John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – The limits of utilitarianism

Although Austin advocates utilitarianism in case of determining the commands of divinity, he is aware of its limits, which are ultimately the limits of the human mind. In other words, there are numerous possible cases to consider and no single person can ever determine the proper course of action for all of them, and indeed, most people have never enough time to determine even the most central duties.

Austin’s answer is that this problem is actually common to all sciences. For instance, no single person can find out all the truths of mathematics, but these have been revealed bit by bit by different mathematicians. Indeed, even nowadays no one knows everything in mathematics perfectly and even the mathematicians must rely on the authority of other mathematicians to be convinced of such mathematical truths they have not had the opportunity to study themselves.

Austin admits that the case of ethical studies is still somewhat different from other sciences, because there are not that many impartial persons researching ethics, but essays on ethics are often marred by personal interests or by adherence to unreasoned customs. Because of this, no reliable consensus has been reached and thus there is as yet no ethical authority to follow.

Yet, Austin sees this lack more as a temporary impediment than as a permanent obstacle for the development of ethics. Indeed, he is certain that there is an extensive consensus at least of the basic principles of ethics. Austin even suggests that anyone could by now learn these principles and thus develop a trust on the authority of professional ethicists applying these principles to practice: he gives a somewhat hopeful example that the poor will completely stop thieving, once they have understood that the institution of private property is good for the whole society. In any case, Austin insists, the more the utilitarian principles will spread among the populace, the more people there will be to do proper scientific ethics.

A faultless system of ethics can never be found, Austin says. Still, we as a society can at least improve our understanding of ethics and come more and more closer this system and full knowledge of God’s commands.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – Divine law

After determining the general definition of law or rule, Austin proceeds to distinguish human made law from divine law. As one might expect, he characterises the divine law as decreed by God. Duties toward divine law are then religious duties and violations of those duties are sins. Like all violations, sins lead to sanctions – religious sanctions – which God should inflict in this life or in the life beyond.

Austin divides divine law into revealed law and unrevealed law. Revealed law should be based on the express commands of God. Then again, unrevealed law, although given by God, should not be based on their express command. In fact, Austin says, unrevealed divine law is what is often called natural law and should be followed by all human beings, no matter whether they have heard divine commands. The problem is, how human beings become aware of the unrevealed divine law.

Austin thinks there are only two theories for the criterion of the unrevealed divine law. First of these theories, he says, states that all human beings have universal sentiments for approving certain actions and disapproving others. This moral feeling or conscience is, according to this theory, given to humans by God, for the purpose of discerning what God has commanded.

The other theory, Austin continues, is that the natural law must be discovered through reason, with the aid of the principle of general utility. Austin is here basing utilitarianism in the benevolence of God, who wants the happiness of all sentient creatures and has thus decreed that they should do things increasing general happiness and avoid things decreasing it.

Austin explains that the principle of general utility is meant to be applied to general tendencies: what would be the result for the general happiness of humankind, if an act of certain kind would be generally done or avoided? Thus, although an action would as such increase the happiness of humankind – say, when a poor person steals something from a rich person, who doesn’t even notice the theft – the action would still be forbidden, because universal permission of thievery would make the whole institution of property impossible. On the other hand, although punishment as an individual action is detrimental to human happiness, it is useful as a foundation of a general system of laws. Hence, Austin concludes, God’s commands are, for the most part, general rules that are to be followed with no exception.

Austin notes a common objection to utilitarianism: if we really had to make precise calculations whether an action contributed to the general happiness of humanity, we would never have time to act, since such deliberation would be too difficult. Austin answers, firstly, by noting that if we do not have any immediate moral sense, as suggested by the first theory, this deliberation is our only possibility to find out the divine commands. Secondly, he notes that the deliberation is meant only for testing general rules of action, which can then be applied without a moment’s notice. Furthermore, Austin adds, we do have sentiments for these rules – for instance, we hate thievery – which provide immediate motives for our actions.

Austin admits that in some cases the general rules do not show us the best course of action. For instance, it is usually beneficial to follow one’s government, since anarchy is so detrimental to human happiness. Yet, in some cases the government itself might be of so great detriment to the happiness of its subjects that a revolution is in order. In such a case, Austin concedes, a deliberation about this specific action must weigh more than a deliberation about the general rule. In these cases the deliberation would take time, as supposed by the objection against the utilitarianism, but Austin considers this good, since one should not lightly act against general rules.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832)

(1790–1859)

John Austin belonged to the utilitarian circle of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. His field of study was jurisprudence, evidenced especially in his main work, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined.

The purpose of Austin’s book is to define the topic of jurisprudence, which he preliminarily determines as positive law. In other words, he tries to demarcate this positive law from other topics resembling and often confused with it. This means, firstly, distinguishing positive law from the other division of law, which Austin names divine law. While the divine law is given by God to human beings, positive law is given by human beings to other human beings, and usually by so-called rulers to their subjects. Furthermore, Austin distinguishes positive law from moral rules, which are also given by human beings to other human beings, but are not laws in the proper sense of the word – Austin calls the set of such rules the positive morality. Finally, Austin points out that there is a fourth kind of so-called laws, which are laws only metaphorically, such as the laws of animals, by which are only meant regularities of animal behaviour.

Austin’s method is to, firstly, define what we generally mean by law. After that, he aims to find the basic characteristics of divine law, in contrast with the positive law. Finally, he will characterise the difference of law and morality and the mere metaphorical use of the word law.

Austin characterises law as a kind of a command. Then again, he defines command as an explicit or implicit expression of a wish or a desire with the suggestion that the refusal to not fulfill this wish will result in something evil. Such a suggestion of evil makes the receiver of the command obliged or bound by duty to obey the command: a rather severe understanding of duty, since a fellow pointing a rifle at me obligates me then to do something. Austin goes even so far as to suggest that nothing can be a duty, if it does not correspond to some command.

The evil inflicted for the disobeying of the command Austin calls a sanction, which includes what are usually called punishments, although not all sanctions are punishments in the proper sense of the word. Austin carefully points out that the sanction in question need not be a strong one: indeed, otherwise it would not make sense why anyone would want to violate a command. Furthermore, he notes that rewards do not create in this manner obligations or duties, although they might provide an incentive to do something.

Austin divides commands into laws or rules and what he calls occasional or particular commands. The point of the division is that in the case of laws or rules the command is directed generally to a class of cases. Thus, commanding a servant to do a particular errand today is not a law or rule, but to order them to do such an errand everyday is a rule. Similarly, when a parliament declares all thieves to be hanged, this is a law, but when a judge orders a specific thief to be hanged, this is not a law. Austin admits that this division does not completely agree with the general usage of the words, and indeed, that some particular commands of Parliament have been called laws.

Austin suggests that laws, and indeed, all commands are given by superiors and obligate inferiors. This superiority means, he explains, simply power – a superior person has the capacity to inflict some evil upon the inferior person. In the case of God, Austin thinks, this superiority is absolute, but in many other cases it is just relative: for instance, a monarch has a power to rule their subjects within certain limits, but if the monarch breaks these limits, the subjects also have the power to revolt against the monarch.

Austin’s definition of law explicitly distinguishes law from morality, since moral rules are not imposed by superiors, although morality does have something analogous to obligations toward law and sanctions for breaking it. Even more so, the definition distinguishes mere metaphorical laws from proper laws. More interestingly, Austin points out that it also separates laws from other things often called laws, which do form a part of jurisprudence. First type of these Austin calls declaratory laws, which are not so much commands, but explanations and interpretations of what duties commands impose. Second type is that of permissive laws, which revoke certain formerly imposed laws. The third and final type is that of imperfect laws, which lack a sanction.

Austin notes that some true laws might not seem to be commands, although on a further inspection they are. First case is that of laws creating rights. Austin states that every right of someone is correlated with a duty of someone else, thus, a law creating a right for someone imposes a duty to someone else. Second case is that of so-called customary laws, based on the habit of people obeying them. Austin notes that as long as no one really adds a sanction to these customs, they are not proper laws, but whenever a judge bases a decision on such a customary law, it becomes a proper law.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Interaction

According to Fichte, the stage of ontology he has reached contains the highest relational concepts, but also the truth and solution of all the earlier dialectical problems. In other words, he explains, all the previous main concepts receive here their final, completing expression. Conversely, Fichte adds, this result has already been anticipated earlier, since, for instance, the level of causality showed many instances of the result, which he identifies with the category of reciprocal interaction (Wechselwirkung). Indeed, he points out, we have for a long time seen that individuals are intimately connected with one another and that this interconnectedness of an infinity of individuals was based on an absolute unity compassing everything. Yet, Fichte notes, these two moments have not before this been related with necessity, so that we would have seen how infinity of related individuals required in itself the absolute unity, which would then contain the former infinity. This has been done, he thinks, for the first time at this point, leading us then explicitly to the concept of interaction.

Despite this, Fichte admits, the transition from infinity to unity was already anticipated, when we noted that finite causal relations had to be based on the concept of absolute, which was first regarded as a law governing all these causal interactions and then developed into positing of absolute purpose for a system of means and purposes. The result of this development, he repeats, is that individuals are thinkable only in an infinity that is ordered into a system of individuals reflecting this infinity. Such a system of individuals, each of which is both a purpose and means to others, Fichte suggests, should be called an organism.

Organism, Fichte begins, is in general a system or totality and thus resembles the stage of monads. The difference is, he explains, that organism is specifically a system of purposes and means. Now, Fichte continues, the concept of purpose contained the contradiction that it can be generated only through its means and that it still must act before its means. This contradiction drove us to the concept of organism, and indeed, Fichte notes, in organism the system of means simply brings about just its purpose. In other words, he explains, organic process is a purposeful activity determined uniquely in all its moments by a not yet existing purpose. On the basis of this organic activity, Fichte thinks,  lies an ideal and not actualised model that comprehends all the separate parts of the organism in a substantial unity. Thus, the concept of organism completes, in addition to the category of purpose, also the categories of substance and monad.

