Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge (1833)

If in the last post we saw Fichte trying to determine the basic characteristic of a new philosophical system from the historical context and its requirements, in his Grundzüge zum Systeme der Philosophie. Erste Abtheilung: Das Erkennen als Selbsterkennen Fichte tries to determine what philosophy should be like from its very concept. Or, to be more precise, he begins by trying to define what the very concept of philosophy should be. Indeed, he adds, philosophy should begin from itself, which means just that philosophy should begin by determining what it means to do philosophy.

Fichte does not completely ignore the history of philosophy, and his outlook is that of many other German philosophers of the time: all the different philosophies are just moments of one whole, developing through periods of division into different systems and contraction of them into one whole. Still, he admits, this context is something we can just anticipate at the very beginning of philosophy and nothing we can assume. Remembering this, he says, we could still preliminarily note that different philosophical standpoints are its different self-definitions, and while further standpoints become more and more clear about the meaning of philosophy, in the very beginning we can have only the most universal and simplest definition of philosophy.

Beginning of philosophy is an indefinite notion, Fichte continues. It can mean a subjective drive to do philosophy. This drive can take many forms, depending on the individual, but it still is something we can find immediately in ourselves. Beyond these subjective drives, there is an objective beginning of a system. There can be only one objective beginning, Fichte emphasises, but finding it is not an easy task. Yet, what he wants to especially guard us against is confusing the objective beginning of philosophy with subjective beginnings. In fact, he adds, many philosophers have begun subjectively from historical conditions that have driven them to choose some concrete beginning. Such a beginning based on our subjective drive is arbitrary, because it works only for this particular individual, Fichte argues. He mentions several such subjective beginnings, which all happen to be ways other recent German philosophers began their philosophies: I of the older Fichte, identity of subjective and objective from Schelling and Hegelian being that equals nothing.

Although Fichte insists on not confusing objective and subjective beginning of philosophy, he suggests that the objective beginning could be found through the subjective beginning – that is, although we should not take any particular subjective beginning as the objective beginning, we could determine objective beginning from the very fact that we do have subjective drives toward making philosophy. This means, he explains, returning to the absolute beginning of our thinking: what made us do philosophy? This is the only way to discover a foundation for philosophy, he adds. Naturally, the beginning cannot be justified through any arguments, since it is supposed to predate anything else in our thinking. Still, we should be able to discover it as a beginning for all our cognitive abilities.

What then is this subjective drive to philosophy? Fichte describes it as a decision to think. In other words, it is a decision to move from the immediate state of consciousness and its given content through cognitive labour to knowledge of truth. This drive is still just an indefinite craving for a higher cognition and it can be further determined only within philosophy. Since we already know many things in our immediate state of consciousness, the question arises why is this not enough. Fichte explains, quite in the manner of the first chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit, that the content of our immediate state of consciousness is variable and with the destruction of this content the supposedly true knowledge becomes untrue. Thus, in striving to do philosophy we search for proper stable knowledge, because consciousness can rest only with such knowledge.

Fichte has thus discovered the opposition between knowledge of variable and contingent matters and knowledge of non-variable, eternal, necessary and lawlike matters. Furthermore, he adds, this latter type of knowledge can be achieved only through a certain activity, which he preliminarily calls thinking. This knowledge of eternal matters Fichte names science. Problem is that there are many particular sciences and we thus have to distinguish philosophy in particular from the other sciences. Fichte notes that the other individual sciences have particular topics, while philosophy does not. Indeed, such an individualisation of topics is even against the notion of philosophy, because philosophy should be the universal science. Fichte then defines philosophy as the science of sciences, that is, as knowledge of the highest and most universal laws of all being and cognition.

The next obvious question is what is this activity of thinking that is supposed to be required for realising philosophy. Fichte notes that to understand what thinking is we must ourselves think, because only the activity of thinking makes us internalise our concepts. In other words, to become thinkers we must see how to progress from the immediate state of non-thinking to thinking. Indeed, this is for Fichte the only universally valid objective beginning of philosophy. At the same time, since this progression is the development of our consciousness, the beginning or the first part of philosophy must be a theory of consciousness or the study of the faculty of cognition.

