About this Book

This book offers a radically new interpretation of the entire philosophy of J. G. Fichte. It does so by showing the impact of nineteenth-century psychological techniques and technologies on the formation of J. G. Fichtes theory of the imaginationthe very centerpiece of his philosophical system. By situating Fichtes philosophy within the context of nineteenth-century German science and culture, the book establishes a new genealogy, one that shows the extent to which German Idealisms transcendental account of the social remains dependent upon the scientific origins of psychoanalysis in the material techniques of Mesmerism. The book makes it clear that the rational, transcendental account of spirit, imagination, and the social has its source in the psychological phenomena of affective rapport. Specifically, the imagination undergoes a double displacement, in which it is ultimately subject to external influence, the influence of a material technique, or, in short, a technology.