Earlier, Fichte recalls, the substantial unity was the real possibility or ideal totality of distinctions or individual actualisations, but it still remained indifferent, how this unity actualised itself in individuals, since any individual could as well be replaced by another individual from this totality of possible options. He notes that this was a conceptual step forward in comparison with abstract necessity, but this indifference of actualisation was still a gap to be filled. The solution, as Fichte sees it, was the concept of purposefulness: the individual actualisation is not posited by mechanical necessity, but it is also not indifferent to its unity or contingent, and instead, the individual is connected to the unity by being purposeful. Substantial unity or monad has thus become an organism, where individual moments are purposes and means to each other and realise in their interaction as their absolute purpose this ideal totality or the model of organic activity that corresponds to and is present everywhere in this system of independent, but related parts or organic body.

Fichte notes that in the organism the conflict between the fact that means exist before the purpose and the fact that means exist only for the purpose has not vanished, but confirmed. In other words, he explains, the individual parts of organism realising the organic unity are each of them relative totalities or organic unities that divide again into other similarly organised parts in infinity. Fichte refers to the proposition that the organic or living is not just divisible in infinity, but is actually divided into internal, qualitative infinity, but also immediately overcome through the organic process in the unity of purpose mediating everything. The goal of the organic process is then realised only through this process, but is also its beginning as an exemplary model.

The organism as the absolute or highest purpose generates then itself from its means, or as Fichte also puts it, the organism subdues the previously given conditions, appropriates them to itself and quenching their own determination imposes at them its own character, in order to renew and preserve itself from this transformation. This is, he notes, a description of reproduction and assimilation. Organic processes are, Fichte says, absolutely powerful toward all shapes of lower existence, that is, those characterised only by the previous categories, which might be purposes in themselves, but in relation to the organism are mere means in an organic process. Organism is thus revealed as the final cause in the hierarchy of purposes, realising itself in the lower causal or mechanical and chemical relations, which are then essential moments in the total organism.

The organism is at first, Fichte states, a living individual that imposes its uniqueness on its preconditions and thus confers external actuality or body to its organic Ur-model. All other individual determinations, he explains, are only elements serving the self-preservation of a living individual, Fichte continues, but just like individuals in the previous stages, the individual life is driven beyond itself to relation toward others, and in this case, to other living individuals. Regarding its body, he notes, the living individual is open to the subordinate causal relations and is interwoven in the external course of causes and effects. Similarly, the elements of its body form a complex of specific forces, Fichte adds, and without the organising unity, these forces enter immediately into other chemical combinations. Yet, he insists, neither the mechanism of the body nor the chemical relation of its elements correspond to the relation of living individuals toward one another. Instead, Fichte emphasises, this relation must incorporate the relation of means and purposes: the living individuals must mutually complement each other in order to generate from themselves another living individual as their common purpose, which describes the process of generation.

The result or purpose of the process of generation is itself a living individual, Fichte emphasises, but can still be not the true purpose beyond organic life. Thus, he explains, it must again become means in the same sense as the previous members were, renewing the process of generation in external infinity. Concept of life merely can then get no further than self-preservation of individuals and genus.

Just like at all previous stages, the relation of an individual to another individual points to a comprehensive infinity. Thus, Fichte concludes, the living individual and the genus of life would stop being living, if they were not members of an infinite series of organisms, in each of which the absolute purpose is realised in a completely unique manner, or of a total organism which encompasses everything and where each member is an essential condition for all other life and also means and purpose for everything. This means, he explains, that the individual does not live merely in itself, but is sustained by a common element of all-life. Fichte assures the reader that living individuals are not absorbed in the all-life, but the all-life ensures to the individuals their existence, since individuals are not just indifferent realisations to the all-life, but all-life realises itself in each individual in a unique manner appropriate only for this particular individual.

Fichte has thus found a new description for the essence of absolute: it is an activity of positing an absolute end goal to a harmonious system of an infinity of purposes and means forming a living organism comprehending everything. In effect, Fichte is presenting a new variation of the old teleological proof, suggesting the existence of a principle harmonising the whole universe or an ideal model of the world organism. Yet, he notes, there still remains the contradiction that this Urbild of the world is actualised only through the infinite organic course of the world, but should also exist eternally. This contradiction is just heightened repetition of the contradiction involved in all life, Fichte emphasises, but it drives us further to explain how such a model could exist before an actual organism.

What Fichte needs is a model that in a sense exists in the organism, but in another sense not and that is evenly present in all the parts of the organism, although no individual part can fully actualise it. He latches on to the notion of soul as sensing (Empfinden) of itself in the other and of the other in itself. The just described problem has now found its solution, Fichte thinks, since the non-actual model of organism can still pre-exist ideally in the sensation. He compares this concept of sensing with the usual notion of instinct as a state where we immediately go into ourselves and let ourselves be guided by something that does not yet exist. Following this analogy, Fichte emphasises that all relations to the other are present to the soul here only in a semiconscious manner, as a deeply purposeful certainty of feeling and acting, but not as an express representation, and similarly, it can not sense itself in full clarity.

The model of the organism has become an internal sensing of manifoldness in itself or soul, Fichte summarises, and thus is the beginning and the final goal of organic activity. It is the absolute purpose of all organisms to serve the soul, not in order to generate the soul, because the soul more likely generates itself. Since the soul posseses itself in the whole manifoldness of its perceptions, Fichte explains, it becomes self-sensation, but this self can become sensible to it only in its relation to others. In other word, he emphasises, sensation of self and sensation of world are inseparable, and this immediate relation of soul to other or sensibility is then the second fundamental determination of soul after self-sensation. Fichte compares sensibility of the soul with passivity of the monad and notes that similarly sensation of something else must be linked to a self-determined reaction or irritability as the third moment in the concept of soul. Thus, he points out, the soul is not just withdrawn to pure impenetrable internality from the external course of cause and effects, but has also the capacity to begin causal series from itself. These three moments of the soul, Fichte adds, are connected also with the reproductive and generative processes of the organic body.

The soul is still only a purpose in an organism, Fichte underlines, but does not yet itself posit purposes. In other words, he clarifies, the soul is purposeful, but not aware of its innermost purpose. The internal purposefulness of the organism of the world has thus strengthened into an internal reasonableness of activity, but only in an instinctual manner and not yet into a consciousness of freely chosen purpose. Hence, Fichte thinks, we are once again driven from individual sensing and acting souls into something that posits their absolute purpose as a world plan harmonising everything. This means thinking the absolute as a world soul. Fichte admits that this is a more satisfying notion of absolute than the world organism, since the former makes at least the notion of the Urbild of the world more comprehensible as an instinctual grasping of the world plan by the world soul, which then shapes the world in a dreamlike fashion or unconsciously.

According to Fichte, such a notion of absolute is unsatisfying and indefensible, because it stays undecided in the middle between the lower and higher categories. The idea of world soul, he says, just repeats the familiar contradiction that the absolute should posit the purpose of the world, because it orders all the individuals of the world toward a common goal, but does not posit this purpose, because it should still be unconscious of this order and this goal.

The concept of world soul transitions then into a higher notion, Fichte explains, where the absolute is abstract spirituality that infinitely thinks of purposes and means in things. Such an ideal cosmos of thoughts should then as absolute be, he notes, thinking that is at the same time actualising what is thought. This rather Hegelian absolute thought becomes therefore something else by necessarily separating the world from itself, but because it is still thinking, it should recognise and know just itself in the world, thus returning from separation and isolation back to itself.

It is no wonder that Fichte also finds this concept lacking, because it is abstract and, according to him, contradictory. From the Hegelian standpoint, the individual is just finite and a mere moment in the infinite process of thinking, while for Fichte the individual is always a specific Ur-position and thus internally infinite. Thus, while Hegelian abstract thinking as an infinite subjectivity is in a sense individual, because it orders itself into a system of concrete thoughts, it is not an individual unity grasping in itself the whole infinity of the world.

Absolute thinking still requires something that drives it over mere universality, Fichte concludes and identifies this required element with the act of generating itself from its own real possibility. In other words, he emphasises, willing is what makes mere thinking into Geist or spirit and what makes absolute into a unified personality, because thinking can be understood abstractly, while willing can only be thought as linked to a self-determining substantial unity.

Fichte instantly declares spirit as the highest category, mediating all earlier categories. Summarising the development thus far, he points out that the ontological study of actuality had revealed a tension between the unified Ur-determinations and their manifold and varying characteristics, which was mediated by the concept of self-actualisation, where unity posits a manifold of determinations that return to the unity as their basis. This fundamental concept of actuality was then connected to the second fundamental concept of an infinity of relations between individuals and finally to the third fundamental concept of all compassing absolute. This threefold set of relations, Fichte recounts, was developed through various causal relations to a relation of purposefulness and then through the notions of organism and soul to the final concept of spirit.

As the final concept, Fichte insists, spirit must solve the contradiction or problem of how an individual can be both based on itself and its own uniqueness, but also always in relation to something else. The solution is, he explains, that a spirit is a self-realising individuality knowing itself in this self-creative act, but this self-knowing can develop only through knowing something else. Spirit, Fichte states, has replaced the instinctual self-sensation of soul as consciousness that is certain of itself in all its distinctions.

What makes the spirit, like everything actual, into individual, Fichte explains, is the concept of self-actualisation. Spirit should thus be no abstract universality, he declares, or spirit is actual only as a person. In other words, Fichte insists, free self-determination is not just an individual property of personality, but its fundamental element, and in its power to choose or posit purposes freely, it is conscious of both itself and of something else, namely, the purpose. Hence, he notes, thinking and willing are inseparable, and the willing is the substantial or the fundamental essence of an individual spirit, while thinking is only a property of this essence.

Fichte emphasises that the self-actualising act of personality is possible only in relation to other personalities or that reciprocal interaction holds even between spirits. This is true, he notes, even of absolute personality, whereby God must differentiate itself from the created infinity and Fichtean philosophy must be separated from pantheism. Absolute personality, Fichte summarises, must be infinitely creative.

