Both systematically and historically, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre represents a further development of Kant's critical philosophy, prepared and inspired by the latter's earlier reception through Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Salomon Maimon. Fichte's relation to his illustrious predecessor is a curious mixture of unconditional allegiance and metacritical distancing. By applying such hermeneutical devices as the distinction between the letter (Buchstabe) and the spirit (Geist) of an author's philosophical system and the separation of the system itself from its various presentations (Darstellungen), Fichte establishes a precarious balance between loyalty and patricide in his relationship to Kant. In so doing, Fichte is supported by Kant's own claim, originally raised with respect to Plato, that it is possible for an author to be better understood by someone else than by himself or herself.

The basic direction of Fichte's move with Kant beyond Kant points toward a completion of what is prepared, begun and partially executed in the latter's critical philosophy. Fichte's project aims both at a more radical foundation and at a more extensive elaboration of the investigation of reason initiated by Kant, thereby integrating Kant's work in the three Critiques into a comprehensive, systematically unified account of (finite) reason. Drawing on Kant's own architectonic distinction between the “propaedeutic” and the “system of pure reason,” Fichte claims to transform the “critique of pure reason” into the “system of pure reason,” which, Fichte maintains, Kant never provided.