ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that J. G. Fichte description of the power of the influence of the human form in intersubjectivity is a radicalization of Immanuel account of the empirical basis of the judgment of taste in the Critique of Judgment in which an empirical interest in the beautiful prepares the way for rational accord. It argues that for Fichte, the recognition of another rational being emerges as an experience of the beautiful. The chapter suggests that Fichte indeed understands the human form as an empirical sign of freedom, not merely by analogy to Immanuel Kant’s judgment of the beautiful, but explicitly in these terms. It also shows that Fichte believed Kant’s solution to the third antinomy to be inadequate. In the Vocation of the Scholar Fichte is at pains to distinguish an organism, as a unity organized by the principle of finality, from mere causal mechanism.