Just like a monad posited distinctions that it then merged into its unity, Fichte argues, the same should hold also of an individual spirit. Thus, spirit is the free power to be this or its opposite, and the two possibilities exist in the spirit ideally. In other words, Fichte underlines, spirit is free in two sense, that is, firstly, as a self-creative act it has positive freedom, and secondly, as not restricted by any of the individual possibilities it could choose from it has negative freedom. Spirit is hence able to withdraw itself from the causal course of things and posit a new causal series, subduing the causality to its own purposes.

Fichte points out that the capacity of subduing causality connects spirit to earlier categories. This means, firstly, that spirit as the final ontological category is the highest actuality and the proper goal of all preceding. Yet, Fichte adds, we will also discern a hierarchy within spirits, leading us finally beyond ontology.

Secondly, Fichte continues, spirit also assumes the former shapes of existence as moments of its own actuality. Similarly, he reminds the reader, individual organisms surpassed all mechanical and chemical causality, but also acted through such causal relations, and on a higher level, an individual soul had to have an organic body. In the same fashion, Fichte states, an individual spirit can be self-conscious only through an organic body and a sensing soul. More particularly, he points out, the moments of sensibility and irritability in the soul receive here new characteristics, sensibility becoming in spirit knowing and irritability respectively conscious self-decision, while the vague self-feeling that mediated both in the soul is replaced by self-consciousness of spirit.

Just like an individual organism could be thought only as a moment in a system of organisms and an individual soul only in a totality of souls, Fichte argues, a personal spirit presupposes also a community of personalities or a spiritual universe, in which the spirits create through their free interaction a world of freedom or history. He muses how each spirit acts completely in its own, but all these actions intertwine into a harmonious unity, realising an absolute purpose. Fichte considers this the final contradiction that the ontology has to solve: how can spirits act independently and still serve something else or the purpose of the world?

Fichte note that the conclusive solution of this contradiction has been prepared in the development of the ontology. Thus, he begins, the infinite organism of the world was comprehended in the unity of an eternal model or Urbild, containing timelessly or ideally the actual events of the world. This eternal model was then understood as contained in an instinctual sensation of the world soul, but this unconscious reason had to still be clarified into a transparency of knowledge. The final step, Fichte concludes, was to complement the notion of absolute thinking with that of willing, in order to avoid the pitfall of abstract pantheism.

The result of this development is, Fichte summarises, that the Urbild of the world is something eternally created by the absolute in the same act of creating the infinity of the world, as a sort of collected unity of this infinity. Expressing this differently, he suggests that the consciousness of everything cannot be thought of, except as a unified self-consciousness that is reflected in each part of the infinite world.

Consciousness of an infinite world is then preceded by an original self-consciousness, although conceptually, Fichte clarifies, not temporally. Conversely, as we have seen, he reminds us, self-consciousness is possible only in distinction from something else, which is then the infinite world. This original self-consciousness is then, Fichte declares, the person of God that views the unity of the world or its absolute purpose and actualises it through a free self-determining act. The person of God is then united with the created personalities and both establishes their freedom, preserving their individuality, and also mediates their freedom into unity, steering the conflict of spirits into a harmonious whole. Fichte admits that this mediation creates further problems, solution of which is then the task of speculative theology.

Looking back at the course of the whole philosophy, Fichte suggests that the theory of knowledge formed a sort of new version of the ontological proof, justifying the existence of an absolute mediating all separation between being and consciousness. This result opened up a new problem on how to characterise this absolute, especially in its relation to the given existence of finite. This problem required the dialectical thinking of the ontology, the first part of which could then be seen as a version of cosmological proof, showing that absolute must be a unified essence of the seemingly finite, while the second part was then a version of teleological proof, arguing that this essence must be a personal spirit assigning purpose to the world.

The ontology proper has now been finished, Fichte notes, and the only remaining task is to point out what in the concept of absolute spirit is left to do for the next part of philosophy or the speculative theology. The absolute is, he begins, the Ur-ground and therefore posits the quantities of space and time and also fills them with infinite Ur-determinations. On the other hand, as a person the absolute unites these distinctions in the spiritual unity of all-consciousness, which still does not cancel the independent existence of these determinations.

The absolute or God is then both an individual unity and infinite allness, gathering the infinity into its spiritual unity, but not cancelling it. Yet, Fichte adds, this infinity is God only through self-actualisation or it is a self-determining capacity infinitely actualising itself and also collecting this infinity into the unity of a power mediating everything. Furthermore, this self-actualisation is not just a result of abstract omnipotence, but of self-conscious will, and only through such all-will can God become all-consciousness. The three moments of God, or being, will and consciousness, Fichte states, form one absolute, where the will as the innermost middle point of God unites the objective being of God with the subjective consciousness of God.

God is thus distinguished from created personalities, Fichte suggests, by being only spirit and not requiring an organic body or a soul. Created spirits, on the other hand, as created, live only in a determined limitation by one another, which is the obscure fate that ties them to the conditions of finity and thus makes them connected to an individual body and a sensing soul. On the contrary, the subject of God transparently penetrates everything objective that it has itself willed, thus, God does not require mere instinctual sensing characteristic to soul. In addition, the analogue of the body in God, which Fichte identifies as the infinity of God in creation, is merely the transparent actualisation of God’s will.

Fichte notes also that God alone is in the proper sense of the word free, because the infinity of the world exists through God’s will, which is free of any conditions, while all creatures have only an imparted and therefore conditional existence. Yet, he adds at once, even the creatures are not bound by external necessity or compulsion, but develop freely through their innermost character that also ties them to God.

The act of God’s will that is filled with absolute consciousness and that posits and realises an infinite purpose is, Fichte concludes, creation, which is also the concept that ends the ontology. Creation solves all the ontological contradictions and extinguishes therefore negative dialectics, he adds, but it also generates a new task. The infinitely creative will posits a purpose and actualises itself according to it in a hierarchy of purposeful systems. Each level of this hierarchy, Fichte imagines, manifests in different measures the absolute purpose of God or the world plan. These different levels of creation need still to be developed, he insists, and this task belongs to speculative theology, which is supposed to analyse the concept of divine creation and thus turn into a speculative knowledge of God’s properties in revelation. In addition, according to Fichte, it will also be a study of ideas or principles of all actuality in God’s creative will. The method of speculative theology cannot anymore be negative or based on contradictions, since the concept of creative God is supposed to solve all contradictions. Instead, it is to apply what Fichte calls positive dialectics that deepens and develops the richness inherent in this concept.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Causality and dependence

Fichte now approaches causal categories that he points out as familiar to common thinking. Yet, he at once adds, the ontological meaning of these categories is far more removed from their common meaning than it was the case with otherwise similarly causal concepts of ground and consequence. Indeed, Fichte points out, the dialectical refutation of the notions of ground and consequence was in a sense proof of inherent flaws in the everyday causal concepts. Thus, he argues, when it was shown that everything actual is a realisation of its self-creative ground, this showed that causes and effects are not separated, as it is commonly thought. Instead, the effect should not be external to the cause, but only its actuality, and the acting cause thus brings about only itself or its own actuality, and both are just aspects of one substantial unity.

All acts of substance or monad toward another substance or monad, Fichte argues, are thus immediately only self-actualisation of this substance and only mediately affect the other substance: when the first substance varies its state, this variance evokes a varying relation to the other substance and also a variance of the state of this other substance. He connects this outward effect of the self-actualisation with the necessary quantitative, and more particularly, spatio-temporal form of substances – each substance or monad must be in the same system of relations with an infinity of others. Monads are thus self-creative, but also dependent from all others. Understood in the most immediate manner possible, Fichte states, this means that they act externally or mechanically on one another as causes and effects.

Monads as in itself locked substantial unities arrive through their self-assertion immediately to having causal relations to one another. The reciprocal influence between them, Fichte explains, is external, because their independent essences are not reshaped by these causal relations. Being a cause is then accidental to the substances, he adds, and in their acting they just assert the integrity of their original essence. Thus, in the first type of causality external independent entities act on one another, but the effect is immediately extinguished and the old state returns, because the causal relation remains contingent and accidental to acting entities.

Fichte notes at once that this notion of causality requires some correction. As we have seen, he reminds the reader, self-assertion is connected to a relation with an infinity of others, thus, self-asserting monads must also at least exclude or provide resistance to one another. Hence, Fichte concludes, their mere existence implies also immediately that they act and are acted upon. We have thus found a seeming contradiction: earlier cause and effect were described as something accidental or inessential to the things, but now they appear as inseparable to the notion of self-asserting existence.

Fichte notes that the balance to this contradiction is already achieved in the concept of abstract self-assertion that essentially implies causal relations toward others, which still touch only part of the existence of things, but remain contingent to their internal essence. Thus, he explains, things act and are acted upon, because they in general are, not because they are these specific entities, but because they are independent of one another and thus exclude others. Hence, Fichte concludes, all things universally affect one another.

The opposition of isolated cause and effect is null, Fichte states and adds that this just repeats the same development that refuted the idea of individual grounds and consequences. In other words, he explains, an individual effect would have its cause in something else, which would then have its cause in yet further things, presupposing a realised external infinity. Instead of such a series of infinite causes, Fichte suggests, each individual should receive an effect from an infinity of other entities and cause such an effect in all of them. The concept of individual causes and effects is then dissolved in this system of reciprocal acting and reacting, where these opposite directions are intertwined in every moment, while the internal infinity of this system produces unity and rest from these varying causal relations.

Concrete things act on other things through their mere formal existence. In other words, Fichte explains, a thing modifies the being of another thing through its own determination or transmits something to the other thing without destroying its independence and in general leaving it essentially what it is. The interacting things remain then external to one another, he states, but they balance themselves by modifying their nature, without still losing their essential characteristics.

Now, when a thing influences another, Fichte continues, this influence opposes the unique nature of the other. The other thing does not just passively accept this influence, he explains, but reacts against it and thus acts on the first thing. Fichte notes that we could picture this intertwining of reaction and interaction with a physical example of two objects putting pressure on one another. Since the two things have now affected one another and transmitted some determinations, the result should be a resting balance, where the action and the reaction are extinguished, or at most, a new action and a new reaction are reproduced cyclically. In any case, Fichte insists, causality at this stage produces nothing really new.

