Text addresses Fichte’s concept of self-consciousness in its critical appropriation by Schelling and Hegel. It is attempted to show that in Schelling’s and Hegel’s critique of Fichte’s selfpositing Ich we can trace the basic shift from the question of activity of reason to the question of its actuality. It argues against the still quite frequently accepted Nietzschean-HeideggerianDerridean ontotheological narrative ascribed to German idealism. Instead, it aims to suggest that Schelling and Hegel of the Differenzschrift provide an approach to see the movement of self-consciousness as being driven not by ever-increasing objectification of knowledge within the means and grounds of infinite subject, but rather, by reason’s incapacity to provide these grounds and limits. Two related aspects are discussed in relation to this: i) the insufficiency of the merely ideal and subjective principle of the absolute Ich to account for its actuality (Schelling’s emphasis) and ii) the apparent confusion of Grenze and Schranke (understood in a Kantian sense), in the act of the self-limiting (selbst beschränkend) Ich as the Nicht-Ich (Hegel’s emphasis).