Performativity and Truth in Fichte

If the notion of performativity is technically a twentieth-century notion, Fichte’s entire philosophy can be read from this concept without the slightest anachronism. In 1794, in the Foundations of the entire WL, Fichte’s starting point is a “proposition” (Satz), not a fact of consciousness. As early as the Personal Meditations of 1793, he substitutes the term “proposition” for that of judgment, and precisely defines this notion of Satz as Handlungweise, i.e. way of acting. Similarly, at the beginning of both the Foundations of the entire WL and the WL Nova Methodo of 1798, the reader is asked to perform acts (e.g., an act of position and opposition) and then to reflect on these acts, determining both their conditions of possibility and their implications. Furthermore, Fichte’s idealism establishes a direct link between the highlighting of thought as act and the foundation of the notion of truth. He does so by deepening the notion of performative non-contradiction, the foundation of all the doctrines of science without exception. It is on this specific aspect of Fichte’s perfomativity that I focus my analysis.