The relative difference of interacting things is extinguished through their balancing communication. Thus, Fichte notes, a uniformity appears, binding things into a larger unity, although the individual entities do remain essentially untouched by it and thus different from one another. The result of the interactions of things is then this universal link that comprehends everything, but also leaves space for things to be different from one another, he explains and adds that this result is both the end and the beginning of this causal process. In fact, Fichte suggests, it is not the things themselves that make it possible for them to act on one another, but this is done by a universal or fundamental cause or principle that acts through and realises itself in individual things.

Fichte’s conclusion is that at this stage of causality it is actually not the individual things that act, but an absolute or universal principle acts through the individuals and their actions and reactions. He calls this principle that is realised through the specification of things a resting cause that reveals itself in a system of uniform actions and reactions. The principle thus rules a manifold of things, only to present its universality at each of these individual things. Then again, Fichte notes, this universal joining of things does not just allow specification of things, but indeed, even presupposes and requires such. This raising of the status of specificness implies a transition in a higher causal relation, where precisely the distinction of things or their specific opposition enters into the relation of acting and reacting. Still, Fichte assures us, the just described interaction of universal causes does not completely vanish, since any two abstract existences act at least in this universal fashion to one another.

Fichte begins a new phase by stating that things do not interact just externally or their specified essence affects the causal processes. Thus, he explains with a reference to an earlier stage of ontology, things are related not like abstract distinctions nor only like opposites, but like specific differences: what one is, lacks precisely the other, and each finds in its other or in the cancellation of their difference its complement, so that only both together or the whole forms their true essence. Fichte describes this new position as things becoming forces. In other words, things specified in such a manner do not have, but are forces: determined manners of acting with a specific, self-asserting existence, which does not affect vaguely anything whatsoever, but only a sharply limited circle of other determinations. Fichte lists a number of phenomena involving such forces: attraction and repulsion of matter, chemical affinity and chemical combinations and dissolutions, sexual attraction, love and hatred and intertwining of various characters in a human society. According to him, the common feature of all these forms of interaction is that it is not anymore a case of external action and reaction, but internal, where both opposites produce a common third that cancels their independence and tension toward one another.

Force is the specific essence of a thing in a relation to its specific complement, Fichte sums up and adds that the force as such is nothing outside its effect, but also nothing outside the specific essence of things. In other words, he explains, just by the sheer existence of a suitably specified thing, the force is activated and starts to interact with it, while without this appropriate counterpart the essence of the thing remains the same, but it cannot become active or force. Fichte notes that when such a specification is not related to a counterpart, it has been called a latent force, which seems a contradictory concept, since force is both assumed to exist and still its actuality or effectiveness is denied. Yet, he admits, the notion of latent force at least implicitly designates the true character of force that it is nothing in itself: it is just an immanent determination of each specific essence that it in general has its counterpart and can interact with it.

There is no simple force, Fichte thinks, since a thing is not specified just in a single relation, but toward many other things. Thus, he insists, substance or monad must be a system or a closed totality of forces. The notion of force replaces then such earlier notions like characteristic, property, part and perception, all of which described the relations of a thing to other things. More precisely, Fichte explains, we can differentiate between the fundamental Ur-force of a thing and its manifestation in a manifold of activities that forms the system of forces.

Fichte suggests that the notion of causality is also intensified in the notion of force, in the sense that the relation of actions and reactions has become more intimate. In other words, the force does not just act and then react, but its actions are always also reactions and vice versa, because the relation of the interacting substances is not just external to them. The notion of distinguished causes and effects is thus destroyed, Fichte insists, and in the interaction of forces there is no separation of an active and a passive party, but instead, this interaction forms a completely new entity.

Moving on from the topic of how the notion of force is related to previous categories, Fichte begins anew by describing the start of the interaction of forces: a force finds its specific counterpart and offers itself as a counterpart to this other, and both are then at least relatively independent of one another. This relative independence or the distinction of the forces, he says, is the first moment in the process, but then this relative independence is cancelled by the very relation of the forces to one another: each requires the other, and only both together form their whole truth. The process of the forces is characterised by this drive to self-cancellation, while the whole produced is not just an abstract unity, but a completely new entity cancelling the independence of the forces.

Fichte goes through the process again from a different angle. The specific nature of an independent thing finding its counterpart makes it into a force acting on the specific other. This mutual interaction, Fichte suggests, is then striving to overcome their own isolatedness and a search for their truth in this intertwining with the other. This striving or internal attraction transitions in the process of actual intertwining, where the forces realise their balance and reach their truth. As a third point in the process, following this mutual neutralisation of forces, appears a new actual substance or product that both has extinguished the difference of the forces and still contains them balanced in itself.

According to Fichte, the product mediating the differences is again just a new individual specification and thus must have a further counterpart of its own. The process that was extinguished in one sense, is in another sense only rekindled. In other words, Fichte clarifies, each neutralising individual product generates only new differences that again balance themselves in a product and so forth in the external infinity. He declares this infinite and never terminating play of combining forces and dissolving combinations as the second moment of the category after the first moment of a single process of interacting forces. Then again, Fichte notes, the independence of individuals is nowhere the final truth and therefore this external infinity of interactions of forces is also not the true expression of this relation. Instead, he insists, all these individual processes must display a universal and absolutely fundamental law as their internal infinity.

Fichte sees still a contradiction: the forces should be relatively independent in the sense that they subsist beside one another and step from this isolation only when they find their counterpart, but on the other hand, they should also exist only in relation to others. In other words, he explains the second part of the contradiction, the forces are not just neutralised and combined into new products in their interaction, but weren’t even independent in the first place. Fichte thinks that this contradiction is solved by noting that the conflicting concepts are more determinately limited by each other, that is, although each specific force is independent, it is still at the same time prepared for its counterpart in the sense that it has precisely what the other lacks. Thus, the state of isolation of forces is unsatisfactory and in need of completion, and the counterparts prepared to one another are so mediated by something beyond them.

Relatively independent forces are from a different viewpoint not originally independent, but exist only through a higher principle realising itself in them. Fichte reminds us that a similar result was found at the previous stage of causality, where the infinitely isolated actions and reactions were also mediated by a common ground. The difference was that in the first stage the specific internal essence of things was untouched by the principle of causality, while here it is precisely the specific content of the thing or force that appears from the all mediating law that penetrates the very essence of forces. In other words, Fichte suggests, each force is what it is only through the law that posits it in a specific relation with its counterpart, and this law or principle precisely balances them, so that each is capable of providing what the other is in need of. Furthermore, he adds, this law is not just abstract universality that would make everything just the same as everything else, but results in a system or universe of specific forces complementing one another through this all prevailing fundamental principle.

What is established here, Fichte suggests, is the importance of the third moment of this category or the all mediating principle, in which the specific forces return, when they cancel their isolation. He notes that we could thus define the absolute as the specifying law that connects the prepared forces and activities into an intertwined world with eternally varying interactions still repeating only this one fundamental principle. Fichte immediately adds that this is not the highest notion of absolute and that we cannot stop with the concept of law that only abstractly unifies things in a pantheistic manner. Thus, this absolutely specifying law and the world order presenting the law are again mere moments or preconditions of a higher principle and a higher order. Similarly, Fichte explains, the interaction of forces is also not the highest and final form of causality, but serves only as a foundation, in which a higher causal relation realises itself. Indeed, he suggests, all causal relations of lower kinds are merely tools or means for realising a purpose or a final cause.

Fichte goes over this transition from a different viewpoint. Individual forces are one-sided and thus search for a complementing counterpart. Finding it and so their truth, they neutralise one another and produce a new individual, which again as an individual requires a new complement. This whole sphere of causality, Fichte insists, is afflicted with a contradiction that, on the one hand, forces seek something beyond them, but on the other hand, they fail to generate this beyond by themselves, being capable of producing only individuals. The internal truth or solution of this contradiction, he thinks, can be found only in a higher form of causality, while the interaction of forces serves as a mere middle step between the most abstract and the highest forms of causality.

In the new form of causality, Fichte states, the relation of the cause and the effect is turned around, that is, what is generated is now the cause for that from which it appears, while the generating element is dependent on and determined by what follows from it. Ground and consequence or cause and effect do not so much swap their roles, so that the cause would become effect and the consequence ground, he explains, but these concepts are given a new meaning. Thus, the cause is still a cause, but in another sense a mere consequence, while the consequence becomes a true cause or ground for that, from which it appears, just because it can only appear from such a cause. The product of neutralised forces is the most original, because of which the forces are presupposed, or it is the cause for these, but this cause of forces is conversely only to be brought about by them or is their consequence, in other words, the forces have the product as their goal or end (telos), to which they are prepared and in which they are destroyed. Thus, the earlier opposition of cause and effect transitions, Fichte notes, in a new relation between purpose and means. Purpose, he explains, is the cause assumed as consequence or it is active without being already actual and causes its own cause. Similarly, Fichte adds, means is the consequence as a cause that generates its own proper cause.

Fichte continues from this general characterisation of the new conceptual field to the relation it has to earlier forms of causality. At first, he begins, it seems that the product of the interaction of forces is simply nothing final, but only for the sake of something else, of which we do not yet know what it might be. What we do know, Fichte suggests, is only that it is simply beyond the earlier circle of concepts, which is then the means for the beyond as purpose. The earlier causality of infinitely each other balancing and differentiating opposites is then complete in itself, but at the same it acts toward a distant and never completely reachable goal. This means, Fichte insists, that this earlier series of causes and effects has been turned around and the cause is now what follows and what is caused is the preceding. In other words, the cause as purpose acts already in the means throughout, but without being itself already expressly there, since it can become actual only through the means, the cause of which it is. What isn’t yet, Fichte summarises, acts back to what is and thereby becomes, which he admits to be a contradiction.

