Forgetfulness and Foundationalism: Schlegel’s Critique of Fichte’s Idealism

Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert

Traditional English language collections on Fichte typically lament the in- difference with which he is treated in the Anglophone philosophical com- munity. This indifference is contrasted to the ample attention this com- munity gives to other figures of the same period of German philosophy, such as Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. Typically we are reminded of Fichte’s importance via references to the philosophers who were influenced by his thought, including not only the very thinkers who often overshadow him, namely, Kant, Hegel, and Schelling, but also thinkers of later periods such as Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, and other heirs to the tradition of German Idealism. Fichte is thus an underdog – deserving far more recognition than he has hitherto received (though we must note the excellent work done on him in the last decades, signaling a turn in the tide).1 Yet, Fichte comes across as a star when compared to another German philosopher from roughly the same period. This dramatically neglected figure was, until quite recently, not even considered to be a philosopher at all, either in English or German speaking lands; largely because the movement to which this figure belonged was dismissed as a literary movement.2 The fig- ure is Friedrich Schlegel and the movement is early German Romanticism,

1 See for example: Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, eds, New Perspectives on Fichte (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996); Wayne Martin, Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte’s Jena Project (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997); Günter Zöller, Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 328 Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert of which he was the most prominent philosophical representative – in- deed, Schlegel arguably gave us the very first definition of the term ›ro- manticism‹.3 Early in his philosophical development Schlegel fell under the spell of Fichte. When Schlegel and his good friend, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) corresponded, they referred to their »fichtesizing« [fichtisieren] sessions, because Fichte’s philosophy was a favorite topic of discussion. Yet, as will often happen when philosophers get together to discuss the views of another philosopher, the results of these conversations were far from songs of praise: what emerged from Novalis and Schlegel’s conversations were strong critiques of certain aspects of Fichte’s thought, and so the ini- tial spell Fichte had cast upon the young Romantics was broken.4 An in- vestigation of the details of what broke the spell that Fichte had exerted upon Schlegel brings a central debate of the post-Kantian period into sharp relief: the debate concerning the grounds of knowledge. As we shall see, Schlegel displayed a high degree of characteristic Frechheit in his claims regarding the limitations of Fichte’s philosophy, but this should not overshadow the great respect he had for both the work and the person (so there is a sense in which Fichte continued to charm Schle- gel). Athenäum Fragment 216 nicely captures Schlegel’s admiration for Fichte: »The French Revolution, Fichte’s philosophy, and Goethe’s Meister are the greatest tendencies of the age,« he announces.5 Given that Schlegel

2 There has been a recent surge of interest in the philosophical dimensions of early German Romanticism. For a discussion of the recent literature see Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert, »The Revival of Frühromantik in the Anglophone World,« Philo- sophy Today (Spring 2005): 96–117. 3 In his recent review of a new book on Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Rosen refers to Schlegel as he »who gave us our first definition of Romanticism« (Times Literary Supplement, No. 5268 (March 19, 2004): 3). This claim echoes similar claims made by thinkers such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Behler. 4 For more on the relation between the early German Romantics and Fichte, see Manfred Frank, Unendliche Annäherung. Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühro- mantik (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1997) – in English as, The Philosophical Founda- tions of Early German Romanticism, trans./ed., Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), esp. Lectures 2, 9, and 10. 5The Athenäum Fragments, as well as the Critical Fragments, and Ideas have been translated by Peter Firchow in Friedrich Schlegel. Philosophical Fragments (Min- neapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), and I have used, with minor modifications, his translations of the fragments. Unless otherwise indicated, all oth-