Abstract This article reconsiders the reception of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy among the Young Hegelians during the Vormärz period, focusing on the problem of the relationship between theory and praxis. Against György Lukács’s influential interpretation, which presents the Young Hegelians’ turn to Fichte as a regressive relapse into subjective idealism, the paper argues that this “return” constituted a strategic and productive attempt to overcome the limits of Hegelian speculation. By reassessing Fichte’s transcendental philosophy as a praxeological model rather than a form of subjectivism, the article reconstructs an alternative trajectory within post-Hegelian thought. The analysis concentrates on two paradigmatic figures, August von Cieszkowski and Moses Hess, whose philosophies of praxis and action explicitly mobilize Fichtean concepts to redefine the status of philosophy as inherently oriented toward practical transformation. This trajectory is then extended to an interpretation of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach , read through the lens of Althusser’s and Balibar’s reflections on the latent Fichtean dimension of Marx’s early critique of contemplative materialism. The paper argues that Fichte’s legacy functioned as a critical and anti-dogmatic conceptual apparatus that enabled the Young Hegelians and the young Marx to destabilize speculative closure and to articulate philosophy’s vocation to transform reality. Ultimately, this Fichtean constellation proves decisive precisely by rendering itself obsolete in the transition toward a materialist philosophy of praxis.
Silvestre Gristina (Thu,) studied this question.