The Fichtean idealism of freedom at the crossroads between morality, religion and politics in the Jena period (1793-1800)

• Grant number: 22/13909-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• End date: November 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Luís César Guimarães Oliva
• Grantee: Lucas Damián Scarfia
• Supervisor: Faustino Oncina Coves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universitat de València, Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/03084-0 - Freedom and servitude: coincidences and tensions in Spinoza's and Fichte's metaphysics, politics and moral., BP.PD

Abstract

From a chronological point of view, the project intends to cover one of the periods in which the bibliography generally divides Fichte's thought, namely the Jena years (1793-1800). From a thematic point of view, we intend to study the juxtaposition of Fichte's metaphysics with respect to its moral, religious, and political derivations. More specifically, it is to point out the problem that manifests itself within Fichtean idealism when he attempts to realize a philosophical deduction of the state and right as the proper sphere of human existence. With this in mind, with regard to the literature of work, we will take the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794-1795) as the main source in which Fichte exposes his doctrinal thought in a systematic way for the first time, and on which he claims to base his Grundlage des Naturrechts, also a work of a systematic character, in which he develops his ideas on right and political community. Parallel to these books, the writings that make up the so-called Atheismusstreit, in which Fichte was involved from the end of the year 1798, and which led to his departure from the University of Jena and his final settlement in Berlin, will also be analyzed. The moral, religious, and political aspects of his philosophy that appear here also form the so-called "Fichtean revolutionary writings", which are Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (1793) and Zurückforderung der Denkfreiheit von den Fürsten Europens, die sie bisher unterdrückten (1793). The joint investigation of all these texts provides a basis on which to consider the different positions that Fichte adopted already in Jena, with the intention of pointing out drawbacks and even contradictions between his theories, while at the same time seeking to denote an organic character of his ideas - both in their metaphysical sense and in their practical derivations - that would favor his image as a philosopher of freedom, revolutionary, and democratic. (AU)