Monday, February 2, 2009

Philosophy Today's Fichte Issue

Below is the table of contents for the Fall 2008 issue of Philosophy Today. They published the proceedings of last spring's North American Fichte Society conference dedicated to Fichte's System of Ethics. The conference was held at DePaul University April 10-13, 2008. I attended the conference though chose not to publish my paper, Fichte on Freedom: How-Possible Questions and Transcendental Arguments, since it is, as I see it, still very much a work in progress. The conference was great, and all of these papers are worth reading.


Philosophy Today

Vol. 52, Iss. 3/4

1. Credits

2. Table of contents

3. APRIORITY FROM THE GRUNDLAGE TO THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Sebastian Rand

4. BETWEEN THE IDEAL AND THE EGO IDEAL: COLLECTIVE EVIL FROM FICHTE TO FREUD
Arnold L Farr

5. FEELING IS KNOWING: THE CENTRALITY OF DRIVES AND AFFECT IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Michael Steinberg

6. FICHTE AGAINST KANT IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Isabelle Thomas- Fogiel

7. FICHTE AND NOVALIS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND AESTHETICS
Howard Pollack-Milgate

8. FICHTE AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE MORAL LAW
Claude Piché

9. FICHTE ON THE HIGHEST GOOD: AGENT UNITY AND PRACTICAL DELIBERATION IN THE JENA SITTENLEHRE
Benjamin D Crowe

10. FICHTE, ETHICS, AND THE PLEASURES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
F Scott Scribner

11. FICHTE, ETHICS, AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Tom Rockmore

12.FINITE AND ABSOLUTE REASON IN (AND BEYOND) FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Steven Hoeltzel

13. HEGEL ON FICHTE'S CONCEPTION OF PRACTICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNES: A FUNDAMENTAL CRITICISM OF THE SITTENLEHRE IN THE DIFFERENZ-SCHRIFT
Liu Zhe

14. INTRODUCTION
Tom Rockmore

15. ON FICHTE'S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Marina F Bykova

16. ONE DRIVE AND TWO MODES OF ACTING: COGNITION AND VOLITION
Violetta L Waibel

17. THE BEAUTIFUL SOUL, THE SOCIOPATH, AND FICHTE'S ETHICS
George J Seidel

18. THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIENCE IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Bärbel Frischmann

19. THE CONCEPT OF DRIVE IN THE SITTTENLEHRE (1798): FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF FICHTE'S DOCTRINE OF OIKEIOSIS
Mário Jorge de Carvalho

20. THE EMPIRICAL I IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Jane Dryden

21.THE FIRST-PERSON STANDPOINT OF FICHTE'S ETHICS

Daniel Breazeale

22. THE FUNCTION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LONGING IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Adam Hankins

23.THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIAL IMPERATIVE IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Jacinto Rivera de Rosales

3 comments:

Duck said...

Wow, you must have been in Fichte heaven. All this stuff is over my head though. Can you recommend a good intro to the man? I think S. Gardner has a Fichte/Schelling volume in the Routledge series, but it hasn't come out in the US yet.

Gabriel Gottlieb said...

Gardner has a book coming out and once it's out, if it as good as his book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, then I expect it will become the standard introduction. There is currently not a very good introductory book on Fichte alone, and this will still be the case after Gardner's book hits the streets.

The best work to get a solid overview of Fichte, I think, is Fred Neuhouser's __Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity__. It is clear, insightful, and I think pretty accessible, though I would not recommend it to someone with little philosophical background, but I know that is no problem for you.

Good introductory overviews of Idealism that contain good sections on Fichte are Frederick Beiser's book __German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism__ and Pinkard's __German Philosophy 1760-1860. There is also the more recent and introductory book by Will Dudley called __Understanding German Idealism__.

As far as reading the man himself, perhaps the best place to start is with the collection of writings __Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre__ ed. Daniel Breazeale.

Duck said...

Thanks Gabe! AFAICT Gardner's book won't come out until 2010. Oh well, probably wouldn't get to it before then anyway. I read the Pinkard book, and I got up to the part about Fichte in the Beiser before I got distracted by some other shiny object or something. I have the Neuhouser book, but it looks a little advanced. I guess I'll just go back to the Beiser.