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.

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

In the previous section, Fichte moved from the concept of contingent to the concept of possible, by noting that a relation of everything to both their essence and to an infinity of other things makes it impossible that all things would be ruled by chance. Still, he reminds us, there still remains a possibility of varying actualisations: although everything has an original determination, it can have different characteristics depending on the infinity of relations that it could enter in and that form the field of its possibilities. Each of the determined actualisations appears from this field of possibilities and further determines the thing in question, but beside this actualisation there are other possibilities with a same right to be actualised. This returns us to the concept of indifference between opposites that engaged us already with the concept of contingent, Fichte notes, but here it appears in a higher sense. The actual without connection to other actualities and to the essence was seen as merely contingent, since it could as well be otherwise, but this apparent contingency vanished, when its concept was studied in more detail. This step forward led us to the concept of possibility of opposites, but this does not imply complete contingency, Fichte assures the reader, since these opposed possibilities are just different relations of the original determination: possibility is the richness of alternative characteristics available for the self-actualising.

According to Fichte, this definition of possibility is one of the most difficult, because just like unrealised capacity, possibility is more like a transition hovering between non-actuality and actuality that is meant to extinguish itself: not-being grasped as still being is in an abstract manner called possible. Possible as such mediation of being and non-being, he continues, is first of all not actual or even an express negation of actuality. Still, possibility is not the same as nothing, but in another sense still partakes of actuality or is expressly related to it. What distinguishes possibility from the nothing, Fichte explains, is that it is qualitatively determined or has content and is therefore not contradictory. In other words, possible can be thought as actual, because it is qualitatively not nothing or not self-cancelling. In abstract possibility, the relation to actuality is left undecided, and if this relation is affirmed, the possible is affirmed as actual, but if it cannot be related to actuality, that is, if an attempt to do this ends with expressly negating the relation, the supposed possibility is revealed as impossible and contradictory. The immediate concept of possible, Fichte notes, is opposed only to this impossibility that cannot be thought as actual. Therefore the possibility has a wider extension than the actuality: everything actual is also possible, but something possible might not be actual. Indeed, Fichte emphasises, any combination of qualities we can think of without contradiction is possible, which makes possibility have no determinations of its own. Because of this lack of determinations, abstract possibility is revealed to be as groundless as abstract contingency: things are possibly so, but their opposites are equally possible.

The first result of Fichte’s investigation has been that the most immediate understanding of possibility corresponds to the first understanding of contingency: both are detached from any relation to essence and from all conditioning relations to other entities. He underlines that the statement of contingency or abstract possibility seems to be tied to our ignorance: we say that something is due to a chance or equally possible as its opposite, because we do not know the ground that would decide the issue. This immediate or unrelated possibility, Fichte continues, develops into the second concept of negative or formal possibility, which is not so much an advance, but more like an explicit consciousness of what the first concept implies.

In other words, the essential determination of this second concept consists in expressly ignoring the presence of a ground for such possibilities: the possible is here not just purely undetermined, but also groundless. Such a possibility, Fichte states, can then be replaced by an infinity of other possibilities. The only limit for this field of possibilities is the contradiction, since it cannot be thought as actual while the mere non-presence of a contradiction suffices to take something as formally possible. Furthermore, Fichte explains, formally possible is not just thinkable, but it also has the ability to exist or it corresponds to the general conditions of being, without which nothing actual can still exist. He points out that it is the very task of ontology to find all these negative conditions of actuality or the abstract ontological forms or categories. Indeed, Fichte underlines, ontological forms cannot be broken without contradiction, while within the limits of the categories remains still an infinity of opposed possibilities, of which the ontology cannot prove, which of them is actual.

Fichte notes that the formal possibility moves to a third kind of or real possibility, just like the groundless chance determined itself further into a positive power of contingent. The isolation of formal possibility from actuality refutes itself, he insists, because nothing can be so groundless and without any connection to others that it could be replaced with anything from an infinite number of possibilities. Indeed, Fichte explains, everything is just self-presentation of ground and is linked with other beings, which limit the externally infinite possibility into a conditioned possibility. Thus, the possibility derives not anymore from the lack of a ground, but from the positive ground or essence conditioning it, and it is not an unlimited possibility, but strictly locked in a field of certain characteristic determinations of or cases allowed by the positive essence.

Fichte regards the just found notion of real possibility as the true concept of possibility, because it is not just ontologically valid. The real possibility comprehends a manifold of qualitative determinations, but within the boundaries determined by the positive essence, which is the totality of possibilities where the essence exerts its power. Fichte insists that because these different determinations or possibilities are grounded in essence, they form a closed whole as mutually each other complementing opposites. The extent of its real possibilities forms then a limit for how the essence can be actualised, but this field of possibilities also contains its full richness, and the self-presentation of essence requires that it has exhausted its possibilities in actualising them. Fichte thinks that this restriction of possibility has finally destroyed all contingency, which still appeared in the negative infinity of formal possibilities.

Fichte seems to have returned to the category of capacity actualised in a system of its realisations. Still, he sees an essential advance in that whereas a capacity contained an undetermined manifold of mutually conditioned alternative realisations, a real possibility refers to a mediation specifically between opposed and mutually excluding alternatives. Thus, if at this point the real possibility or capacity of the essence actualises one member, the opposed member becomes a mere possibility, thus, this capacity is partly actual and partly remains a mere possibility. Then again, Fichte reminds us, the capacity should be one with its realisation, which precisely forms its actuality. In other words, nothing should be in capacity or essence without immediately exercising this power of self-actualisation, which seemingly contradicts the previous statement that capacity as real possibility does not actualise all of its possibilities.

