![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
In a brief section of The Characteristics of the Present Age, Fichte presents one of the strangest ideas to have arisen in transcendental thought: that wit is related to what Fichte calls the highest idea and to truth. The concept of wit does not arise anywhere else in Fichte's philosophy, and he does not analyze it completely in either The Characteristics of the Present Age or his philosophical texts. I contend that Fichte does not expand upon his idea because his understanding of wit arises out of the Kantian analysis of wit, even though Fichte gives his own spin to Kant's view. What I show in this paper is how Fichte both appropriates and alters Kant's understanding of wit, and how wit serves a social/political function in Fichte's thought.
Notes
Slippery Rock University, Philosophy Department, Slippery Rock, PA 16057‐1326, USA. Email: [email protected]
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age, in Significant Contributions to the History of Psychology, Vol. II, ed. Daniel N. Robinson (Washington, DC: University Press of America, Inc, 1977). Abbreviated throughout as CPA. Quotation here: CPA, 3/VII, 5. Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämtliche Werke, Band VII, herausgegeben von J. H. Fichte (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1965).
CPA, 4/VII, 6.
CPA, 5/VII, 7.
CPA, 9/VII, 11.
CPA, 9/VII, 11.
CPA, 9/VII, 11.
CPA, 9/VII, 12.
CPA, 9.VII, 12.
In Foundations of Natural Right According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte speaks about how the first humans were in need of a non‐human rational “spirit” to instruct them. Fichte says that a “spirit took them into its care, exactly as is portrayed in an old, venerable document … to which all philosophy must return in the end.” His reference is to the Bible. Foundations of Natural Right According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre, translated by Michael Baur (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 38.
CPA, 76/VII, 71.
CPA, 20/VII, 21.
CPA, 30/VII, 31.
CPA, 38/VII, 37.
CPA, 20/VII, 21.
CPA, 42/VII, 41.
CPA, 42/VII, 41.
CPA, 42/VII, 41.
CPA, 58/VII, 55.
CPA, 59/VII, 55.
CPA, 59/VII, 56.
CPA, 62/VII, 58.
CPA, 78/VII, 72.
CPA, 80/VII, 74.
CPA, 80/VII, 75.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929). Abbreviated throughout as CPR. Quotation here: CPR, A133, B172.
CPR, A133, B172.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, translated by Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987). Abbreviated throughout as CJ. Quotation here: CJ, 195/Ak. XX, 325. Kritik der Urteilskaft, Akademie Ausgabe, Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Königlich Preuische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908–13).
In section 54, Kant develops the ideas of health, laughter and wit, which are ideas that figure prominently in both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer explores wit and laughter as phenomena that are “exclusively peculiar to human nature” (59). Nietzsche understands that wit, laughter and light‐heartedness are essential requirements for health. For example, in Book One, Chapter One of The Gay Science, Nietzsche makes laughter one of the key components in the new sense of wisdom he is developing. See Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, translated by E. J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969); Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, Inc., 1974).
CJ, 201/Ak. XX, 331.
CJ, 201/Ak. XX, 330–1.
CJ, 202/Ak. XX, 331.
Kant distinguishes between the type of music that causes a “beautiful (schön) play of sensations (of hearing)” and the type of music that causes “the play of agreeable sensations” (CJ, 194/Ak. XX, 325). Only the former is a matter of fine art, while the latter is a mater of agreeable art.
CJ, 202/Ak. XX, 331.
CJ, 202/Ak. XX, 331.
CJ, 202/Ak. XX, 332.
CJ, 104/Ak. XX, 333.
CJ, 204/Ak. XX, 333.
Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, translated by Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). Abbreviated throughout as Anthro. Quotation here: Anthro, 89.
Anthro, 89.
Anthro, 89.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 89.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 90.
Anthro, 90–1.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91.
Anthro, 91. Given the references to Samuel Johnson and John Young I assume that one of the works Kant has in mind is A Criticism on the Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard: Being a Continuation of Dr. J—n's Criticism on the Poems of Gray. Johnson disliked Thomas Gray's poems, and Young seems to have satirized both Gray and Johnson. In this work, Gray expresses some anti‐Whig views, and hence some element of political satire is present.
CPA, 80.
Anthro, 91.
CPA, 80/VII, 75.
CPA, 81/VII, 75.
CPA, 81/VII, 75–6.
CPA, 81/VII, 76.
CPA, 82/VII, 76.
CPA, 82/VII, 77.
CPA, 92/VII, 77.
CPA, 83/VII, 77.
CPA, 83/VII, 77.
I cannot help but believe that Fichte takes some delight in their suffering by not taking off the bandages.
CPA, 10/VII, 12.
CPA, 160/VII, 144.
CPA, 165/VII, 148.
CPA, 199/VII, 178.
For Fichte, the Germanic tribes “were apparently of similar descent to the ancient Greeks, and must have held intercourse with them at an earlier period as a strict examination of the respective languages might incontestably prove” (CPA, 218/VII, 193).
CPA, 180/VII, 161. For Fichte, the endpoint to be reached is where the purpose of nature and the state coincide with each other and maintain themselves. This involves placing “the human race under such external conditions as may enable it to form itself, by it own free activity, into an express image of reason” (CPA, 181/VII, 162).