
freedom

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 80
distinct concepts: 95
by passages held, corpus-wide: #554

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “first principles” and “systematicity”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
first principles	systematicity	9
epistemology	scientific method	8
epistemology	systematicity	7
certainty	epistemology	6
certainty	first principles	6
epistemology	philosophy of science	6
logic	philosophy of science	6
certainty	scientific method	5
certainty	systematicity	5
knowledge	systematicity	4
philosophy of science	scientific method	4
philosophy of science	systematicity	4
epistemology	first principles	3
epistemology	logic	3
logic	scientific method	3
scientific method	systematicity	3
epistemology	knowledge	2
first principles	scientific method	2
knowledge	philosophy of science	2
certainty	knowledge	1
first principles	knowledge	1
first principles	logic	1
first principles	philosophy of science	1
knowledge	logic	1
knowledge	scientific method	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1792 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung)
The debut, written in weeks in Königsberg to impress Kant: a book on religion that made Fichte famous before he had a system of his own.
DE
1794 Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre (Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie – als Einladungsschrift zu seinen Vorlesungen über diese Wissenschaft) you are here DE
1794 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre)
The first full statement of the system and his best-known treatise, begun as lecture handouts in 1794; the 1795 Outline carries its theoretical half further, and the First Introduction of 1797 starts the explanation again.
DE
1794 Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation (Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten)
Popular ethics for students, given the summer Fichte arrived at Jena in 1794, alongside the far harder Foundation.
DE
1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Faculty (Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre)
A companion rather than a book of its own: the 1795 supplement that carries the Foundation's theoretical half on into sensation, space and time.
DE
1797 First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre (Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre)
Written for beginners: the 1797 journal essay in which Fichte, frustrated with how the Foundation had been read, began explaining his system again from first principles.
DE
1799 Streitschriften zur Denk- und Gewissensfreiheit
Gathered here from two separate publications, of 1793 and 1799, that bracket Fichte's rise to fame and his fall at Jena.
DE
1800 The Closed Commercial State (Der geschlossene Handelsstaat)
A venture into economics, offered as an appendix to his theory of right and published in 1800, the same year as The Vocation of Man.
DE
1800 The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen)
Written straight after the Atheism Dispute, in his first months in Berlin: the system retold for general readers as a first-person passage from doubt to faith.
DE
1806 The Characteristics of the Present Age (Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters)
One of three popular lecture courses Fichte published in 1806: the philosophy of history that the Addresses to the German Nation would later claim to continue.
DE
1806 The Way Towards the Blessed Life (Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben)
The summit, in Fichte's own estimate, of the popular lectures he gave in Berlin before the war: religion presented as the result of the Wissenschaftslehre, his "doctrine of science", for listeners with no philosophy.
DE
1808 Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation)
His most influential book: public lectures once more, but this time a call to a defeated nation rather than a philosophy of history or a doctrine of religion.
DE
1810 Kürzere Darstellungen der Wissenschaftslehre
A Jena beginning and a Berlin summing-up, published separately and gathered on one page, on either side of the many versions of the system Fichte kept to the lecture room.
DE
1845 Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre. Aus dem Jahre 1801 (Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre aus dem Jahre 1801)
An early Berlin reworking of the system, written in 1801 as Fichte and Schelling were drifting apart, and left among his papers.
DE

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