Abstract

The aim of this research is to return to the now famous second theorem that Fichte expounds in his Foundations of Natural Right of 1796, specifically to how exhortation is introduced as the foundation of intersubjectivity. According to certain positions, such as Honneth’s, the doctrine of exhortation would fail to justify intersubjective relations as a transcendental condition for the constitution of self-consciousness. Because of this, it seems difficult to situate Fichte as the progenitor of the intersubjectivist tradition. However, it will be argued that this argument can be salvaged if 1) one reevaluates Fichte’s transcendental method as distinct from that expounded by Kant, 2) one shows that in fact the second theorem resolves a contradiction put by Fichte in the first two paragraphs, and 3) if one completes the argument of the exhortation with the development made of corporeality in the second part of the treatise. With this, it will be possible to realize that the argument of the exhortation manages to be completed through the pre-reflective recognition of a human figure (Menschliche Gestalt) that Fichte puts as a transcendental condition of the recognition of a rational being.