Generic Essence, Individuality and Intersubjectivity in Fichte's Jena Writings

This essay investigates the implications of Fichte’s theory of intersubjectivity for how Fichte conceives of our “generic essence” (“Wesen meiner Gattung”) and the relation between species (Gattung) and individuality within humankind. To this purpose, it focuses especially on Fichte’s Jena lectures on the scholar’s vocation and on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, by stressing the shift between the two writings. My claim is that in the lectures on the scholar’s vocation Fichte deals separately with the problematic of individuation and with the justification of intersubjectivity, by thus proposing an irenic view of society as purposeful cooperation between individuals united by their common struggle against nature. On the contrary, in the Foundations of Natural Right Fichte systematically links the issues of intersubjectivity and individuation, by developing a transcendental deduction of intersubjectivity as a necessary condition of the individual’s self-consciousness, which involves a new awareness of the contingency and vulnerability of the actuation of our generic essence.