Heidegger on Fichte’s Three Principles

Abstract

What does Heidegger’s Fichte look like? This paper focuses on a key component of Heidegger’s interpretation of Fichte, as laid out in volume 28 of the Gesamtausgabe. In Heidegger’s view, the key to understanding Fichte is his 1794 Grundlage, and the key to understanding Fichte’s Grundlage lies in Fichte’s three “first principles.” But what is new about Heidegger’s interpretation of Fichte’s first principles? This chapter attends to Heidegger’s interpretation: (a) of the first principle, of “thetic judgments” and the primacy of “I-hood”; (b) of the second principle (Heidegger’s view on Fichte’s “Not-I”); (c) of the third principle—of “divisibility” and “capacity for quantity” (Quantitätsfähigkeit); and (d) of the connection between the three first principles, their “equiprimordiality” and the primacy of “finiteness” (Endlichkeit).