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

Last time, we saw how the pure being of the beginning of ontology was determined to something and then opposed with others. Fichte continues by noting that in this opposition is also expressed the absolute relation of the opposed. In other words, he is suggesting that opposition isn’t the final truth, but at least implies that all positing of something and putting the something against another is possible only within the common sphere where both are reciprocally related. Thus, both previous categories develop into a third: affirmative positing and negative opposing are just one-sided expressions for positing or placing in a relationship. Fichte insists that this relatedness is the only true Ur-category, while the two first Ur-categories are just its interconnected moments or constituents. In other words, all determining is at the same time opposing, while this is just placing in a relation. Thus, Fichte notes, while earlier the original activity of thinking was seen to hover between affirmation and denial, we now find out that within this hovering movement, thinking relates the affirmative and negative members reciprocally to one another. In this sphere or space of relations, he declares, all thinking moves. Thus, all further categories and even all determined thoughts could be seen as mere further development of this Ur-category of relatedness.

Fichte describes the first three Ur-categories also with terms borrowed from his father: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. What he stated could then also be expressed by saying that the thesis and the antithesis led to synthesis, which is then something that could be discovered dialectically in all further oppositions. We thus find Fichte discovering the method of his ontology, which begins by noting how every position or thesis is one-sided and limited by its opposite of antithesis. He also points out that this is where the unspeculative thinking stops: it either fixates on one of the opposites, ignoring the other, or then it becomes aware of the opposition, but then just sceptically denies both positions. On the other hand, speculative thinking tries to solve these oppositions, even if it is not always aware of doing this or works only instinctually. Thus, speculative thinking should lead to the unification of opposites in something higher.

Fichte calls the result of uniting something (Etwas) synthetically with its opposite as this (Dieses). Fichte’s point appears to be that by determining something and relating it to other we can point out to it as one specific individual among many individuals, all of which are in the same space of relation and differentiation. Thus, he admits, opposition has not completely vanished, but the reciprocal exclusion of individuals goes on to infinity: even if we literally united two individuals together into a unity, this unified individual would have then to be determined in comparison to yet another individual etc. Fichte promises to return to this point later and continues to point out that every individual thus always reflects the sum of all individuals, because being determined by its relation to the other individuals, just like this sum or “all” reflects each single individual. This original synthesis of everything being in everything will then be developed further in the later parts of the ontology, he reveals, and should find its final form in the relation of the original personality or God to infinity of creations.

An important conclusion of the ontology so far, Fichte thinks, is that everything that is is determined as an individual. Thus, universal abstractions are not in the proper sense of the word, but are at most the unactual ontological foundation of the individual. This conclusion, together with the earlier one that everything reflects everything else, are, according to Fichte, truths that are just implicitly present in the Ur-categories and that must be developed in more detail through the course of the ontology. Then again, he assures us, if the development is done by following the dialectical method of mediation of opposites, the result cannot be different, no matter who is using this method: Fichte’s philosophy should just bring about what is already contained in its first principles.

Although Fichte adopts the three-level schema so often used in the German philosophy of his times, the origin of which he sees in Kantian idea that in all triplets of categories the third is the synthesis of the first two, but especially in the first presentation of his father’s Wissenschaftslehre, he warns the reader that by itself it does not exhaust the whole ontology. Instead, Fichte says, it is just the most empty or most abstract expression of the truth that will be found again in all more detail later. Only the highest synthesis will be the final truth, and each previous synthesis, including the original Ur-synthesis, are just more or less abstract preconditions of the highest synthesis.

