Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Necessity

Fichte has arrived at the concept of necessity from the development of real possibility that determines itself to self-actualisation: the possible must be so as it actualises itself, or its internal determination is a hidden necessity that imprints its actualisations with the character of necessary. Thus, the necessity unites the real possibility and the actuality or it is the actuality that is determined to cancel any further possibility. Fichte calls this the first, provisional definition of necessity, which completes the concept of actuality. In other words, he explains, the actual is necessary, but conversely the necessary is thus also actual. Since the concept of necessity appears at the level of essence, Fichte continues, the latter concept also gains a more complete expression. This means that the essence does not just determine its internal into external or let ground grow into consequence and capacity into its realisation, but it is also an infinite real possibility. In this infinite real possibility lies also necessity, so that the essence as a ground does not just realise itself in general, but realises itself in a completely determined and necessary manner that positively excludes all alternative ways of being.

Once again, Fichte begins from an immediate understanding of a concept, and for necessity this means that it simply excludes the possibility of being something else, whereby necessity would be a direct opposite of possibility. Such an abstract necessity, he explains, means that something could not fail to be or even be otherwise, excluding both the existence and thinkability of anything that would contradict it. Fichte calls this the universal, formal and apodictic necessity and notes that it is the task of ontology to exhaust the field of such necessities in the dialectical derivation of the universal forms of being and thinking. Thus, he adds, this unconditional necessity is ascribed only to, first of all, the categories, and secondly, the mathematical forms of space and number that are not anymore categories, but still belong to the pure forms of actuality. Such a field of forms describes, Fichte clarifies, only a negative sphere, within which everything actual must further determine itself, without being able to overstep this limitation, because it would lead to a contradiction. Such a formal necessity covers everything that is thinkable and actual, but it also remains empty and formal, that is, leaves the content of these forms undecided.

Fichte emphasises that it is the character of the apodictic necessity to exclude its opposite as contradictory that cannot exist or even be thought of. He admits that this merely draws the limits of impossibility. Hence, it can be used merely as a negative criterion of truth or actuality that explains everything non-contradictory as equally thinkable or possible, but must leave completely undetermined, what is truly actual, possible and necessary. Such a necessity is also only a formal criterion that indicates what anything actual cannot be without, but does not tell what positively is actual. Abstract necessity remains thus opposed to an equally abstract possibility, Fichte concludes, and this abstract possibility corresponds with the concept of contingency.

Fichte notes that a distinction essential for the whole ontology can now be reduced to the just discovered conceptual relation. In other words, what earlier was called the eternal form against the infinite content is here designated as apodictic, but formal necessity, while what earlier was called the content filling and governing the form is here the real possibility of essence beyond mere abstract necessity. The infinite essence itself and all individuals derived from the essence lie thus outside this necessity, that is, Fichte clarifies, everything actual is more than what these necessary forms of actuality can exhaust. Indeed, he adds, these universal boundaries of negative necessity allow an indeterminable possibility of being so or otherwise, but the real possibility determines these boundaries more. Fichte declares drawing the limit between the real possibility and the abstract necessity as one of the main tasks of ontology that will lead to a higher form of necessity, which he aptly calls real necessity.

Fichte notes that the dialectical transition from the first, immediate understanding of necessity to second or the real necessity has already appeared, when we saw that the formal necessity contained only the negative, external limitation for the positive content. At first this content was designated as a real possibility, he reminds the reader, but even this concept contains a moment of necessity, because real possibility is one step in the category series of actuality that was earlier noted to be necessary. In other words, actuality refers to an essence that actualises itself in the infinite totality of each other complementing opposites, thus, involves a real possibility or infinity of alternative creative realisations, where each of these realisations is not groundless, but necessitated by the essence.