At the beginning of this study, we know very little about consciousness. Indeed, the only thing we should know is what our beginning from the subjective drive determined: we know immediately only contingent and variable matters, but we should strive to know what is necessary and stable. If the object of our striving Fichte named thinking, he calls its beginning perceiving. What other states possibly lie between these two extremes is yet unknown. Still, we do know we have to begin from the immediate state of consciousness, because nothing else is given to us. Indeed, Fichte adds, we can never really escape the standpoint of our consciousness, and other things come into our attention only when they are revealed to our consciousness.

Fichte notes that the transition from perception to thinking is not possible, unless there’s something common that stays the same between these two states. The simple solution is that this common element is our being conscious of these states or our self. This consciousness, Fichte explains, is then a stable unity in comparison with a variable manifold of states, which are then like images representing some content that exists independently of the consciousness and toward which it just points without making it. Fichte describes this content as being (Sein) in relation to non-objective image (Bild), both of which are concepts mutually determining one another: image has the content of being as reflected, while being has the same content as not reflected. Consciousness then consists of placing being and image in opposition and of connecting them as inseparable.

Consciousness can relate being and image, Fichte continues, only through a higher image, where consciousness ponders its own activity of opposing and relating being and image. In other words, he explains further, consciousness must be an image that conceives itself to be an image in opposition to being. This more complex state of consciousness Fichte calls self-consciousness. In this complex state, consciousness is thus aware of being in some determined state of consciousness, but also of its own self as a resting unity behind these particular states. The self Fichte describes as purely self-transparent and self-knowing unity in multiplicity. Because it thus has an essential link to these multiple states, it can exist only in connection with determinate consciousness. Consciousness must thus always be determined or in particular conditions, while the self is a formal unity for the variable content.

The first state the self or consciousness finds itself in Fichte calls Empfindung, which we might translate in this context as sensation: consciousness has given, determined affections, content of which it cannot change. These on-going sensations form the external world, and the self becomes gradually aware of being distinct from this external world. The receptivity to this necessary effect of the external world on the self Fichte calls Sinn, which somewhat confusingly we should also translate as sense or sensation. Still, this passive receptivity is the original root of our consciousness.

Now, we do not have just one, but many sensations, which are differentiated from one another spatially and temporally. In a Kantian fashion, Fichte notes that our faculty of sensation is based on an intuition of space and time, which enable the differentiation of sensations. Yet, he immediately adds, this intuition is actually just an abstraction or indicates a mere possibility of differentiating sensations, since we always intuit space and time only as filled by sensations. Following the lead of his father, Fichte notes that we also intuit ourselves as in space and time, which means that we have an immediate spatio-temporal presence or a body. Compared to abstractions of pure space and time, the body is our actualised receptivity. It is also our immediate individuality and we exist only as embodied.

Fichte notes in passing that receptivity of our body is divided into individual senses, but adds immediately that a more detailed study of these senses is the task of, on the one hand, psychology (when it comes to sensations as conscious states, and on the other hand, physiology (when the sensations are taken as preconscious state of our bodily presence). What is important for the theory of consciousness is that these various sensations received by different senses (cold, warm, sweet, sour, etc.) are the material elements of our consciousness. Furthermore, they act as stimuli that make the soul first sense itself as separate from what is sensed, then to consciousness proper and finally to self-consciousness. Fichte explains that, in a sense, self-consciousness is present even in the first sensations, since only self-conscious entities can sense, but it is still, as it were, sleeping and awakened only by the external stimuli. One could thus say that the sensations as the first state of consciousness already drive the consciousness to proceed to further states of its development.

Although consciousness has been thus far described as mere passive receptivity, Fichte explains that its feeling of being restricted by sensations brings immediately forth an opposed tendency to appropriate what is external to it. This opposite tendency is will, and as it also needs the stimulus of sensations, it must be embodied. Indeed, Fichte says, the first act of will is its mastery over its own body, which is then an absolute tool of the will. The embodied will or drive develops different goals, which it tries to achieve through an ordered series of actions.