Because the concept of final cause or purpose is the truthful expression of the category of causality, Fichte states, purposes must have appeared already in the earlier, mechanical and chemical forms of causality. In other words, he clarifies, the world of mechanical and chemical processes should realise a system of purposes, and while an effect might seem just external, it still realises a purpose. Thus, Fichte concludes, final causes are not a form of causal relation in opposition with the other forms, but they are more likely present in all causality as the absolute goal of all causal processes. Of course, he admits, this absolute goal or purpose has earlier remained unknown, but now the dialectical process of the causal concepts has shown that the notion of goal is demanded by their very nature. Fichte refers back to Kant as the originator of the idea that purposes are not merely humanly subjective, but that to all things is implanted a purpose as a shaping principle, not in the sense of human or even divine intervention into the mechanical course of the world, but as an absolute purposefulness penetrating everything actual. Fichte considers himself as giving a proper ontological account of this idea, but he has to at first try to solve the previously mentioned contradiction in it, and this solution cannot be, he says, a subjective notion of a universal law nor a vague instinct guiding all things.

Before going to this contradiction, Fichte starts to investigate individual moments of the concept of purpose. At first, he says, purpose and means appear as externally related opposites: the purpose is a concrete, in itself completed thing, opposed to its means, but beyond this relation these two things are not dependent on each other. Thus, one thing is one-sidedly considered as means and another thing as its purpose, and both are in this manner externally related to one another. This relation could be interpreted as a mere judgement of an external observer or as a concrete instance of a person taking one thing and using it as means. Both of these interpretations, Fichte insists, belong not to ontology, but more to the field of practical philosophy, where human spirit mimics the creator by imprinting their varying purposes on the things. This mimicry is, he states, finite and contingent, and indeed, refutes itself immediately, since each of these judgements could be replaced by a different assignment of purposes.

According to Fichte, the first, provisional opposition of purpose and means is insufficient because the externality of the relation of purpose and means displaces us back to the causality of forces or even to the mechanistic causality of externally independent substances, while the proper concept of final cause has been lost. He suggests moving on to the original contradiction of purpose acting without yet being. This contradiction breaks into an opposition of two conflicting propositions, Fichte says, namely, on the one hand, that the purpose must be already contained in its means as acting through it, but on the other hand, that the purpose cannot be contained in its means, because it in general is not yet, but should only become through this. Both propositions are equally valid, he insists, and neither can be rejected.

The contradiction cancels firstly the separation or contingent externality of purpose and means toward one another, Fichte says, or the true purpose cannot be sought outside the means and the true means cannot be found outside a purpose. Instead, he emphasises, both are in one another, that is, the purpose has simply its means, in and through which it realises itself, while the means fulfils and satisfies immediately its purpose. Thus, the purpose realises itself constantly, because it is immediately present in its means, and so the externally mechanical process of causality is, Fichte emphasises, what Kant and Hegel have called internal purposefulness. Thus, it is essential that a purpose does not remain outside its means and also not outside the mechanical causalities, as if it would lie above them, in a distant world, or would be added to them as a completing supplement. Fichte notes that the standpoint of mechanical causality is, on the one hand, reproduced, since the purpose realises itself immediately through the subordinate causal relations in every point, but on the other hand, these causal relations have been lowered only to the status of means.

Fichte thinks only the first of the contradictory propositions has been engaged with, while the other side has been disregarded. In other words, no matter that the purpose is also a self-completing means, still, according to the second proposition, it must behave either as purpose or as means to something else. Thus, Fichte suggests, just like in all the previous stages, the isolation of the individuals has to be cancelled and their infinite relation has to be reproduced. This means, he says, that each individual has its purpose in itself and at the same time in something else, and conversely, that each individual is means to all others. Thus, the earlier seemingly isolated things have now been integrated into a system of an infinity of to each other related purposes and means. Fichte connects this idea with the earlier concept of a monad, which should be precisely such an identity of purpose and means, because it is a unity resulting from and renewing itself from distinctions, but each of these distinctions is also a self-purpose.

The problem is, in Fichte’s opinion, that if everything is both a purpose and a means, nothing in fact remains anymore true means or true purpose. Indeed, he suggests, we have just returned to the notion of causality between all things. This consideration, Fichte thinks, renews the conflict of the two propositions. Firstly, the final cause must suppose an absolute purpose that can in no sense become means. Yet, secondly, this absolute purpose is to be thought only in a system of infinite relations of means and purposes, which the absolute purpose uses as its means. The conflict is, Fichte explains, that the absolute purpose must be completely separate from the system of means and purposes used as its means, but the absolute purpose must also be embodied in this system.

Fichte suggests solving this conflict in such a manner that, on the one hand, the purpose is present in the totality of its means by them being also self-purposes, but that none of these are pure purposes, still striving to a truly absolute purpose. In other words, the purposes would form a hierarchy, so that what would in one sense be a self-purpose, would in another sense be just means for a higher purpose, all the way to the highest purpose that is not means to anything. Thus, each relative purpose fulfils the idea of purposes being also means, but this series of purposes does not reach into infinity, since there is an absolute final purpose that still is eternally embodied in the system of subordinate purposes.

The final turn highlights the other side of contradiction in the most heightened sense possible, Fichte suggests, since the higher final cause is actual in lower final cause, but also not actual, because it first requires this as its means of realisation. He begins solving this contradiction by pointing out that actuality is here understood in two senses. Firstly, it means the anticipation of non-actual purpose in its means, and secondly, the reality of the purpose generated through the means. The second concept is clear by itself, Fichte deems, but the first concept is the proper seat of contradiction. The anticipation of the still not actual purpose, he thinks, can only mean its pre-existence or ideal presence in its means, so that the means is prepared for the sake of purpose in such a manner that only the purpose can appear from the means. In order that means can be prepared in such a manner, Fichte argues, there must be something preparing it and this something cannot be the non-actual purpose, but can only be the creative absolute that orders means and purposes. We have thus arrived, he points out, to the third and final moment in the category of final cause, namely, by moving from isolated purposes and means to a system of an infinity of means and purposes and finally to the creative absolute unity. The notion of absolute, Fichte concludes, has thus gained an important new feature as the ultimate positing of purposes that lead the whole created world through subordinate causal relations to a goal beyond them.

The true concept of purpose cannot be thought without assuming the existence of the absolute positing all purposes, Fichte summarises, or the world of purposes is only possible, insofar as it is penetrated by an absolute consciousness. In other words, as certainly as there are purposes or goals that have not yet been actualised, as certainly there should be an actual absolute that orders everything to anticipate these purposes. Fichte explains that we have not yet fully proven an existence of such a purposeful absolute, but it has not yet been made properly comprehensible in an ontological manner.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Substance and accident

Fichte is getting nearer and nearer to the end of the ontology proper that studies precisely categories. Hence, he deems it necessary to collect the results of the previous developments, in order to express in a more summarised fashion the end result that has been gradually prepared in the system of categories. Fichte reminds us that his investigations began by the something becoming through quantitative and qualitative determinations finite. This finite something was then dissolved in the infinity. The result of the first part, Fichte summarises, was the perfect cancellation of opposition between finite and infinite or absolute and conditional. This unity of still different is, for Fichte, the original relation that is repeated in all forms of thinking and being and that the categories have to develop and present more and more exhaustively. The dialectical progress of these categories, Fichte states, is then overall same in kind: all categories and relational concepts appear first in their immediacy, that is, in their finite shape, where they keep themselves against the opposite, but then they refute themselves, in order to present themselves in synthesis or in infinite. Only the synthesis or the infinite, Fichte insists, truly is, while the finite is only as combined or comprehended in the infinite synthesis.

From the concept of infinite, Fichte continues, appeared the notion of essence that posits in itself infinite number of to each other related Ur-determinations. The relations of these Ur-determinations to the essence, he explains, are expressed in the relational concepts of the second part. Thus, the absolute essence was at first the infinite realising and specifying itself in these concepts and relations, whereby the essence was distinguished into the infinite content and in the eternal and universal form, while at the same time the unity and inseparability of both was shown overall. Their distinction, Fichte suggests, made the ontology as the science of pure form possible, while their inseparability showed that the ontology requires complementing through more concrete philosophical knowledge, involving determination in space and time. The form and the content converged again as the third main category in the sphere of ground collected in itself all the previous concepts: the essence was the capacity of infinitely specified self-actualisation that made its actuality into a continually renewing self-act. Thus, Fichte entered the sphere of actuality, where from the dialectics of contingent, possible and necessary appeared the absolute necessity of self-determination, but also the real possibility overcoming each of its necessary-actual self-shapings. According to him, this revealed the main result of the whole ontological investigation that must be expressed more sharply at the threshold of the third epoch of essence: everything actual is what it is only through self-actualisation or through its own real capacity. This implies, Fichte states, that all chance and external coercion is excluded, when uniqueness overcomes necessity. Instead, everything contains an infinity of possible actualisations that cannot be exhausted through any individual shapes.

Fichte is now entering a new field of categories, in which both of the earlier fundamental determinations of essence or absolute capacity of an infinite content and its actuality are complemented by an essential concept that is for the first time in a position to completely solve and bring to perfect unity the earlier opposition of both first concepts. When the concept of actuality appeared from the dialectic of capacity, he reminds the reader, it seemed to completely substitute the capacity, so that all actuality was merely the actualised presence of essence and the absolute capacity of essence appeared completely absorbed and perfected in its rigid actuality. Then, he notes, in the dialectics of actuality was found the correcting addition that in actual remains the real possibility as capacity to opposites, thus, that this capacity is never exhausted in any individual self-actualisation. This concept of the unity of actuality and superactuality or infinite ideality, Fichte states, is the new relation that attempts to join both the earlier opposites into a unity, but still itself requires development and justification.

Fichte describes this new beginning as the fundamental concept of substantiality. Substantiality remains an infinite real capacity, since it is exhausted in none of its self-actualisations: it is always varying and new effects arise relentlessly from its infinity, while it remains the essence comprehending evenly both possibility and actuality. The essence according to this new fundamental determination, Fichte states, is the synthesis of possible and actual and thus both the persisting substrate of its infinity and its unceasingly creative act.

