Issue 4 (14) 2011

1 LAW AS THE MAIN FACTOR OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: J. G. FICHTE’S INTERSUBJECTIVE PARADIGM OF LAW-UNDERSTANDING

LAW AS THE MAIN FACTOR OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: J. G. FICHTE’S INTERSUBJECTIVE PARADIGM OF LAW-UNDERSTANDING

А.V. Byvaltseva

Perm State National Research University
15, Bukirev st., Perm, 614990
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The main purpose for this article is to analyze the content and heuristic potential of the philosophy of law by German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). The author notes the necessity of re-interpretation Fichte’s conception. Re-interpretation promotes integration Fichte’s ideas into the object-methodological “body” of the inter-subjective paradigm of law-understanding. The inter-subjective paradigm of law-understanding assumes phenomenological-communicative methodology. After all, law is “born” from responsive discourse, as A. F. Zakomlistov noticed after B. Valdenfels. The traditional way of interpretation Fichte’s philosophy is “subjective-idealistic”, but more deep view opens to us the inter-subjective character of Fichte's conception. The main theses of inter-subjective view are: activity as the “heart” of “Self”; communication as the main model of rule-building; de-personalization as the key to recover broken and destroyed social-cultural interaction. One of Fichte’s brilliant ideas is his idea that the law is main, necessary condition of possibility of self-consciousness. Actually, Fichte was the first who discovered the law-social nature of self-consciousness, and reveal the way of it. This way is recognition. Only relations based on recognition promote foundation of “Self”-structure in the structure of personality. One more of Fichte’s brilliant ideas is his idea that the activity of unconscious produces the reality which seems to be external and “alien” for a person but the truth is that it is his inner activity and it produces the recognition relations. He called it “the productive power of imagination”. This idea can be used for description the process of law-genesis (and anthropogenesis in wider context) and for explanation the “taboo-phenomenon”. The “active subject” attributes to itself some limited sphere of the activity. The extremely important for Fichte is independence of this action, and idea that this restriction is not external (”nature” level), but an internal order – self-restriction, making borders to itself and for itself. Also Fichte determines the subject of law and “law action”, and insists on primacy of “law action”. The high-grade subject, according to Fichte, “is inconceivable without legally significant relations of a recognition”. Eventually, we can make a conclusion that Fichte defines law as a main condition of completion of existential incompleteness of the person, its consciousness and shaping (rising and socialization).

Keywords: J.G. Fichte; inter-subjective paradigm of law-understanding; activity as the “heart” of “Self”; recognition relations; de-personalization; self-consciousness; unconscious

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