As we embark on the topic of knowledge or Erkenntnis, Fichte notes that it is not really anything beyond perceiving or thinking, but is just perceiving and thinking filled with actual content, while earlier they were regarded as mere capacities. Thus, he explains, we again pass through the very same development we have already witnessed: we begin with indivudual perceptions and by collecting, comparing and distinguishing them try to reach thinking. Although thinking is thus the goal of knowledge, the world of perception in its qualitative infinity remains the basis of all knowledge. Perception in its purity, Fichte concludes, remains thus an ineradicable basis, towhich we must return to orient us. Although speculation then occasionally contradicts common concepts and opinions of empirical thinking and declares them unsatisfying, it should not despise pure content of perception, because this is the first source of reality for consciousness.
Fichte thus speaks for a return to the beginning or to the immediacy of consciousness, which has received now a new meaning: the immediate is the revelation of eternal. Thus, he continues, taken purely as such, without addition of any one-sided categories, immediate consciousness always has truth, and no purely grasped phenomenon is without universal meaning. True a posteriori is then, Fichte insists, always at the same time a priori, and in their essence the two are not opposed. Perception or Anschauung is thus awareness of the immediately present truth, yet, perception itself does not yet understand this, but this requires a more developed form of consciousness.
The principle of correct experience, Fichte explains, is then pure, genetic perception of the object: only when I live through the object or when it develops itself in front of me in all its conditions and connections to others or in its whole life process, have I experienced and known it. This perceptual knowing contains also the concept or the essence of the object, because what it reveals in its whole lived through appearance is not just individual and contingent, but its internal nature or universal essence. Fichte calls such a freely performed perception immersed in an object observation (Beobachtung).
First condition of observation, Fichte says, is to grasp the object in its purity. This means especially removal of categories or abstract concepts, which have been used with the erroneous presupposition that phenomena are to be explained and interpreted. Worst option, he thinks, is to inject one’s own opinion or theory into topic, because this does not ruin just a perception of an individual object, but disturbs the whole perception as a source of knowledge. Fichte considers it thus the most important step toward correct experience to keep away all untested categories, like matter, fluid, capacity, force, drive etc. as unrequired and interrupting research. If such are required for understanding a certain group of appearances, this should happen with awareness that these categories mean nothing real, but are mere fictions.
Second condition, Fichte adds, is to grasp the object in its natural development and attached to the whole complex of its surrounding phenomena. This second condition, he thinks, completes and justifies the first, isolating step: to grasp the most sharply defined characteristics of an object presupposes its foregoing isolation, which is thus essential for knowing its genesis and for bringing into consciousness the whole context of its appearance. Nothing is really isolated, Fichte suggests, thus, nothing is to be grasped as such. The main error in all scientific studies is to take an individual as a ground for other individuals, when ground lies always in a complex of interacting moments. Only by looking at the context can the reciprocal interaction of ground and consequence or their internal identity be perceived and recognised.
The investigation of the context of an individual phenomenon already presupposes, Fichte says, that we can generate this phenomenon under certain conditions and thus govern its true essence. Thus, we need to progress to experiments or creation of determined phenomena through art in order to know the law governing it. Experimenting observation is only more closely developed consciousness of what lies as immediate presupposition of all perception, Fichte thinks, because we have already seen, he reminds the reader, that all individuals manifest universal concept and the immediate manifests an eternal law or essence, so that immediate individual is only a determined expression of law. Correct method of experimenting lies in conducting experiments with what is previously known suggesting problems and defining questions that we want to direct at the nature.
Third form of experience complementing observation and experiments, according to Fichte, is testimonial (Zeugniss), by which he means experience that is reported by someone else. A testimonial widens experience over limits of a mere individual person and makes it possible to combine the experience of everyone to a holistic result. This is especially important, Fichte emphasises, because of the historical observations and experiments that we can access only through testimonials. This raises the obvious question of the historical trustworthiness of testimonials. Fichte thinks that it is not enough to ask whether a witness could know the truth and whether they were impartial and wanted to tell it, but we must also remember that falsehoods and fictive accounts are unavoidable, when facts move from one person to another, and indeed, might affect even the original statements.
