Abstract

The aim of the „Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre“ is to analyse the theoretical faculty. The starting point of this analysis is the proposition that the I posits itself as determinated by the Non-I. My thesis, which can be proven in Fichte´s text, is that it is the notion of the picture which serves as a point of orientation in the analysis of the cognitive faculty, as Kant calls it. The cognition of an object comes about as a dialectical relationship between the picturing i, the picture and the pictured object, which Fichte calls the real thing. I would like to investigate how much Fichte follows the Kantian analysis of the cognitive faculty on the one hand and how much he differs from it on the other hand. This investigation will take into account a question which is very important for every epistemology taking its starting point in subjectivity, namely the question of how the i can recognize that the objects of its cognition are real things and not the products of his phantasy. Fichte explicitly raises this very question. At the end of this paper, I attempt to show what kind of answer Fichte gives to this questionee.