Fichte distinguishes in this new type of necessity two sides. Firstly, each of the realisations or Ur-positions stems from the essence and is just its self-presentation. Secondly, each Ur-position is also a determined individual and thus in relation to other Ur-positions. Both the relation to the essence and the relation to other individuals affect with equal necessity the varying characteristics of the individual, Fichte states. Thus, because the content of such an actual individual is given by the essence, it has a necessity that is not just formal, but real or involves the content. Furthermore, Fichte continues, just like the formal necessity was also called apodictic because of its universal validity, the real necessity must be also called conditioned, because it has its ground or condition in something else. Then again, although as an Ur-position determined by the essence the individual is necessary, it is also only an individual consequence of essence, in addition to infinitely many others that are equally possible. Hence, the concept of real necessity seems to be again connected with the concept of formal possibility or contingency: an isolated, conditionally necessary individual could as well be something else. Contingency thus finds in the field of possible consequences of the essence still a field of its own, or, as Fichte explains, in relation to essence it is indifferent or contingent, which one of infinite alternative realisations is actualised.

Fichte notes that the essence as infinite actualisation is expressed not in any individual consequence, but every individuality is absolutely comprehended in a system of realisations, and only the whole of these consequences is the actuality of essence. The individual realisations form then a series or a nexus of individuals as conditions of other individuals. In this sense, Fichte adds, groundless chance is also refuted. In other words, an individual, combined through infinitely conditioning relation with all others, has its externally conditioning limit or its determined position and its inescapable relation to the other beings in the world, just like it has received from its origin in essence its internal, real or positive determination or its ineradicably positive individuality. The positive individuality and the determined position in the system of individuals, Fichte concludes, are the inseparable sides of real necessity, united in the totality of essence.

Fichte places an externally determining, fatalistic necessity, based on the one-sided understanding of actuality, possibility and necessity, against an internal necessity that is contained in both the absolute essence and the finite Ur-positions and that is the expression or actualisation of the real possibility. He also suggests that this opposition must be synthetically combined into a unity, whereby also the highest expression for the category of actuality is found. The higher unifying concept, Fichte thinks, can be found only in the concept of essence and in the just discovered dual relation that the essence absolutely actualises itself in a system of infinitely many Ur-positions that immediately step into a mutual relation to one another. Each moment of the actuality shows this duality or is, firstly, the self-presentation of internal Ur-essence that forms the foundation and the kernel of everything actual, but secondly, each moment modifies its original determination in a field of varying characteristics through its relation to infinitely many other moments. In other words, Fichte clarifies, an original disposition (Ur-dispotion) or individuality asserts itself in all its variation, but also reflects in different colourings the infinity of other individuals that it affects and that in turn affect it.

According to Fichte, properly actual and in no sense illusory is the Ur-position or Ur-disposition imparted by the essence. This disposition, he continues, is both ground or capacity and grounded or self-realisation, that is, it gives its internal ideality a complete and full realisation. The second, but equally necessary side of each actualisation, beyond Ur-positions, Fichte says, is the infinite relation to others and the changeability appearing from this relation. The second moment relates to the first, he suggests, like characteristic to Ur-quality, like appearance to essence or like varying form to real content: the latter is the fundamental determining principle of necessity, while the former is only the derived subordinate necessity arising from action of individuals to one another. Using an earlier distinction, Fichte says that the internal necessity is the ground of the external, while the former is in itself completely independent of all external conditions. Indeed, Fichte insists, the internal necessity derived from the essence breaks through the chain of conditions, which appears to determine an individual merely through another individual. Instead, each actuality is before all things a necessary self-act stemming from essence, introducing a new, from no previous conditions derivable member of the universal nexus. This new kind of necessity is derived from absolute self-realisation, and although the self-realisation enters in a conditioning relation with an infinity of other self-realisations, its internal necessity cannot be overcome by this influence, but is only modified into various characteristics.

Fichte declares this concept of internal necessity derived from the Ur-positions of essence as the highest kind of necessity, because it comprehends in itself all isolated sides of necessity and actuality. Firstly, this necessity is liberated from the nexus of external conditions in the sense that it is not actualised because of these conditions, but because of itself. Thus, Fichte suggests, it could be called free necessity in the negative sense of having no conditions, although it is not therefore groundless and so not susceptible to contingency. Yet, he adds, this necessity also includes the concept of freedom in a more positive sense, because it contains the principle that everything actual is self-determination or self-act. Finally, Fichte concludes, this necessity is the highest also for the reason that it has dialectically appropriated in itself the other moment of externally conditioning necessity: internal necessity is not just free of the influence of external necessity, but it is also the ground of the latter. He suggests therefore calling internal necessity also unconditional or absolute. With the completion of the concept of necessity, Fichte adds, the fundamental concept of actuality has also received its full meaning. When this concept appeared, it was determined as self-assertion of content deriving from the essence, and now we see it again as the self-creating act of essence resulting in a system of Ur-dispositions revealing themselves in self-asserting conflict with each other.

