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.