Fichte starts solving this contradiction by reminding the reader that a capacity should not to be thought as resting or dead in itself, because then it would be a contradictory abstraction, just like unactualised and unrevealed essence would be a self-contradictory abstraction or undetermined being of the beginning of ontology. The concept of real possibility, he continues, adds to this result a new, qualitative side that this capacity is a power over opposed, each other excluding moments. This new side makes the concept of absolute capacity more comprehensible, Fichte suggests, because earlier, as a mere transition in its actualisation, capacity after its actualisation would be immediately expired, completed and dead being without any movement. The thought of qualitative opposition contained in the concept of real possibility makes the essence as absolute capacity of self-actualisation an inexhaustible principle of actualisations, since even though it would have actualised one of the opposites, its excluded moment would still remain merely possible and something to actualise later.

Fichte sees the notion of real possibility now lined up with the conceptual cycle that formed the exposition of essence. Essence as internal and infinite content gave itself an eternal form and then it appeared as a process of self-actualisation in the relation of ground and consequence or of capacity and its realisation. Now, with the new moment of real possibility the essence comprehends in itself the infinite opposition, in which each of actualities remains opposed to a background of unrealised capacity and the infinite actuality of essence remains opposed to an equally infinite superactuality or ideal power. Both of these sides are also comprehended in the unity of essence, Fichte explains, since essence in its actuality is precisely the infinite ideality. Thus, the definition of actuality as the power to actualise itself gains an additional aspect that this power is internally infinite, so that everything self-actualising has an inexhaustible content.

The individual members or opposites that are comprehended in the real possibility complement each other into a system, Fichte notes, and therefore each of the alternative opposites both demands and excludes others. The real possibility or capacity itself is thus internally determined and limited in its realisations, he emphasises, which leads us to the concept of necessity. In other words, the order of these realisations is not left to indifferent chance, but it is conditioned by the undissolvable relation that the individual members have to one another. The individual actualisations of real capacity are then just the so-called Ur-determinations of the first book that asserted themselves only in an infinite relation to other self-assertions excluding them. The standpoint of isolation is thus refuted again, and just like in the first book, the specific determinations are to be seen as dependent on the unity comprehending them all. In other words, Fichte explains, when one of the opposites in the real possibility is decided to hold in certain conditions, the content of this decision becomes necessary in the sense that under these conditions one of the opposites must simply actualise itself. The real possibility is thus not lost in necessity, like contingency was in possible, but necessity should just complement possibility, which, Fichte thinks, leaves still room for freedom to be reconciled with necessity.

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.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Content and form

The outcome of the previous phase in Fichte’s ontology was that the two sides dealt with – the more essential ground, or as it is now called, the content (Gehalt), and its less essential consequence or form – cannot exist or be thought of without the other. In other words, the content, or as Fichte also calls it at the beginning, the matter (Stoff) must become visible and thus take on a form, while this form is dependent on the content and hence in comparison inessential, contingent and changeable. In the previous section, he reminds us, the interior of the essence made a manifold of appearances actual without being necessarily related to any single one of them, and here also the form seems external to the content, although with the difference that the form is inseparable from the content that assumes some shape. Thus, all forms require a content and would not exist without such, while the content, although it must have a form, can change it into a different form without losing what is essential to it.

This indifference of content toward its form is the first characteristic sign of the new conceptual relation, Fichte says, but just like earlier, in case of essence and inessential or of internal and external, a further mediation between the two opposites is required. At this stage, he continues, their relation appears contradictory, because they are both opposed, but also inseparable: content must be formed, and form presupposes content, but also content is indifferent toward its form and the form is contingent or changeable. In fact, Fichte notes, we have as yet barely progressed from the previous relation between internal and external.

Since the content requires a form in general, but not any determined form, Fichte argues, both are in a sense independent of one another: content could assume many forms, but form also many kinds of content. In this sense, the content is a mere foundation or substrate for the form, since the content could be abstracted from any particular form without destroying the content itself. In this reproduction of the relation between internal and external, the content seems, just like Fichte hinted, mere matter that could be shaped in various manners. This matter remains the same, no matter what appearance it has, and this appearance or form adds only inessential determinations to the matter. Thus, when this form is removed, these additional determinations vanish from the matter.

To lead us away from this notion of content and form, Fichte suggests that their opposition has already appeared to us, albeit in a more abstract shape. What we know about the content is that it is qualitatively determined and has thus some characteristics that make it finite, negative toward others and changeable. Because of these features, the content must exist in a system of infinite determinations and assert its place in this system as internally infinite. Fichte has thus returned the notion of content to the categories of quality: such as permanent position in a system of qualitative determinations is precisely a content that does not vanish when it is formed or that is more essential than its inessential form. What then this form is, beside something inessential compared to the qualitative content? Fichte reminds us that the categories of quality appeared originally from the refutation of the categories of quantity, which was revealed to be a mere manner how a quality expressed itself, both extensively and intensively.

What Fichte is implying is that the relation between quality and quantity is the same relation that occurs between content and form or that the form is the quantitative expression for the content. This explains, he adds, how form can in a sense subsist separately from the content, but is also in itself without any meaning and only an expression of another, or how the content and form are both different, but still absolutely unified. The content is the qualitative side that gives itself a specific quantitative determination or a form corresponding to it, in other words, the qualitative content quantifies itself in a manner appropriate to its own determination or produces a specific form corresponding to this specific content. Fichte notes that this is a second, more complete expression of this conceptual relation, where the content posits itself in this specific form that is not in general inseparable from content. Thus, he explains, it is not anymore the case that the content is just matter that can assume any form and that can even change between many forms without losing its own qualitative specification. Instead, only a certain form completely corresponds to this content and is its only quantitative expression. Form and content are therefore identical, because form is nothing in itself and in its isolation leads to a contradiction, but, Fichte adds, just because of this dependency, form is also not identical with content that should be essential in comparison.