While the concept of necessity has perfected the concept of actuality, Fichte thinks it essential to assess how necessity relates to the concept of possiblility and more precisely, of real possibility. In this regard the actuality has appeared as immediate realisation of its possibility: it is the self-act of the capacity contained in the essence or the Ur-positions. It at first seems that the actuality has fully exhausted tsuch a capacity, but the development of the concept of possibility has shown, Fichte reminds us, that a real capacity contains in itself also the possibility of the opposite, varying in its actuality members that exclude one another. Thus, each of the actualisations of this capacity appears from internal necessity or absolute self-act, but against this actualisation is always a real possibility: just like the capacity also realises itself, it is never exhausted or runs out of forms to actualise itself, but it remains an ideal power or an unactualised field of ever new possibilities.

To the concept of actuality has now been added the concept of real possibility and the concept of necessity, Fichte notes. Actual is then in truth self-creative and absolute self-act that retains in itself a real possibility that as the ground of all its realisations and actualisations remains at the background as the ideal totality of its essence. Fichte suggests characterising this actual as substantial, that is, the carrier of individual actualisations. Everything actual is ideally infinite and actualised finite, since at the basis of each of these individual limited actualisations lies an unlimited possibility that actualises itself, but also remains inexhaustible. In this manner, Fichte suggests, the concept of self-determination or absoluteness that appeared from the concept of actuality receives further clarification and confirmation. Self-actualising or self-determining, he thinks, can only be thought to have a power to remain internally infinite in actuality. In other words, Fichte clarifies, absoluteness, no matter whether predicated in unconditional or relative sense, can only be ascribed to such that possesses a “self”, a kernel or a midpoint of existence, which is inaccessible to external conditions and from which all its externalisations appear. Thus, the essence distributes to each Ur-position an infinite real possibility or disposition, which frees each of these actualities from externally conditioning coercion.

The concept of the actuality of essence has now been exhausted, Fichte states, and we have thus reached a resting point. Still, he adds, a new task has appeared, but at first he starts with a summary. Essence was known as ground, internal and content, but equally as consequence, external and form. Thus, Fichte reminds us, as a main determination of essence appeared that of actuality, so that actuality and essence or capacity and realisation were so interconnected that nothing remained in essence that did not actualise itself and nothing was to be found in the actuality that would not have been actualisation of essence. With this result we entered the categories of actuality, where first the contingency refuted itself, while the formal possibility and the abstract necessity were shown as valid only in a negative meaning of ontology. The concepts of real possibility and real necessity balanced each other, so that the actuality showed itself as their true unity: the actual was necessarily itself realising real possibility. Finally, it appeared that the real possibility itself does not terminate itself in individual realisations of the necessary actuality or that it comprehends in itself an infinite possibility of self-actualisations. In this manner, Fichte suggests, we have returned to concepts discovered at the beginning of the investigation of essence, that is, to internal, content and capacity and their opposition with the actuality. If we earlier found out that the essence is simply actual and all actuality is only actualisation of essence, we have now added to this a correction that this actualisation is essentially infinite in both intensity and extension, since the real possibility of essence is inexhaustible both in every individual moment of its actualisation and in their system. The new task that Fichte has envisaged is the investigation of this just found new relation of inexhaustible possibility and its individual actualisations.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Possibility

In the previous section, Fichte moved from the concept of contingent to the concept of possible, by noting that a relation of everything to both their essence and to an infinity of other things makes it impossible that all things would be ruled by chance. Still, he reminds us, there still remains a possibility of varying actualisations: although everything has an original determination, it can have different characteristics depending on the infinity of relations that it could enter in and that form the field of its possibilities. Each of the determined actualisations appears from this field of possibilities and further determines the thing in question, but beside this actualisation there are other possibilities with a same right to be actualised. This returns us to the concept of indifference between opposites that engaged us already with the concept of contingent, Fichte notes, but here it appears in a higher sense. The actual without connection to other actualities and to the essence was seen as merely contingent, since it could as well be otherwise, but this apparent contingency vanished, when its concept was studied in more detail. This step forward led us to the concept of possibility of opposites, but this does not imply complete contingency, Fichte assures the reader, since these opposed possibilities are just different relations of the original determination: possibility is the richness of alternative characteristics available for the self-actualising.

