From pure reason to human spirit. Fichte’s philosophical exploration of a new semantic field

Abstract

This paper argues that Fichte, in his early works, apprehends the task of philosophy not as much as a Critique of Reason, but rather as a self-‑knowledge of Spirit, thereby bringing the notion of Spirit to the center of the philosophical discussion. We explore what Fichte means by Spirit and sustain that this notion, even if it is not used in a consistent way throughout his work, covers a fundamental conceptual space of his philosophical project. The argument will be structured as an exploration of each dimension of this conceptual space, namely: (i) the Spirit as self-‑relation; (ii) the Spirit as productive imagination; and (iii) the Spirit as the result of learning process grounded on the human drives.