Substantiality means, Fichte concludes, precisely this that the essence remains in itself with its infinite self-determinations and distinctions that thus are lowered into the status of mere accidents. These accidents inhere at the substantial essence or the substance, but none of them forms it, since each of them is only in the unity of substance that is not abstract, but infinitely itself actualising and still remains the substrate of its accidences.

Substance is the unifiedness in the totality of self-given distinctions: the truth of this most general definition, Fichte states, can appear perfectly only at the end of this stage of investigation, but now it sheds light on the main moment of the whole epoch from a new perspective by letting us perfectly recognise a concept, which has been prepared through all parts of ontology, ever since it appeared at the end of the first part that each finite individual by itself or unrelated to a positing-comprehending unity is a contradictory concept. In all earlier categories this form of isolation or immediacy appeared as contradictory and dissolved in the comprehending unity, which has been described as infinity, essence, ground etc.

We seem to have merely reproduced an older concept, Fichte admits, but adds immediately that the thoroughly prevailing fundamental unity receives here still a higher sense. In other words, he explains, this unity is not merely externally comprehensive unity, in which the distinctions are just externally beside one another, like subconcepts are in the general concept, where this logically abstract unity is to be found in each of subconcepts only as externally unifying common sign. At least earlier, Fichte suggests, the unity of essence could also be grasped in this external manner, because its concept was not yet perfectly developed. Now it is expressly raised to a substantial unity, since it is the totality of its distinctions that are united in it as intertwined to one another. In this manner, Fichte insists, the manifoldness is not just taken in the unity, whereby the two sides of unity and manifoldness should be thought as combined, but still distinguished. As substance, the unity itself actively unifies its manifold, since as one and whole it is present to all its individual actualisations and remains against each of them a real possibility of its opposite.

The distinctions, the actualisations or self-realisations of this substantial unity, which Fichte takes as different names for the same issue, are merely accidental for the substance. In other words, he clarifies, they are what varies, disappears or moves at this persisting unity. Thus, each individual can as well not be or it can transition into another accidental shape, without the substance changing in itself or becoming essentially other. These actualisations and distinctions as individual, Fichte continues, are merely external and inessential to the substance, and each accident by itself appears both unindependent or the negation of substantiality and inessential, that is, not sufficient for exhausting the internal essence of substance that remains as the real possibility relentlessly moving over each of its individual shapes.

Fichte notes that this is the immediacy of the relation of substance and accidentality. He adds that we should not take anymore as valid the superficial and completely unspeculative concept, where the accidents appear as something merely externally added or contingent at the substance. Still, Fichte insists, as individuals these accidents still appear as inessential: each of the accidents by itself could also be lacking from the substance without impairing its essence, since it expressly contains the possibility of opposites in itself. Thus, Fichte concludes, the externally varying accidentality with the internally persisting substance is the first and most immediate manner of understanding their relation.

The most immediate and therefore still most undeveloped expression of substantiality relation is, Fichte says, that the substance is understood as the substrate of immediately and externally combined qualitative determinations that are raised to inhering properties of this collective unity or thing. Thing means at first, he explains, merely this immediate unity or the combination of such externally lined up determinations or the sum of certain joined realities, whereby their internal unification is not yet expressly brought to consciousness. These determinations or properties appear only as accidental to the thing or they occur so or also otherwise, but the thing in itself is essentially not determined or changed through their possible change. Thus, Fichte notes, the properties are contingent, external and changeable, while the thing remains internally determined as a unity.

The thing changes itself or varies its properties, but remains itself essentially what it is. According to Fichte, this relation involves a familiar, dialectically far back lying concept. Indeed, he takes it as a sign, how superficial in its immediacy this relation is. What here is designated as inessential, varying property of a thing remaining same through all changes is, Fichte suggests, same that according to an earlier distinction was called characteristic against the one internally changeless Ur-determination. Thus, the accidental is merely the external side of the thing appearing from its relation to an infinity of others. Fichte makes the pun that when the thing asserts its original determination and remains changelessly in itself, it receives in relation to every other thing a characteristic that corresponding to its uniqueness is to be called proper (Eigenes) to it or property (Eigenschaft). Here the manifoldness and the variation of properties of a thing is to be explained from the relations, in which the unvarying Ur-quality of thing enters to the other Ur-qualified things. Fichte interprets this move by saying that the opposition of essential and inessential has, like earlier, progressed to that of essence and what seems. In other words, the difference of properties of a thing is only what appears and not the real side of the thing, because it is based merely on the varying and contingent relations, which the one quality of thing has to an infinity of others, while in itself the thing has no variation and no manifoldness.

The concept of essence as a hidden, abstract being-in-itself has long ago been refuted, thus, Fichte argues, so should also the notion of a thing that is not actual or knowable in its properties. Instead, he insists, the thing has its truth and actuality only in the field of its properties, or it exists merely as their full, worked out unity. In the discarded view, the unity of thing was abstract simplicity, excluding all manifoldness and all variation from itself, but as substantial unity it was also the manifoldness or the distinction that still dissolved itself in unity, since it could be only in this unifying relation. When the concept of simplicity of thing is refuted, Fichte suggests, at the same time is refuted the notion of a by itself subsisting, unrelated distinction. Instead, they converge as the extreme ends of abstraction: the isolated distinction becomes itself simple, but it is only in the reciprocal relation with other distinctions, since what remains unrelated is not anymore distinction. Thus, Fichte concludes, nothing is here distinguished, without being twined into a unity, while all unities sustain in themselves distinctions as their own actuality. The thing is not anymore an external sum or a substrate of its properties, but it is the nature of distinctions to be intertwined into the unity of thing, just like the nature of thing is to carry in itself these distinctions. The distinctions become then properties and even essential properties of the thing.

Fichte points out that now all variation of properties seems to be erased from the thing, since each property plays an indispensable part at the essence of the thing, which is actual and present only in the whole, undivided fullness of its distinctions, without allowing any variation and change of them. The variation is then again subject to the inessentiality or it is external and untrue, while the old contradiction is merely pushed further, but not solved. Fichte suggests that we must now distinguish in the thing real or essential and seeming or inessential properties, without still knowing how the latter can be called properties in the sense of being proper to the thing. Hence, the essential properties are the actuality of the essence of the thing, but exclude thus all variation, and inessential properties are external to its essence, while also being inseparable from its concept. Thus, Fichte notes, the manifoldness of properties is established in the thing, but not the variation that still has appeared as its essential moment in the whole earlier series of categories.

Fichte identifies the essential and unchangeable properties of the thing with the real possibility of essence. Such a real possibility, he points out, contained two sides, corresponding to the opposition found in the notion of thing. On the one hand, the real possibility forms the embodiment or the totality of essence and is so identical with the real necessity, but on the other hand, it is not exhausted in any of its actualities, but keeps itself as a unity against them. This relation perfectly corresponds, Fichte thinks, to that of essential and inessential properties of the thing: essential properties present the real possibility and inessential properties its actualisations. Thus, just like a real possibility, essential property is the capacity for opposed and varyingly each other excluding actualisations, any single one of which could fail to exist or change to its opposite, but which in their totality have the character of essentiality and necessity. In other words, Fichte explains, it is essential and necessary that the essence of the thing actualises itself, but not what individual details the actualisations have.

Fichte finds here a more satisfying expression for inessential properties. They are, he suggests, the varying accidents, which are not external to the essence or inessential, while the thing is the infinite self-actualisation, which is never frozen in necessity, but in all parts retains the same possibility for opposites. The thing is thus the substantial unity of the essential properties, but this is only the side of its real possibility. Hence, it is also essential for the thing that these essential properties are infinitely specified. In the varying determinations of these specifications lies also their actuality, while the same substantial unity remains present in all the individualisations of its actuality.

The dialectics of thing and its properties, Fichte continues, has more and more clearly pointed to the concept of distinctions that are only in each other and of unifiedness that is only in the totality of its distinctions. Thus, he suggests, the thing is also a whole, while its essential and inessential properties form its parts that intertwine and complement each other. Fichte thinks, then, that the relation of the whole and its parts is the nearest developed expression after the relation of thing and properties. This new relation consciously underlines the notion of unified substance, he insists, but since it is a relational concept that can at first be grasped only as opposition, it requires further development.

The whole and the parts, Fichte begins, understood in their opposition to one another, seem relatively independent. The whole can at first be thought independent of its parts, since the parts regarded individually seem to assume an external, inessential relation to the whole. Thus, Fichte explains, the specific essentiality of the whole subsists, even if this and that part comes off or is undeveloped. Indeed, he insists, the more powerful and ordered the whole is in itself, the more individual parts can be lacking from it. Fichte notes that we can then divide parts again into essential and inessential, where the latter are dispensable, and even if removed, allow the essence of the whole remain independently of them, while in the former lies the true meaning of the whole, which becomes something else, if these are withdrawn from it or changed.

Then again, Fichte adds, parts are also relatively independent of the whole, since each part has an internal determination independent from the whole and from the other parts, which allows this part to subsist in itself. Each part divorces then itself from their whole, because it does contribute to the existence of whole, but does not conversely require the whole for its own existence. Thus, Fichte concludes, parts subsist outside the whole, but the whole does not subsist outside them. He points out that this is the familiar category of a whole being composed of parts, where the whole is understood as an aggregate of such otherwise existing determinations. These determinations appear again as partial wholes and are thus thought as separable into other previously existing determinations, as long as inseparable atoms have not been reached. Hence, Fichte argues, such a view of the whole must lead back to atomism of isolated finite entities, which he takes to be a long ago refuted notion. Indeed, he insists, if parts can exist independently of the whole, their substantial unity is eradicated and as a breaking whole is a whole no more, while the independent parts are not anymore parts and cannot even be thought as determined, because determination requires relating them in a system.

Fichte concludes that the whole by itself is expressly an empty, void and contradictory abstraction, or whole is only as ordering itself into its parts, and if it would miss one of them, it would not be this whole. The whole forms then its parts and the parts their whole, he concludes, and neither can the whole be separated from the parts nor conversely the parts from the whole or also any single part from the others. Indeed, Fichte suggests, the whole is not just mathematically equal to its parts and these equal to their whole, but the whole and the parts are simply identical or a unifiedness that divides into manifoldness.

