In the last post we saw the end of the first part of Fichte’s Grundzüge zum Systeme der Philosophie that dealt with the epistemological question of can we know anything beyond ourselves to exist. This first part, Fichte states, serves as an introduction to the three years later published second part concerning ontology, which would thus require no introduction of its own. Instead, Fichte uses the opportunity to reflect more on the relation of ontology to the first and the later parts of philosophy.
Fichte begins by summarising the results of the first part, where we saw consciousness beginning in intuition, where it was immersed in a naive unity with its object. Bit by bit, consciousness started to free itself in representation and thinking and finally moved to its highest subjectivity, where reflection and scepticism left the consciousness being certain only of itself. Knowledge was thus restricted, Fichte says, from its widest extension to mere formal self-knowing, where only consciousness was true and all else mere appearance. This subjective highpoint of reflection, Fichte reminds us, was at the same time a turn from the emptiness of knowledge to its fullness. Consciousness, to which everything else seemed a mere illusion, was led to self-contradiction, because it knew itself as not being absolute, but a mere derived image of something else that revealed itself in consciousness. Consciousness became thus an examination of an unavoidable reality or absolute, which, according to Fichte, was not anymore external objectivity opposed to consciousness, but revealed itself to consciousness.
This insight, Fichte continues, leads us to the highest principle reconciling all the previous oppositions. The concept of absolute as revealing itself in consciousness, Fichte explains, correctly describes the living actuality that mediates everything. In other words, this absolute actualises itself infinitely by creating oppositions that it then combines inti a unity. Thus, absolute is not colourless indifference swallowing oppositions or an empty formal concept of universality, but an infinite power affirming itself eternally in oppositions. This absolute, Fichte says, is the common object of all the following parts of philosophy, just like it is the only true being or the beginning and end of all things. Fichte admits that this is just the most general description of the new standpoint of knowledge, because all the determinations used to describe the absolute still require further justification. In other words, when absolute is provisionally defined as the original actuality revealing itself in everything actual or as the identity of infinite oppositions, these oppositions are not in itself clear nor still demonstrated. Thus, Fichte concludes, we have to develop in thinking the provisional concept of absolute in order to become certain of the truth contained in it.
Fichte insists that we must not rest with the general result of the first part and that neither is it enough to search in multifarious experience the confirmation of absolute as the infinitely positive. Instead, he thinks, the task lies in the middle of the general concept of absolute and the experience: we should understand the concept of the infinite self-actualisation of the absolute by thinking it and so dialectically develop thoughts lying in this seemingly simple notion. This points to a need for the second fundamental science in the whole system of philosophy, which expressly abstracts from the positive content of the divine actuality and tries to know pure thoughts or absolute form of it. Ontology, Fichte continues, has thus as its task to ask what actuality in itself means, expressly ignoring all its further determinations or content. If at the end of the ontology will be shown that truly actual is just a free subject or that God is also personal, this particular result is then based on a dialectical completion of the formal concept of actuality.
The necessary counterpoint to the purely actual by itself, Fichte explains, is what actualises itself qualitatively in the actual, or to put it somewhat more clearly, being cannot be thought without what is in the being or without the substantial content of the absolute. This absolute, Fichte explains, is both eternal content and eternal form of being, and the content and the form are distinguished only in pure thinking. It must also expressly recognise this distinction as untrue and so point beyond itself to something else than pure thinking. Thus, Fichte concludes, while ontology is the science of eternal form in an express opposition to all content, this opposition must also be set aside, since it shows the form as incapable of existing by itself. Here the characteristic standpoint of ontology is revealed and also its relation to the following parts of philosophy: ontology is complete in itself, but through its completion it points to a complementing counterpoint in another type of investigation.
The identity of form and content in the concept of absolute was designated as the common object of all following parts of philosophy: just like the theory of knowledge followed the living self-development of consciousness, Fichte notes, similarly in ontology and in the following parts of the whole system this living substantial unity is the infinitely self-actualising and self-revealing absolute. He thinks that we can in all earnest, and not just allegorically, speak here of self-movement of this absolute. On the other hand, purely formal as in itself unactual and dead has no such driving impulse and no power to go through oppositions and mediate them in unity, except as an arbitrary fiction. Just like absolute itself is the acting force that produces from its internal infinity oppositions and extends them into a universe, speculative thinking of this absolute becomes the image of this original activity in creation, Fichte suggests: in ontology, speculation grasps the formal side of this self-actualisation, and in concrete parts of the system, the more qualitative side. Yet, he warns the reader, we shouldn’t regard this dialectical completion of absolute in thinking as awakening of divinity into self-consciousness, since confusing our dialectical thinking with the divine is just the same error as confusing real with formal.