The form can then be determined, Fichte summarises, as both inessential to the content and also its absolute consequence expressing its essence in a quantitative element. Form itself has no power over its content, while content is the absolute power over or the principle of its form. Still, Fichte emphasises, this relation of dependence does not cancel the eternal difference between form and content, but instead, reproduces this difference and establishes the power of the content. At the same time, he adds, all mere formalism and purely a priori is shown to be of limited validity, in comparison to the study of infinite content. On the other hand, the form is also shown to be separable from its content, at least in speculative consideration, which makes a pure science of form possible. Indeed, Fichte explains, form as a presentation of content in a quantitative element can be taken as an independent topic that develops into a complete system of forms transitioning into each other. Ontology has thus proceeded into an explanation of the possibility of itself and all other sciences dealing with forms, solving thus a task given in the very introduction of this work. Fichte also classifies the various sciences of forms by saying that mathematics studies merely quantitative forms and especially forms of space and time, while philosophy contains, beside the ontology as the science of the forms of being, epistemology as the science of the forms of thinking, although, he admits, the latter has also an empirical foundation, since it has to develop these forms of thinking from preceding states of consciousness.

All the ontological categories have been set out as mere forms in abstract emptiness, Fichte argues, thus, they point to an essence or content. Still, this common essence has also a corresponding category, and indeed, Fichte insists, all proper categories explicitly show a relation to this essence, which happens in the relational concepts of the second part of ontology. Thus, every relational category has two sides, one of which designates what is real – e.g. essence, ground, internal and content – while the other designates what is formal – e.g. inessential, consequence, external and form. Furthermore, Fichte emphasises, since all the categories and thus also the categories belonging to the side of the real or content are valid only in this sphere of ontology, we can only prove ontologically that there is an infinite content that goes through the whole ontological system of forms, but we cannot say what are the more specific determinations of this content – indeed, ontology has to itself prove its own limits.

Content is completely determined and unique, Fichte reminds us, thus also its form can be only individualised: specific content posits its specific form. This means, firstly, that with the relation of content and form are again established all the categories in the dialectics of qualitative determinations. Thus, the determined content is finite, that is, it both negates others and asserts itself in this negation. As is familiar, Fichte continues, this leads us to the notion of internal or positive infinity, where something is, on the one hand, in a system of infinite determinations infinitely related to one another, but on the other hand, contains in its individuality an internal infinity reflecting these relations. These determinations refer to the content, thus, Fichte sets out as a task, we have to find out what this means for the form.

Fichte begins answering this question by noting that content and form are first negations or others toward one another, but with this reciprocal negation they also posit one another. Furthermore, he continues, the second concept of negation reappears, that is, that of changeability. This means that because content is determined, it is subject to becoming something else. Here, Fichte explains, the form appears as the changeable side and the content as what remains the same in becoming: the content is identical with itself, but in the becoming or change it transforms itself by varying its forms.

When a content takes on its specific form, Fichte underlines, it behaves freely toward and subjugates this form, which then has no subsistence of its own. When content then transforms itself, this transformation is nothing foreign to the content, but just expresses its essence and especially the connection to others that is inseparable from its determination. Thus, Fichte summarises, the content with its stable determination transforms itself through the system of its forms, and it remains the same throughout this transformation, insofar as the same determined individual content is present in all these forms. On the other hand, the content also does not remain the same, since its varying forms develop its aspect of being something else, although they do not add anything opposed to the stable content.

This account of the change or transformation of concept, Fichte adds, is at once connected to the relation that a determined content has to other determinations. In fact, he explains, the determined content varies its relation to its own forms only through its place in the system of all determinations, where it both negates as well as posits other determinations and also asserts itself through these relations. This means that the variation of the forms of content derives not only from the content itself, but also from its necessary reciprocal relation to the infinity of other kinds of content. In other words, according to Fichte, the change of the form of any determined content means combination with another content and its form and dissolution of a previous similar combination. Just like the variation of forms is then a variation of different combinations, the form in general is the relation, which the content has to the infinity of other determinations.

The result is, Fichte notes, that neither the determined content nor the system of its variable forms subsist in themselves. Instead, every qualitative determination is only a moment in the system of an infinity of determinations – this is the already familiar notion of internal infinity. Furthermore, the system of its forms is not derived merely from the content, but also from the necessary reciprocal relation between individual contents. The forms thus consist only in the infinitely varying combining and dissolving of these relations, while the content asserts always its original quality, but varying its forms and relations, and with these also its characteristics. In these characteristics, Fichte concludes, content and form combine with each other, while both characteristics and the form are an immediate combination of the relation to others and the self-assertion.

Fichte has discovered the form to be identical with the relation to the infinity of others, since both appear through the variation of characteristics. Still, he immediately adds, the concept of form is still not perfectly clear. We do know, Fichte reminds us, that the form is the quantitative expression for the content. Thus, when we say that the specific content corresponds to a specific form, this means also that the content is quantitatively determined or limited and has its own extension and intensity. Fichte notes that in terms of more concrete parts of philosophy this means that when a content receives a form, it is determined in time and space, that is, it fills space and time in a completely specific manner.

Space and time are, Fichte concludes, the common element, in which qualitative determinations can enter in actual relation to one another. They form the common sphere, in which all actual things meet each other and transform in their mutual relations. Just like all quantities, space and time are indifferent toward what individual qualities they have, although they cannot be completely without qualitative determinations. This indifference, Fichte explains, makes these fundamental forms seem independent, but actually, like all quantities, they are mere forms for real qualities and thus dependent on content. Then again, as every content is in reciprocal relation to others, it must fill some specific time and space, so that there is no empty time or space, just like categories are not actual without any content. Thus, Fichte notes, content is spatial and temporal, but is also independent of them in the sense that it is not exhausted with its temporal and spatial determinations.

The relation of content and form is almost at the end of its development, Fichte states, with the exception of the highest synthesis that just has to be recognised. A specific content, he begins the search for this synthesis, taking a specific form, is specific only in opposition to other specifications, and indeed, it can be thought only as having its qualitative specification in a positive infinity. The same dialectical step engaged us already at the level of quality, Fichte reminds us, as we raised ourselves from the internal infinity of every individual determination into a positive infinite that creates and orders individual determinations (this was the first proper definition of absolute), At this new stage, he explains, we could further describe the absolute as the ground that posits the infinite content, specifies this content infinitely and differentiates it into a system of mutually qualitative Ur-determinations. The actual content of the absolute is this qualitatively filled infinity. Yet, Fichte notes, just like every specific content has its specific form, the absolute gives to this qualitative infinity also its eternal form, which is also a necessary aspect of the absolute.

