Abstract

The paper points out the reasons for the substitution of the concept of reason’s striving for the concept of will in J.G. Fichte’s later writings, and particularly in his lectures on the Facts of Consciousness of 1813. In this way, it is possible to rethink R. Lauth’s interpretation, according to which Fichtian philosophizing would reconsider the primacy attributed by modernity to theoretical knowledge and would succeed in constructing a “nova method” philosophy, but would fail to overcome a ‘horizontal’ conception of reason with a view to the formation of a “prima methodo” philosophy. The latter would start, not from the striving-affection correlation, but from the self-clarification of reason according to the task it sets for itself. After an overview of the doctrine of striving in the context of a philosophical exposition nova methodo, (§2) we define how Fichte rethinks it in terms of a will capable of coherently ordering constellations of events and how such ordering underlies an understanding of the world as the horizon of coherent human action (§3).