Abstract
The aim of the following remarks is to take a closer look at Fichte’s 1805 Propädeutik Erlangen 1 (hereafter PE) and to provide at least a rough sketch of how these introductory lectures describe the transition from prescientific everyday consciousness to scientific knowledge and from scientific knowledge to philosophical knowledge; namely to what Fichte regards as the only legitimate form of philosophical knowledge: the Wissenschaftslehre.
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Notes
The standard translation is “particular sciences,” but this translation misses part of the point. For ἐν μέρει literally means “by turns or in succession,” “in installments” (“in dribs and drabs,” as it were). The point is that the focusing (viz., the concentration) needed in order to bring about one ἐπιστήμη — to notice that it is still missing, to start investigating, etc. — excludes the focusing (viz., the concentration) needed in order to bring about another. In other words, the “range of focusing” is relatively narrow, the result being an either/or: either one ἐπιστήμη or another, for different ἐπιστῆμαι cannot be developed at the same time by the same mind. In short, ἐπιστῆμαι correspond to alternate possibilities, and what Henri de Montherlant says when he compares each one of us with an infantry company attacking from the trenches holds good in this regard: “Chaque être est comme une compagnie d’infanterie qui sort de la tranchée, qui avance en de certains points, jusqu’à entrer dans la tranchée adverse, et en d’autres est arrêtée ou même recule. Chaque être est cette ligne brisée de flèches et de poches: ici admirable, à côté faiblard, et dans le même temps.” This is not the place to discuss the semantics of ἐν μέρει — but see, for example, A. W. Verrall (ed.), The “Choephori” of Aeschylus (London: Macmillan, 1893), on 331;
W. J. M. Starkie (ed.), The “Wasps” of Aristophanes (London: Macmillan, 1897), on 1319;
E. Fraenkel (ed.), Aeschylus: “Agamemnon” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), on 1192;
J. D. Denniston and D. Page (ed.), Aeschylus: “Agamemnon” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), on 1192;
W. B. Stanford (ed.), Aristophanes: “The Trogs” (London: Macmillan, 1958), on 32;
G. Thomson and W. Headlam (ed.), The “Oresteia” of Aeschylus (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1966), on Agamemnon, 1191–1193;
D. C. Macdowell (ed.), Aristophanes: “Wasps” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), on 1319,
C. Collard (ed.), Euripides: “Supplices” (Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1975), on 406–408;
A. F. Garvie (ed.), Aeschylus: “Choephori” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), on 332;
W. Biehl (ed.), Euripides: “Kyklops” (Heidelberg: Winter, 1986), on 180, 253;
J. Henderson (ed.), Aristophanes: “Lysistrata” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), on 539–540;
K. Sier (ed.), Die lyrischen Partien der “Choephoren” des Aischylos (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1988), on 332;
A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Aeschylus: “Eumenides” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), on 586;
J. Wilkins (ed.), Euripides: “Heraclidae” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), on 181, 184;
N. Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes: “Birds” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), on 1228;
S. Luraghi, On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases: The Expression of Semantic Roles in Ancient Greek (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003), 91.
On reduplication, see notably Albertus Magnus, De sophisticis elenchis libri duo,I, iii, 6; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-I, 16, 10; John Duns Scotus, In librum primum Priorum Analyticorum Aristotelis Quaestiones, I, XXXV; Quaestiones super libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Q. 1, n. 24; Reportatio I d. 21, Q. unica, n. 8; Quodlibet, Q. 3, nn. 7–8; William of Ockham, Summa logicae, II, c. 16; III-1, c. 65; III-3, 6; IV, c. 11; Paulus Venetus, Logica parva, c. IV, 11; Petrus da Fonseca, Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo, III, xxvii; Joachim Jungius, Logica Hamburgensis, II, XI, 20ff.; Walter Burleigh, De puritate artis logicae. Tractatus longior, II, 3.2.3; Rudolph Goclenius, Lexicon Philosophicum, sub voce; Gottfried W. Leibniz, Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale de Hanovre, ed. L. Couturat (Paris: Alcan, 1903; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961), 403; Gottfried W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1875–1890; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1971);
Gottfried W. Leibniz, Schriften und Briefe, ed. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften / Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, VI, 4 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1999), no. 157, 672; no. 227, 1072; no. 241, 1241f.; no. 243, 1326; Christian Wolff, Philosophia rationalis sive logica, sections 227ff.
See also L. Honnefelder, Ens inquantum ens: Der Begriff des Seienden als solchen als Gegenstand der Metaphysik nach der Lehre des Johannes Duns Scotus (Münster: Aschendorff, 19892), 102ff.;
I. Angelelli, “On Identity and Interchangeability in Leibniz and Frege,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 8 (1967): 94–100;
M. Mugnai, “Intensionale Kontexte und termini reduplicativi in der Grammatica rationalis von Leibniz,” in A. Heinekamp and F. Schupp, Die intensionale Logik bei Leibniz und in der Gegenwart, Symposium der Leibniz Gesellschaft, Hannover, November 10–11, 1978 (Studia leibnitiana Sonderheft 8) (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1979), 82–92;
G. Nuchelmanns, Judgement and Proposition. From Descartes to Kant (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1982), 228ff.;
D. P. Henry, “The Grammar of Quiddity,” in Speculative Grammar, Universal Grammar and Philosophical Analysis of Language, ed. D. Buzetti and M. Ferriani (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1987), 1–22;
M. Mugnai, Leibniz’s Theory of Relations (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992), 66ff., 103ff.;
R. Poli, “Formal Aspects of Reduplication,” Logic and Logical Philosophy 2 (1994): 87–102;
A. T. Bäck, On Reduplication: Logical Theories of Qualification (Leiden: Brill, 1996);
R. Pozzo, “Res considerata and modus considerandi rem: Averroes, Aquinas, Jacopo Zabarella, and Cornelius Martini on Reduplication,” Medioevo 24 (1998): 151–176,
R. Poli, “Qua-Theories,” in Shapes and Forms: From Gestalt Psychology and Phenomenology to Ontology and Mathematics, ed. L. Albertazzi (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 245–256.
Cf. M. Jorge de Carvalho, “A Further Point of View on Points of View”, Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics 4 (2012): 1–40.
Cf. Leibniz to Jac. Thomasius, in Gottfried W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1875–1890; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1971), vol. I, 10; and
Gottfried W. Leibniz, Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale de Hanovre, ed. L. Couturat (Paris: Alcan, 1903; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1961), 15.
Cf. Pascal, Pensées, 1001(Lafuma, 77 Brunschvicg), in Oeuvres complètes, ed. L. Lafuma (Paris: Seuil, 1963), 640.
The PE thus provides a clear-cut illustration of Fichte’s transcendental (NB: transcendental in the modern, Kantian, and post-Kantian sense) version of scientia transcendens — transcendental science, in the pre-Kantian sense of the term (i.e., of the ἐπιστήμη καθόλου). In other words, the PE clearly illustrates the connection between the pre-Kantian and the post-Kantian understanding of what “transcendental” is all about. On scientia transcendens, see notably L. Honnefelder, Scientia transcendens: Die formale Bestimmung der Seiendheit und Realität in der Metaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Duns Scotus — Suárez — Wolff — Kant — Peirce) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990).
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de Carvalho, J. (2014). Knowledge and Standpoint: Fichte’s Understanding of Science and Transcendental Knowledge in the Propädeutik Erlangen (1805). In: Rockmore, T., Breazeale, D. (eds) Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412232_13
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