In the fundamental knowledge that we have reached at the of the theory of knowledge, Fichte says, all dualisms are completely cancelled, both the opposition between eternal and finite and also the separation of subjective and objective: human spirit and natural world appear no more as a duality, but both present the unity of divine actuality and divine thinking. Insofar as this divine thought of the world must still be developed through investigations of the ontology and the more concrete parts of philosophy, this result of the theory of knowledge is anticipation of the later parts of philosophy, which must be illuminated and justified in more depth through the dialectical progress of speculation. In this dialectical progress, Fichte suggests, the mere anthropocentric standpoint of consciousness is raised to a theocentric standpoint, because through it, the consciousness comprehends itself in all its levels and shapes as the knowing of this divine self-actualisation: consciousness is itself in God, because it in general is. Similarly, what consciousness knows is only divine, because only the actual is knowable: nothing is merely subjective or meaningless, and even in error the force of truth is present. The divine presence, according to Fichte, drives from now on all philosophical investigations and shows itself as the only true viewpoint of philosophy.
Fichte now regards himself to have justified the general need to move from the study of consciousness and knowledge to ontology and further parts of the philosophy. His next task will be to explain in more detail the relations of these different parts of philosophy. Objective and particularly ontological knowing, he begins, has not destroyed the previous subjective standpoint. Instead, Fichte thinks, the completed self-knowing illuminates the process of the later parts of philosophy, justifying in advance all its turning points. Thus, the theory of knowledge should prefigure all the following parts of philosophy, which must still fill this preliminary foreshadowing with evidence and internal richness. We might say, Fichte suggests, that every part of the philosophy both points forwards to the next and in its turn receives its own meaning from those later parts. Still, he emphasises, theory of knowledge has the advantage that like a compass it shows a fixed centrepoint of truth that orients us through all hazards of investigation. Thus, the whole system of philosophy could be likened to an organism, in which previous stages already contain an undeveloped model of all the following. Fichte also notes that because the two final parts or the philosophies of nature and spirit engage with experience and its infinity of material, they can never be completed, while the theory of knowledge and the ontology can be.
Ontology has then a very limited task to solve, Fichte muses, as it must complete pure thinking. In its specific content, it is a science of eternal forms, in which everything concrete must appear. Pure thinking of ontology is not the empty logical abstraction, because such would for all eternity remain empty. Instead, ontology has as its topic the certainty of the absolute as simply actualising itself in oppositions, the concept of which it has received from the theory of knowledge. Making an exhaustive survey of this concept in its dialectical moments is the only content of ontology.
How can ontology reach the absolute form in separation from everything concrete? Fichte looks back at the theory of knowledge. Pure thinking has abstraction as a moment in itself. In other words, pure thinking has followed the path of abstraction and distinguished between that from which we can abstract in a certain context and that from which we cannot abstract in that context or between contingent and necessary. It then found out what cannot be abstracted from in any context or what is absolutely necessary in all being and thinking. In the theory of knowledge, these necessary elements were called categories, which Fichte takes as forms of both thinking and being. The categories as a whole can be called the system of absolute forms of actuality, distinguished from their possible content.
Fichte suggests that just like the theory of knowledge modelled the fullness of pure thinking through the speculative intuition of the absolute, the ontology in its part models the more concrete philosophies of nature and spirit, to which ontology has to introduce us. It is thus a characteristic of ontology that it is presented as a separate science, but it has to also show its one-sidedness. In other words, the purely a priori content of ontology is not the highest, but the simply first and most universal truth and precondition of all concrete knowing that desires to be speculative. The forms of ontology cannot exist by themselves, Fichte explains, but this is just the dialectical life driving them from one level to another until the highest or absolute form. Ontology thus relates to later parts of philosophy like pure science to applied sciences. Thus, Fichte concludes, speculative knowledge about objectively real or God, nature and spirit comes in two kinds. Firstly, there is the quantitatively limited knowledge of their pure a priori forms. Secondly, there is the infinite knowledge of experience of these objects that is shot through with a priori concepts, but goes further than them. This imperfection of ontological forms must be revealed in the ontology itself.
