franks_review of martin idealism and objectivity

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thought is not among the aims of the book. Still, introductions that overflow with detailedknowledge of ethical theories and traditions can be found everywhere. Books thatgenuinely enthuse the reader for the activity of philosophical ethics, however, are far morerare. In combination with skilled teachers and texts from the authors it discusses (and

those who build upon their work), this book will most certainly prove to be an excellentintroduction to philosophical ethics.

Bert van den Brink Schoordijk InstituteFaculty of Law

Tilburg UniversityP.O. Box 90153

5000 LE TilburgThe Netherlands

[email protected]

NOTE

1 See for example Tom L. Beauchamp, Philosophical Ethics: An Introduction to MoralPhilosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, second edition 1991.

Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichtes Jena Project , by Wayne M. Martin.Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997, xvi + 177 pp.ISBN 0804730008 hb 30.00

Martins book is lucid and well-argued. It is accessible to a reader who knows nothingabout Fichte, but who wishes to understand Fichtes project and its importance, both forpost-Kantianism and for contemporary debates about naturalism and its limits in thephilosophy of mind and action. At the same time, Martin makes a significant contributionto several central debates in the expanding literature, both Anglo-American and Conti-nental, about how to interpret Fichtes challenging yet rewarding texts. Particularly note-

worthy are Martins discussions of the relationship between Fichtes system and thespecial sciences, of the debate between Fichtes idealism and contemporary naturalismssuch as Dretskes, and of Fichtes early dialectical method.

However, Martins attitude towards Fichtes development within the Jena period(17949) is questionable. The subtitle promises an interpretation of Fichtes Jena project,a project that took two main forms, known as the first presentation (17945) and thesecond presentation (17969), each producing both published and unpublished works.Yet Martin focuses on the first presentation, indeed, almost exclusively on the 17945 Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, in essence the handouts from Fichtes firstuniversity classes.1 Hardly any attention is paid to the more mature works of the secondperiod, including published works such as The Foundations of Natural Right and The Systemof Ethics, and the underlying Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy nova methodo, oraccording to the new method, whose publication halted after two introductions and thefirst chapter, but to which we now have access through student transcripts.2

Martin gives four reasons for his choice: first, the 17945 Foundations is the only foun-dational text prepared for publication by Fichte himself; second, the 17945Foundations

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were widely known, whereas the nova methodo system was directly known (at least in anysignificant detail) only to the students who attended Fichtes private lecture courses (6);third, the early work allows exploration of two of Fichtes most important philosophicalcontributions, his account of the theory-practice relation and his dialectical methodology;

and, finally, differences between the two presentations bear mainly on matters of strategy;when it comes to the aims and doctrines of the system, the Jena corpus displays a funda-mental continuity (7).

Martin gives no argument for his fourth point, which I would contest. Not only Fichtesstrategy but also crucial features of his doctrine are changed by his new method, includ-ing his view of the theory-practice relation and his understanding of dialectics. ThusMartins third point is also questionable, for he may be studying only Fichtes most imma-ture views on those topics, views quickly abandoned or altered. Such a study would bevaluable, especially since the 17945Foundations was so influential. But I cannot agree thatthe second presentation was known in detail only to Fichtes audience. Besides the twointroductions and first chapter of the new version of the foundations, The Foundations ofNatural Right and The System of Ethicsboth contain condensed versions of the foundationalargument for the necessary embodiment of the mind in a natural and social world ofnormatively constrained free agency. These works were widely read. Hegel did not attendFichtes lectures, but studied the later works closely. That leaves Martins first reason: theproblems that arise from the fragmentary and second-hand sources associated with thenova methodo presentation (6). The lecture transcripts are certainly second-hand and occa-sionally fragmentary, but we are fortunate to have two to compare and, by comparing theresults with the published works, we may reliably reconstruct Fichtes arguments. Indeed,

Martin cannot wish no weight to be placed upon these texts, for his own claim that Fichtesproject is an account of referential character depends, as we shall see, solely on one of themurkier passages in the lectures. It seems to me that Martin should either have restrictedhimself entirely to the 17945Foundations, which would certainly have been justifiable butwould not have yielded an account of Fichtes Jena project, or he should have takenextensive account of the second presentation, in which case his interpretations of Fichtesviews about things in themselves, dialectical method and the primacy of practice wouldhave had to be radically altered to reflect Fichtes own developments.