Objective validity of testimonials, Fichte suggests, must be decided by testing how they fit categories and especially those of possibility and actuality. In other words, we must consider first the abstract or formal and then physical possibility of what testimonials suggest and from that proceed to consider internal or positive reliability or actuality of it. By comparing several testimonials and by combining them with their underlying context and with analogical phenomena they can be raised to historical certainty, which is justified by experience, but is still not apodictically or a priori certain, but has instead an infinity of possible grades and levels.
The testing of testimonials, Fichte thinks, is perfected only through thinking, that is, through deduction and development of categories used for testing. At this stage, it means thinking conditioned by experience or a posteriori thinking. From the standpoint of thinking, observations, experimentations and testimonials have the same fundamental failure that they can lead to individual, but not to universal truths The next task is then, Fichte notes, to satisfy universality and necessity through experience, which leads us to developments similar to those in judgements and deductions: individuals are determined according to their predicates, but as long as they are determined as mere individuals, no knowledge is reached, thus, we must discover predicates that correspond to all individuals. The problem is again that finding all possible individuals would be an infinite task, and we are thus forced to substitute unreachable allness with multiplicity and assume that where many agree with one another, the rest of or all individuals will agree also.
We are thus led again to the principle of induction that tries to count individuals and thus derive something universal, which is only searched for, but never reached, and that replaces absolute universality with mere particularity. Fichte points out quite correctly that the step from multiplicity to universality is completely unjustified, since deductions usually move from universal through particular to individual, but not from particular to universal. The imperfection of induction is also expressed, he continues, in that finding just one individual that does not have the asserted predicate cancels the whole induction. In other words, even one instance against a statement of experience points to a complete absence of concept in purely a posteriori studies that concern what is merely contingent in things. On the other hand, Fichte thinks, genetic perception mentioned earlier manages to grasp the concept in its immediate shape and self-actualisation and so cannot be overturned by any opposite instance, but further progress can just confirm and develop it.
Just like the absolute universality that induction tries to reach has been replaced by particularity, Fichte says, absolute certainty is also replaced in induction by relative probability that has an indefinite number of grades and levels according to the completeness of induction. Insofar as this grade of probability can be expressed quantitatively as a relation of numbers, it can be expressed as a mathematical probability, which, according to Fichte, is correctly applied in mere quantitative relations that deal with mere empty combinations of numbers. Then again, he at once adds, mathematical probability becomes worthless with more qualitative matters.
In Fichte’s opinion, empirically complete induction can be given only in a limited sphere, where it is not a case of a universal concept, but only of a completely relative, contingent truth: for instance, it can be justified by complete induction that all known Greek historians were very objective writers, but no concept lies behind this statement. Induction tries to justify a universal concept through collection of all individuals in their universality, but its true worth lies not in the number of collected individualities, but in studies made through genetic intuition. In other words, Fichte says, all induction is worthless, if it is not immediately complemented by the internal concept, presence of which in individuals would perfect induction.
Perfecting induction requires then raising an individual to a position of a representant of its whole genus, from which the concept could be known. In other words, Fichte concludes, induction is based on the principle of analogy: an individual should completely manifest its universal concept, thus, it should be not just individual as such, but universal presented in individual or normal individual. At the same time, we should find another individual that corresponds with the first in most of its properties and therefore also in others, that is, in all properties, which is the supposed conclusion of the analogy. Fichte notes that analogy applies the same unwarranted step from plurality to allness as induction. Hence, certainty is again replaced by probability, which is greater, the more individual properties there are, in which the compared things correspond with one another. We encounter the same fault as in the induction that the study of probability is turned into just quantitative counting of evidence, without any consideration of internal, essential properties corresponding to a concept: if two things agree on some essential properties, it is more certain to conclude to total correspondence than if they share merely contingent or even just negative determinations. Just like with induction, Fichte thinks, it is genetic perception that gives analogy internal confidence, although it is not enough for formal certainty.
Analogy and induction, Fichte suggests, are both based on a common principle that multiplicity can replace allness and relative correspondence the absolute totality, because of the concept that is present in many instances. This assumption of the presence of concept in individuals is expressly brought to consciousness in the third form of a posteriori thinking, hypothesis, where a universal concept is presupposed as the ground of a series of similar appearances. In other words, from appearances is deduced back to the assumed ground that must be characterised so, because the appearances are characterised thus. Fichte calls this an important principle of knowledge, because ground is not grasped anymore as remote and separate from appearances, but is recognised more as actualised in appearances in an immediate manner: appearances are given, but in themselves they are nothing or they present only their ground. The existence of such a ground can be deduced, Fichte thinks, because it is thus also given.
Form of hypothesis resembles externally the hypothetical deduction, Fichte points out, with the slight difference that when a proper hypothetical deduction derives from being of ground A the necessity of its consequence B, in hypothesis B is given and from this the existence and characteristics of its ground A should be deduced. Now, Fichte continues, knowledge of cause or ground implies knowledge of its effect or consequence, but not conversely, because it is an essential determination of ground that as richer and deeper or as more universal in general it cannot be exhausted by its consequence. Thus, just like induction and analogy, hypothesis is not a proper deduction, and again only the internal presence of ground completes the lacking formal evidence: in genetically grasped characteristics of a series of recurring appearances lies also their ground. This internal relationship of appearances to their concept or ground gives the principle of a hypothetical method that the hypothetical assumption of the characteristics of the ground should not overreach the limits that lie in the appearances themselves.
An immediate result of this principle, according to Fichte, is that nothing is to be more carefully avoided with hypotheses than intrusion of completely unfounded categories. Fichte derives from this result individual rules that logic usually states about hypothesis, starting with the rule that hypothesis should be in full harmony with the appearances to be explained, in other words, that the ground must show itself as their universal concept. Furthermore, hypothesis should be as simple as possible, because the more one has to assume further determinations – this would be the reprehended intrusion of other categories – the more improbable it becomes. Generally, Fichte notes, explanatory principles are not to be multiplied without a special reason, thus, all additional hypotheses are to be banned. These rules of logic, Fichte thinks, state just what he earlier pointed out in a more general fashion: the more the hypothesis distances itself from the character of the given appearances, the less analogous it is to their concept and thus the more condemnable. Hence, Fichte concludes, instead of clever conjectures it is often better to openly acknowledge that for certain appearances the correct empirical context has not yet been found and that they still are too isolated from analogous appearances to comprehend them through a hypothesis of their ground.
When empirical thinking has worked through the whole field of given with the methods of induction, analogy and hypothesis, Fichte thinks, it has tested all categories in individuals and thus perfectly brought them to consciousness in concrete shape. In other words, it thinks according to these forms or categories that are given, and what it thinks with the categories is something equally given or individual objects of its perception: in the forms it has its formal, and in the objects its qualitative basis and presupposition. The next step, Fichte continues, is to become aware that the forms of thinking are universal compared to what is thought or variable content, which therefore appears external to these forms and derived from elsewhere. It is an essential consequence of this standpoint that it is possible to completely abstract from content and leave behind pure and thus also empty forms.
Fichte calls this new standpoint philosophical, because it has the task to free thinking from its external, empirical content and immerse itself in its pure content or categories. This standpoint handles the categories still in an empirical manner, since it tries to grasp categories and externally order them only as they are found.
Fichte starts going through the characteristic signs of this standpoint. Firstly, it assumes that the opposition between content and form is completely essential and unavoidable. Form as “empty” requires content it has to find elsewhere, while content is to be worked through to fit form that is something originally alien to it. Thus, form and content do not intermingle one another reciprocally, although perception immediately presupposes this intermingling, where form would create from itself its own content and similarly content would already have its own form. Instead, the stated sundering of both can be overcome only in individual cases by applying form to some content and so finding filling to it, while content receives through this connection to form an understandable shape.