From the overall structure of philosophy, Fichte moves on to describe the structure of ontology itself. He notes that while until now he could look back on the results already achieved in the theory of knowledge or their immediate consequences, from here on he is going to give a preliminary look on things he will properly justify in the ontology itself. An important point in the structure of ontology, Fichte explains, is the distinction between concepts and ideas, where ideas are more complex forms than categories and refer to actual entities. He also makes the crucial point that due to the limited space of the book, he will not be dealing with ideas here, leaving that part of ontology to a later publication.
Fichte also quickly describes his method of organising ontology, which unsurprisingly works in three steps of position, opposition and synthesising mediation. In other words, at every point of the development of the concept we begin with something that has the character of immediacy and is therefore a negation of something. Due to it being a negation, it can then be placed against its opposite. Finally, both are united in the third member, which contains in itself the opposites as reconciled in relation. Although this trivision seems rather formulaic, Fichte assures us that it is derived from the characteristics of the topic investigated. Since we are dealing here only with concepts appearing from a dialectical process of thinking, the content of ontology is only consciousness of form, and because ontology applies the just described dialectical method, it uses this form also as a method. Thus, in ontology, the method is derived strictly from the nature of the topic, or the form and content of the ontology go inseparably together. Fichte notes that this is true only of ontology, because the form and content cannot coincide in any science that requires empirical impulses, therefore not even in the concrete parts of philosophy.
Fichte connects his description of the dialectical method with the distinction between categories and ideas by noting that the characteristic of all categories and also their dialectically further driving principle is that all of them appear as mere members or one-sided moments of a higher conceptual totality or idea. In other words, only in ideas do the categories find their truth. System of isolated categories consists therefore of ideas differentiated into their moments. Thus, all of these moments as isolated are constrained by the contradiction of not being in totality. This contradiction, Fichte explains, drives them ever higher until full completion in the reproduced idea. In other words, through contradictions driving it further, ontology raises itself over all one-sided concepts until something real is found that isn’t anymore affected with contradiction. The result or the ideas, Fichte says, are fundamental forms and paradigms of actuality. When ontology turns into a theory of ideas, there is no contradiction to lead it further, but even here dialectical progress does not stop, Fichte insists, but receives a new, positive meaning.
Ideas as principles of actuality, Fichte thinks, express in their relations toward one another at the same time real relations. Progress within theory of ideas models the real processes of the world, and the ideas in their mutual relation present the eternal forms of the world, while this must be completely denied of categories in their isolation. Categories are in general to be thought merely as conceptual moments of ideas and are not enough for actuality, while ideas show themselves shaping and moving the actuality. Fichte hints that the dialectical progress will show that all ideas return to the idea of spirit and personality and only in this find their full truth. Thus, the meaning of the world process is that all reality tries to push itself to consciousness, spirit and personality, and in the universe, like in ontology, God remains the highest idea solving all contradictions.
Study of ideas becomes then in its highest truth speculative theology, Fichte explains. In this end, all contradictions are resolved and all categories and ideas comprehended and explained. Thus, Fichte concludes, the only true or absolute idea is the idea of absolute personality, which is then also the only complete definition of God. The goal and result of ontology is then absolute theism, and ontology is therefore an attempt to lead all other, more imperfect ways to understand God to theism as their absolute truth. Every category and every idea, Fichte thinks, is a subordinate definition of the concept of God and thus corresponds to some religious or speculative consciousness of God, and therefore ontology should also contain the principles of an internal history of religions and philosophies from an ontological standpoint, just like the theory of knowledge contained principles of all philosophies from the standpoint of self-consciousness. Each lower conception of God is then just a confused opinion lacking final evidence, while with the highest religion, Fichte insists, we also reach the standpoint of true philosophy.
