Fichte's Transcendental Ontology by Yicai, Ni;

Short description:

This book reinterprets Fichte’s thought as a “transcendental ontology,” arguing that his later Jena Wissenschaftslehre transcends the “History of Self-Consciousness” to establish a “History of Being”, where the I’s genesis aligns with the world’s historical development.

Long description:

This book reinterprets Fichte’s thought as a “transcendental ontology,” arguing that his later Jena Wissenschaftslehre transcends the “History of Self-Consciousness” to establish a “History of Being”, where the I’s genesis aligns with the world’s historical development.

Challenging the dominant interpretive traditions established by Henrich and the Heidelberg School, this book adopts the framework of “Transcendental Ontology” to explicate the pre-conscious, self-generating activity of primordial reality. The narrative traces the roots of the ontological genesis from Kant’s doctrine of self-affection and Reinhold’s theory of representation, through Fichte’s theoretical confrontations with Schelling and Hölderlin, to its profound reception in the early twentieth century. By examining the works of Neo-Kantians (Lask and Hirsch), Neo Marxist Georg Lukács, and Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, the book demonstrates how Fichte’s philosophy evolved into a response to the spiritual crisis of European modernity. Its aim was to unite individuality with historical totality in a “concrete universal”.

This book is essential for scholars and advanced students of German Idealism, modern European philosophy, and intellectual history, especially those interested in subjectivity, the shift from Kant to Fichte and Schelling, and transcendental philosophy's impact on twentieth-century thought.

“Ni Yicai has taken a topic that has been extensively covered and found something new to say about it. Taking Fichte’s early Wissenschaftslehre as constituting in fact a “transcendental ontology” of the thinking, acting “I”, he then traces the reception of this not as ending with Schelling and Hegel but as extending through the nineteenth and twentieth century, even deeply into Russian philosophy. He gives us a new way of seeing Fichte’s philosophy and its historical impact.”

Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University, USA

“The book by Ni Yicai, entitled Transcendental Philosophy as Transcendental Ontology, from the Genesis of the Transcendental I to the History of Being, offers an original and persuasive investigation aimed at demonstrating the contemporary relevance of transcendental philosophy. Starting from an innovative reading of Fichte and his concept of “intellectual intuition,” the volume engages with figures of twentieth-century Neo-Kantianism (Lask, Lukács, and Hirsch) as well as important representatives of 20th Century Russian philosophy (Ivan Ilyin), showing how transcendental philosophy constitutes an “ontology of subjectivity” that makes it possible to develop a philosophy of history in a contemporary key.”

Gaetano Rametta, University of Padova, Italy

Table of Contents:

1 Kant and Reinhold’s Doctrine of Self-Affection  2 From Free Play to Self-Feeling  3 Fichte and Schelling in Parallel  4 Absolute Being as Distanceless Unity of Subject-Object  5 Annihilation and Genesis of Being  6 The Genesis of the Philosophy of History  7 “A Lone Swan’s Solitary Flight Across the Void”