The form has two sides, Fichte notes. Firstly, there is the eternal, simply universal form of infinite content that is an in itself completed system of mutually each other determining formal concepts or categories. On the other hand, because the content specifies itself infinitely, this eternal world of forms must be also infinitely specified. Thus, Fichte summarises, the categories must because of their necessary link to content be thought only as specified, that is, actually united with their content as specific spatial and temporal quantities. All categories are therefore, he concludes, infinitely specified, and their abstract eternity receives in this manner movability that prepares the transition from ontology into more concrete parts of philosophy.

Fichte envisions a twofold result impacting, on the one hand, the ontology itself, and on the other hand, its position in relation to more concrete parts of philosophy. The absolute creates first its content or the infinite Ur-positions, with the system of categories as containing the first and therefore abstract forms. Then the specific characteristic of content specifies the categories, Fichte explains, and these specifications are actualised forms of the content, which are not anymore abstract, but only specified. Fichte points out that we now meet the concept of individual in its most general meaning: it is the specific content of a determined Ur-position actualising itself in its specific form. His conclusion is that everything actual is individual, since actualities have completely specified content and form down to their most individual determinations. The abstract general forms, on the other hand, are only an unactual, negative foundation of this actualisation.

Everything merely general and abstract has now been cancelled in finite entities, Fichte insists, and abstractions have been shown in their thoroughgoing voidness. Individuals, on the other hand, should take the place of categories as principles shaping the actual world. Fichte’s statement is an explicit criticism of Hegelian philosophy, which Fichte thinks has to endorse the characteristic proposition that only the categories form what is truly actual and unchanging in all things. Fichte suggests that the direct opposite of this supposedly Hegelian proposition has been ontologically justified: individual or completely specified is actual and nothing else. This principle of individuality, Fichte argues, should be extendable to absolute behind all content. Earlier the absolute was thought merely as an Ur-essence, and now it is specified as grounding in itself an infinity of specific determinations.

Concept of the form is now fully understood, Fichte states, and we have proven that form is an independent topic, but in itself empty. Thus, the system of categories is in its abstract generality, partly because categories are in general only forms of something else (the infinite content), partly because even filled by content and in this sense actual they still cannot present as such what is real, but still require more specific temporal and spatial determinations. Fichte suggests that this reveals the relation of ontology to more concrete parts of philosophy in a different light. He reminds us that the ontology as a study of absolute form can be in itself closed and separate from the other parts of philosophy, but also has to demonstrate a transition into a more speculative method covering both form and content and thus the whole actuality. According to Fichte, the starting point for this demonstration has now been discovered: the ontology has to merely show and strictly remain within this limitation that the categories must be actualised through what is real and become specific spatio-temporal quantities.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Internal and external

A completely new chapter in Fichte's ontology has begun. For the first time, the viewpoint of finite entities has been fully discarded. More likely, Fichte adds, it has dialectically destroyed itself, since the finite has shown itself as merely sustained by infinity. The positive infinite or absolute has cancelled the finite in its separation, but also raised it into a true reality. This is, Fichte thinks, the correct foundation for the ontology, and it properly begins only here, when the standpoint of ontology has become one of synthesis or one of absolute. If the task of philosophy is to consider things in their relation to truth, Fichte insists, this means knowing them from this standpoint, and specifically in ontology, according to absolute form. The first part of the ontology, he explains, is then only an ontological justification of this true speculative high point, just like the first part of the whole system was an epistemological proof of it.

Now that the absolute is determined as essence, Fichte continues, it is inevitably involved with relation, which is supposed to be the characteristic of all concepts of this second part. Thus, he insists, the essence must be defined only in opposition to what is not essential, while the inessential can be understood only in relation to the essence. Fichte admits that we did find examples of such reciprocal determining already in the previous book, and indeed, one might even think that this new opposition means a relapse into similar antithesis. The difference is, he explains, that at the level of essence the opposition does not appear from outside, but is posited with the original concept. Thus, in order that an essence can be an essence, it has to have in itself implicitly the other that it then actualises into an opposition with itself and divides thus itself into a fundamental duality that still is unity.

The first and most formal determination of this concept, according to Fichte, is that the essence is the true being that remains always the same, while against it lies something infinitely self-destroying and changeable that is not being, but only seems to be or even is an illusion (Schein). Such a seeming being is not just nothing, he explains, just like essence is not merely being. Instead, essence is against other and even itself becomes something else, but also asserts itself and persists in unity with this difference and change. Similarly, the merely unessential or merely seeming to be shows in itself only what seems to be the essence. Here the infinite and finite become again separated, because the essence excludes what just seems to be from itself. Still, Fichte emphasises, what is purely nothing cannot seem to be anything. The seeming is then caught in the contradiction, he notes, that it seems even an appearance (Erscheinung) of essence, but then it would not be mere seeming.

Despite this self-refutation, Fichte says, the notion of seeming provides the starting point for all speculation: the absolute alone is truly the essential, while the finite sense world is in comparison only seeming. Thus, the absolute remains eternally the same or invariable throughout the variation of the finite world, and just like what seems to be still shows the essence, variation can also exist only through the invariable. The finite world is thus not ejected out of the absolute, as if the world would exist outside the absolute in any sense, but its independent existence is in general denied.

The essence appeared as the opposite of inessential that therefore was designated as what just seems to be. This seeming then annihilated itself and was proven to be just the appearance of essence. Thus, Fichte states, the inevitably shifting distinction or the infinite seeming is derived from the essence, and only because of this derivation is the essence not empty or just quantitative abstraction, but the qualitative fullness of positive infinity. The inessential or the seeming is fully eradicated, or it has changed itself into the fullness or the infinity of essence. In other words, Fichte explains, all that seems uncovers the essence, which presents its fundamental basis or ground (Grund) in what seems to be. Thus, the essence is to be next determined as a ground of its infinitely seeming distinctions.

