1Prof. em. Dr. Jrgen Stolzenberg (Halle)Martin Heidegger reads Fichte“At the present moment I am lecturing on Fichte, Hegel and Schelling for the first time and once more a new world opens up before me. It is the same old experience: other people cannot do your reading for you.”1 These are the words written by Heidegger to Karl Jaspers in a letter dated 25th June, 1929. How did Heidegger read Fichte? What kind of world opened up before him?Heidegger, while examining Fichte, always had Being and Time2 before his eyes. When he says that at this time he perceived a whole new world, this does not mean that a new realm of thought was opened up to him, a rival, as it were, to his own convictions. It rather means that Heidegger became aware of the original quality of Fichtes philosophy in relation to his own theory in Being and Time. Heideggers study of Fichte is seen to be an attempt to get the following two different things into a solid, rational relationship - congeniality and closeness on the one hand, distance and critique on the other. Here Heideggers presentation of Fichtes philosophy takes on a certain systematic urgency through the discovery of discrepancies which themselves allow Fichtes individual conception to reveal itself. In Heideggers view, however, the characteristics of this conception become limitations which must be surmounted and overcome in the direction of an analysis of existence (Dasein). Heideggers reading of Fichte appears thus in a double hermeneutic perspective: We have here an attempt on Heideggers part to give Fichtes view its own due precisely with the aim of emphasising and underlining the justness of his own claims.In Heideggers letter to Jaspers we cannot deny the tone of astonishment at all the things which became clear to him in the course of his work on the idealism lectures. Here, in relation to Fichte, we can point to the concept of the ego as “Tathandlung” (fact/act), Fichtes theory of thetic judgment and the grounding of the finite nature of the ego in the second and 1 Zur Zeit lese ich zum ersten Mal ber Fichte, Hegel, Schelling und es geht mir wieder eine Welt auf; die alte Erfahrung, dass die anderen nicht fr einen lesen knnen. (Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers: Briefwechsel 1920-1963, ed. Walter Biemel and Hans Saner, Frankfurt a. M., Mnchen, Zrich 1990, 123.) 2 Martin Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, Tbingen 1927 (161986), in the following Being and Time is referred to under SuZ, plus page-number.2third principles. In addition we have Fichtes theory of imagination where the problem of the relationship between existence (Dasein) and temporality3 in Being and Time is announced as it were in a “flicker of summer lightning”4. Strictly rejected, on the other hand, are the technical aspects of deduction and the system character of Fichtes Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge. Once the constraints of system have been laid aside and the content of Fichtes concept of ”Tathandlung”, the systematics of the principles and the theory of imagination have been grasped, Heidegger sees a perspective opening up which has its vanishing point in the conception of Being and Time. This is Heideggers reading of Fichte.What are we to make of this? Is Heideggers interpretation of Fichte convincing? To put the question more precisely: Is Heideggers interpretation of Fichte convincing independently of the assumed truth of the position adopted in Being and Time? Is there perhaps some “violation”5 here at work as Heidegger himself admitted with regard to his Kant interpretation? Are we faced here in the last instance with “misconceptions and omissions”, too?6I.Heidegger did not spare his audience. “The only possible way” he could see of gaining an adequate understanding of Fichtes topic and its problems was to “think through the Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge) in toto step by step”.7 And indeed Heidegger pursues Fichtes train of thought with an exactitude and perspicacity which impresses us and demands our respect. The first and decisive point is Heideggers interpretation of the first principle of Fichtes Doctrine of Science, the statement “I am”.8 This we can use as a model to present and evaluate the double hermeneutic perspective in which Heidegger read Fichte. First of all we have to bear the following points in mind. In 1 of the Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge9 Fichte introduces the statement “I am” in the 3 It is not possible here to give an analysis of Heideggers interpretation of Fichtes theory of imagination, the background to which is given in Heideggers interpretation of Kant (cf. GA 28, 163 et seqq.). 4 GA 28, 170.5 Cf. Heideggers explanation in the preface to the 2nd edition of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1950), here quoted according to the 5th enlarged edition, Frankfurt a. M. 1991, XVII.6 ibid.7 GA 28, 51.8 For the following cf. GA 28, 55 et seqq.3course of a reflection on the conditions under which an unq