Fichte began his ontology with a thought of being that had as yet nothing determined in it, although there was a need to find a further determination. The next obvious step is then to determine this being at least in some manner. The simplest way to determine the beginning, Fichte says, is to take it as something (Etwas): it is just thought as somehow determined, although as yet there is no further information how it is determined. The result, Fichte says, is that we are not thinking of anything completely indeterminate, but something recognised as having some determination, although we do not know yet what determination it should be.
By being determined, Fichte continues, this something is distinguished from something else. Thus, he notes, relation to determination and becoming something implies also a relation to other beings, in comparison of which it is determined as being this and not those. In other words, something is something only as opposed to what is something other: if you want to determine something, you have to distinguish it, but this is possible only by placing it opposite to another. Thus, if the first thought could be called positing (Setzen), the second thought is then opposing or positing against (Gegensetzen). Fichte is here following the lead of his father, who used these two terms as the starting steps in the first version of his Wissenschaftslehre, but unlike there, Fichte is here suggesting that opposition is not an unnecessary addition to position, but positing must lead to opposing. All thinking, he says, hovers between affirmation and negation, and just like affirmation of something implies negation of another, so does negation of something imply an affirmation of something else.
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