I am currently on an SNF grant that previously took me to the University of Toronto, before coming to Potsdam University. Previously, I was a Postdoc (“Akademische Rätin”) at Heidelberg University (a position I will resume in August 2026). I completed my doctorate at ETH Zurich, spending one year at Yale University as a Visiting Assistant in Research.
Dr. Jelscha Schmid
SNF Post-Doctoral Fellow
Period at the center: August 2025 – January 2026
Research Project: Fichte on Self-Constitution and other Minds
Email: Jelscha.schmid@uni-heidelberg.de
WebsiteResearch Project
Fichte on Self-Constitution and other Minds
I work on German Idealism (Maimon, Fichte, Schelling) and sometimes Kant, with a particular focus on philosophy of mind and metaphilosophy.
My current research project focuses on Fichte’s philosophy of mind as developed within his practical Jena philosophy, with particular attention to the questions of self-constitution, personal identity, and the problem of other minds in its various forms (i.e., epistemological, conceptual, and moral). I connect Fichte’s thought to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind and metaethics (esp. concerning the second-person), as well as to phenomenological approaches that emphasize intersubjectivity and embodiment (esp. Merleau-Ponty & Stein).
I also continue to investigate how Kant, Maimon, Fichte, and Schelling adapted methods from 18th-/19th-century natural sciences (e.g., experimentation, modeling, geometrical construction) to address metaphilosophical problems. As part of this project, I combine studies on the history of science with contemporary debates in the philosophy of science and metaphilosophy.
Selected publications
Articles
“From Kant to Maimon to Fichte: Imagination and Objective Validity”, in Fichte’s Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge: A Critical Guide, ed. Jeffery Kinlaw (New York: Cambridge University Press), (forthcoming).
“Fichte’s method of philosophical experimentation in the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre”, in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 106 (forthcoming).
The methods of metaphilosophy: Kant, Maimon, and Schelling on how to philosophize about philosophy. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2022).
“Fictions of systematicity: Maimon’s quest for a scientific method in philosophy”, in: Philosopher’s Imprint 21:36 (2021), 1-21.
“Schelling’s method of Darstellung: Presenting nature through experiment”, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 69 (2018), 12-22.