According to Fichte, this definition of possibility is one of the most difficult, because just like unrealised capacity, possibility is more like a transition hovering between non-actuality and actuality that is meant to extinguish itself: not-being grasped as still being is in an abstract manner called possible. Possible as such mediation of being and non-being, he continues, is first of all not actual or even an express negation of actuality. Still, possibility is not the same as nothing, but in another sense still partakes of actuality or is expressly related to it. What distinguishes possibility from the nothing, Fichte explains, is that it is qualitatively determined or has content and is therefore not contradictory. In other words, possible can be thought as actual, because it is qualitatively not nothing or not self-cancelling. In abstract possibility, the relation to actuality is left undecided, and if this relation is affirmed, the possible is affirmed as actual, but if it cannot be related to actuality, that is, if an attempt to do this ends with expressly negating the relation, the supposed possibility is revealed as impossible and contradictory. The immediate concept of possible, Fichte notes, is opposed only to this impossibility that cannot be thought as actual. Therefore the possibility has a wider extension than the actuality: everything actual is also possible, but something possible might not be actual. Indeed, Fichte emphasises, any combination of qualities we can think of without contradiction is possible, which makes possibility have no determinations of its own. Because of this lack of determinations, abstract possibility is revealed to be as groundless as abstract contingency: things are possibly so, but their opposites are equally possible.

The first result of Fichte’s investigation has been that the most immediate understanding of possibility corresponds to the first understanding of contingency: both are detached from any relation to essence and from all conditioning relations to other entities. He underlines that the statement of contingency or abstract possibility seems to be tied to our ignorance: we say that something is due to a chance or equally possible as its opposite, because we do not know the ground that would decide the issue. This immediate or unrelated possibility, Fichte continues, develops into the second concept of negative or formal possibility, which is not so much an advance, but more like an explicit consciousness of what the first concept implies.

In other words, the essential determination of this second concept consists in expressly ignoring the presence of a ground for such possibilities: the possible is here not just purely undetermined, but also groundless. Such a possibility, Fichte states, can then be replaced by an infinity of other possibilities. The only limit for this field of possibilities is the contradiction, since it cannot be thought as actual while the mere non-presence of a contradiction suffices to take something as formally possible. Furthermore, Fichte explains, formally possible is not just thinkable, but it also has the ability to exist or it corresponds to the general conditions of being, without which nothing actual can still exist. He points out that it is the very task of ontology to find all these negative conditions of actuality or the abstract ontological forms or categories. Indeed, Fichte underlines, ontological forms cannot be broken without contradiction, while within the limits of the categories remains still an infinity of opposed possibilities, of which the ontology cannot prove, which of them is actual.

Fichte notes that the formal possibility moves to a third kind of or real possibility, just like the groundless chance determined itself further into a positive power of contingent. The isolation of formal possibility from actuality refutes itself, he insists, because nothing can be so groundless and without any connection to others that it could be replaced with anything from an infinite number of possibilities. Indeed, Fichte explains, everything is just self-presentation of ground and is linked with other beings, which limit the externally infinite possibility into a conditioned possibility. Thus, the possibility derives not anymore from the lack of a ground, but from the positive ground or essence conditioning it, and it is not an unlimited possibility, but strictly locked in a field of certain characteristic determinations of or cases allowed by the positive essence.

Fichte regards the just found notion of real possibility as the true concept of possibility, because it is not just ontologically valid. The real possibility comprehends a manifold of qualitative determinations, but within the boundaries determined by the positive essence, which is the totality of possibilities where the essence exerts its power. Fichte insists that because these different determinations or possibilities are grounded in essence, they form a closed whole as mutually each other complementing opposites. The extent of its real possibilities forms then a limit for how the essence can be actualised, but this field of possibilities also contains its full richness, and the self-presentation of essence requires that it has exhausted its possibilities in actualising them. Fichte thinks that this restriction of possibility has finally destroyed all contingency, which still appeared in the negative infinity of formal possibilities.

