CARTESIAN LABYRINTHS: REMAINS OF AUTOMATISM IN THE FICHTEAN ANIMAL CONCEPTION

Abstract

This article presents the lines of a possible reading deconstructive that seeks to trace the residues of the mechanistic paradigm implicit in the approach to the material body that Fichte develops in extenso in its Foundation of natural law. Although Fichte exhibits the notion of leib as a tentative overcoming of Cartesian dualism, towards the end of paragraph 6 and in the context of an intersubjective anthropological turn, he wonders how to differentiate another human from an animal. To resolve such a dilemma, he elaborates a corollary where he fixes, in the distinction between körper and leib, the limit that separates them, and concludes that, while the lived body ( leib) translates what is properly human, the material body (körper) continues to describe animal corporalities. In this sense, the argument will try to provide a reflective framework that questions such borders, drawn by the modern tradition and promoted by its most canonical representatives.