Seeming distinctions are thus grounded in the infinity of essence itself, Fichte summarises. Just like the essence cannot be without grounding distinctions, all distinctions also appear only as unveiling or appearance of the hidden ground, thus, he concludes, the essence is complete only in both the ground and in its infinite unveiling, since only with this relation it is not anymore empty or abstract. Fichte points out that the word ground has here, and indeed, in the common use of language, two meanings. Firstly, ground refers to the foundation (Grundlage) that lies hidden under what appears. In this sense ground is contradictory, because it expresses itself in appearance, but also doesn’t. This contradiction leads, Fichte thinks, to the second meaning of the word, according to which ground is the sufficient reason or the explanatory principle (ratio) of an appearance. With such a ground, the appearance should immediately appear from it as its consequence, and only in combination with its consequence the ground is fully thought of.

From the essence immediately appears something else without any particular assistance, through the mere characteristics of the essence. What follows from the essence, Fichte suggests, could be called the absolute characteristic of the essence itself. By having this something or consequence follow from it, the essence becomes ground, and indeed, wouldn’t otherwise be a ground. Thus, Fichte concludes, ground and consequence are simply inseparable, and they reproduce the relation of finite and infinite in a more fundamental level. The difference is that the finite and the infinite are still more in the shape of opposition, while the unity of the ground and the consequence is already more intimate. The consequence appears from the invariable nature of ground, like it would flow out of or emanate from the unmoving rest of its being.

Fichte finds here a new definition for the concepts of finite and infinite. The finite should be determined as not a ground of itself, but a consequence of something else, while the infinite or the essence is, on the contrary, in general a ground, thus also a ground of itself. Fichte calls the infinite even the Ur-ground or absolute ground, which grounds itself and everything else: the absolute is through itself, while the finite is through the absolute. Then again, when we look at an individual or determined finite, he points out, it has to have a ground outside itself, and in this context the ground can be found only in other determined individuals. This returns us to the already familiar relation of other against other, but in a new form, where the different individuals are grounds and consequences of one another.

Thus, a determined individual is taken as a ground of another individual with a different quality. Indeed, Fichte says, ground must always be in some sense different from consequence, or if they would be thought as having identical determinations, they wouldn’t be thought as ground and consequence. He points out that such a relation must be based on an implicit and unjustified axiom that something can be generated as a consequence from a ground, although it is not present in this as such. This means that not just the being of the individual consequence, but also its characteristics should appear from its ground and that this wouldn’t be a ground, if both couldn’t be explained from it. Fichte takes this as the common philosophical understanding of this relation, expressed in the so-called proposition of sufficient reason, where an individual is not to be arbitrarily taken as a ground of another, but only if the being and the determination of this other can be sufficiently or completely explained from it.

Fichte thinks that the proposition of sufficient reason can be refuted through a familiar endless regression into the empty or negative infinite. In other words, in order to explain a determined individual b through another individual a, the a as a determined individual has to be again explained through a third x, which is again only an individual further to be explained, and so backwards in infinite. Each individual, Fichte concludes, would require for its grounding an infinite regress, or the sufficient reason is never achieved, because it would require endless individual grounds. The mistake, he thinks, is to attempt explaining an individual from an individual, since nothing individual can be a sufficient ground or reason for another, just as little as an individual can be a mere consequence of another individual.

The sufficient ground of an individual can lie only in an infinity, which was just presented in a mere quantitatively endless series of individual grounds. Yet, Fichte insists, this infinity should be understood positively and in its fulfilment. He suggests that this touches the earlier question, how from a ground can appear something other as its consequence, which is not contained in the ground. A ground should bring forth from itself what it itself is not, and similarly a consequence is neither the corresponding ground nor its part. Indeed, precisely this difference makes one the consequence and the other its ground, or if something had generated just itself, it itself would not be a ground nor would what appears from it be its consequence. Yet, Fichte insists, this bringing forward something that is not contained in the ground is a contradiction that should find its dialectical solution.

According to Fichte, the contradiction lies again in taking individuals as grounds and their negations as corresponding consequences. Finite individuals have already appeared as void and cancelled in the positive infinity, and indeed, it should be the characteristic of the current standpoint to not admit finite as final truth, thus, it would be foolish to remain with individual grounds. In other words, Fichte explains, there are no individual grounds or individual consequences, but every consequence is an infinite complex of grounding, just like conversely it itself is not just a consequence, but in another context again a ground. When all these one-sided notions are cancelled, we find the true, positive infinity, which is now understood as the sufficient and complete ground in all seemingly individual relations of grounds and consequences. This sufficient ground is once again the absolute essence.

Absolute is not just an Ur-essence, which could still be understood as remaining beyond and outside the inessential, Fichte insists, but an Ur-ground that uses the opposition of determinations to reproduce its internal infinity. If the finite was earlier opposed to essence as what only seems to be, here it is the inseparable consequence of essence or its immediate externalisation (Äusserung). This makes, Fichte says, Ur-essence into Ur-ground, which is thus not abstract and empty, but contains the infinite fullness of such externalisations. In Ur-ground the seeming becomes expressly the appearance of essence, since the absolute brings out its hidden essence into an infinitely unfolded externalisation. Fichte calls this a genuinely speculative worldview, although it still uses very abstract categories, which must be enlivened with symbolic expressions. It is a step forward, he thinks, because the finite world is not separate from the Ur-ground that reveals its essence in the immediacy of finite things, but unsatisfying, because the supposed revelation of hidden seems still just a nonsensical expression.