Creation of this ordering, Fichte concludes, is performed by a third faculty besides sensation and will, which remains neutral and mediates between passive sensation and active will. In effect, this third faculty is the free representation of ideas in our consciousness. This faculty of representation is the true centre of consciousness, which both conserves sensations and makes them the property of consciousness by renewing them, but also creates new ones, through which it leads the will. Thus, the representative activity has as its parts both memory and imagination. Awakened by the first strike of sensation, consciousness changes sensation into an inner representation and thus makes it into its own property. When new sensations constantly arise, the internal flow of these representations becomes self-imagination, which both conserves sensed representations and forms new ones. This flow of representations works then as a material for further development of the whole cognition and for the actions of the will. The three faculties of sensation, representation and will are thus entwined to one another, Fichte insists, and indeed, just aspects of one faculty of representation.

The main conclusion of Fichte’s study has been that the representative consciousness is determined by spatio-temporal sensations. This, he explains, is the essence of perception, which was the supposed starting point of the development of consciousness to thinking. Yet, he says, even the perception has its own development, and in its first state it is just an undeveloped sensation, where the consciousness just passively observes what it senses. In this specific state, confused sense impressions flow in the consciousness that still cannot separate anything determinate from this flow and that cannot even separate itself from these external representations. In a sense then, while plenty is observed, nothing is yet known, since there are yet no distinctions or comparisons.

Without really any evidence, Fichte speculates that children live in such a state at the first moments of their lives. In such a state, the sensations are felt more intensively and strongly and thus awaken the consciousness forcefully. He also assumes, again without much evidence, that we might return to such a state during severe depression, especially if it proceeds to a level of complete stupor. In the posts to come, we shall see how Fichte thinks consciousness will develop from this supposed starting point to its final phase, where it should be capable of doing philosophy.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Of the opposition, turningpoint and goal of current philosophy (1832)

(1796–1879)

In a rarely seen manner, the son of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Immanuel Hermann, followed the line of work of his father and became also a philosopher. Unlike his illustrious relative, the younger Fichte was content to see himself not as a revolutioner in philosophy, but as a link in the steady progress of the currents of philosophy – a sign of times, when the Hegelian idea of a rational plan underlying the history of philosophy was in vogue.

Fichte’s attempt in his work, Über Gegensatz, Wendepunkt und Ziel heutiger Philosophie, was to recognise the next necessary step the philosophy had to mae,k by studying the internal development of the current systems of philosophy. Fichte’s starting point is, naturally enough, what he calls constructive philosophy, meaning the school of Schelling and Hegel, whom Fichte considers continuing the work of Spinoza. He especially concentrates his efforts on Hegel’s system of philosophy, as the most complete and systematic form of that philosophical trend.

Fichte takes Hegel’s system as having two important results. First was the development of the dialectical method, which Fichte sees as a further development of the method of his own father. He takes as a kernel of this method the process of finding in some forms of knowledge (e.g. concepts) inherent problems that organically lead to a development of further, more complete forms – indeed, this is what he is himself purporting to do in his investigation of the current systems of philosophy. Yet, he adds, Hegel misunderstood his own method, when suggesting that this same method would mirror processes of the real world, especially because Fichte sees Hegel as not properly justifying this assumption.

The second important result, according to Fichte, was the development of Spinozan substance or God into subject. In other words, Fichte explains, while the Spinozan substance was just a dead unity in which different individual entities had just disappeared, Hegel understood it as a living process that created and eventually also destroyed different individuals. Yet, Fichte adds, Hegel failed in thinking that God was nothing more than this abstract process, while the true result should have been that God is also an individual person separate from other individuals. Instead, Fichte says, for Hegel,God had a self-conscious personality only through philosophers explaining what God is.

