Daniel Breazeale

In Defense of Fichte’s Account of Ethical Deliberation

Abstract: Fichte’s ethical theory (as presented in his 1798 System der Sittenlehre) has often been characterized as an unsound and extreme expression of moral rigorism, even “moral fanaticism”. It has long been simultaneously criticized both as too formal and abstract and as too subjective and arbitrary. After considering these criticisms as they were first formulated by, among others, Schelling and Hegel, a more recent version of a similar criticism is also considered: namely, the charge that Fichte is unable to provide a successful account of moral deliberation and substantive self-determination that preserves both the autonomy of the moral agent and the universality and objectivity of the moral law. In order to respond to these criticisms one must explain how Fichte’s ethics is grounded in the larger account of agency contained within the entire Jena Wissenschaftslehre, and, more specifically how that “determinate pure willing”, which was posited in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo as the “highest synthesis” necessary for the very possibility of empirical self-consciousness, becomes the moral law when it is related, as it must be, to finite, natural consciousness. There follows an interpretation of Fichtean moral deliberation as a distinctive form of reflective judgment, the “product” of which is the deliberative agent’s recognition, not of the moral law per se, but rather of precisely what one ought to do in any and every situation. Taken together, these considerations would appear to absolve Fichte’s ethics of at least some of the more serious charges that have been made against it.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The System of Ethics: According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre

Part I. Deduction of the Principle of Morality Part II. Deduction of the Reality and Applicability of the Principle of Morality Part III. Systematic Application of the Principle of Morality, or Ethics in the Narrower Sense.

Reason’s Changing Needs: From Kant to Reinhold

What are the needs and interests of reason? How do those of practical reason relate to those of theoretical reason, and how do reason’s universal needs and interests relate to the general needs of humanity and the specific needs and interests of philosophy? These are the questions examined in this paper, beginning with a discussion of Kant’s account of reason’s unchanging needs and interests. Reinhold’s major contribution to this discussion and most important advance on Kant’s position is his defense of a thoroughly historical conception of the “interests” or “needs” of reason as changing over time and in different circumstances.

German Philosophy, 1670-1860: The Legacy of Idealism (review)

renders any straightforward connection between Newton and Hume problematic, but he tries to solve the problem by eliding the kind of experimentalism championed by Robert Boyle and John Locke with Newton’s brand of natural philosophy. In doing so, he ignores the deep methodological differences between Boyle and Newton and fails to take up the interpretive issues raised by Barfoot. It is unfortunate that Stanistreet fails to give either a balanced introduction to recent Hume scholarship or an entirely convincing interpretation of Hume’s philosophical thought. There is certainly a need for a good introductory overview of Hume combining sensitivity to historical context with a mastery of the latest secondary literature. Perhaps Stanistreet’s book will encourage someone else to undertake this daunting task. P A U L W O O D University of Victoria

Aground on the Ground of Values: Friedrich Nietzsche

Ambiguite de Nietzsche: celui-ci comme critique de tout fondationnalisme axiologique et comme chercheur de fondations nouvelles.