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.