With respect to the aims of Fichtes project, I agree that there is no significant change inthe Jena period and that we should pay close attention to Fichtes careful formulations (in

his lectures on the new method) of the problem of the objectivity of consciousness. Lessconvincing is Martins proposal that Fichtean objectivity be understood, not as an anti-skeptical thesis about the existence of the objects of our experience, but rather as referen-tial character, a species of intentionality that side-steps skeptical concerns: To say of oneof my conscious states that it is objective is to say that it is of or about something that Itake to exist independently of that conscious state (18; cf. 72). According to this concep-tion, the empirical object of which I take myself to be conscious may not in fact exist, ormay be a feature of my conscious state, yet my state is nonetheless objective; hence, toshow that and how our consciousness is objective is not to refute skepticism about theobjects of experience. To be sure, there are interesting projects beside the refutation ofskepticism, and exploration of referential character might be one of them, but what is theevidence for attributing that conception to Fichte, as opposed to, say, a conception of objec-tivity that involves the existence of empirical objects? The sole evidence is a single passagein the new method lectures, recorded differently in the two transcripts, in which Fichtedistinguishes his initial claim that things correspond to representations from the claimthat things are (17).3 The passage supports Martins proposal only if Fichte is saying that

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his claims about correspondence or objectivity have no implications for the existence ofcorresponding empirical objects. But why not interpret Fichte in a more obvious fashion, asdenying that he is talking about correspondence to things in themselves? Indeed, the Halletranscript confirms that Fichte means to deny just this, for it continues: We can be conscious

only of the objects of our consciousness.4 I therefore see no reason to disagree with Beisersview5 that Fichte is mainly concerned to respond to an appropriately post-Kantian versionof epistemological skepticism (1416). In particular, both the skeptical problematic andFichtes response owe a tremendous amount, as Beiser has argued,6 to Maimon, whoseideas are to be found explicitly or implicitly on every page of Fichte, but whom Martinmentions only once (11112). Since one of Maimons central arguments is that transcen-dental philosophy can discern the necessary conditions only of an idealized science, butcan never show the applicability of its concepts to the objects of everyday experience,about which skepticism is therefore justified, Fichtes project may be fruitfully viewed asthe attempt to demonstrate, among other things, that the necessary conditions derived bytranscendental philosophy are sufficient to determine objects of everyday experience. Inthis sense at least, Fichtes exploration of the objectivity of consciousness is at the sametime an engagement with post-Kantian skepticism.

Martin offers a highly suggestive account of Fichtes attitude towards things-in-them-selves, although he himself notes, with admirable candour, that his account does not fit allthe texts. His unspoken assumption is that the ascription of a single view is called for, ratherthan the tracing of Fichtes development. Martins interpretation, which is presumablyintended to apply to the entire Jena period, contains three elements: first, Fichte is ontolog-ically agnostic, neither affirming nor denying the existence of things-in-themselves; second,

his rejections of things-in-themselves are either methodological (they are excluded from theexplanandum of transcendental philosophy by its procedure) or amount to sound Kantianrejections of predications concerning things-in-themselves; third, Fichte not only uses butneeds to use the concept of thing-in-themselves in order to specify the epistemological impli-cations of his objectivity thesis, which amounts to the thesis that things-in-themselves areunknowable. Martin admits that his interpretation cannot accommodate texts that say thatwe know things-in-themselves indirectly insofar as they affect our feeling, and texts that saythat the concept of the thing-in-itself is contradictory. Yet, although he does not say so, suchtexts are central to the 17945 Foundations on which Martins book focuses. In the firstpresentation, Fichte does indeed maintain that, when we attempt to explain our theoretical

knowledge, we will necessarily be forced to appeal to things-in-themselves in order toexplain the passive affection of our feelings that occasions perceptions. However, thisappeal is inherently unstable, because anything we are forced to appeal to by our ownconsciousness is something for-us. So, according to the 17945 Foundations, the concept ofthe thing-in-itself is both necessary and contradictory.7 However, one does not find any suchclaim within the second Jena presentation; things-in-themselves are no longer invoked toexplain the affection of feeling which remains, however, a topic of some difficulty; instead,the thing-in-itself is said to be abolished once and for all.8

Returning to Martins three-pronged interpretation: first, it is hard to see how Fichte canbe agnostic about the existence of things-in-themselves, since he takes himself to be deriv-ing the transcendental conditions of all existence-claims and predications from theautonomous activity of the I, which would exclude the possibility of claims about thingsindependent of that activity, except insofar as such claims enter into the dialectic of neces-sity and impossibility described above, which does not much resemble stable agnosticism.Second, Fichte excludes things-in-themselves from the transcendental explanandum butnot, as Martin notes, from the explanans, where in fact they re-emerge in the Foundations.

