Fichte’s ordering of the stages thus far considered – intuition or perception, internalisation or memory and imagination – has been clearly influenced by Hegel’s psychology. The difference is that while for Hegel these stages form nothing more than a clear progression in an ideal development of consciousness (first perceiving external world, then internalising it or forming images resembling the external world and finally modifying these images), Fichte also sees here a progression of finding deeper and deeper foundations for consciousness. Thus, he calls imagination (Einbildung) a turning point in his discussion, as he at this stage finds what he already at the introduction of the book named as the very centre of consciousness, which in addition to imagination, he also calls the capacity of representation (Vorstellung). In other words, he has now discovered that the essence of consciousness consists in creating representations (at this point we might imagine him to be speaking of mental images).
Although Fichte speaks of a capacity of representation, he is quick to point out that this does not mean that representing would be just one activity of consciousness beside, say, feeling and desiring. Instead, he wants to say that consciousness is by nature always representing. In this, representing corresponds to living in the unconscious functions of our organic body: living is not just one thing our body does, but our body lives always (at least as long as it is our body). Now, these two sides – conscious representing and unconscious living – are linked in sensation, which is both the pinnacle of organic life, but also the starting point of consciousness. We represent as soon as we start to sense, Fichte says, but the sensation does not produce our capacity of representation or consciousness, as sensualists had said, but merely awakens it.
Now, imagination as a separate level in the progression of consciousness is for Fichte the purest expression of the capacity of representation. This capacity did appear in the previous stages, where consciousness recognised similarities between past and present perceptions through unconsciously formed representations of universal patterns. At the point we have reached, the consciousness can create these representations consciously, having thus in a sense liberated itself from mere acceptance of sensations as such. Yet, he at once adds, consciousness can never be completely liberated from sensations, because its creations must always be rooted in sensations, and even the most abstract concepts like being and nothing must be something that can be developed out of sensations. Thus, Fichte admits, sensualists were right at this point, although they then failed to understand the need for the activity of consciousness that assimilates and works on sensations.
All our perceptions are combinations of a manifold of sensations, and since our first representations are reproductions of perceptions, all of them must also contain several partial representations, Fichte notes. Now, because we have been able to reproduce perceptions as representations, we must have at first analysed the perceptions to their parts, reproducing first the partial representations. This activity – or indeed, the wider activity of disassembling not just perceptions, but also representations – Fichte calls analysing imagination. This analysis does not expand nor change the content of the given representation, but separates and brings into distinct consciousness what formerly was given in unification with others. Thus, it at least can unfold at least formally new representations, all the way to the level of absolutely simple representations that cannot be analysed further.
The analytical imagination, Fichte suggests, is a precursor of analytical thinking, which is used to analyse concepts. Now, analytical thinking, he thinks, is closely connected to the capacity of abstraction, which regards the results of analysis (say, a colour of a rose) as separate from its original context (in the just mentioned example, as a colour that could belong to other entities in addition to the rose). Similarly, in Fichte’s opinion, analytical imagination is linked to reflection, whereby an individual representation can be taken as a sole object of our attention. Indeed, he notes, even the very act of reflecting something can be taken as a new object of reflection, leading to an indefinite series of ever more abstract reflections.
Reproduction of representations or reproductive imagination consists then in combining the results of the analysis back to a unity in a synthesis. Yet, Fichte notes, this reproductive synthesis is only one modification of synthetic imagination. In other words, we can also speak of a truly productive imagination that connects partial representations in a novel fashion. This combination, Fichte thinks, can happen in an unconscious manner and then we are speaking of creative phantasy. Phantasy does follow some conceptual pattern, but we are not just aware of it when creating. Fichte even suggests that a real poet (and by poets he also refers to musicians, painters, and indeed, artists of any kind) can follow an insight into a speculative truth about the divine and the world. He goes further and suggests that everyone of us has such hunches or divine leaps of thought, but only a poet can express them, although even they cannot control the coming of such inspirations.
It is natural to assume that in addition to such unconscious use of productive imagination there would also be conscious use of it. Fichte agrees with the assumption and notes that such a conceptual synthesis is what essentially governs synthetical thinking, and more precisely, judgement and deduction.
What imagination produces is internal images – indeed, sensations, perceptions, memories and even thoughts are all something within consciousness. Yet, Fichte notes, we have a tendency to externalise these internal representations (Vorstellung) and make them presentations (Darstellung). The aforementioned phantasy of poets usually involves such externalisation in the shape of a drive to artistic presentation that strives to make images of one’s imaginations in some external material. Beyond art, Fichte points out that all humans do this externalisation when they express their representations in the form of sounds. Indeed, language use will be the next step in our progress.
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