Fichte seems to have returned to the category of capacity actualised in a system of its realisations. Still, he sees an essential advance in that whereas a capacity contained an undetermined manifold of mutually conditioned alternative realisations, a real possibility refers to a mediation specifically between opposed and mutually excluding alternatives. Thus, if at this point the real possibility or capacity of the essence actualises one member, the opposed member becomes a mere possibility, thus, this capacity is partly actual and partly remains a mere possibility. Then again, Fichte reminds us, the capacity should be one with its realisation, which precisely forms its actuality. In other words, nothing should be in capacity or essence without immediately exercising this power of self-actualisation, which seemingly contradicts the previous statement that capacity as real possibility does not actualise all of its possibilities.

Fichte starts solving this contradiction by reminding the reader that a capacity should not to be thought as resting or dead in itself, because then it would be a contradictory abstraction, just like unactualised and unrevealed essence would be a self-contradictory abstraction or undetermined being of the beginning of ontology. The concept of real possibility, he continues, adds to this result a new, qualitative side that this capacity is a power over opposed, each other excluding moments. This new side makes the concept of absolute capacity more comprehensible, Fichte suggests, because earlier, as a mere transition in its actualisation, capacity after its actualisation would be immediately expired, completed and dead being without any movement. The thought of qualitative opposition contained in the concept of real possibility makes the essence as absolute capacity of self-actualisation an inexhaustible principle of actualisations, since even though it would have actualised one of the opposites, its excluded moment would still remain merely possible and something to actualise later.

Fichte sees the notion of real possibility now lined up with the conceptual cycle that formed the exposition of essence. Essence as internal and infinite content gave itself an eternal form and then it appeared as a process of self-actualisation in the relation of ground and consequence or of capacity and its realisation. Now, with the new moment of real possibility the essence comprehends in itself the infinite opposition, in which each of actualities remains opposed to a background of unrealised capacity and the infinite actuality of essence remains opposed to an equally infinite superactuality or ideal power. Both of these sides are also comprehended in the unity of essence, Fichte explains, since essence in its actuality is precisely the infinite ideality. Thus, the definition of actuality as the power to actualise itself gains an additional aspect that this power is internally infinite, so that everything self-actualising has an inexhaustible content.

The individual members or opposites that are comprehended in the real possibility complement each other into a system, Fichte notes, and therefore each of the alternative opposites both demands and excludes others. The real possibility or capacity itself is thus internally determined and limited in its realisations, he emphasises, which leads us to the concept of necessity. In other words, the order of these realisations is not left to indifferent chance, but it is conditioned by the undissolvable relation that the individual members have to one another. The individual actualisations of real capacity are then just the so-called Ur-determinations of the first book that asserted themselves only in an infinite relation to other self-assertions excluding them. The standpoint of isolation is thus refuted again, and just like in the first book, the specific determinations are to be seen as dependent on the unity comprehending them all. In other words, Fichte explains, when one of the opposites in the real possibility is decided to hold in certain conditions, the content of this decision becomes necessary in the sense that under these conditions one of the opposites must simply actualise itself. The real possibility is thus not lost in necessity, like contingency was in possible, but necessity should just complement possibility, which, Fichte thinks, leaves still room for freedom to be reconciled with necessity.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology – Contingency

Fichte has reached the concept of actuality, which he describes as the essence or ground that has completed its abstract interiority by combining with exterior. He admits that this definition might seem incomprehensible, but thinks it captures the fact that something actual is not just a being or existence without essence nor something essential that lacks being or existence. Instead, actual should be something that exists just because of its essence or necessarily. Mere being, Fichte reminds the reader, is the most formal determination or the first starting point of all determining and thus still indifferent toward any particular quantitative or qualitative determinations. When being is determined quantitatively and qualitatively, it receives content and thus becomes essence, and even more, a ground with a capacity to realise and assert its content. It is this self-assertion derived from the essence that Fichte calls actuality.

Fichte notes that actuality seems like a simple concept, unlike other concepts in the second part of ontology that have consisted of a relation of two aspects. Yet, he adds at once, actuality is precisely a mediation containing these two opposite sides (essence or ground and its realised existence), and just because they are united, they cannot appear in separation. Still, Fichte insists, actuality should be thought of as a relational concept, because it designates the original relation between infinite and finite where the finite is the self-actualisation of the infinite essence.

