Chapter 6 - Fichte on the Content of Conscience

Summary

This chapter explores Fichte’s two arguments for ethical content in the "System of Ethics" and examines the difficulties they raise for the coherence of his overall position. The chapter argues that Fichte has good arguments for deriving ethical content on the basis of the original freedom of the I, but that these arguments put serious pressure on the appeal to formality in the basic argument for conscience as an absolute criterion. The argument for individuality and intersubjectivity in later in the "System of Ethics", in particular, raises questions about whether the methodological individualism of the formal derivation is compatible with the account of content.