ABSTRACT
Self-consciousness' is the basic principle of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's thought. The difficulties in broaching the main issue of Fichte's thought are great enough. The Fichte gave the theory of self-consciousness an entirely new status. A gap, perhaps even an abyss, opens up between the "Self" and what makes the Self intelligible. The reflection theory, which expects the phenomenon of the Self to furnish its own explanation, far from bringing this gap fully into view, ends up making it disappear. Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, despite many fruitful distinctions, succumbs to Fichte's critique of the reflection theory. Philosophy must work out a theory of self-consciousness in opposition to the language we quite naturally use in speaking about the Self, while nonetheless continuing to use language. The present essay on Fichte's original insight did not treat all his propositions concerning self-consciousness. Fichte's standpoint is that of knowledge of the Self.
