| Foundations of the Science of Knowledge | |
| Title Orig: | Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre |
| Author: | Johann Gottlieb Fichte |
| Country: | Germany |
| Language: | German |
| Subject: | Epistemology |
| Release Date: | 1794/1795 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 324 (1982 Cambridge University Press edition) |
| Isbn: | 978-0521270502 |
| Notes: | gesamten in modern German. |
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 Fichte had delivered as a professor of philosophy at the University of Jena.[1] Fichte created his own system of transcendental philosophy in his book.[2]
Science of Knowledge has first established Fichte's independent philosophy.[3] The contents of the book, which were divided into eleven sections, were crucial in the way the thinker has grounded philosophy as - for the first time - a part of epistemology.[4] In the book, Fichte has 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".
In 1798, the German romantic Friedrich Schlegel identified the Wissenschaftslehre, together with the French Revolution and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, 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 the Ideas (1913) and the Cartesian Meditations (1931).[7]
The Wissenschaftslehre has been described by Roger Scruton as being both "immensely difficult" and "rough-hewn and uncouth".