Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Gesamtausgabe / Reihe IV: Kollegnachschriften. Band 6: Kollegnachschriften 1812–1814

The student transcripts of this volume considerably facilitate our understanding of Fichte’s difficult and terse preparatory texts. This not only holds for the revised lectures of the later works on the ›Rechtslehre‹ and ›Sittenlehre‹ of 1812, but also for ›The Facts of Consciousness‹ and the ›Wissenschaftslehre‹ (both from early 1813), the ›Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre‹ (Fall, 1813) and the 1814 ›Wissenschaftslehre‹. The lecture transcript entitled ›Darstellung des Christenthums‹ documents a portion of the lectures on the ›Staatslehre‹. Because of its various hypothetical approaches to the elements that constitute consciousness, ›The Facts of Consciousness‹ merely serves as an introduction to the ›Wissenschaftslehre‹. Whereas it is the task of the ›Wissenschaftslehre‹ itself to supply a complete deduction of the cognitive presuppositions of these elements within a systematic framework. War forced the suspension of these lectures, and in winter 1813/14 Fichte renewed his attempt. Of these there is extant a hitherto unpublished transcript of a comprehensive ›Introduction‹, followed by five lectures from the 1814 ›Wissenschaftslehre‹. The latter was cut short by Fichte’s death.