The Role of the Concept of Drive in Fichte’s Theory of Knowledge
According to Fichte, transcendental philosophy has the task of explaining the possibility of experience. To achieve this goal, Fichte carries out an investigation into the representations that necessarily structure our perceptions. For Fichte, at the basis of these representations there is a subject...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ref, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
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Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte
2026
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| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | According to Fichte, transcendental philosophy has the task of explaining the possibility of experience. To achieve this goal, Fichte carries out an investigation into the representations that necessarily structure our perceptions. For Fichte, at the basis of these representations there is a subjective, inner dynamic force that leads to the unconscious production of the objects of experience in accordance with a priori rules of thinking. He calls such a force a drive (Trieb). Despite the considerable amount of contemporary commentary devoted to the Wissenschaftslehre, little attention has been given to the epistemological role of Fichte’s theory of drives by the secondary literature in English. In this paper, I aim to fill this gap by shedding some light into the relevance of the notion of drive within Fichte’s theory of cognition. I argue that drive is key to explicate consciousness, representations, and the acquisition of knowledge. |
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