Ground and consequence can be comprehended only through one another. This means, Fichte explains, that when our understanding of one side changes, the other side must also be expressed differently. The immediate way to understand their opposition, he continues, is to see the ground as the inner core of the externalised consequence. Ground as internal is the hidden and invisible foundation that does allow a manifold of appearances to flow out from itself, but always retains a remainder that is not uncovered. Thus, Fichte argues, the externalisation of the essence can never adequately match its interior. The current standpoint asserts a separation between both halves, where the essence expresses itself in its externalisation only imperfectly, leaving behind an unexpressed interior, but the exterior is still not completely detached from the essence as a seeming illusion without any reality. The relation between internal and external is so one of ambiguity, where the internal appears in external and does not or the both are opposed and also not. Despite this ambiguity, Fichte insists, this relation is a necessary conceptual moment in the development of ontology, and indeed, used in other sciences (for instance, psychology of his time spoke of the interior of human mind being expressed imperfectly in their external behaviour).

When the internal essence and its externalisation are kept strictly opposed, Fichte suggests, their relation is shown to be contradictory. Essence as a ground determines itself in general into external and therefore its interiority is inseparable from its external side. In fact, Fichte says, the essence is the common element, while internal and external are only inseparable moments of the same essence as ground. Thus, he argues that the internal side cannot be called more essential than the external side, since the ground is equally present in both. We have thus managed to mediate the opposition of internal and external, but they still remain also distinguished.

The invisible internal is understood as determining itself into visible external. Fichte thinks that this relation corresponds to the common opposition of supersensuous and sensuous or ideal and real. In other words, everything external, immediate or given in the visible world should have an invisible internal ground lying beyond this immediacy. Essence is thus at this stage purely ideal, Fichte underlines, but as a ground it infinitely determines and realises itself in immediate actuality, and indeed, it is the original source of everything actual. Yet, he points out, the distinction between the ideal interior and the real exterior is becoming more and more non-existent, therefore, the ideal should itself be real and not unreachable beyond. The ideal should also be the only principle of actuality, Fichte adds, and especially sensuous individuals are not their own principles.

The relation of internal, hidden and invisible ground and external consequence has highlighted the side of separation, although ground does become visible in its externalisation. Still, Fichte assures us, internal and external are not anymore completely separated, but more like two sides of the same coin and they just have to be mediated. Indeed, he explains, internal and external are not separated, but only distinguished from one another. Thus, Fichte concludes, the absolute inseparability of both sides should be expressed more clearly: the internal ground is to be seen as the qualitative and ideal content that is shaped by the external consequence or form and thus made visible.

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

The latest result of Fichte’s ontological studies has been the concept of limitation, by which he means a positive quality that appears only through negation, that is, in opposition to all other qualities that it complements. Thus, he thinks, all finite entities should limit one another and so determine their characteristics: they maintain themselves precisely through this mutual negating and by being absolutely inseparable from others. In this category, Fichte thinks, converge all the previous concepts that are summarised in it in a new and higher manner. Thus, all synthesis should have its proper truth in the limitation: everything determined is only in such a way that it is connected to infinity of others and thus asserts itself with a completely particular characteristic belonging only to it. All isolation, Fichte suggests, is simply cancelled and everything antithetical is in general resolved into synthesis, and even further, the synthesis itself is infinitely unifying: everything is absolutely linked with everything else.

The conceptual level of limitation, Fichte thinks, should correspond to both position and negation. Thus, the beginning of limitation should somehow combine in itself both the determination (the beginning of position) and nothing or negativity (the beginning of negation). In other words, Fichte concludes, we should begin with a determination tainted with the negation of something else, which means, according to him, just a relation to this something else or other. The relation to others, he suggests, as the first and most immediate expression of the concept of limitation, means that everything is generally able to be determined by others. In other words, nothing is without any relation or nothing is isolated, and since it is determined or quantitatively and qualitatively limited, it is also open for receiving influences from others, but also has influence on these others. This concept, Fichte suggests, is the truth of both distinction and change, which could be thought as holding between absolutely isolated entities, while here we expressly understand that these entities are mutually determinable.

Relation to something else, Fichte argues, is the most comprehensive concept for the finite in general. Finite entities are in their determination still completely dependent and only moments for something else, thus, being for another or being determinable is the essential meaning of finite. Indeed, Fichte emphasises, this relation to something else is not accidental to the finite, that is, finite cannot fail to have it, but the quantitative and qualitative limit of the finite determination and therefore its fundamental character consists in being in its own being also only for something else.

The relation to something else means, firstly, Fichte suggests, the negation of the exclusive isolation of finite in general: finite is only for another. This concept of “for another”, he thinks, is here regarded abstractly, ignoring all the following categories complementing it. Then the finite exists only for another, but is nothing in itself and thus becomes only what seems to be for this other. The other, Fichte argues, must thus be called the true being or the thing in itself, while the existence of the finite is possible only by assuming a consciousness representing it. This idealistic insight could mean, he suggests, that the finite entities are real only in divine spirit, so that the creation of the world would be only a divine self-representation and perhaps also a partial representation of individual spirits. Fichte thinks that this theory is partially – but only partially – true, because it understands the notion of creation through the notion of divine consciousness. A second manner to understand the idealistic insight, Fichte continues, is that the concept of finity is limited only to natural things, while the spirits should be eternal and substantial realities: here, the sense world would be just delusion. Yet, both ways to grasp the idealistic insight, and indeed, all forms of idealism, Fichte insists, suffer from the mistake that they understand the concept of relation to others in an isolated fashion, ignoring the relative independence of the finite entities. Then again, what is true in them, according to Fichte, is the idealism of finite, according to which anything finite can exist only by letting the other shine through or realise itself in this finite.

Secondly, Fichte assures us, the concept of being for another retains also the positive meaning that in this outward limitation the finite also manages to confirm its own internal determination: the finite is related to or for itself or asserts itself. This does not mean that the relation to other would be completely unrelated, but instead, that this being creates its power to exist from its conflict with others. This self-relation or being for itself is therefore the same as the simple position, Fichte notes, but only unified with a relation to others that it complements. Self-assertion of something continuously reappears from threats to its independence that make it into a living activity.

