Kürzere Darstellungen der Wissenschaftslehre

(lit.: Shorter Presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre)

One begins with the reader's own self, the other with God: the system stated briefly, in 1797 and again in 1810.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte49 passages held

German, the original language

First published: 1810(aged 48)
Original language: German

Overview

Two short texts by Johann Gottlieb Fichte share this page, written thirteen years apart and published separately; no book under this title ever appeared. Each tries to state the Wissenschaftslehre, his "doctrine of science" or theory of knowledge, in a small compass, and set side by side they show how far the system travelled. The first is the opening chapter of an Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre, which Fichte began serialising in his Philosophisches Journal in 1797; two introductions came first, and nothing followed this chapter. Its heading states its thesis — all consciousness is conditioned by an immediate consciousness of ourselves — and it works by exercise, speaking to the reader as "you". Think of your table or your wall, and the one thinking and the thing thought are two; think of yourself, and they are one. That self-awareness, Fichte argues, cannot be produced by looking back on oneself, since every such look already presupposes it. The philosopher Dieter Henrich built his 1966 essay "Fichte's Original Insight" partly on this chapter. The second text, Die Wissenschaftslehre, in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse dargestellt — the Wissenschaftslehre set out in general outline — came out in Berlin in 1810, the year the new university opened with Fichte as dean of its philosophy faculty. It runs to fourteen numbered paragraphs and starts at the other end: only God is, as pure life, and knowing is God's image, or schema, outside himself. It was the only one of his many later versions of the system that Fichte published, and one of the most compressed and difficult things he wrote.

Key concepts

What is 'immediate' self-consciousness?

It is the awareness of oneself that is already present in every act of thinking, before any deliberate looking back. Fichte argues it must exist: if we knew ourselves only by making ourselves an object of a further thought, that thought would need yet another to be known, and so on forever. Since we are in fact aware of our thinking, the awareness cannot be built up step by step and must be immediate.

Why are thinker and thought one when we think ourselves?

Because thinking of oneself is an activity that returns into itself. When someone thinks of a table, the one thinking is here and the thing thought is there. When they think of themselves, the activity that thinks is also what is thought, so subject and object coincide. Fichte holds that the I is nothing other than this returning activity, which is why the 1797 chapter teaches by exercise rather than by definition.

What does 'God is pure life' mean in the 1810 outline?

It means God is not a concept we hold but a living being complete in itself. Fichte stresses that the word 'God' as we say it is a dead concept, while what it names is pure life. Because all being is already given in God, God cannot change or turn into something else, and nothing new can arise either within God or outside him.

What is a 'schema' in the 1810 outline?

A schema is an image: God's being outside God's own being, in which God is wholly expressed while remaining wholly himself. Fichte's term names what knowing is. Since nothing exists but God, knowing cannot be a second thing beside him; it can only be his appearance. It is not produced by a special act of God, as if God changed, but exists simply because God is.

Themes of the book

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

Catching Yourself Thinking

How do we know that we are the ones thinking? The 1797 chapter argues that no amount of looking back could ever teach us.

Fichte addresses the reader directly: think of your table or your wall, and the one thinking and the thing thought are two; think of yourself, and they are one. Thinking, he tells the reader, is a doing. But if self-awareness came only from looking back on oneself, every look would need a further self to be aware of it, without end. So it must be there already, immediately, in every act of thinking, whether the object is a wall or oneself.

self-consciousness
consciousness
thinking
activity
self-positing
subject-object
subject-object relation
reflection
intuition
agency
freedom

Enter a dialogue

God and His Image

If only God truly is, what is our knowing? The 1810 outline starts at the far end from the reader's self and works down.

Only One is, through itself: God, who is not the dead concept we pronounce but pure life, and who cannot change or become anything else. Knowing exists all the same, and since nothing is but God, it can only be God outside himself, his appearance or image, which Fichte calls a schema. Even a knower who grasps this is only the image of that image. From the simple 'ought' that drives the will, the world of action runs on without end.

god
absolute
existence
schema
concepts
pure thought
knowledge
the ought
will
drive
infinity
duty
idealism

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 49
distinct concepts: 74
by passages held, corpus-wide: #657

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: “concepts” and “self-consciousness”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 41 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
concepts	self-consciousness	6
intuition	self-consciousness	6
consciousness	self-consciousness	4
freedom	self-consciousness	3
concepts	intuition	2
consciousness	intuition	2
freedom	intuition	2
freedom	the ought	2
idealism	knowledge	2
idealism	self-consciousness	2
intuition	the ought	2
knowledge	self-consciousness	2
concepts	consciousness	1
concepts	freedom	1
consciousness	freedom	1
consciousness	idealism	1
freedom	idealism	1
freedom	knowledge	1
idealism	intuition	1
intuition	knowledge	1
self-consciousness	the ought	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)
A manifesto before the system: the short programme Fichte printed to introduce himself to Jena, months before the first sheets of the Foundation reached his students.
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 you are here 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

— or open another of their works