Fichte, Kant and the Copernican turn

Abstract

The paper studies Fichte’s views of the cognitive problem, especially his account of the three fundamental principles. I argue three points: fi rst, Kant’s position includes two incompatible approaches to knowledge I will be calling representationalism and constructivism; second, in his early writings Fichte defends a version of the so-called Copernican Revolution or Copernican turn, more specifically a revised conception of “representation”; and, third, though Fichte’s version of the Copernican turn improves on Kant’s, it is not a satisfactory solution to the cognitive problem.