Fichte thinks that we must now understand the whole as an active unification of its parts, hence, as keeping its indivisible self in each part and continuing as totality of these distinctions. He suggests calling this notion of active unifiedness with the Leibnizian expression of monad. This monad, Fichte notes, is itself its totality, so that we need not anymore search something that would develop it to a manifold, but as a unifying power it is itself partly manifoldness and partly it collects its distinctions in itself and mediates them into a whole. The monad is then designated as manifoldness and it still must negate the manifoldness and be expressed as a complete indivisibility. Fichte admits that this duality can easily develop into a contradiction, but before attempting to find its full solution he suggests comparing this notion to the previous stages and seeing what earlier uncompleted problems might have found their solution in it.

At the end of the first book of Fichte's ontology appeared the concept of the Ur-position that could be conceived as specifically determined only in infinite relation to others and as asserting itself in this relation. The opposition of these infinite being for other and being for itself, Fichte reminds us, was mediated through the concept of comprehending and reciprocally relating infinite or absolute. Now, he suggests, this provisional conclusion has found its satisfying expression in the notion of monad. The Ur-positions were shown to be more than abstractly simple or they were able to become something else because of the opposition of their unchangeable determination with their changing characteristic. Here, Fichte points out, this notion of becoming something else converges with what was first called the accidents in the substance and now in a more developed manner the ideal and intertwined distinctions in the monad. Furthermore, he continues, the concept of substantial unity or monad has also integrated the categories of ground and of real possibility. Thus, as a real possibility monad raises its distinctions into an intertwined unity or into a free identity remaining with itself. Since the monad is also a self-actualising ground, this real possibility places itself against the actuality of varying individuals that never exhaust the possibility, which remains as their ideal background.

The concept of monadic unity has fully developed itself, Fichte states, since it has assumed in itself its opposite or its distinctions are now what they are through one another and so grow together into their unity. Monadic unity is thus no more a collective substrate or thing and not even a bond joining parts into a whole, shortly, no particular externally related to its distinctions. Instead, Fichte emphasises, it is the inseparable and indivisible unity, in which the distinctions mutually require and presuppose one another. He notes that we have thus discovered a higher concept of individuality than earlier, where it meant only an Ur-determination specified according to both content and form. Now, this Ur-position is a unity in manifoldness and thus a totality of its moments or monad, but also simply individual, partly as it is completely unique and similar only to itself, partly as it absolutely asserts itself and remains similar in this uniqueness, when its distinctions are internally joined by being inseparable from one another. This individual unity subsists, according to Fichte, because it asserts itself in the infinite variation of becoming. Indeed, he thinks, every entity in the world is such a closed and completely determined peculiarity, which can be developed and reshaped, but not broken or fundamentally changed and is therefore justifiably called indivisible. This indivisibility, Fichte says, is the internal or real necessity of this entity, which converges with its real possibility and is thus the root of its freedom. The notion of real possibility joined with necessity that is above all its actualisations, but still produces infinite distinctions and is thus sameness that continuously becomes dissimilar to itself and distinction that eternally remains a unity, he thinks, does not contain at this stage any contradiction and not even an unresolved opposition, because this monadic unity has shown itself as a substance of all its distinguishing activities and asserts itself in them as an indivisible whole. According to Fichte, this monadic unity is the true result of the previous development of categories that will not anymore be abandoned, but only developed.

Fichte suggests that this concept of individuality is inseparable from an infinite relation to others outside it and that only in this relation does this individual receive and assert its specific Ur-determination. This relation, he adds, is not just a dead separatedness of mere quantitative joining, but more like the comprehension of seemingly isolated finities into the concept of infinite or essence. Now, Fichte clarifies, this cannot anymore be thought as merely external comprehension nor as an abstract ground or as  a self-actualising necessity, but only as a substantial unity of internal distinctions that themselves are unities or as absolute monad of finite monads. In other words, the infinite is also actual only as an individual, just like finite. The monads as specified, but thus infinitely related unities, Fichte describes, converge themselves again in higher unities or central monads that finally are infinitely mediated in the absolute unity of the Ur-monad.

Fichte notes that we have once again found a familiar duality of interconnected relations or the relation of an individual to another individual and the relation of all of these individuals to the comprehensive absolute, where the relation of individuals can itself be thought only in the infinite comprehension, while this comprehension is possible only as specifying itself into relations between individuals. Thus, each monad, or more precisely, what it is or its Ur-determination and what it becomes or the series of its actualisations is such only in an absolute relation to the infinity of others. Hence, Fichte underlines, the fundamental specification of the monad and its varying determinations are nothing in themselves, but only in relation to all others. The system of monads is thus reflected in the individuals and, he adds, each individual monad carries the mark of this system and especially of such monads that are related more nearly to it by the higher centralising monad to it. This perception or representation of the infinite system in each individuality forms, on Fichte’s opinion, one of the most essential moments in the concept of monad, and only through this representation of all others it secures what it is and what it becomes, just like these others are what they are through this monad. The deepest independence of the monad, he concludes, is thus combined with infinite dependency from the others, or what it is through its own act is still only the mirror of the whole infinity outside, which seems like another contradiction to be solved.

The monad actualises itself from its own positive Ur-determination and thus appears to be absolutely independent or active, but it is also originally related to others and thus seems to become only through this infinitely reflecting relation or with absolute passivity. Fichte starts looking for the solution of this conflict by sharply distinguishing the positive Ur-determination of the monad or its real possibility from its actualisations. As a real possibility, he says, the monad can be thought neither as active nor as passive, or the field of activity and passivity begins only with its actuality. Yet, Fichte adds at once, according to its real possibility monad is still not completely without any relations, since its Ur-disposition is posited by the infinitely specifying absolute and this position can only happen in being ordered into a system of infinite specifications or individual monads. In a sense, monad is then both independent and related, both grounded by all others and conversely grounding these others.

Beyond its general relation to all others, Fichte adds, a monad enters into a special relation to a determined monad that it represents more closely. In this sense, he explains, the monad becomes a ground of a series of consequences in this other and thus actively transfers it, but on the other hand, the relation occurs to the other direction and the second monad reflects this influence back to the first. Thus, Fichte describes, what appeared as consequence becomes again a ground, just like the first ground becomes a consequence. The result of self-actualisation of monads, he suggests, is then not purely derived from their own absolute activity, but they at the same time assume the influence of others in themselves, but also actively appropriate it. This dual relation, Fichte suggests, is the solution of the contradiction of activity and passivity, so that no moment of actuality is mere action or mere reaction, but reciprocal intertwining of both.

To fully understand this relation of monads to one another, Fichte thinks, we have to still bring up one point. The monads acting and reacting to one another, he insists, presuppose a common field or a sphere of existence and action comprehending all of them. This common sphere, Fichte suggests, has been named in the discussion of content and form as the specific form that the content gives itself, when it steps from mere capacity in the realisation. Here, he states, the content is the self-actualising monad that specifies itself from real possibility into a specific form, but this specific form is only the quantitative expression that is inseparable from every qualitative content. This form is then the sphere of the specific actualisations of the monad, but also its determined relations to others, while changes in the form are only variations of these relations or interactions between monads. The system of these forms is generated from the variation of combining and dissolving these relations. Fichte concludes that in general the fundamental form inseparable from all monads is this common sphere, in which monads encounter each other in interaction.

Fichte reminds the reader that the form is known to be the quantitative expression of content. Thus, specifying itself qualitatively it specifies itself also quantitatively, that is, it gives itself determined extension and intensity in space and time. Space and time, Fichte suggests, are then the universal form of specification and the sphere of existence and action for monads. He also points out that space and time are in no sense independent, but as mere forms exist only through the infinitely itself specifying content or the monads.

By specifying themselves, monads give themselves their extensively and intensively determined quantity, that is, create their space and their temporal duration. Fichte points out that this quantitative specification in general is a determination common to all monads or their fundamental form, just like categories, although they are not categories and thus not properly dealt in ontology. Because the monad is known as the principle creating its form, he argues, it must be partly thought absolutely free of this form, but partly it is actual only in this form. As real possibilities, monads are simply independent or negative toward the form, but in their self-actualisation they must fill this form of space and time through causal relations with other monads, which form the next topic of investigation in Fichte’s ontology.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Necessity

Fichte has arrived at the concept of necessity from the development of real possibility that determines itself to self-actualisation: the possible must be so as it actualises itself, or its internal determination is a hidden necessity that imprints its actualisations with the character of necessary. Thus, the necessity unites the real possibility and the actuality or it is the actuality that is determined to cancel any further possibility. Fichte calls this the first, provisional definition of necessity, which completes the concept of actuality. In other words, he explains, the actual is necessary, but conversely the necessary is thus also actual. Since the concept of necessity appears at the level of essence, Fichte continues, the latter concept also gains a more complete expression. This means that the essence does not just determine its internal into external or let ground grow into consequence and capacity into its realisation, but it is also an infinite real possibility. In this infinite real possibility lies also necessity, so that the essence as a ground does not just realise itself in general, but realises itself in a completely determined and necessary manner that positively excludes all alternative ways of being.

Once again, Fichte begins from an immediate understanding of a concept, and for necessity this means that it simply excludes the possibility of being something else, whereby necessity would be a direct opposite of possibility. Such an abstract necessity, he explains, means that something could not fail to be or even be otherwise, excluding both the existence and thinkability of anything that would contradict it. Fichte calls this the universal, formal and apodictic necessity and notes that it is the task of ontology to exhaust the field of such necessities in the dialectical derivation of the universal forms of being and thinking. Thus, he adds, this unconditional necessity is ascribed only to, first of all, the categories, and secondly, the mathematical forms of space and number that are not anymore categories, but still belong to the pure forms of actuality. Such a field of forms describes, Fichte clarifies, only a negative sphere, within which everything actual must further determine itself, without being able to overstep this limitation, because it would lead to a contradiction. Such a formal necessity covers everything that is thinkable and actual, but it also remains empty and formal, that is, leaves the content of these forms undecided.