Fichte notes that theory of knowledge as the foundation of ontology could be called a proof of God’s existence. Similarly, he argues, ontology must be understood as a demonstration of God’s essence. Still, he admits, even here ontology is just a science of forms and the highest idea of the divine personality is also just a form, although it is the highest form. Like all ideas, it corresponds to the positive, infinitely filled actuality of divine person, but unlike many other ideas, it can be realised only once, which Fichte suggests as the formal proof of the unity of God.
When we move from ontology to speculative theology, Fichte thinks, the a priori necessity of negative dialectics is completed, but just because of this also destroyed. Behind all more abstract categories and ideas we find the idea of personality or freedom as the only truth without any contradiction. Since thinking of the highest idea is free of all contradictions, the validity of negative dialectics ends, because it could move forward only through contradictions. A higher method of knowledge is thus required, Fichte says, and this method has to use a different methodological principle: unlike Hegel thought, Fichte points out, negative dialectics cannot be the absolute method of knowledge. Just like it was the character of negative dialectics to return from categories as one-sided parts to their totality, from here on the valid methodology has to be completely opposite. This positive dialectics, as Fichte calls it, is then progressive and descends from the height of the absolute idea, and here the leading principle is the development and unfolding of what is already implicitly present.
Just like in negative dialectics the contradiction in every subordinate concept was the impulse to search for something truer and more essential, Fichte continues, in positive dialectics the principle is ever fuller confirmation of what is in itself already real, or more shortly, its life and freedom. In the sphere of speculative theology and concrete systems of natural and spiritual philosophy, he explains, all the moments shown by positive dialectics can be actual, that is, not affected by self-negation of contradiction. Yet, he at once adds, since there is no contradiction forcing these moments to exist, it is completely free whether they do. Thus, there is no dialectical contradiction in that God would not reveal itself in creation or that God would just be the world creator, but not a redeemer in world history. That God is more is thus no necessity in God, but a free act that cannot be derived from God with negative, but only with positive dialectics. Similarly, Fichte continues, nature could exist without human spirit and this would lead to no logical contradiction, but spirit still is the truth of nature. Shortly, it is not an abstract necessity that lies behind the creation and the development of the world, and positive knowledge of the world cannot be derived from a necessary chain of mere a priori conceptual moments. Content of positive dialectics, Fichte concludes, lies in thinking about the process of life and spirit, not a priori, but by dialectically working through experience as the actualisation of these powers.
This addition of positive dialectics, Fichte believes, changes the whole manner of philosophical investigation. Creation of nature and spirit becomes a history of divine revelation through the will of God, which finally assists speculation out of its abstract spinning in itself. Such an abstract fixation on a priori is overcome, firstly, by complementing negative dialectics with and by lifting it to positive dialectics, which ontologically finds its realisation in the speculative theology. Then again, here the validity of a priori completely ends, because the field of freedom begins. Thus, positive revelation of the personality of God or God’s actions can be experienced only in the actual things. The a priori is then complemented for the second time, Fichte suggests, by a transition into speculative empiricism that knows the world as a creative act of God and as an artwork of divine understanding and will. This infinitely concrete, natural and spiritual universe is also the counterpoint that confirms the reality of the eternal ideas of ontology: just like ideas are forms of God’s actuality, the concrete infinite world is the fulfilled actuality of divine revelation. Ontology thus ends with complete self-awareness of ending, because it has recognised its own, necessary limits.
Fichte goes back from these fancy preliminary speculations to the more pressing question where and why should ontology begin. He returns to the simple result of the theory of knowledge: absolute is. Thinking of this simple result, he says, is pure thinking. We have to think through the absolute, that is, to separate the differences contained in its seeming simplicity. This separation should also raise categories to consciousness in their necessary, dialectical connection.
First step in this thinking of absolute, Fichte explains, is to ignore all the indeterminate representations that the provisional thinking of absolute suggests semi-unconsciously. Indeed, he insists, all provisional thinking should be completely forgotten and all its valid results should be demonstrated from the beginning of pure thinking. Just like consciousness at the end of the theory of knowledge finally broke through all oppositions and found the knowledge that absolute is, it provisionally harbours in this thought of absolute many concepts (it is the eternal in all change, highest mediating of all oppositions, absolute power over everything etc.). True, Fichte admits, this thought of absolute can be regarded from different viewpoints, but even more so a deeper justification of this synthesis is crucial. In other words, it hasn’t been yet shown why specifically this set of concepts is found in the absolute nor is it solved how the unity of the absolute in general suffers a manifold of properties. Similarly, from other predicates involved in the thought of absolute should be evoked a series of problems or contradictions that thinking should work through. We are thus left with the task of showing how all these concepts or categories within the thought of absolute reciprocally determine one another.
