The outcome of the previous phase in Fichte’s ontology was that the two sides dealt with – the more essential ground, or as it is now called, the content (Gehalt), and its less essential consequence or form – cannot exist or be thought of without the other. In other words, the content, or as Fichte also calls it at the beginning, the matter (Stoff) must become visible and thus take on a form, while this form is dependent on the content and hence in comparison inessential, contingent and changeable. In the previous section, he reminds us, the interior of the essence made a manifold of appearances actual without being necessarily related to any single one of them, and here also the form seems external to the content, although with the difference that the form is inseparable from the content that assumes some shape. Thus, all forms require a content and would not exist without such, while the content, although it must have a form, can change it into a different form without losing what is essential to it.
This indifference of content toward its form is the first characteristic sign of the new conceptual relation, Fichte says, but just like earlier, in case of essence and inessential or of internal and external, a further mediation between the two opposites is required. At this stage, he continues, their relation appears contradictory, because they are both opposed, but also inseparable: content must be formed, and form presupposes content, but also content is indifferent toward its form and the form is contingent or changeable. In fact, Fichte notes, we have as yet barely progressed from the previous relation between internal and external.
Since the content requires a form in general, but not any determined form, Fichte argues, both are in a sense independent of one another: content could assume many forms, but form also many kinds of content. In this sense, the content is a mere foundation or substrate for the form, since the content could be abstracted from any particular form without destroying the content itself. In this reproduction of the relation between internal and external, the content seems, just like Fichte hinted, mere matter that could be shaped in various manners. This matter remains the same, no matter what appearance it has, and this appearance or form adds only inessential determinations to the matter. Thus, when this form is removed, these additional determinations vanish from the matter.
To lead us away from this notion of content and form, Fichte suggests that their opposition has already appeared to us, albeit in a more abstract shape. What we know about the content is that it is qualitatively determined and has thus some characteristics that make it finite, negative toward others and changeable. Because of these features, the content must exist in a system of infinite determinations and assert its place in this system as internally infinite. Fichte has thus returned the notion of content to the categories of quality: such as permanent position in a system of qualitative determinations is precisely a content that does not vanish when it is formed or that is more essential than its inessential form. What then this form is, beside something inessential compared to the qualitative content? Fichte reminds us that the categories of quality appeared originally from the refutation of the categories of quantity, which was revealed to be a mere manner how a quality expressed itself, both extensively and intensively.
What Fichte is implying is that the relation between quality and quantity is the same relation that occurs between content and form or that the form is the quantitative expression for the content. This explains, he adds, how form can in a sense subsist separately from the content, but is also in itself without any meaning and only an expression of another, or how the content and form are both different, but still absolutely unified. The content is the qualitative side that gives itself a specific quantitative determination or a form corresponding to it, in other words, the qualitative content quantifies itself in a manner appropriate to its own determination or produces a specific form corresponding to this specific content. Fichte notes that this is a second, more complete expression of this conceptual relation, where the content posits itself in this specific form that is not in general inseparable from content. Thus, he explains, it is not anymore the case that the content is just matter that can assume any form and that can even change between many forms without losing its own qualitative specification. Instead, only a certain form completely corresponds to this content and is its only quantitative expression. Form and content are therefore identical, because form is nothing in itself and in its isolation leads to a contradiction, but, Fichte adds, just because of this dependency, form is also not identical with content that should be essential in comparison.
The form can then be determined, Fichte summarises, as both inessential to the content and also its absolute consequence expressing its essence in a quantitative element. Form itself has no power over its content, while content is the absolute power over or the principle of its form. Still, Fichte emphasises, this relation of dependence does not cancel the eternal difference between form and content, but instead, reproduces this difference and establishes the power of the content. At the same time, he adds, all mere formalism and purely a priori is shown to be of limited validity, in comparison to the study of infinite content. On the other hand, the form is also shown to be separable from its content, at least in speculative consideration, which makes a pure science of form possible. Indeed, Fichte explains, form as a presentation of content in a quantitative element can be taken as an independent topic that develops into a complete system of forms transitioning into each other. Ontology has thus proceeded into an explanation of the possibility of itself and all other sciences dealing with forms, solving thus a task given in the very introduction of this work. Fichte also classifies the various sciences of forms by saying that mathematics studies merely quantitative forms and especially forms of space and time, while philosophy contains, beside the ontology as the science of the forms of being, epistemology as the science of the forms of thinking, although, he admits, the latter has also an empirical foundation, since it has to develop these forms of thinking from preceding states of consciousness.