Just like the opposition between form or categories and their content remains unavoidable in this standpoint, Fichte insists, categories also remain fixed in their differences toward one another. Categories are used for thinking given content, that is, some category is related to this content and from its application is discovered a predicate in the content beside other predicates, and the sum of these applications of individual categories to a topic is its truth. Here, Fichte suggests, categories remain opposed to one another and are not determinations moving constantly to each other. This fixed opposition of categories is for Fichte the essential characteristic of both empirical knowledge and dogmatic philosophy. It thus becomes a particular task to separate the categories from the content and present them as completely ordered abstractions: a task of both ordinary logic the empirical psychology. Although Fichte takes this task to be of the highest importance, he thinks that both logic and psychology handle it in an unsatisfying manner, because they remain with a mere empirically discovered and external ordering of categories that might be correct in its internal relations, but has not been discovered and even less proven scientifically.
Finally, Fichte states, this standpoint develops consciousness of a deeper opposition that perfects the division of this empirical standpoint and drives it to further, properly speculative studies. This is the opposition between subjective and objective. Form or thinking engages with externally given content and is thus only mine, internal and originally locked in the realm of consciousness – subjective. Content, on the other hand, is external to thinking – objective. Subjective and objective belong then to two distinct worlds, and neither should have anything in common with the other. Objectivity should originally be foreign to categories and it is in itself given without requiring categories or without any internal relation to thinking. Thinking, on the other hand, is in itself empty and formal and therefore requires objectivity, which gives it filling, application and meaning. When thinking works its originally subjective forms into objectivity, it should receive truth, but this truth is valid only in the context of thinking or it is a subjective truth. The result is then a complete separation of both fields. Fichte considers it a fact that despite this opposition, the subjectivity and the objectivity correspond to one another completely, and suggests that this fact requires explanation and becomes so a topic of a proper philosophical study.
First answer to this problem is sensualism, which is fixated to lowest form of consciousness or receptivity, without the ability to bring into consciousness the hidden spontaneity or thinking. Fichte calls it the roughest kind of philosophy (“first philosophy”), because it is derived from the most immediate and lowest viewpoint of consciousness or perceiving. Therefore its critique, he thinks, is actually performed by consciousness itself, when it develops into thinking. At the standpoint of sensualism, there is nothing else actual and certain, but sensuous individuality, while thinking and all universal knowledge and necessary truth seems only a product of abstraction, invented and completely subjective. We learn bit by bit to separate universal concepts from given, and this is thinking that thus shows all its supposedly a priori laws and determinations as derived from repeated observations and thus from summarised experience. Proper a priori as a subjective form is not present, and the whole opposition of a priori and a posteriori has fully disappeared, because there isn’t anymore a priori as independent from a posteriori.
According to sensualist philosophy, Fichte states, consciousness or soul is no independent power and does not develop from itself, but is a mere mirror or receptivity for external things. Consciousness is affected by sensations, and while Fichte thinks he has shown how sensations as the first awakener of self-consciousness thus develop its self-activity or spontaneity, in the sensualist viewpoint all is locked in the lowest state and sensation is the only content and the only reality of consciousness, without understanding of the proper character of perception. Sensualism remains in the most superficial reflection that external things impress through sensations images of themselves in the soul and that the soul is a mere empty capacity to receive such impressions (tabula rasa of Locke), and the capacity to reflect explains these sensations as the only truth and source of all knowledge.
The next step, Fichte says, is to show that according to sensualism there can be no universal and necessary knowledge, because what has been collected through mere abstraction from repeated observations can never receive a character of a universal and apodictic necessity. Fichte singles out Hume as the discoverer of this fault, since what appears as universal and necessary was for him just an assumption from mere habit that in its essential character is as contingent as any individual knowledge. Hume made us aware of the unsatisfactoriness of the sensualist standpoint without getting over it. Still, because thinking of universal and apodictically certain remains completely impossible from the standpoint of sensualism, the standpoint itself is cancelled.
The whole foundation of empirical knowledge and the philosophy of experience has been cancelled, because both presuppose thinking of things according to categories, Fichte points out. On the other hand, it is stated that categories and thinking with them do not generally reach any truth that is here understood as interior of objectivity, which remains hidden and unknowable for consciousness, because this can grasp only appearances or exterior of objectivity. The result is that knowledge vanishes into negative. Categories have no truth, because they are just subjective abstractions, while sensations also allow us to know only the external surface of things and not their kernel or their true hidden properties. Nothing can be known and nothing is true for consciousness: scepticism is the next philosophical standpoint Fichte will turn to.
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