Combining Texts

Ideas for 'After Finitude', 'The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed]' and 'Knowledge and the Philosophy of Number'

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3 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / b. Transcendental idealism
Fichte's logic is much too narrow, and doesn't deduce ethics, art, society or life [Schlegel,F on Fichte]
     Full Idea: Only Fichte's principles are deduced in his book, that is, the logical ones, and not even these completely. And what about the practical, the moral and ethical ones. Society, learning, wit, art, and so on are also entitled to be deduced here.
     From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works Vol 18 p.34
     A reaction: This is the beginnings of the romantic rebellion against a rather narrowly rationalist approach to philosophy. Schlegel also objects to the fact that Fichte only had one axiom (presumably the idea of the not-Self).
Unlike speculative idealism, transcendental idealism assumes the mind is embodied [Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: What distinguishes transcendental idealism from speculative idealism is the fact that the former does not posit the existence of the transcendental subject apart from its bodily individuation.
     From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1)
     A reaction: These modern French philosophers explain things so much more clearly than the English! The 'speculative' version is seen in Berkeley. On p.17 he says transcendental idealism is 'civilised', and speculative idealism is 'uncouth'.
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism
Fichte's key claim was that the subjective-objective distinction must itself be subjective [Fichte, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Fichte's key claim was that the difference between the subjective and the objective points of view had to be itself a subjective distinction, something that the 'I' posits.
     From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09
     A reaction: This seems to lock us firmly into the idealist mental prison and throw away the key.