From Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics to Fichte’s Post-Critical Metaphilosophy

Abstract In this article, I compare Kant and Fichte’s metaphilosophical commitments by focusing on their conceptions of critique. Both philosophers, I argue, combined their provisional elaborations of first-order metaphysics with a second-order inquiry into the conditions under which such metaphysics can be turned into a science. Fichte departed from Kant, however, by obfuscating the normative strand of Kant’s conception of critique. I further argue that Fichte’s anodyne conception of critique went hand in hand with the elaboration of a new type of metaphilosophy in the Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Science , namely, the attempt to derive the principles of deficient philosophical systems from the ultimate principle of human cognition per se . Seen in this way, Fichte transformed the critique of metaphysics carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason into a post-critical type of metaphilosophy that can account for the possibility and necessity of transcendental idealism itself.