Indeed, Fichte regards Hegel’s philosophy in a rather dreary manner: although it appeared to be ingrained in deep truths, it finally just emptied itself of all deepness. Thus, the desire to be united with God became in Hegelianism the cold theorem that God exists only through consciousness, while the mystical idea of God knowing themselves through creation became the dullness of philosophy being the self-awareness of God. In other words, Fichte continues, Hegelian God turned to humans not because of caring about these individuals, but for reaching self-awareness. The final end of Hegel’s system Fichte takes to be political quietism: the current world is divine and so highest wisdom and virtue, no matter how bad the individual’s lot is.

The basic flaw Fichte identifies as leading Hegel into what he considers a pantheistic nightmare is the latter’s supposed tendency to identify thinking with being and both ultimately with God. What is more, Fichte insists, this identification is wholly unjustified and it should be justified before Hegel could even begin his philosophy: indeed, a different beginning would lead to a different philosophy. But Hegel thought, Fichte suggests, that his train of thought was just what God was thinking, trying to make objective what is ultimately subjective.

A counterpoint to Hegelian pantheism Fichte sees in mystical philosophies of Franz Baader and Anthon Günther. Such thinkers, Fichte thinks, based their philosophy on a temporal and individual revelation, and while this method clearly was unscientific, mysticism could at least give a stimulus to good philosophy. For these mystical thinkers, Fichte continues, the world was a free creation of personal divinity and conscious creatures were originally good images of this God. The mystic considered humanity to have fallen from this high position and with it also turning nature into a realm of death. The history of the natural and the human world after fall would otherwise be further estrangement from God, unless grace hadn’t intervened .

Fichte admires mystical philosophers, but does not think mysticism is wholly sustainable. Mysticism, he argues, is based on the idea of the free fall of evil from God. This assumption means that the perfection of humanity has already been reached at the beginning of their existence. Yet, Fichte insists, what is conceptually first or perfect cannot be temporally first, because then God could not reveal themselves through the development of creatures: indeed, the originally perfect creature would not even be distinct from God. Furthermore, Fichte adds, the notion of fall is eventually just a symbolic expression that merely hides holes in speculation.

What is required, Fichte suggests, is a mediating viewpoint between the Hegelian and the mystic standpoints. This mediating standpoint would take the dialectical method of Hegel and use it to justify a more mystical notion of a personal God. But what the dialectical method is to be applied to is a further philosophical standpoint. This third standpoint differs from both Hegelianism and mysticism in that while the two were occupied, Fichte says, with God, this new standpoint was occupied with human consciousness. Thus, Fichte calls it the standpoint of reflection.

The two founding fathers of the reflective philosophy Fichte identifies as Kant and Jacobi, while later representatives of this philosophy, like Fries and Echenmayer, merely chose to follow one of the two or tried to produce an uneasy reconciliation between them. The Kantian route, Fichte says, ended ultimately with a bare scepticism, where the consciousness was revealed to know nothing else than its own representations and really just reflected itself. This result is a complete contradiction, Fichte argues, because consciousness should be consciousness of something beyond itself.

The second, Jacobian route admitted that Kantian denial of true knowledge is partially correct, when it comes to ordinary, reflective knowledge. Yet, it insisted, we also have another capacity immediately reaching the ultimate reality or God – capacity that is often called faith. Fichte applauds the Jacobian point that we have a basic connection to reality, which underlies the rest of our consciousness. Still, he finds in this standpoint the basic fault that in a sense agrees with fault of the both Hegelian and mystical philosophies: the basic principle of the Jacobians or the faith is never argued for in a proper fashion, but just assumed.

The new route Fichte says the philosophy should take is to reconcile these disparate current trends into a coherent whole. He admits that he is not completely original and mentions a few minor figures of the time as his predecessors. A more complete account of this new system of philosophy Fichte leaves for his further works, but he does indicate some basic characteristics of it. This new philosophy should begin with a study of consciousness and take us to the Kantian problem of complete scepticism. The very absurdity of this position should then lead us to the faith of Jacobi, which is now justified through dialectical method. The result of this approach would then be the acceptance of a personal God as underlying our consciousness.