The Structural Difficulty of the Foundational Self-Consciousness

Abstract: In two texts related to each other in 1795, Hölderlin made a serious critique of Fichte’s theory of self-consciousness in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794). Hölderlin criticized that Fichte’s concept of the absolute I cannot lay the final foundation for the reality of consciousness, and there are serious internal structural difficulties. Fichte tried to construct a theory of absolute subjectivity based on the self-activity (Ich-Tätigkeit), but his concept of absolute subjectivity failed to keep the ontological distance from the objective self-consciousness in terms of the philosophy of consciousness. Therefore, in order to avoid the inherent dilemma of Fichte’s transcendental philosophy, Hölderlin replaced the objective self-consciousness in terms of the philosophy of consciousness with the absolute being with ontological concerns, depicted the deep ontological structure of self-consciousness as the unity of essence without distance, re-established the ontological foundation of absolute subjectivity, and cast a new light on the transcendental ontology as another alternative of transcendental philosophy.