Abstract

The aim of paper is to consider some similarities and differences between Fichte’s doctrine of idealism and Dummett’s conception of semantic antirealism. While Fichte built his idealistic view in the classical way as a metaphysical doctrine, Dummet sought to ground the fundamental distinction between realistic and antirealistic theories in alternative semantic conceptions of truth conditions. The main question of the paper is whether it is possible to interpret Fichte’s metaphysical doctrine as an anti-realist one according to the criteria proposed by Dummett. To order to answer such a question one has to consider a set of interrelated issues; among them is Fichte’s doctrine based upon an assumption of a reality determining the truth values of sentences; does it accept facts the cognition of which exceeds the epistemic abilities of the subject; does it allow for the existence of facts which are ontologically unrelated to subject. In Fichte’s view a subject consist of elements such as “the I”, “the Absolute I”, “the Non-I”, “the empirical I” which are related to each other in a complex way. Within the analytical philosophy the concept of the subject is much simpler and its meaning is usually confined to the meaning of the “empirical I” in Fichte’s terminology. Key words FICHTE, DUMMET, IDEALISM, ANTYREALISM