Equine Driving: Plato, Kant and Fichte on the Teamwork of the Mind

The chapter places the recourse to the concept of drive in the accounts of practical subjectivity in Fichte into the historical and systematic context of Platonic and Kantian thinking about the psycho-politics of self-rule. Part 1 presents Plato’s comparison of the soul’s set-up and manner of operation to a team of horses of opposed character that are driven by a seriously challenged charioteer. Part 2 first addresses Kant’s account of the irrational and rational modes of practical subjectivity and then traces Reinhold’s and Fichte’s appropriation of the concept of drive for detailing the dynamic structure and functionality of the mind’s multiple and competing drives, including the “selfish” and “unselfish drive” in Reinhold and the “natural,” “pure” and “ethical drive” in Fichte.