In this paper I investigate the developments of the notion of “transcendental apperception”
in Fichte’s writings of the period 1811-1813. I pay particular attention
at the second lessons on Transcendental Logic (1812), as well as at the lessons
on the WL 1812 and 1813 and at the Diarium 1813. I follow and closely
examine the philosophical work Fichte does regarding the concept of apperception,
which is at the core of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of
pure reason. Claiming that Kant’s notion of apperception was a mere factual
one, Fichte aims at providing the genetic foundation of apperception, in order
to avoid Kant’s shortcomings. I argue that Fichte submits therefore the concept
of apperception to a double revision and that this entails the re-organization of
his own transcendental-philosophical project. On the one hand, he carries out
an epistemological revision of Kant’s thinking on apperception, by means of establishing
the priority of the analytic unity over the synthetic unity and changing
the formulation notoriously used by Kant for the explanation of apperception.
On the other hand, Fichte’s work consists in grounding apperception ontologically.
The issue I will focus on regarding this ontological foundation is the
relation between apperception and life, which on my view proves to be key for
the last exposition of Fichte’s transcendental-philosophical thought, despite the
fact that Fichte could not complete and organize his reflection on this point, due
to his death occurred in 1814. In the course of the paper I insist on the systematic
link between Fichte’s epistemological and ontological re-elaboration of apperception
and the self-reflection of transcendental philosophy.
