ABSTRACT
Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts opens with a provocative and uncompromising series of declarations and claims: the Wissenschaftslehre is to be sharply distinguished from virtually all preceding philosophies, inasmuch as it is grounded in a clear insight into the reflexive structure of Ichheit itself, in which subject and object, ideality and reality, are originally and synthetically united in the sheer and spontaneous self-assertion of the I. In order to accomplish the requisite derivation of the complete series of reason’s self-constitutive acts, the transcendental philosopher must elevate himself from the standpoint and presuppositions of ordinary life and “attend to what remains.” He must perform an act of global “abstraction,” followed or accompanied by a series of self-conscious “reflections.” “The complete object of the concept of right,” according to Fichte, is “a community of free beings as such” – that is to say, the real community of sensible beings interacting in a material world.