Fichte emphasises that it is the character of the apodictic necessity to exclude its opposite as contradictory that cannot exist or even be thought of. He admits that this merely draws the limits of impossibility. Hence, it can be used merely as a negative criterion of truth or actuality that explains everything non-contradictory as equally thinkable or possible, but must leave completely undetermined, what is truly actual, possible and necessary. Such a necessity is also only a formal criterion that indicates what anything actual cannot be without, but does not tell what positively is actual. Abstract necessity remains thus opposed to an equally abstract possibility, Fichte concludes, and this abstract possibility corresponds with the concept of contingency.

Fichte notes that a distinction essential for the whole ontology can now be reduced to the just discovered conceptual relation. In other words, what earlier was called the eternal form against the infinite content is here designated as apodictic, but formal necessity, while what earlier was called the content filling and governing the form is here the real possibility of essence beyond mere abstract necessity. The infinite essence itself and all individuals derived from the essence lie thus outside this necessity, that is, Fichte clarifies, everything actual is more than what these necessary forms of actuality can exhaust. Indeed, he adds, these universal boundaries of negative necessity allow an indeterminable possibility of being so or otherwise, but the real possibility determines these boundaries more. Fichte declares drawing the limit between the real possibility and the abstract necessity as one of the main tasks of ontology that will lead to a higher form of necessity, which he aptly calls real necessity.

Fichte notes that the dialectical transition from the first, immediate understanding of necessity to second or the real necessity has already appeared, when we saw that the formal necessity contained only the negative, external limitation for the positive content. At first this content was designated as a real possibility, he reminds the reader, but even this concept contains a moment of necessity, because real possibility is one step in the category series of actuality that was earlier noted to be necessary. In other words, actuality refers to an essence that actualises itself in the infinite totality of each other complementing opposites, thus, involves a real possibility or infinity of alternative creative realisations, where each of these realisations is not groundless, but necessitated by the essence.

Fichte distinguishes in this new type of necessity two sides. Firstly, each of the realisations or Ur-positions stems from the essence and is just its self-presentation. Secondly, each Ur-position is also a determined individual and thus in relation to other Ur-positions. Both the relation to the essence and the relation to other individuals affect with equal necessity the varying characteristics of the individual, Fichte states. Thus, because the content of such an actual individual is given by the essence, it has a necessity that is not just formal, but real or involves the content. Furthermore, Fichte continues, just like the formal necessity was also called apodictic because of its universal validity, the real necessity must be also called conditioned, because it has its ground or condition in something else. Then again, although as an Ur-position determined by the essence the individual is necessary, it is also only an individual consequence of essence, in addition to infinitely many others that are equally possible. Hence, the concept of real necessity seems to be again connected with the concept of formal possibility or contingency: an isolated, conditionally necessary individual could as well be something else. Contingency thus finds in the field of possible consequences of the essence still a field of its own, or, as Fichte explains, in relation to essence it is indifferent or contingent, which one of infinite alternative realisations is actualised.

Fichte notes that the essence as infinite actualisation is expressed not in any individual consequence, but every individuality is absolutely comprehended in a system of realisations, and only the whole of these consequences is the actuality of essence. The individual realisations form then a series or a nexus of individuals as conditions of other individuals. In this sense, Fichte adds, groundless chance is also refuted. In other words, an individual, combined through infinitely conditioning relation with all others, has its externally conditioning limit or its determined position and its inescapable relation to the other beings in the world, just like it has received from its origin in essence its internal, real or positive determination or its ineradicably positive individuality. The positive individuality and the determined position in the system of individuals, Fichte concludes, are the inseparable sides of real necessity, united in the totality of essence.

Fichte places an externally determining, fatalistic necessity, based on the one-sided understanding of actuality, possibility and necessity, against an internal necessity that is contained in both the absolute essence and the finite Ur-positions and that is the expression or actualisation of the real possibility. He also suggests that this opposition must be synthetically combined into a unity, whereby also the highest expression for the category of actuality is found. The higher unifying concept, Fichte thinks, can be found only in the concept of essence and in the just discovered dual relation that the essence absolutely actualises itself in a system of infinitely many Ur-positions that immediately step into a mutual relation to one another. Each moment of the actuality shows this duality or is, firstly, the self-presentation of internal Ur-essence that forms the foundation and the kernel of everything actual, but secondly, each moment modifies its original determination in a field of varying characteristics through its relation to infinitely many other moments. In other words, Fichte clarifies, an original disposition (Ur-dispotion) or individuality asserts itself in all its variation, but also reflects in different colourings the infinity of other individuals that it affects and that in turn affect it.

According to Fichte, properly actual and in no sense illusory is the Ur-position or Ur-disposition imparted by the essence. This disposition, he continues, is both ground or capacity and grounded or self-realisation, that is, it gives its internal ideality a complete and full realisation. The second, but equally necessary side of each actualisation, beyond Ur-positions, Fichte says, is the infinite relation to others and the changeability appearing from this relation. The second moment relates to the first, he suggests, like characteristic to Ur-quality, like appearance to essence or like varying form to real content: the latter is the fundamental determining principle of necessity, while the former is only the derived subordinate necessity arising from action of individuals to one another. Using an earlier distinction, Fichte says that the internal necessity is the ground of the external, while the former is in itself completely independent of all external conditions. Indeed, Fichte insists, the internal necessity derived from the essence breaks through the chain of conditions, which appears to determine an individual merely through another individual. Instead, each actuality is before all things a necessary self-act stemming from essence, introducing a new, from no previous conditions derivable member of the universal nexus. This new kind of necessity is derived from absolute self-realisation, and although the self-realisation enters in a conditioning relation with an infinity of other self-realisations, its internal necessity cannot be overcome by this influence, but is only modified into various characteristics.

Fichte declares this concept of internal necessity derived from the Ur-positions of essence as the highest kind of necessity, because it comprehends in itself all isolated sides of necessity and actuality. Firstly, this necessity is liberated from the nexus of external conditions in the sense that it is not actualised because of these conditions, but because of itself. Thus, Fichte suggests, it could be called free necessity in the negative sense of having no conditions, although it is not therefore groundless and so not susceptible to contingency. Yet, he adds, this necessity also includes the concept of freedom in a more positive sense, because it contains the principle that everything actual is self-determination or self-act. Finally, Fichte concludes, this necessity is the highest also for the reason that it has dialectically appropriated in itself the other moment of externally conditioning necessity: internal necessity is not just free of the influence of external necessity, but it is also the ground of the latter. He suggests therefore calling internal necessity also unconditional or absolute. With the completion of the concept of necessity, Fichte adds, the fundamental concept of actuality has also received its full meaning. When this concept appeared, it was determined as self-assertion of content deriving from the essence, and now we see it again as the self-creating act of essence resulting in a system of Ur-dispositions revealing themselves in self-asserting conflict with each other.

While the concept of necessity has perfected the concept of actuality, Fichte thinks it essential to assess how necessity relates to the concept of possiblility and more precisely, of real possibility. In this regard the actuality has appeared as immediate realisation of its possibility: it is the self-act of the capacity contained in the essence or the Ur-positions. It at first seems that the actuality has fully exhausted tsuch a capacity, but the development of the concept of possibility has shown, Fichte reminds us, that a real capacity contains in itself also the possibility of the opposite, varying in its actuality members that exclude one another. Thus, each of the actualisations of this capacity appears from internal necessity or absolute self-act, but against this actualisation is always a real possibility: just like the capacity also realises itself, it is never exhausted or runs out of forms to actualise itself, but it remains an ideal power or an unactualised field of ever new possibilities.

To the concept of actuality has now been added the concept of real possibility and the concept of necessity, Fichte notes. Actual is then in truth self-creative and absolute self-act that retains in itself a real possibility that as the ground of all its realisations and actualisations remains at the background as the ideal totality of its essence. Fichte suggests characterising this actual as substantial, that is, the carrier of individual actualisations. Everything actual is ideally infinite and actualised finite, since at the basis of each of these individual limited actualisations lies an unlimited possibility that actualises itself, but also remains inexhaustible. In this manner, Fichte suggests, the concept of self-determination or absoluteness that appeared from the concept of actuality receives further clarification and confirmation. Self-actualising or self-determining, he thinks, can only be thought to have a power to remain internally infinite in actuality. In other words, Fichte clarifies, absoluteness, no matter whether predicated in unconditional or relative sense, can only be ascribed to such that possesses a “self”, a kernel or a midpoint of existence, which is inaccessible to external conditions and from which all its externalisations appear. Thus, the essence distributes to each Ur-position an infinite real possibility or disposition, which frees each of these actualities from externally conditioning coercion.

The concept of the actuality of essence has now been exhausted, Fichte states, and we have thus reached a resting point. Still, he adds, a new task has appeared, but at first he starts with a summary. Essence was known as ground, internal and content, but equally as consequence, external and form. Thus, Fichte reminds us, as a main determination of essence appeared that of actuality, so that actuality and essence or capacity and realisation were so interconnected that nothing remained in essence that did not actualise itself and nothing was to be found in the actuality that would not have been actualisation of essence. With this result we entered the categories of actuality, where first the contingency refuted itself, while the formal possibility and the abstract necessity were shown as valid only in a negative meaning of ontology. The concepts of real possibility and real necessity balanced each other, so that the actuality showed itself as their true unity: the actual was necessarily itself realising real possibility. Finally, it appeared that the real possibility itself does not terminate itself in individual realisations of the necessary actuality or that it comprehends in itself an infinite possibility of self-actualisations. In this manner, Fichte suggests, we have returned to concepts discovered at the beginning of the investigation of essence, that is, to internal, content and capacity and their opposition with the actuality. If we earlier found out that the essence is simply actual and all actuality is only actualisation of essence, we have now added to this a correction that this actualisation is essentially infinite in both intensity and extension, since the real possibility of essence is inexhaustible both in every individual moment of its actualisation and in their system. The new task that Fichte has envisaged is the investigation of this just found new relation of inexhaustible possibility and its individual actualisations.