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Thing in Itself Kantian: Anstoß

1) For Fichte, the I can only posit itself as limited, discovering through an "impulse" or "resistance" (Anstoss) its own finitude. 2) The Anstoss provides the impetus for the I to become conscious of itself and the world through a series of activities that result in experience. 3) Unlike Kant, Fichte's Anstoss is not something foreign to the I but denotes the original encounter of the I with its own limitation, which it must discover in order to become conscious of its freedom.

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173 views1 page

Thing in Itself Kantian: Anstoß

1) For Fichte, the I can only posit itself as limited, discovering through an "impulse" or "resistance" (Anstoss) its own finitude. 2) The Anstoss provides the impetus for the I to become conscious of itself and the world through a series of activities that result in experience. 3) Unlike Kant, Fichte's Anstoss is not something foreign to the I but denotes the original encounter of the I with its own limitation, which it must discover in order to become conscious of its freedom.

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whynotbequiet23
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The I must posit itself in order to be an I at all; but it can posit itself only insofar as it posits itself as

limited. Moreover, it cannot even posit for itself its own limitations, in the sense of producing or
creating these limits. The finite I cannot be the ground of its own passivity. Instead, for Fichte, if the I
is to posit itself off at all, it must simply discover itself to be limited, a discovery that Fichte
characterizes as an "impulse,"[58] "repulse,"[59] or "resistance"[60] (Anstoss; Modern German: Anstoß) to
the free practical activity of the I. Such an original limitation of the I is, however, a limit for the I only
insofar as the I posits it out as a limit. The I does this, according to Fichte's analysis, by positing its
own limitation, first, as only a feeling, then as a sensation, then as an intuition of a thing, and finally
as a summons of another person.
The Anstoss thus provides the essential impetus that first posits in motion the entire complex train of
activities that finally result in our conscious experience both of ourselves and others as empirical
individuals and of the world around us. Although Anstoss plays a similar role as the thing in
itself does in Kantian philosophy, unlike Kant, Fichte's Anstoss is not something foreign to the I.
Instead, it denotes the original encounter of the I with its own finitude. Rather than claim that the not-
I (das Nicht-Ich) is the cause or ground of the Anstoss, Fichte argues that not-I is posited by the I
precisely in order to explain to itself the Anstoss, that is, in order to become conscious of Anstoss.
The Wissenschaftslehre demonstrates that such an Anstoss must occur if self-consciousness is to
come about but is unable to deduce or to explain the actual occurrence of such an Anstoss —
except as a condition for the possibility of consciousness. Accordingly, there are strict limits to what
can be expected from any a priori deduction of experience, and this limitation, for Fichte, equally
applies to Kant's transcendental philosophy.[citation needed] According to Fichte, transcendental philosophy
can explain that the world must have space, time, and causality, but it can never explain why objects
have the particular sensible properties they happen to have or why I am this determinate individual
rather than another. This is something that the I simply has to discover at the same time that it
discovers its own freedom, and indeed, as a condition for the latter. [citation needed]
Dieter Henrich (1966) proposed that Fichte was able to move beyond a "reflective theory of
consciousness". According to Fichte, the self must already have some prior acquaintance with itself,
independent of the act of reflection ("no object comes to consciousness except under the condition
that I am aware of myself, the conscious subject [jedes Object kommt zum Bewusstseyn lediglich
unter der Bedingung, dass ich auch meiner selbst, des bewusstseyenden Subjects mir bewusst
sey]").[61] This idea is what Henrich called Fichte's original insight.[18]

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