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However, the contradictoriness of the concept renders them not merely unknowable assubjects ofreal predication, which Kantian doctrine allows, but also unthinkable as subjectsoflogical predication, which goes beyond Kant. Third, I do not see how Fichte can have anyepistemological use for the concept of things-in-themselves. According to Martin, Fichtes

theory issues a far-reaching skeptical result (72), because it shows that things in them-selves are unknowable. That is, we cannot have knowledge of objects except as subject tothe conditions under which they can be posited as objects of knowledge (74). From theperspective of Fichtes first presentation, things-in-themselves are not merely unknow-able but unthinkable. Since we can form no stable sense that there are things we cannotknow, it is hard to call this skepticism. From the perspective of the second presentation,they are still unthinkable, but no longer necessary, so neither ontological agnosticism norepistemological skepticism can be intended. In short, I can see no justification for ascribingskepticism about things-in-themselves to Fichte.

Martins discussion of the dialectical methodology of the 17945 Foundations isextremely illuminating and suggestive. The fundamental idea that the three principlesare at once certain and indeterminate (136), and that the bulk of the argument isconcerned with the determination of the content of those principles seems correct andfruitful. One would very much like to see this view developed and applied to the readingof the work as a whole. However, it is surprising to hear that Fichtes idea, first expressedin notes from the revolutionary winter of 17934,9 that, like geometry, philosophy mustsecure the objective validity of its concepts by appealing to a construction-guiding a prioriintuition, is an appeal that rings hollow. For Fichte has nothing substantive to say abouthow his intellectual intuition could carry out its constraining function in his construc-

tions (116). This may be true with respect to the 17945Foundations, in which the role ofintellectual intuition is notoriously under-thematized. But it is far from true of the secondpresentation, in which the character of intellectual intuition and its methodological roleare central topics. Indeed, one might suggest that it was in part the need to pursue themethodological goal set by the early analogy with geometry that led Fichte to develop thenew method and to abandon the method Martin describes. It may be philosophically chal-lenging, or even impossible, to make sense of Fichtes conception of philosophical demon-stration as construction in intellectual intuition, but it is false that he has nothingsubstantive to say about it.

Finally, I turn to the primacy of the practical. This is the core of Fichtes positive

doctrine, according to Martin. But it is also the site of one of the new methods greatestinnovations, distinguishing the second presentation from the first: the repudiation of thetraditional distinction between a theoretical part of philosophy that deals with cognitionand a practical part that deals with volition. Instead, the new method regards conscious-ness as a single, complex yet unitary activity of positing, from which the distinctionbetween cognition and volition emerges at a certain level of abstraction. Consequently,what Martin takes to be the core of Fichtes idealism is only to be found in the first presen-tation of 17945. In Martins formulation, to explain the capacity for representation wemust think of human beings not only as they are but also as they are not . . . For as Fichteinsists, as real, finite human beings we are neither self-determining nor self-positing. Weare and must be subject to determination by the world a world that constitutes both theobject of our representation and the domain of our action . . . . Here at last we can see inwhat sense Fichtes theory of objectivity is a form of idealism . . . . Fichtes idealism should. . . be understood as a commitment to an ideal perspective on human beings (1445). Thepicture is of tension between theory and practice, reconciled by asymmetrical ordering:the tension consists in the fact that theoretical philosophy portrays us as finite, neither

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self-determining nor self-positing, whereas practical philosophy portrays us as striving tobe self-determining and self-positing; the reconciling asymmetry consists in the insight thatour striving can alone explain our cognitive finitude, whereas our cognitive finitude canoffer no explanation for our striving; hence the primacy of the practical over the theoretical,

of the ideal over the real. But this picture presupposes a fundamental distinction betweentheory and practice, and is accordingly absent from the second presentation. On themature view, we exercise both our cognitive and our volitional capacities within a worldthat is constituted by the absolute autonomy of positing. Whether the activity in which weare engaged is traditionally classified as theoretical or practical, we are finite, self-deter-mining and self-positing; there is no tension between the real and the ideal. Hence, Fichtesstartling remark, repeated variously in each major work of the second presentation, thatThe ought, or the categorical imperative, is also a theoretical principle.10

Martins book is an important contribution to debate about the questions addressed byFichtes Jena project, and about the solutions proposed in his seminal 17945Foundations.I hope that it will be followed by further work of a similarly high philosophical standard,and that Martins innovative and provocative suggestions will generate the debate theydeserve.

