Phillips, Rory; (2017) What is Fichte's Thesis of the Primacy of the Practical and How does he Argue for this Thesis? Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Fichte is well known for adhering to some version of the thesis of the Primacy of the Practical. There remain questions over the exact nature of this Primacy, and to what extent Fichte is committed. Furthermore, Fichte’s arguments for this thesis, which appear across the full range of the Jena period writings, are opaque. This thesis attempts to resolve both issues. I start with an outline of Fichte’s positions in theoretical philosophy, and present a sympathetic defence of his version of what has been called the transcendental argument against determinism. By doing so, we can see the force of one sense of the primacy of the practical – a methodological sense. I continue to demarcate various senses of what Fichte might be taken to mean by the Primacy of the Practical, identifying the most important sense as a transcendental interpretation of the primacy of practical reason. In doing so, I reject interpretations of Fichte that have recently been advanced by Breazeale and Zöller. I then attempt to outline Fichte’s complex transcendental and dialectical strategies to support this thesis, with special attention to the texts of the 1794 Grundlage des Gesamten Wissenschaftslehre and the 1796-9 Wissenschaftslehre nova Methodo.

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