Fichte: The Self-Positing 'I' (and a little Kant and Žižek)

After Immanuel Kant developed his system of Transcendental Idealism, Fichte attempted to uncover what Kant lacked: the absolute ground. Fichte considers the subject, or the self-positing "I", to be the absolute from which the entire science of knowledge may be deduced. In this video, we attempt to answer what exactly Fichte means by the "subject" and its "self-positing act", while also touching on Kant's "Transcendental Apperception" and Zizek's void of self-relating negativity.

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
0:41 The Table of Categories
1:42 Critiques of Kant
2:57 Transcendental Appercetion
6:01 The Self-Positing "I" (The Absolute)
10:36 Žižek’s Subject
11:45 PATREON

[O.G.Rose.Michelle.and.Daniel]

Beautiful, eloquent, and comprehensive: it’s wonderful that you did this video focusing in on Fichte. I particularly appreciated the quote you employed that clearly delineated why “A = A” isn’t the same as “I = I” for Fichte, as well as drawing attention to how for Fichte the “I is a whole” while for Žižek the “I is a hole.” Great work!

[MacSmithVideo]

What Kant said about the self was so profound that i can't believe it's not talked about more.

[Wesenschau]

Great stuff, lays the groundwork for some of the most important philosophy of our time!

[yungmeesie]

im not big on philosophy but this video makes me curious to read up more on what philosophers had to say. thank you for your time in making this!

[stephanieramirez]

Fichte- reminds me of Rudolf Steiner, who was Geothe's curator. Much of his musings are way out there - but his 'Philisophy of Freedom', his first werk, is fairly solid. His insight into the future and those accurate statements impress me the most....

[BrucknerMotet]

(First blush reaction -- note I haven't analyzed this at all (I'm currently distracted with another task) and this is simply an immediately reactive utterance that, IMHO, is interesting enough to merit discussion by others, should my fractured attention span lead to forgetting about this completely):
Isn't there an underlying tautology that grounds the unity of the self-positing I that makes the judgment about identity?
Doesn't the judgment "if A = A, then A=A" rely for any meaning at all on the possibility that A either is A or isn't A?

[VernCrisler]

Good discussion. Fichte's view of the Ego involves not only innate ideas in the Ego (the laws of logic) but all of reality in the Ego. He was basically a hyper-Nativist, or perhaps better a pan-Nativist vis-a-vis the Empiricists. Kant tried to combine Nativism and Empiricism but Fichte thought of the Empiricist component of Kant's philosophy -- the thing in itself -- as wrong. Zizek's view of the subject seems similar to Kant's, in that for Kant, none of the Nativist or innate components in knowledge (forms, categories, unities) had any content. They were "holes" waiting to be filled in with material content.

[glasselevator]

Me when the floating astronaut categories (groundless) knock over a book on my shelf and make me (Kantian) realize that I win the argument

[walterbenjamin]

Fichte’s I is the pivotal point of consciousness in the self?

[animefurry]

This reminds me of the work of Mister Eckhart, on the ground of god and soul and there unity.

[ijustdontknowguy]

I don't understand anything of this. Any tips on how to understand Kant? And philosophy in general

[infinidimensionalinfinitie]

I = i^i =infinidiimensional infinities, imo.

[Jersey-towncrier]

Wouldn't this ultimately posit Quantity as the only groundless category? Like as in the Monad? I say this because it seems that the concept of unity os being used here both in an existential sense as well as a mathematical sense.

[dieselphiend]

So much of this philosophy is essentially open ended in that it requires some kind of faith which I have a lot of trouble understanding. So, is God closer to 'I Am' or 'I am Not'? Perhaps God is the interface between the two. How does one subscribe to duality without subscribing to subjectivity, and subjecthood?

[zekie]

so is transcendental self something that everyone has? or is that 1 big thing that connects us all like a god

[Impaled_Onion-thatsmine]

The eternal walk; would walk alongside a beat up man who does the eternal walk of divination? You just keep going with this transcdental reduction system of positing ideals that reduce the present-at-hand...That's seriously old and influenced heideggers analysis of the process, analyzed through their alterity of the ontological of the ready-at-hand. This causes despair and anxiety in the form of psychotic desire.