Although actuality means ultimately necessity, Fichte explains, in its first or immediate shape it is still understood as opposed to the essence. In fact, he continues, actual in its immediacy refers to a simply determined and sealed off individuality against other equally determined and sealed off existences: self-assertion against other, equally unique self-assertions. We have thus returned, Fichte states, to the level of an infinity of isolated finite entities. Now, he adds, such an actual and isolated finite is contingent. This contingent should expressly not be a consequence of essence or self-presentation of a ground, thus, it is something determined, as everything actual is, but its determination is indifferent or could as well be something else or its place could be taken by infinitely many others.

The actual in this immediate sense, Fichte summarises, is determined by chance. The actual appeared without ground and isolated from its context, and contingency or chance is just this lack of all relations. Yet, despite this isolation, Fichte continues, an actual contingent individual could be substituted by infinitely many others and in fact is, in the unrelenting process of generation and destruction. The contingent has, firstly, no essence or ground: all higher meaning and reference to something eternal that the individual would express is expressly denied. On the other hand, Fichte adds, the contingent individual is also teared out of all connections to other individualities that might cause or condition it. Thus, contingent means in its first stage something with no known ground or cause, and at this point everything actual seems contingent in this superficial sense.

As one might expect, Fichte does not linger long in this rawest sense of contingency. The isolated contingent individual is immediately related to infinitely many others and thus dependent on and determined by them. This reproduces the level of an externally infinite series of an individual being conditioned by others. The individual seems thus not anymore contingent, but necessitated by other individuals, although it still has no internal ground. Yet, Fichte notes at once, contingency still prevails, since this whole series of individuals could be replaced by another series.Thus, on the one hand, an individual is explained by its link to other individuals, to which it is connected, but on the other hand, because this very connection is not necessary, the individual still lacks the internal determination from the essence, being therefore both necessary and contingent at the same time.

Fichte reminds the reader that already in the first part of ontology the external infinity of individuals linked to other individuals revealed the internal infinity of essence. Similarly, he argues, the contingent and still externally necessary nexus of actual individuals must also return in the unity of Ur-ground. This seems like no new result would have been reached, Fichte admits, but at least we have gained the explicit insight that the chance can never be the absolute ground of all things. He does suggest that contingency could take a subordinate role in the level of what is grounded by or dependent on the essence. In other words, the chance does not rule everything, but there might be some remnant of contingency in the actual individuals, because the ground does not determine the most external determinations of things.

Fichte starts to explain the role of contingency from the essence as absolutely self-actualising ground that disperses into a system of realisations. This system of realisations expresses the essence, but what the individual realisations of this system are remains indifferent: an individual could be replaced by its opposite. In other words, the concept of essence does not suffice for determining which of the possible realisations are truly actualised, and this determination is left undecided or contingent. Thus, Fichte explains, although an individual is now a self-presentation of ground, it is not the only possible. This, he concluded, is the third and properly speculative meaning of contingency: the undecidedness of which of the infinite alternatives or possibilities is actualised by the essence.

The second meaning of contingency was refuted, because an individual in its relation to an infinity of other individuals has to be in relation to the eternal ground. Conversely, Fichte says, in the third meaning of contingency we must remind ourselves of this infinite relation to other individuals. The ground appears to remain indifferent in relation to its individual actualisations and therefore seems to leave some room for chance. Yet, Fichte emphasises, the actual individual becomes actual precisely by being inserted into an ordered system of mutually conditioning realisations. The individual actualisation is thus removed from indifference that makes it contingent. In other words, Fichte explains, an actual individual could not exist or be thought as its opposite, because its determination is a self-assertion grounded in eternal essence and thus excludes any chance. Even the varying characteristics of such an individual are not relinquished to this indifference of chance, because they present the Ur-determination of the individual in its relation to other individuals. So the individual remains, even down to the most individual externalisations and impulses of its individuality, always faithful to itself. Nothing is contingent, Fichte concludes, because nothing is without essence and also not without relation to others. Still, he adds, the refinement of the concept of contingency has led us to the new concept of possibility: both the essence and the individual determination grounded in essence have an infinity of possible actualisations.