All this, Fichte points out, takes us back to the provisionally drawn field of investigation. Just like the theory of knowledge left us at the end the thought of absolute, so the provisional thinking through of this thought shows the necessity of investigating it systematically. Thus, Fichte insists, we must return to the absolute beginning of thinking that is also the absolute beginning of being, since the opposition of objective being and subjective thinking is not valid here. The theory of knowledge gave us the insight that absolute is, as simply evident and certain truth. Then again, thinking the absolute reveals a series of problems, and only their full solution justifies the universal certainty of this insight. Here, Fichte thinks, we have described the task of ontology from a new angle. He also notes that we could now completely separate ontology from the first part of the system. If we do this, knowledge of the being of absolute remains a presupposition that as self-justifying should be placed at the start of the ontology.
Returning to the absolute beginning or the first act of thinking, Fichte suggests, we have to search for the most universal principle of this activity. This universal principle, he thinks, is positing of something as still thoroughly undetermined. The aim of this positing, Fichte thinks, is to move from this indeterminateness to determination and fix what we are thinking as something that is placed within a universal sphere of distinctions, where one in general is determined as not something else. Thus, he points out, determining always relates to denying something else, and this relation connects positing and denying: both are just opposed to one another, but therefore also united in a relation. Only this relating is their truth, not their isolation, since they are what they are only in this relation. Going through all the different forms of this relating of distinctions Fichte takes as a new way to describe the task of ontology. He also thinks that the unity of these three moments should not yet be counted among the proper categories. Indeed, he calls them the Ur-categories or the general field for all further categories. It should thus not be possible to express any determined thoughts in them, but ontological thinking must begin with them.
Even before going to this trinity of related opposition, Fichte insists, we must still isolate its absolute beginning, expressly separating from its both other moments, although it is irresistible to move further from this beginning. In relation to thinking, he says, the beginning is to be designated only as positing of a formal starting point for further determinations. This could also be expressed as mere being or “is” without any further addition: logically, Fichte explains, we could take it as the empty, indeterminate subject of a judgement that has not yet developed to its copula and predicate. Since this mere being is just purely determinable, it is not yet even something that is: it is or has no predicate, but is only absolute predicability. We can determine this absolute indeterminacy, Fichte explains, only when we move to further members of the Ur-categories. Its contradiction is then simply that we try to remain in it, when it expresses its absolute determinability and the need to move to determining.
In this first and simplest thought, Fichte thinks, we inevitably recognise the identity of thinking and being or of form and content: this beginning of all determining is only in thinking, but it still leads to all proper being or or real determinations. In other words, Fichte explains, because this beginning develops further into real determinations or ideas it cannot be merely subjective, but because as the beginning of all determining it completely lacks all concrete determinations, it cannot be called objective. From this first source, he describes, flow out all distinctions of thinking and being, but here thinking completely penetrates being, so that nothing is obscure or impenetrable for thinking. Similarly, this abstract being is completely placed in the light of consciousness, so that the highest a priori immersion of content and form is reached.
Fichte recognises that this pure beginning has been poignantly called being that is still just nothing. This properly means, he explains, that being as beginning is simply still undetermined or the negation of all further determination, hence, still nothing. This does not really mean, Fichte thinks, that nothing would be added as a predicate to being, since being in present context is more likely the absolutely predicateless, but the first thought is just described in its essential self-negation: being is expressly determined as still nothing, as simply not determined or as contradiction against itself. Then again, Fichte adds, it is completely impermissible to believe this proposition to be universally valid even beyond the beginning of the still lacking determining, as he thinks undeniably happens in the expressions like “being and nothing are same”. Here, he explains, being is more properly called actuality, and the predicate “nothing” directly cancels the first thought, because actuality directly negates nothing.
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