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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.