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.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti