PEDRO HENRIQUE ALMEIDA CABRERA

In this research we intend to reconsider the problem of contradiction between freedom and necessity in history by placing it specifically in the history of philosophy. We will try to demonstrate then how this problem appears in J. G. Fichte’s philosophy of history, which is presented in his work Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters. There Fichte divides the science of history in two parts: one a priori and the other a posteriori. The first one results from a fundamental concept and doesn’t rely on any empirical data to be understood, in the other side the a posteriori part can’t be the work of a philosophical deduction, since it relies on contingent and non-conceptual aspects of reality, furthermore this part is heavily influenced by the freedom of individuals. We will then try to turn clear that these two moments can’t be easily brought to one another, so that the text contains a fundamental contradiction between necessary history and it’s free and contingent aspects. This research must therefore through Fichte’s arguments solve the contradiction or prove the impossibility of its solution.