Paul Franks Department of PhilosophyIndiana University

BloomingtonIndiana 47405-2601

USA

[email protected]

NOTES

1 Fichte 18456: Vol. I, 86328. For a translation, see Fichte 1982a: 89286.2 For the Krause transcript, see Fichte 1982b. For the Halle transcript, see Fichte 1964:

Series IV, Vol.2. See Fichte 1992 for a useful introduction and a translation of the Krausetranscript that draws upon the Halle transcript and indicates their differences.

3 Fichte 1992: 88.4 Fichte 1992: 88.5 See Beiser 1992: 6368.6 See Beiser 1992: 6567.7 See Fichte 18456: Vol. I, 280285, and Fichte 1982a: 246251.8 Fichte 1992: 163.9 The Eigne Meditationen ber Elementarphilosophie, in Fichte 1964: Series II, Vol.3. The

geometrical analogy is emphasized in recently discovered notes taken at Fichtes lecturesat Zrich in 1794. See Fichte 1996: 117145.

10 Fichte 1992: 437. cf., e.g., Fichte 1964: Series I, Vol. 5, 77.

REFERENCES

Beiser, F. (1992), Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern GermanPolitical Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Fichte, J. G. (18456),Johann Gottlieb Fichtes smmtliche Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte. Berlin: Veitand Comp.

Fichte, J. G. (1964),J. G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,edited by R. Lauth, H. Jacob and H. Gliwitzky. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich

Fromann Verlag.Fichte, J. G. (1982a), Fichte: The Science of Knowledge, trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Fichte, J. G. (1982b), Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. Kollegnachschrift K. Chr. Fr. Krause, ed.

E. Fuchs. Hamburg: Meiner.Fichte, J. G. (1992), Fichte: Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre)

Nova Methodo (1796/99), trans. and ed. D. Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Fichte, J. G. (1996), Zricher Vorlesungen ber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre Februar 1794.

Nachschrift Lavater, ed. E. Fuchs. Neuried: Ars Una.

The Indexical I: The First Person in Thought and Language , by Ingar Brinck.Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, xii + 179 pp.ISBN 0792347412 hb 44.00

Ingar Brincks monograph is a patient, sensible and wide-ranging account of the meaningand reference of I, broadening into a treatment of self-knowledge and personal identity.The first part of the book offers critiques of the Wittgensteinian no-reference thesis, and thedirect reference theory of I. In the second part Brinck defends her own thesis that I refers

indirectly, through a de re sense, to the speaker as presented in the context of utterance.In her opening chapter, Brinck is concerned to reject the arguments of those who claim

that I is not a genuine referring expression. She also develops the idea of immunity toerror through misidentification which some of those arguments appeal to. But it is worthnoting that Wittgensteins own thesis is less definite, at least after the time of the Philo-sophical Remarks. He does say that, in using I, I do not name a person, but his target ismuch more the idea that there is no object, the self. This is not a minor interpretativepoint. In her very opening sentence, Brinck writes that Most of us take it for granted thateach of us in some sense has a self and she shows no sign of dissenting from this (p. 1).Brinck may be right that most of us assume this; but she does not consider Wittgensteins

view that talk of the self, whether Cartesian or not, is at the root of philosophical illusionconcerning self-consciousness.

The concept of immunity to error through misidentification henceforth IEM is ofgreat interest independent of its role in supporting a no-reference account of I. Considerthe judgment I went on holiday to Bournemouth when I was nine years old. If oneassumes that this expresses a personal memory-judgment, then although it could conceiv-ably be mistaken, it would make no sense to suppose this was because of an error aboutwho went on holiday; the judgment is IEM. Brinck offers an extended treatment of theconcept starting with Wittgensteins discussion in The Blue Book, though it is not reallypinned down in a complete definition Brincks first formulation is that Uses of I areIEM if the speaker cannot mistake herself for another as the referent of I (p. 32). She goeson to endorse the account given by Gareth Evans, which emphasises that it is token-judg-ments based on certain kinds of ground that are IEM, though this crucial feature is omit-ted in some of her formulations (for instance p. 11). Brinck rejects Wittgensteins view thatwhen the possibility of misidentification is excluded, it is wrong to talk of identification:in thinking about oneself, one does identify oneself as instantiating a certain property . . .

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