Abstract

This paper deals with the dispute between Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Carl Chr. Erhard Schmid around 1796 in the context of Fichte’s rejection of Schmid’s philosophical position and with a special focus on a ‘methodological’ primacy of the Wissenschaftslehre over Schmid’s philosophy. I argue that, in line with the,spirit‘ of Kant, Fichte bravely tried to examine the foundations of a fact of consciousness and to develop his Wissenschaftslehre as a transcendental philosophy, whereas Schmid, who focused on the ‘letter’ of Kant’s philosophy, forbade going beyond a fact of consciousness. In addition, in his work A Comparison between Prof. Schmid’s System and the Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte presented his new method of the future Wissenschaftslehe to the public. Hence, I argue that we should attribute the work to the ambit of Fichte’s later Jena Wissenschaftslehre (1796–1799) and we can even regard it as a ‘Pre-First’ Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo.