Although Fichte appeared to move fom representations to thinking through the use of language, he now appears to ignore the role of language and emphasise the role of analysis. When a representation has been analysed into its parts, these parts are now universal in the sense that they can be attached to different individual representations in different contexts, which then appear particular in relation to this universal. Such a universal representation, Fichte says, is called concept (Begriff), when it is consciously connected to particular representations it comprehends. Concept in this sense does not then materially differ from representation, and for instance, a representation of red becomes a concept when it is connected to particulars, that is, when we become conscious of a plurality of representations in which red can appear as a sign.
Development of a concept has then three stages, Fichte continues. We are first conscious of particular perceptions and representations that contain something common or fall under the same universal. This is essentially what happened at the stage of pattern recognition: we must have had an immediate awareness of a concept, before we consciously developed it. Because of this pre-awareness, Fichte thinks, we can say that the concepts are not mere subjective inventions, but something we just discover in things.
After the stage of recognition or comparison, Fichte notes, the different representations with similarities are analysed and commonalities are distinguished from differences. The move to the analytical phase is natural, since we must have already been aware of there being such commonalities. Analysis just emphasises this immediate consciousness by clearly distinguishing universality from all individual perceptions and representations and their differences.
The final result of the analysis is for Fichte the ignoring of or abstracting from particulars, leaving only the common unity or universality, which is then an abstract concept. Abstraction is a negative condition for the formation of the abstract concept, while its positive condition is an already occurring collection of similar perceptions and representations and their comparison and the connection of the abstract concept to this manifoldness. Abstract concept is then, Fichte says, in a sense universal, because all the differences of individual representations have disappeared in it – or at least we are not actively conscious of them. In another sense, he immediately adds, it is the unity that combines all the different representations comprehended under it: while the conceptual abstraction sets the differences aside, it still leaves awareness of a relation to that from which the abstraction is made.
With concept, in Fichte’s opinion, consciousness has arrived at the level of thinking. Thus, he thinks, we have found the solution to the first task set in the introduction to philosophy, since we have seen how immediate consciousness or perception develops into thinking. Now, the perception was described as knowing of contingent or variable, which consciousness tries to overcome by taking away the contingent and variable, in order to know what is universal and eternal in them – in other words, to know the truth in its appearance. Fichte notes that even in its lowest stages consciousness has tried to bring out from immediately given perceptions the constant universal which the individual perceptions are recognised to fall under. Thinking is then not just a particular capacity besides e.g. perceiving and representing, but it has already been present and active in these, that is, all consciousness is thinking, just more or less developed.
When eternal is known, Fichte suggests, what is individual and immediate stops being contingent, because it can then be derived from eternal and we understand what appears to us. Full understanding of what is eternal must thus contain understanding of manifoldness comprehended under it. The eternal is then not just universal, but also a concrete unity of a manifold of determinations, which as a whole present perfectly its essence. Fichte calls such a concrete universal or eternal an idea.
Yet, Fichte remarks, at first we are not yet conscious of any idea, but only of abstract universals or concepts. Individual perceptions and representations are then comprehended under a concept, but in addition to this particular concept they fall also under other conceptual universalities. There are thus many external abstractions or concepts, in which the first layer of contingence has been taken away from individual representations, but we haven’t discovered their idea or essential universality. In comparison, the universality of abstract concepts does not concern the internal essence of things, because they have been just put together from external comparison of given perceptions and representations.
Even if concept means just external universality, according to Fichte, it does not contain mere external signs for knowing an individual, but the collection of commonalities of similar individuals at least points to their idea or essence: for instance, if the concept of tree has signs common to most or all trees, we presuppose that these signs are based on the idea of tree. Knowing a concept we thus have a hunch of an idea without being express conscious of it, and even the content of the idea can be present in the concept, although the justification of that content is missing. Fichte hence thinks it a correct advice that we should begin from determined concepts that contain also essential determinations presaging the idea.
Fichte then starts with such abstractions from individual given perceptions or with determined concepts as the immediate result of the previously described process of concept formation. These concepts are made on the basis of the whole expanse of perceptions, he says, and their possible content is thus limited by nothing. Still, as determined concepts they must have some content, because they comprehend a particular manifold of individual perceptions. This content, or as we would call it, intension of the concept gives it also extension or a set of individual perceptions falling under it. Intension and extension thus presuppose one another, but in an inverse relation: the greater the extension, the poorer the intension, and the richer the intension, the smaller the extension.
Both intension and extension of a concept are variable, Fichte continues, in the sense that we can arbitrarily add or remove signs from it: thus taking a sign away from the concept of the bird of prey makes it the concept of the bird, while adding one makes it the concept of eagle. In other words, a determined concept does not refer to any essential distinction, but to a mere provisional stopping point in the process of abstracting, which could be continued, leading to a new concept. Concept, Fichte concludes, is then essentially in a relation to other concepts both under and above it.
Fichte now introduces two relations between concepts – subordination and superordination – which are essentially just converses of one another: a more abstract concept or genus superordinates a more concrete one or species, which is in its turn subordinated to the genus. Fichte thinks that these relations are arbitrary, because they are based on mere arbitrary choice of how much to abstract. Now, finding a genus of something does not tell very much, he thinks, and we try to fill this emptiness by finding what species belong to a certain genus. Such species of the same genus are then coordinated concepts.
Somewhat confusingly, Fichte suggests that coordinated concepts come in two varieties. The first variety would not actually be a case of coordination as Fichte appears to describe it, since it consists of a collection of concepts making explicit what determinations are comprehended in the content or intension of the “higher” concept”: thus, Fichte says, in the concept of humanity we could find further concepts of organic, living, ensouled and rational. What Fichte is here describing is an analysis or definition of a concept.
The second variety Fichte brings forward seems, on the other hand, a true case of coordinated concepts. In this case, these concepts divide the extension of the “higher” concept into mutually exclusive opposites (e.g. when angles are divided to acute, right and obtuse angles). This division then complements the definition, because the former presents fully the extension of a concept and the latter the intension.
All of these conceptual relations, Fichte insists, are still based on the arbitrary nature of abstraction. Question is whether the abstraction does have any essential limits, that is, whether there is any highest genus or lowest species. Fichte thinks that insofar as we are still speaking of concepts, it is always possible to point out further species under it, because otherwise we wouldn’t be speaking of a concept, but of an individual perception or representation. Then again, he adds, the highest genus must be reachable, because abstraction must eventually run out of determinations to take away. Fichte calls this final result of abstraction Ur-Begriff, which we might translate as the root concept: it is the most abstract concept with the emptiest intension and the greatest extension.
Now, the root concept should be an abstraction from all content and therefore purely undetermined. Still, as a concept it should still contain at least an implicit reference to all the qualities it has been abstracted from: it could be determined in any manner whatsoever. Fichte thinks that this pure void of determinations is thus contradictory: as a concept in general, it should be determined in some manner, but the only determined thing about it is that it has no determinations.
This somewhat empty result of concept formation, Fichte thinks, points out that we cannot be satisfied with mere concepts. If we go too high on the conceptual hierarchy, the emptier our concepts become, but if we go too low, the more inessential the determinations become. Universal and particular ends of the conceptual hierarchy fall thus always apart. What is now required, Fichte suggests, is to put the two in essential relation, which happens in the next stage of the development or judgement.
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