Fichte recapitulates that the original being, which was still nothing, was determined as something and thus as a certain individual against other individuals. Now, in the category structure presented in a summarised fashion in his theory of knowledge, Fichte continued forward to space and time as the forms of perception or intuition, because we determine individuals through their positions in space and time. Ontology, on the other hand, should be involved only with pure thinking, not yet touched by perception and intuition, and thus this way of proceeding should not be open to it. Instead, Fichte continues by noting that describing an individual merely as this does not really tell us what it is and how it is different from other individuals: it is both distinguished and also not distinguished from them. Tantalisingly, Fichte just suggests that this contradiction leads us to the notion of quantity, but his point might be that at this stage the division of the infinity of everything into individuals is completely arbitrary: we might as well say that a set of individuals were combined instead of distinguished. As Hegel had already pointed out, such an arbitrary assignment of limits characterises in fact quantities, since e.g. a length of 6 metres could be divided into two lengths of 3 metres, but also to lengths of 4 and 2 metres.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. Second division: Ontology (1836)

In the last post we saw the end of the first part of Fichte’s Grundzüge zum Systeme der Philosophie that dealt with the epistemological question of can we know anything beyond ourselves to exist. This first part, Fichte states, serves as an introduction to the three years later published second part concerning ontology, which would thus require no introduction of its own. Instead, Fichte uses the opportunity to reflect more on the relation of ontology to the first and the later parts of philosophy.

Fichte begins by summarising the results of the first part, where we saw consciousness beginning in intuition, where it was immersed in a naive unity with its object. Bit by bit, consciousness started to free itself in representation and thinking and finally moved to its highest subjectivity, where reflection and scepticism left the consciousness being certain only of itself. Knowledge was thus restricted, Fichte says, from its widest extension to mere formal self-knowing, where only consciousness was true and all else mere appearance. This subjective highpoint of reflection, Fichte reminds us, was at the same time a turn from the emptiness of knowledge to its fullness. Consciousness, to which everything else seemed a mere illusion, was led to self-contradiction, because it knew itself as not being absolute, but a mere derived image of something else that revealed itself in consciousness. Consciousness became thus an examination of an unavoidable reality or absolute, which, according to Fichte, was not anymore external objectivity opposed to consciousness, but revealed itself to consciousness.

This insight, Fichte continues, leads us to the highest principle reconciling all the previous oppositions. The concept of absolute as revealing itself in consciousness, Fichte explains, correctly describes the living actuality that mediates everything. In other words, this absolute actualises itself infinitely by creating oppositions that it then combines inti a unity. Thus, absolute is not colourless indifference swallowing oppositions or an empty formal concept of universality, but an infinite power affirming itself eternally in oppositions. This absolute, Fichte says, is the common object of all the following parts of philosophy, just like it is the only true being or the beginning and end of all things. Fichte admits that this is just the most general description of the new standpoint of knowledge, because all the determinations used to describe the absolute still require further justification. In other words, when absolute is provisionally defined as the original actuality revealing itself in everything actual or as the identity of infinite oppositions, these oppositions are not in itself clear nor still demonstrated. Thus, Fichte concludes, we have to develop in thinking the provisional concept of absolute in order to become certain of the truth contained in it.

Fichte insists that we must not rest with the general result of the first part and that neither is it enough to search in multifarious experience the confirmation of absolute as the infinitely positive. Instead, he thinks, the task lies in the middle of the general concept of absolute and the experience: we should understand the concept of the infinite self-actualisation of the absolute by thinking it and so dialectically develop thoughts lying in this seemingly simple notion. This points to a need for the second fundamental science in the whole system of philosophy, which expressly abstracts from the positive content of the divine actuality and tries to know pure thoughts or absolute form of it. Ontology, Fichte continues, has thus as its task to ask what actuality in itself means, expressly ignoring all its further determinations or content. If at the end of the ontology will be shown that truly actual is just a free subject or that God is also personal, this particular result is then based on a dialectical completion of the formal concept of actuality.

The necessary counterpoint to the purely actual by itself, Fichte explains, is what actualises itself qualitatively in the actual, or to put it somewhat more clearly, being cannot be thought without what is in the being or without the substantial content of the absolute. This absolute, Fichte explains, is both eternal content and eternal form of being, and the content and the form are distinguished only in pure thinking. It must also expressly recognise this distinction as untrue and so point beyond itself to something else than pure thinking. Thus, Fichte concludes, while ontology is the science of eternal form in an express opposition to all content, this opposition must also be set aside, since it shows the form as incapable of existing by itself. Here the characteristic standpoint of ontology is revealed and also its relation to the following parts of philosophy: ontology is complete in itself, but through its completion it points to a complementing counterpoint in another type of investigation.