All the ontological categories have been set out as mere forms in abstract emptiness, Fichte argues, thus, they point to an essence or content. Still, this common essence has also a corresponding category, and indeed, Fichte insists, all proper categories explicitly show a relation to this essence, which happens in the relational concepts of the second part of ontology. Thus, every relational category has two sides, one of which designates what is real – e.g. essence, ground, internal and content – while the other designates what is formal – e.g. inessential, consequence, external and form. Furthermore, Fichte emphasises, since all the categories and thus also the categories belonging to the side of the real or content are valid only in this sphere of ontology, we can only prove ontologically that there is an infinite content that goes through the whole ontological system of forms, but we cannot say what are the more specific determinations of this content – indeed, ontology has to itself prove its own limits.
Content is completely determined and unique, Fichte reminds us, thus also its form can be only individualised: specific content posits its specific form. This means, firstly, that with the relation of content and form are again established all the categories in the dialectics of qualitative determinations. Thus, the determined content is finite, that is, it both negates others and asserts itself in this negation. As is familiar, Fichte continues, this leads us to the notion of internal or positive infinity, where something is, on the one hand, in a system of infinite determinations infinitely related to one another, but on the other hand, contains in its individuality an internal infinity reflecting these relations. These determinations refer to the content, thus, Fichte sets out as a task, we have to find out what this means for the form.
Fichte begins answering this question by noting that content and form are first negations or others toward one another, but with this reciprocal negation they also posit one another. Furthermore, he continues, the second concept of negation reappears, that is, that of changeability. This means that because content is determined, it is subject to becoming something else. Here, Fichte explains, the form appears as the changeable side and the content as what remains the same in becoming: the content is identical with itself, but in the becoming or change it transforms itself by varying its forms.
When a content takes on its specific form, Fichte underlines, it behaves freely toward and subjugates this form, which then has no subsistence of its own. When content then transforms itself, this transformation is nothing foreign to the content, but just expresses its essence and especially the connection to others that is inseparable from its determination. Thus, Fichte summarises, the content with its stable determination transforms itself through the system of its forms, and it remains the same throughout this transformation, insofar as the same determined individual content is present in all these forms. On the other hand, the content also does not remain the same, since its varying forms develop its aspect of being something else, although they do not add anything opposed to the stable content.
This account of the change or transformation of concept, Fichte adds, is at once connected to the relation that a determined content has to other determinations. In fact, he explains, the determined content varies its relation to its own forms only through its place in the system of all determinations, where it both negates as well as posits other determinations and also asserts itself through these relations. This means that the variation of the forms of content derives not only from the content itself, but also from its necessary reciprocal relation to the infinity of other kinds of content. In other words, according to Fichte, the change of the form of any determined content means combination with another content and its form and dissolution of a previous similar combination. Just like the variation of forms is then a variation of different combinations, the form in general is the relation, which the content has to the infinity of other determinations.
The result is, Fichte notes, that neither the determined content nor the system of its variable forms subsist in themselves. Instead, every qualitative determination is only a moment in the system of an infinity of determinations – this is the already familiar notion of internal infinity. Furthermore, the system of its forms is not derived merely from the content, but also from the necessary reciprocal relation between individual contents. The forms thus consist only in the infinitely varying combining and dissolving of these relations, while the content asserts always its original quality, but varying its forms and relations, and with these also its characteristics. In these characteristics, Fichte concludes, content and form combine with each other, while both characteristics and the form are an immediate combination of the relation to others and the self-assertion.
Fichte has discovered the form to be identical with the relation to the infinity of others, since both appear through the variation of characteristics. Still, he immediately adds, the concept of form is still not perfectly clear. We do know, Fichte reminds us, that the form is the quantitative expression for the content. Thus, when we say that the specific content corresponds to a specific form, this means also that the content is quantitatively determined or limited and has its own extension and intensity. Fichte notes that in terms of more concrete parts of philosophy this means that when a content receives a form, it is determined in time and space, that is, it fills space and time in a completely specific manner.