The category of being for itself, in Fichte’s opinion, is the centre for all categories of quality. Just like simple determination changed into negative and just like from negativity appeared the absolute limited relation of everything to everything, all of these categories have now been collected in their proper result or in the infinitely self-reproducing assertion. Positive is not anymore just an abstraction without relation, but determined only in infinite relation to others. Furthermore, this relation is not external or quantitative, but internal reciprocal determinability. Finally, positive is not just a result of externally arriving determinations and nothing else, but it posits these determinations as appropriated and governed by itself. In conclusion, Fichte states that precisely by facing the infinite negation from others, the determined being receives its positive character, asserting permanently its place in the system of these negations.

The categories of relation to another and of self-assertion, Fichte continues, are now immediately combined: relation to another is the source of self-assertion, and the self-assertion again leads to infinite relation of everything to everything. This combination, he suggests, moves to a mediating unity of a position that is limited by an infinity of othera or asserts itself in infinity of reciprocal relations. According to Fichte, this synthetic concept of limitation is a new category of internal infinity that is distinct from the earlier externally endless process into infinity.

Fichte distinguishes within this internal infinity three moments. Firstly, every determined or finite being is in its self-assertion also for an infinitely other. In other words, each of the determined entities maintains itself against an infinity of others, while it also itself influences this infinity. Thus, both the self-assertion and the relation to others contain an infinity of moments that could be called the external side of the internal infinity. Fichte sees here embodied the proposition that every individual part of the universe is in connection with all others, being open to their influence and influencing them in turn. He notes that later we will see that the individual things are not externally connected into this system of reciprocal influence, but they themselves are derived from this infinity.

The second moment that Fichte emphasises is that every finite being contains this infinity in itself ideally: each is the middle point of infinite radii converging in it. He points out that this notion of internal infinity was already expressed in the Leibnizian idea that a monad reflects in itself the whole universe. Furthermore, Fichte recognises this notion also in the early Schellingian philosophy, which asserted the presence of an actual infinity or reason in the most individual and smallest details of the world. Fichte also thinks that if this thought would have been dialectically developed to its proper conclusion, it would have led to the insight that this absolute reason can only be an absolute spirit or the highest personality.

The second moment unites infinity immediately with determination that arises from its relation to a system of infinite determinations related to each other. Thus, Fichte suggests, the concepts of relation to another and self-assertion are fully balanced: in asserting itself, an individual retains and asserts also its other, and conversely, the infinite system of relations simply ascertains the self-assertion of each individual. Each determinate individual points, according to Fichte, over itself to an infinitely creative, but also ordering and harmonising power.

This creative and harmonising power is, for Fichte, the third and highest moment in the concept of infinity. The finite determinations can be thought only as comprehended in the infinite that always surpasses them by having more finite entities to be related to each other. Here we find again a case of external infinity, and Fichte admits it is a necessary part of this concept, but only as regulated by the internal infinity. Indeed, he insists, this externally infinite system can only exist through a positive comprehension or relating of finite to an infinity of others, whereby the finite is both destroyed and also retained.

Fichte takes this infinity that actively creates and relates finite entities as the first proper definition of absolute. It contains, in Fichte’s opinion, the previous definitions that the absolute is quantifying and qualifying, and the unity of these previous definitions is precisely the concept of an infinite, qualitatively determining and also qualities relating power. This absolute negates the finite, but also posits it at the same time. Thus, Fichte emphasises, although finite both is necessarily opposed to others and also itself becomes something else, in addition, the finite is also affirmed through the infinite or absolute. In other words, the finite has as its basis a determined original quality going through all its facets, which is provided by the absolute in inserting this finite into the system of reciprocally related determinations. This original quality remains one and the same both in being related to others and in becoming itself something else.

Fichte considers the just developed principle of an infinite qualification by the infinite absolute as the mediation of all previous categories and thus as the true internal infinite. The absolute creates infinitely many finite original positions and orders them into a system of reciprocally complementing, but therefore itself changing relations that assert themselves as essential and as necessary members of this reciprocal system. Earlier, Fichte reminds us, these original positions were called finite, but this has now been shown to be only a negative designation. Finite is to be recognised as finite, that is, as negative, he states, only in regard to its external distinctions and changes. Yet, both distinction and change just require complementing from the positive relation and the self-assertion. From an absolute or positive viewpoint, Fichte states, finite is infinite, firstly, because infinity of positive relations converge in it, and secondly, because even in becoming something else it still always remains the same. Fichte calls this the true or positive finity, because as positive it carries in itself also the moment of infinity.

Fichte thinks that the concept of positive finity fills a gap in the category of becoming or change. It solves a contradiction that pure becoming involved both an identity remaining same and an otherness distinguished from itself. The positive, unchangeable original determination, Fichte states, is the principle of unity that remains the same throughout the changing relations to other determinations and that still changes its characteristics and so involves also the opposed principle of changeability. This unity combines the otherwise separated moments of otherness into becoming, so that what does not otherwise become can in another sense become (Fichte thinks that Hegel’s notion of becoming lacks this unity and is thus the most contradictory of all concepts).

Fichte suggests that we have found the correct and the highest mediation between the infinite and finite. Finite is not anymore the merely negative or eternally disappearing moment in infinite, which would make infinite into a mere formal or negative process of such eternally posited and eternally disappearing moments. This negative process is, according to Fichte, the high point of Hegelian philosophy that does not expressly recognise the principle of an infinite qualification in finite. Speaking against Hegel, Fichte insists that the absolute should be the creator of infinite original positions that it also orders into a system of relations. In other words, the absolute posits a finite as originally determined against others, but also again cancels its mere finity and sustains it as enduring in change.

Fichte calls this process the truthful unity of infinite and finite, which is not just a formal unity, where the opposites would be balanced only dialectically. Instead, the infinite is the real, all fulfilling presence in finite, and the unity of both has appeared from the notion of the infinity of finite itself, since negating the finite negates only its negative side. Thus, Fichte says, the finite is not just endlessly vanishing, but an image of infinite. He explicitly opposes Hegel’s negative philosophy, according to which there is nothing finite, in which does not lie a contradiction that cancels it. In opposition to this standpoint, Fichte insists that contradiction or negativity means only one-sided formality, while the finite and limitation is internally infinite, since it is positive, original determination and not tainted with the contradiction, but sustained by the divine harmony and unity.

In these final concepts, Fichte thinks, the mediation of thesis and antithesis has found a completely new and higher expression. Earlier it might have seemed, he explains, as if the synthesis resulted only from a combination of the previous members, but here the case is completely opposite: the synthesis is the most original, creative and comprehensive, through which and in which the opposites only exist. Thus, the synthesis is the absolute that creates the opposites and relates them to one another, and here particularly it creates and orders the infinity of original positions. This opens up for us a new field of investigation, Fichte suggests. Earlier we were involved only with simple concepts that did change into one another and were related, but only in an external manner. Here, on the other hand, for the first time the concept is duplicated in itself into a higher or comprehensive and a lower or comprehended member. Thus, Fichte gives an example, the finite is only in the infinite that is a power positing and governing it. He suggests calling the relation between infinite and finite the original or absolute relation, since all further relations will be only further development of it.

The first part of ontology has thus led into a second part investigating relational concepts. Fichte considers this transition important, because it moves ontology from mere preliminary concepts to the proper task of speculation. Thus, the earlier fundamental determinations of absolute were always in opposition to predicates of finite, and it meant unmistakably a conflict between both conceptual spheres, if we designated the absolute as being without quantity, but also as quantifying everything, as indifference, but also as comprehending all finite differences or as identity, but as governing all finite distinctions. Fichte notes that it was earlier a problem how these two sides of the absolute could be combined, but it had to be passed over, because it could only be dealt in the sphere of relational concepts. The earlier definitions were then only provisional and elementary, while here, on the other hand, the principle of distinction has been found in the absolute itself: the second member or the created, finite world has appeared from it, which expresses the original relation of absolute to itself that the ontology tries to establish.

Before moving to this new field of investigation, Fichte summarises the first part. The task of ontology was to solve the question what actuality means or what are its universally valid forms. We began with the Ur-categories, which showed a paradigmatic structure for all categories: a thesis is possible only in relation to antithesis and both are comprehended in a synthesis as the true, perfect form of actuality, while thesis and antithesis are only its moments, parts or members, without any truth or meaning by themselves. Thus, everything actual was revealed to be a this (Dieses), absolutely mediating these oppositions, but because it was at first just empty this, it could be determined only quantitatively. Quantity was hence the first category or the most abstract form of actuality, with no particular content, but expressly grasped as an independent concept. The further divisions of quantity – number, measure and grade – were only in relation to other quantities, which led to the synthesis of all comprehending quantitative infinity: every number, every measure and every grade existed only in a system of infinite mutually determining quantitative relations.

The whole level of quantity refuted itself, Fichte continues summarising, and quantity was revealed to be a mere form of a quality. This simply qualified determination is the finite, which again was positive only antithetically or in opposition to another and in changing its characteristics to something else. Thus, this position inevitably had a negative side both in distinctions and in changeability. Although seemingly threatened with annihilation, it still maintained itself through a true synthetical relation, where the finite is grasped as really positive or as internal infinity, which in change appeared as the presence of a stable reality. These negative concepts are thus completed by a mutually affirming relation, and from this positing of limited original positions appeared as the highest result in this circle of categories the concept of truly creative infinite or absolute, in which and through which alone the finite is.

The concept of finite proves its own dependence in all instances, Fichte states, and it finds its truth only when raised in the synthetical unity. Thetic this, limited quantity and qualitative determination have all refuted themselves in isolation, but at the same time they have also refuted the negation or antithesis of their own levels. Present in everything, Fichte concludes, is the positively filling and also infinitely relating absolute, and the former categories have all appeared as mere forms of actualisation of the absolute. Thus, when the finite is thought in isolation or when someone wants to isolate it, it remains contradictory in the true sense of the word, but this attempt to isolate refutes itself: the finite is not at all by itself, but only in absolute.

It is thus possible to distinguish two results in the first part, Fichte suggests. Firstly, concerning the formal side, at all stages we have advanced from abstract to concrete, and every individual conceptual moment has been more concretely determined than the previous one. The beginning or something was the emptiest notion, Fichte reminds us, and we have raised ourselves to the concept of absolute, which is not just the most concrete concept possible in this sphere of ontology, but in general the principle of everything concrete. Secondly, concerning the content, the performed synthesis, that is, the complete thinking of all antithetical relations has refuted all the forms of finite (thesis-antithesis) and shown them as mere moments of infinite that actualises itself in them. The original synthesis or the absolute has appeared from all these opposites as the only true and actual, but also infinite being, which according to thus far investigated forms of actuality could even be called both quantitatively and qualitatively infinite. This absolute is not just a formal, empty actuality, which would make it again just a quantity, Fichte insists, because everything merely formal has always refuted itself. Instead, the absolute has appeared as a principle of reality that, on the one hand, is beyond the confines of ontology, but on the other hand, has forms that can be fully investigated by the ontology and that are in essential parts already known, although how or as what absolute actualises itself remains completely inaccessible to ontology.

Fichte states that he has already provisionally confirmed the basic characteristic of his ontology that it considers an absolute, which in itself is not merely formal, only in regard to its forms. Indeed, he thinks to have shown that in the self-realising act of the absolute is to be found the principle of these forms. This leads us to a higher concept of absolute as infinitely self-realising and self-forming: absolute is not anymore just a lifeless infinite being, but a living, creative unity that gives itself both infinite form and actuality. This completely new concept can be designated at first and in most general manner only as essence, which means defining the absolute as the infinite essence.