In some of his writings, Fichte describes the Wissenschaftslehre as addressed exclusively to philosophers of profession; at other times, he argues that philosophy is of concern for every rational being. In this article I examine these seemingly contradictory stances by contextualising them historically. I claim that throughout his Jena-writings, Fichte presents a consistent idea of the societal and ethical relevance of philosophy. This idea, I further contend, can best be explained as an input into the debate about the popularity of philosophy that had been ongoing since the early 18th century. By tracing this debate from Christian Thomasius to Fichte, I show that while Fichte was certainly critical of the eclectics and popular philosophers, he was also influenced by some of their metaphilosophical conceptions.

In the 1790s, many post-Kantian German philosophers attempted to lay a new foundation for the historiography of philosophy. Earlier works on the topic, they argued, made out mere aggregates of disconnected sources and allowed for no understanding of the overarching, rule-bound nature of reason’s historical development. This error was to be amended by applying the insights of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which the post-Kantians believed to offer a universally valid and unbiased method for approaching the philosophical thought of the past.

I argue that this historiographic strain in post-Kantian thought is often misunderstood. It is frequently described from a presentist viewpoint that makes it appear as merely a tendentious apology for critical philosophy. In this dissertation, I approach post-Kantian historiography of philosophy in a different way, namely, by situating it in the historically specific situation in which it arose. First, I attempt to make sense of post-Kantian theories and practices of the history of philosophy by relating them to earlier traditions. Second, I trace the development of post-Kantian historiography during its most vigorous period until the time it started tobe challenged by other, new historical methods and ideals around the middle of the 19th century.

A main result of my study is that the post-Kantians posited reason as such as the subject of the history of philosophy. This subject transcended both particular individual philosophers and particular schools of thought. To achieve this narrative of reason’s historical development, the post-Kantians established what I refer to as a “depth model”. The task of the historian was, in their view, to reach from the outer expression of historical philosophies to their rational essence, from their letter to their spirit. This ambition led to a number of new historiographical challenges. It forced the post-Kantians to reconsider the role of biographies in the history of philosophy, the geographical scope of this history, and the relation between history’s temporality and reason’s eternity. Throughout my examination, I account for all of these issues and how the post-Kantians attempted to resolve them. I claim that their approach in general can be described in terms of performative concept work, i.e., a use of concepts that was made possible by certain already-given frameworks of understanding, but that simultaneously transformed these frameworks and gave them a set of new meanings. Ultimately, I argue, the period led to a wholly new concept of “the history of philosophy” as such.

Under 1790-talet efterfrågade många postkantianska tyska filosofer en ny grund för filosofihistorieskrivningen. Tidigare verk på ämnet utgjorde enligt deras uppfattning aggregat av osammanhängande källor som inte möjliggjorde någon förståelse för den övergripande regelbundenheten i förnuftets historiska utveckling. Denna brist kunde, ansåg de, rättas till med utgångspunkt i Kants Kritik av det rena förnuftet, som enligt postkantianerna erbjöd en universellt giltig och opartisk metod för att närma sig det filosofiska tänkandets förflutna.

Jag hävdar att denna historiografiska tendens i det postkantianska tänkandet ofta misstolkats. Den beskrivs i regel ur ett presentistiskt perspektiv varigenom den framstår som en tendentiös apologi för den kritiska filosofin. I denna avhandling närmar jag mig den postkantianska filosofihistoriografin på ett annat sätt, nämligen genom att placera den i den historiskt specifika situation den uppstod. För det första eftersträvar jag att förstå postkantianernas filosofihistoriska teorier och praktiker genom att relatera dem till tidigare traditioner. För det andra spårar jag den postkantianska filosofihistoriografins utveckling genom dess mest intensiva period fram tills den började utmanas av andra, nya historiska metoder och ideal runt 1800-talets mitt.

Ett centralt resultat är att postkantianerna uppställde förnuftet självt som filosofihistoriens subjekt, och detta subjekt överskred såväl individuella filosofer som enskilda skolor. Med ambitionen att teckna denna förnuftets historiska utveckling etablerade postkantianerna vad jag kallar en djupmodell. Historikerns uppgift var enligt deras uppfattning att nå från de historiska filosofiernas yttre uttryck till deras förnuftiga väsen, från deras bokstav till deras ande. Denna ambition ledde till en rad nya historiografiska utmaningar. Den tvingade postkantianerna att ompröva biografiernas roll i filosofihistorien, filosofihistoriens geografiska omfång och relationen mellan förnuftets evighet och historiens tidsbundenhet. I min undersökning redogör jag för alla dessa frågor och hur postkantianerna sökte lösa dem. Jag hävdar att deras tillvägagångssätt i allmänhet kan beskrivas i termer av ett performativt begreppsarbete, det vill säga en användning av begrepp som möjliggjordes av vissa redan givna meningssammanhang, men som samtidigt omvandlade dessa sammanhang. Ytterst hävdar jag att perioden gav upphov till ett helt nytt begrepp om filosofihistorien som sådan.

During the 19th century, most Swedish philosophers considered the Orient, rather than ancient Greece, the birthplace of philosophical thought. This article examines the arguments in support of this viewpoint and reconstructs the meaning of the concept “oriental philosophy” used at the time. The aims of this article are therefore twofold. Firstly, it examines and maps out the way in which the history of philosophy was treated by 19th century Swedish philosophers. This question has not been studied in depth, and the article therefore contributes to a deeper understanding of Swedish academic philosophy during this period. Secondly, since the Swedish source material contains many examples of how historians of philosophy described oriental thought, the article also contributes to an understanding of modern European orientalism and oriental studies in general. The conclusion is that, as a concept, oriental philosophy played a key role in 19th-century debates on the origins of philosophical thought; ideas about oriental culture could be, and indeed were, used both to formulate Eurocentric narratives about the history of philosophy and to challenge such narratives. This article suggests that its conclusion could likely be extended to German historiography of philosophy, and that further studies on this issue are needed.