Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings (review)

624 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:4 OCTOBER i99o adequacy of his own categorial principles. But nowhere does he show us how such demonstrations are to be carried out. There is material in this book to interest scholars (especially, I think, WolfCs comments on Copernicus and scientific method, the likely source of many of Kant's own reflections) and a provocative thesis. But it remains to be shown how and in precisely what sense Kant tried to bring about a "Newtonian" revolution in philosophy. The book, in the Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series, is very well produced, but a quasi-analytical table of contents is no substitute for an index. GORDON G. BRITTAN, JR. Montana State University Fichte:Early Philosophical Writings. Edited and Translated by Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Pp. xx + 455- $49-95. This volume contains English translations of a number of Fichte's shorter writings from the years 1794-1799 . Many of these pieces have never before been translated into English, and of those which have been, most appear only in unreliable translations dating from the nineteenth century. The texts included here fall into four main categories : technical, philosophical treatises; popular essays and lectures; polemical articles attacking Fichte's philosophical foes; and letters written to friends which reveal some of Fichte's fundamental philosophical motivations and goals. Despite this diversity in form, the writings are unified by the fact that they all help to elucidate Fichte's enigmatic but influential first version of the Wissenschafislehre (published in 1794) and it is this feature of the selections that makes this volume an extremely important contribution to Fichte scholarship in the English-speaking world. This importance is underscored by the fact that several of the selections are not merely helpful in understanding the Wissenschaftslehre but are actually essential to grasping the central tenets and method of that work. The previous unavailability of most of these texts in English may help to explain why Fichte's best-known work has gone uncomprehended for so long. Although all of the selections contain something of philosophical interest, two of them stand out as most important. The first of these is Fichte's "Review of Aerresidemus." It is here, in responding to G. E. Schulze's criticisms of Kant (and Reinhold), that Fichte introduces the concept that was to become the centerpiece of his philosophy, that of the "self-positing" subject. The virtue of this article is that it reveals the nature of the philosophical problem to which Fichte is responding and elucidates, more clearly than the Wissenschaftslehre itself does, the nature of the mental act that Fichte intends to capture with his notion of'positing'. The first principle of Fichte's philosophy--"the I posits itself absolutely"--is asserted more than explained in the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, and for this reason it is bound to remain unintelligible to readers who are unaware of its origin in Fichte's early criticism of Schulze in the "Review of Aenesidemus." The second selection which is essential to understanding Fichte's project is "Con- BOOK REVIEWS 625 cerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre" (CCWL), a text which, surprisingly, has never before been translated into English in its entirety. Fichte's main subject here is the proper method of philosophy. Once again, the Wissenschaftslehreof 1794 itself has very litde to say on this topic, even though the arguments it makes often presuppose that the reader already have an understanding of the transcendental method it purports to employ. For this reason a familiarity with the CCWL is an indispensable propaedeutic to a reading of the Wissenschaftslehre.Furthermore, this text is the clearest of Fichte's technical writings---a clarity which is preserved in the present translation-and for this reason alone constitutes a good introduction to his system. Daniel Breazeale's translations are uniformly excellent, which is to say that they are not only technically accurate but readable as well. His ability to transform German texts into fluent and well-styled English is most apparent in his translation of the vehement prose of Fichte's polemical texts; but even the very technical articles translated here have been rendered into an idiom...