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

Fichte has reached the concept of actuality, which he describes as the essence or ground that has completed its abstract interiority by combining with exterior. He admits that this definition might seem incomprehensible, but thinks it captures the fact that something actual is not just a being or existence without essence nor something essential that lacks being or existence. Instead, actual should be something that exists just because of its essence or necessarily. Mere being, Fichte reminds the reader, is the most formal determination or the first starting point of all determining and thus still indifferent toward any particular quantitative or qualitative determinations. When being is determined quantitatively and qualitatively, it receives content and thus becomes essence, and even more, a ground with a capacity to realise and assert its content. It is this self-assertion derived from the essence that Fichte calls actuality.

Fichte notes that actuality seems like a simple concept, unlike other concepts in the second part of ontology that have consisted of a relation of two aspects. Yet, he adds at once, actuality is precisely a mediation containing these two opposite sides (essence or ground and its realised existence), and just because they are united, they cannot appear in separation. Still, Fichte insists, actuality should be thought of as a relational concept, because it designates the original relation between infinite and finite where the finite is the self-actualisation of the infinite essence.

Although actuality means ultimately necessity, Fichte explains, in its first or immediate shape it is still understood as opposed to the essence. In fact, he continues, actual in its immediacy refers to a simply determined and sealed off individuality against other equally determined and sealed off existences: self-assertion against other, equally unique self-assertions. We have thus returned, Fichte states, to the level of an infinity of isolated finite entities. Now, he adds, such an actual and isolated finite is contingent. This contingent should expressly not be a consequence of essence or self-presentation of a ground, thus, it is something determined, as everything actual is, but its determination is indifferent or could as well be something else or its place could be taken by infinitely many others.

The actual in this immediate sense, Fichte summarises, is determined by chance. The actual appeared without ground and isolated from its context, and contingency or chance is just this lack of all relations. Yet, despite this isolation, Fichte continues, an actual contingent individual could be substituted by infinitely many others and in fact is, in the unrelenting process of generation and destruction. The contingent has, firstly, no essence or ground: all higher meaning and reference to something eternal that the individual would express is expressly denied. On the other hand, Fichte adds, the contingent individual is also teared out of all connections to other individualities that might cause or condition it. Thus, contingent means in its first stage something with no known ground or cause, and at this point everything actual seems contingent in this superficial sense.

As one might expect, Fichte does not linger long in this rawest sense of contingency. The isolated contingent individual is immediately related to infinitely many others and thus dependent on and determined by them. This reproduces the level of an externally infinite series of an individual being conditioned by others. The individual seems thus not anymore contingent, but necessitated by other individuals, although it still has no internal ground. Yet, Fichte notes at once, contingency still prevails, since this whole series of individuals could be replaced by another series.Thus, on the one hand, an individual is explained by its link to other individuals, to which it is connected, but on the other hand, because this very connection is not necessary, the individual still lacks the internal determination from the essence, being therefore both necessary and contingent at the same time.

Fichte reminds the reader that already in the first part of ontology the external infinity of individuals linked to other individuals revealed the internal infinity of essence. Similarly, he argues, the contingent and still externally necessary nexus of actual individuals must also return in the unity of Ur-ground. This seems like no new result would have been reached, Fichte admits, but at least we have gained the explicit insight that the chance can never be the absolute ground of all things. He does suggest that contingency could take a subordinate role in the level of what is grounded by or dependent on the essence. In other words, the chance does not rule everything, but there might be some remnant of contingency in the actual individuals, because the ground does not determine the most external determinations of things.

Fichte starts to explain the role of contingency from the essence as absolutely self-actualising ground that disperses into a system of realisations. This system of realisations expresses the essence, but what the individual realisations of this system are remains indifferent: an individual could be replaced by its opposite. In other words, the concept of essence does not suffice for determining which of the possible realisations are truly actualised, and this determination is left undecided or contingent. Thus, Fichte explains, although an individual is now a self-presentation of ground, it is not the only possible. This, he concluded, is the third and properly speculative meaning of contingency: the undecidedness of which of the infinite alternatives or possibilities is actualised by the essence.

The second meaning of contingency was refuted, because an individual in its relation to an infinity of other individuals has to be in relation to the eternal ground. Conversely, Fichte says, in the third meaning of contingency we must remind ourselves of this infinite relation to other individuals. The ground appears to remain indifferent in relation to its individual actualisations and therefore seems to leave some room for chance. Yet, Fichte emphasises, the actual individual becomes actual precisely by being inserted into an ordered system of mutually conditioning realisations. The individual actualisation is thus removed from indifference that makes it contingent. In other words, Fichte explains, an actual individual could not exist or be thought as its opposite, because its determination is a self-assertion grounded in eternal essence and thus excludes any chance. Even the varying characteristics of such an individual are not relinquished to this indifference of chance, because they present the Ur-determination of the individual in its relation to other individuals. So the individual remains, even down to the most individual externalisations and impulses of its individuality, always faithful to itself. Nothing is contingent, Fichte concludes, because nothing is without essence and also not without relation to others. Still, he adds, the refinement of the concept of contingency has led us to the new concept of possibility: both the essence and the individual determination grounded in essence have an infinity of possible actualisations.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Capacity and realisation

Fichte begins a new section of his ontology by pointing out how to move forward from the just investigated relation: content should be not just seen as passive filling of empty forms, but should contain in itself the principle from which alone the forms are derived and actualised. Thus, he suggests, the content should be seen as a capacity (Vermögen). This capacity is not, Fichte insists, an empty abstraction, because it has been derived from content. What the concept of capacity adds to the concept of content is the notion of power over forms: capacity means determined content with the power to bring it forward as its consequence.

