Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (German: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre) is a 1794/1795 book by the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Based on lectures he had delivered as a professor of philosophy at the University of Jena[1] Fichte created his own system of transcendental philosophy in this book.[2]
Science of Knowledge first established Fichte's independent philosophy.[3] The contents of the book, divided into eleven sections, were crucial in the way the thinker grounded philosophy as – for the first time – a part of epistemology.[4] In this book Fichte also claimed that an "experiencer" must be tacitly aware that he is experiencing in order to lead to "noticing".[5] This articulated his view that an individual's experience is essentially the experiencing of the act of experiencing so that his so-called "Absolutely Unconditioned Principle" of all experience is that "the I posits itself".[5]
In 1798 the German romantic Friedrich Schlegel identified the Wissenschaftslehre together with the French Revolution and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, as "the most important trend-setting events (Tendenzen) of the age."[6]
Michael Inwood believes that the work is close in spirit to the works of Edmund Husserl, including Ideas (1913) and Cartesian Meditations (1931).[7]
The Wissenschaftslehre has been described by Roger Scruton as being both "immensely difficult" and "rough-hewn and uncouth".[1]
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