Volume 83, Issue 1, January-March 2020
Fichte and Language
Ives Radrizzani, Fiche and language. A foreword
Isabelle Thomas Fogiel, Fichte : A philosophy of "saying" (Sagen) as "doing" (Tun)
The aim of this study is, after identifying the apparent weakness of Fichte's views on language (Part I), to restitute their coherence and importance. To begin, we consider the coherence of these views, which will guide us from a theory of designation (the word referring to an independent thing) to a theory of signification as effectuation (Part II). We then move on to explore their importance, since it will then be possible to understand how at the heart of the Fichtean system lies a theory of enunciation that utilizes a fundamental principle of agreement between saying (Sagen) and doing (Tun) (Part III). To establish this, Fichte gives a precise critique of the referential illusion and also a critique of the representation. By doing this, his philosophy becomes a philosophy of saying as doing.
Ives Radrizzani, The philosophy of language in the architecture of the Fichtean system
The aim of this contribution is to identify the place of language in the architecture of the Fichtean system. It appears (1) that the deduction of language belongs de juris to the foundation of transcendental philosophy; (2) that the integration of this deduction into the foundation of transcendental philosophy was achieved, as in the case of the doctrine of intersubjectivity, by taking into account considerations originally developed in a text not directly related to the Theory of Scientific Knowledge; (3) that, as a medium of solicitation, language plays a crucial role in the genesis of consciousness, of which it constitutes the supreme condition; and (4) that it is directly linked to the solution proposed by Fichte to remedy the "lack of completeness of the Kantian system."
Marco Ivaldo, The Transcendentality of language
What arouses in us the idea of language, that is to say, the idea of ​​designating our thoughts by means of arbitrary signs, is interaction with our fellows. Specifically, the "drive" toward language creation is based on the natural human drive to find rationality in the world. Without this linguistic interaction, "the human being cannot be." Language therefore has a transcendental reach, as it makes possible and accompanies the genesis of human consciousness.
Marc Maesschalck, Language and the protogenesis of norms in Fichte
This article offers a prospective analysis of the positions taken by Fichte in theory of language, as exposed in an early text on the linguistic faculty. The thesis establishes a link between Fichte's construction of this faculty and the origins of structuralist approaches inherited from Russian formalism, and in particular Jakobson and Vygotsky.
Max Marcuzzi, Vouloir dire and reference according to Fichte
In his early writings on the origin of language, Fichte affirms both the primary and constitutive nature of language, and the primacy of thought over it. At the same time, he makes language both the product of freedom and a fundamental structure of man. The Reden an die deutsche Nation present a solution to this circle by making language a fundamental element of being-in-the-world of man and of his social existence. By thus removing language from the contingency of individual decisions, Fichte presents language as being the natural and original form of knowledge and truth.
Luis Fellipe Garcia, Fichte and the powerful powerlessness of language
This paper demonstrates that Fichte develops an original conception of language in his Addresses to the German Nation, inasmuch as it entails the necessity of not only translating philosophical concepts into a more popular language, but also of formulating a language that is more flexible for philosophy itself. In order to explore this hypothesis, our argument will be organized in the following way: (i) an analysis of Fichte's conception of the relation between popularization and flexibilization of language, which will allow us (ii) to explore the systematic reasons for the linkage between philosophical and popular language, and (iii) to accurately understand the philosophical role of language that it entails.
Antonella Carbone, The reflection upon language in the Transcendental Logic 1812
The lectures concerning Transcendental Logic given in Berlin in 1812 are one of the places in which J. G. Fichte reflects on language, especially on the performative capacity of the word used in the philosophic discourse. Through the deconstruction of the logician's speech, already criticized in the Zurich lessons of 1794, it is possible to enucleate three main moments, namely irony, inventiveness and guile of language. Through them the Science of Knowledge reveals the indissoluble bond between word, concept and intellectual intuition, arguing in favour of the subsumption of the first to the concept properly understood. Only in this way the language, which had been deducted from his transcendental power, can reveal the presence of a synthetic thought, of which the word itself is image.
Augustin Dumont, Fichte and Language. "Transcendental Lyricism" versus Dissolution
This paper aims at considering the Fichtean use of language in view of the necessity of an exposition – in and by natural language – of the transcendental genesis of the conditions of the possibility of knowledge. In the first section, I shall explain, by way of some contextual reminders, the "codes" used by Fichte in his statements about language requirements. In the second section, I shall illustrate his position on language by commenting on some passages from significant texts. In the third section, I shall propose an interpretative assessment of the written mode of presentation in Fichtean transcendentalism. I shall argue that the aim of transcendental writing is to translate into language the required intensification of the present experience of intellectual intuition.
Sébastien Roman, Antiquity and civic humanism in the sixteenth century: A comparative study of Machiavelli and La Boétie
Machiavelli and La Boétie have often been compared and broadly pitted against each other, based on the idea that the former is on the prince's side, and the latter on the people's side. This paper offers a comparison of their thoughts, focusing its approach on how each of them read the Ancients and their respective positions on the humanist culture of their time, in order to better understand their differences and their similarities.
Julia Christ, Totality and symptom, or how to read society
The article deals with contemporary discussions around the concept of totality where it is used to handle social reality. By reconstructing Durkheim's and Althusser's positions it examines the different methods developed by these theories to justify their holistic approach to the social. It turns out that revolutionary Marxism and non-revolutionary sociology meet at one point: both read the texts of the social science in order to access that which produces society in the form of a whole. Our article establishes the status of these texts for both approaches and compares their methods of reading, in order to identify what, according to both, produces the social bond.
Descartes Annual XLIX