Fichte distinguishes three aspects in the concept of capacity. Firstly, he begins, capacity has content, but not anymore opposed with its forms. Secondly, capacity is the power over all its consequences that might arise from it. Finally, capacity can realise these consequences, but it also might not. Capacity is thus in a sense indifferent to its realisation, Fichte notes, and although what the realisation would be like is determined by the capacity (unlike the forms in their original stage that had little to do with their content), the realisation might still fail to exist. Fichte identifies this indifference as the essential failure in the concept of capacity.

Capacity is opposed to its realisation, Fichte explains, in the sense that it is not irresistibly realised, that is, it does not make its consequences automatically actual with it. In this sense, capacity still resembles internal and content, leaving its content locked within its interiority. Fichte notes that in earlier times such inactive capacity was called resting and points out that something further is required to awaken this capacity to its realisation. Thus, he says, the realisation process of a capacity consists of three members: the resting capacity, an inciting external and the final realisation.

Fichte points out that this required external incitement leads the concept of capacity into a contradiction. In other words, he explains, capacity as determined by something outside it seems not anymore an active capacity, but a mere dead content, or while the content belongs to the capacity, the activity seems not. Fichte notes that we have returned not just to the notion of content, but even further, to the concept of being for another: capacity is determined to realisation in a system of infinitely many others. Yet, he adds, this being for another must be also complemented by the moment of self-assertion. Indeed, Fichte explains, the influence of the others does not so much determine the capacity, but just gives it an opportunity to react against them and thus to realise its own essence.

Fichte enumerates the self-determination of the capacity into activity as the second moment in its concept. In other words, the capacity maintains its own identity through its conflict with others and thus leads to a corresponding realisation. Capacity does not then produce something new from itself, but realises what is present in it as resting. Capacity is then an independent source of its realisations and a power determining their content. Fichte describes this notion as real capacity and considers it to be a mediation of the previous conceptual moments: real capacity is an internal ground with content that determines itself to express itself in exterior forms.

Fichte notes that a real capacity is not exhausted by a single act of realisation, but proceeds into a series or a system of connected realisations, the whole course of which through each other complementing moments can only be the full realisation of the content of the capacity. He points out that we are effectively returning to the notion of the same interior being expressed in many different manners externally or the same content being developed in a system of several forms. Similarly here the original determination of the capacity is not locked in an absolute simplicity, but asserts itself by performing many different realisations, when related to a number of others.

Fichte suggests that we are now heading toward a third and final moment in the concept of capacity. The capacity is in its relation to others determined into an immediate system of self-realisations. This means, according to Fichte, that the supposed separation between the capacity and its realisation completely disappears, together with the notion of a passive resting capacity. Instead, we have discovered the thought of a real capacity that simply realises or actualises itself, which Fichte suggests to lead us to the concept of actuality as the next category. Hence, every capacity simply actualises itself, and everything actual is only the self-actualisation of an internal or ideal capacity. Actuality is thus, for Fichte, this complete interpenetration of ground and consequence or the living and undisturbed self-realisation of capacity, while anything not penetrated by ideality down to the final point of its existence is not actual. Fichte concludes that therefore every notion of a dead material, enlivened only by something external, must be completely rejected.

In Fichte’s opinion, while the concept of capacity as such has been developed completely, something still needs to be said about its original relation to essence. In other words, he explains, capacity is in its realisation related to infinitely many other capacities and is therefore finite. Yet, Fichte reminds us, even in the first book of the ontology everything finite was shown to refute itself. Now, the capacity as finite is separated into a system of its realisations and is therefore not at all an independent individual capacity, but to be thought only as part or member in a system of capacities, in which it only receives its truth and internal infinity. All thoughts of isolation must be rejected here, Fichte concludes, and we must return to the concept of internal, all comprehensive infinity, which is not just dead ordering of individual capacities, but a living unity, or to phrase it differently, the finite capacity is only a moment or part of infinitely self-realising and in a system of such moments unfolding Ur-capacity.

At the beginning of the second book, Fichte described the absolute as the essence and then soon as the Ur-ground. At this point he notes that these definitions were abstract and empty, while now through the further investigations at least a part of this abstraction has been put aside. The absolute was further determined as ideal power, as a content giving to itself infinite forms and finally as absolutely self-realising capacity. Thus, Fichte says, the absolute is not merely internal, but also infinite self-actualisation that contains in its essence everything actual. Furthermore, he adds, this infinity also does not remain abstract or empty, but develops into a system of completely determined, individual self-realisations, which correspond to what earlier were called original qualitative positions. Here begins, Fichte concludes, a new circle of conceptual relations, the middle point of which is the just discovered concept of actuality.

Before entering this new phase. Fichte once more summarises the conceptual moments of the beginning of the second book, showing how the essence has through these moments reached the concept of its actuality. At first the essence placed itself against the inessential that only seemed to be. Then its dialectic showed the essence to be more of a ground of its opposite or consequence. Still separated from its consequence, ground was understood merely as interior against external, ideal against real and content against form. All these oppositions were refuted and found their final solution in the concept of simply self-realising and self-actualising capacity. The final result was, Fichte reminds us, that the essence is the ground, the interior and the content, but also the consequence, the external and the form in the same undivided unity that in general actualises itself. The essence or the ground is then not behind and beyond the actuality, but actuality is only the essence: actuality shows nothing that would not be in essence and in essence is nothing that would not actualise itself.