Johann Gottlieb Fichte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Gottlieb Fichte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "In his famous work Foundations of Natural Right (1796), Fichte stated that self-consciousness was a social phenomonon. Namely, he writes that self-consciousness depends upon resistance from objects in the external world. However, the mere perception of these external objects depends on self-consciousness. The solution to this paradox, Fichte thinks, is that a being gains consciousness when 'summoned' to be conscious by another rational being outside of oneself."