Space and time are, Fichte concludes, the common element, in which qualitative determinations can enter in actual relation to one another. They form the common sphere, in which all actual things meet each other and transform in their mutual relations. Just like all quantities, space and time are indifferent toward what individual qualities they have, although they cannot be completely without qualitative determinations. This indifference, Fichte explains, makes these fundamental forms seem independent, but actually, like all quantities, they are mere forms for real qualities and thus dependent on content. Then again, as every content is in reciprocal relation to others, it must fill some specific time and space, so that there is no empty time or space, just like categories are not actual without any content. Thus, Fichte notes, content is spatial and temporal, but is also independent of them in the sense that it is not exhausted with its temporal and spatial determinations.
The relation of content and form is almost at the end of its development, Fichte states, with the exception of the highest synthesis that just has to be recognised. A specific content, he begins the search for this synthesis, taking a specific form, is specific only in opposition to other specifications, and indeed, it can be thought only as having its qualitative specification in a positive infinity. The same dialectical step engaged us already at the level of quality, Fichte reminds us, as we raised ourselves from the internal infinity of every individual determination into a positive infinite that creates and orders individual determinations (this was the first proper definition of absolute), At this new stage, he explains, we could further describe the absolute as the ground that posits the infinite content, specifies this content infinitely and differentiates it into a system of mutually qualitative Ur-determinations. The actual content of the absolute is this qualitatively filled infinity. Yet, Fichte notes, just like every specific content has its specific form, the absolute gives to this qualitative infinity also its eternal form, which is also a necessary aspect of the absolute.
The form has two sides, Fichte notes. Firstly, there is the eternal, simply universal form of infinite content that is an in itself completed system of mutually each other determining formal concepts or categories. On the other hand, because the content specifies itself infinitely, this eternal world of forms must be also infinitely specified. Thus, Fichte summarises, the categories must because of their necessary link to content be thought only as specified, that is, actually united with their content as specific spatial and temporal quantities. All categories are therefore, he concludes, infinitely specified, and their abstract eternity receives in this manner movability that prepares the transition from ontology into more concrete parts of philosophy.
Fichte envisions a twofold result impacting, on the one hand, the ontology itself, and on the other hand, its position in relation to more concrete parts of philosophy. The absolute creates first its content or the infinite Ur-positions, with the system of categories as containing the first and therefore abstract forms. Then the specific characteristic of content specifies the categories, Fichte explains, and these specifications are actualised forms of the content, which are not anymore abstract, but only specified. Fichte points out that we now meet the concept of individual in its most general meaning: it is the specific content of a determined Ur-position actualising itself in its specific form. His conclusion is that everything actual is individual, since actualities have completely specified content and form down to their most individual determinations. The abstract general forms, on the other hand, are only an unactual, negative foundation of this actualisation.
Everything merely general and abstract has now been cancelled in finite entities, Fichte insists, and abstractions have been shown in their thoroughgoing voidness. Individuals, on the other hand, should take the place of categories as principles shaping the actual world. Fichte’s statement is an explicit criticism of Hegelian philosophy, which Fichte thinks has to endorse the characteristic proposition that only the categories form what is truly actual and unchanging in all things. Fichte suggests that the direct opposite of this supposedly Hegelian proposition has been ontologically justified: individual or completely specified is actual and nothing else. This principle of individuality, Fichte argues, should be extendable to absolute behind all content. Earlier the absolute was thought merely as an Ur-essence, and now it is specified as grounding in itself an infinity of specific determinations.
Concept of the form is now fully understood, Fichte states, and we have proven that form is an independent topic, but in itself empty. Thus, the system of categories is in its abstract generality, partly because categories are in general only forms of something else (the infinite content), partly because even filled by content and in this sense actual they still cannot present as such what is real, but still require more specific temporal and spatial determinations. Fichte suggests that this reveals the relation of ontology to more concrete parts of philosophy in a different light. He reminds us that the ontology as a study of absolute form can be in itself closed and separate from the other parts of philosophy, but also has to demonstrate a transition into a more speculative method covering both form and content and thus the whole actuality. According to Fichte, the starting point for this demonstration has now been discovered: the ontology has to merely show and strictly remain within this limitation that the categories must be actualised through what is real and become specific spatio-temporal quantities.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti