Abstract

This article emphasizes Fichte's role as a central figure in the period of transition from Kantian moral universalism to Hegelian ontological collectivism and _Sittlichkeitsethik. Echoing Rousseau's insights into the sociological determinants of human consciousness and drawing on Herder's more comprehensive theory of the linguistic and cultural conditions of all human thought, Fichte, in his writings from 1796 onward, develops a radical reformulation and extension of Kant's theory of reason and self-consciousness. Fichte's theory of the origins and nature of consciousness and knowledge, it is concluded, anticipates Hegel's replacement of the Kantian individual self by the collective _We as the fount of all rational understanding and moral judgement in the human subject