The identity of form and content in the concept of absolute was designated as the common object of all following parts of philosophy: just like the theory of knowledge followed the living self-development of consciousness, Fichte notes, similarly in ontology and in the following parts of the whole system this living substantial unity is the infinitely self-actualising and self-revealing absolute. He thinks that we can in all earnest, and not just allegorically, speak here of self-movement of this absolute. On the other hand, purely formal as in itself unactual and dead has no such driving impulse and no power to go through oppositions and mediate them in unity, except as an arbitrary fiction. Just like absolute itself is the acting force that produces from its internal infinity oppositions and extends them into a universe, speculative thinking of this absolute becomes the image of this original activity in creation, Fichte suggests: in ontology, speculation grasps the formal side of this self-actualisation, and in concrete parts of the system, the more qualitative side. Yet, he warns the reader, we shouldn’t regard this dialectical completion of absolute in thinking as awakening of divinity into self-consciousness, since confusing our dialectical thinking with the divine is just the same error as confusing real with formal.

In the fundamental knowledge that we have reached at the of the theory of knowledge, Fichte says, all dualisms are completely cancelled, both the opposition between eternal and finite and also the separation of subjective and objective: human spirit and natural world appear no more as a duality, but both present the unity of divine actuality and divine thinking. Insofar as this divine thought of the world must still be developed through investigations of the ontology and the more concrete parts of philosophy, this result of the theory of knowledge is anticipation of the later parts of philosophy, which must be illuminated and justified in more depth through the dialectical progress of speculation. In this dialectical progress, Fichte suggests, the mere anthropocentric standpoint of consciousness is raised to a theocentric standpoint, because through it, the consciousness comprehends itself in all its levels and shapes as the knowing of this divine self-actualisation: consciousness is itself in God, because it in general is. Similarly, what consciousness knows is only divine, because only the actual is knowable: nothing is merely subjective or meaningless, and even in error the force of truth is present. The divine presence, according to Fichte, drives from now on all philosophical investigations and shows itself as the only true viewpoint of philosophy.

Fichte now regards himself to have justified the general need to move from the study of consciousness and knowledge to ontology and further parts of the philosophy. His next task will be to explain in more detail the relations of these different parts of philosophy. Objective and particularly ontological knowing, he begins, has not destroyed the previous subjective standpoint. Instead, Fichte thinks, the completed self-knowing illuminates the process of the later parts of philosophy, justifying in advance all its turning points. Thus, the theory of knowledge should prefigure all the following parts of philosophy, which must still fill this preliminary foreshadowing with evidence and internal richness. We might say, Fichte suggests, that every part of the philosophy both points forwards to the next and in its turn receives its own meaning from those later parts. Still, he emphasises, theory of knowledge has the advantage that like a compass it shows a fixed centrepoint of truth that orients us through all hazards of investigation. Thus, the whole system of philosophy could be likened to an organism, in which previous stages already contain an undeveloped model of all the following. Fichte also notes that because the two final parts or the philosophies of nature and spirit engage with experience and its infinity of material, they can never be completed, while the theory of knowledge and the ontology can be.

Ontology has then a very limited task to solve, Fichte muses, as it must complete pure thinking. In its specific content, it is a science of eternal forms, in which everything concrete must appear. Pure thinking of ontology is not the empty logical abstraction, because such would for all eternity remain empty. Instead, ontology has as its topic the certainty of the absolute as simply actualising itself in oppositions, the concept of which it has received from the theory of knowledge. Making an exhaustive survey of this concept in its dialectical moments is the only content of ontology.

How can ontology reach the absolute form in separation from everything concrete? Fichte looks back at the theory of knowledge. Pure thinking has abstraction as a moment in itself. In other words, pure thinking has followed the path of abstraction and distinguished between that from which we can abstract in a certain context and that from which we cannot abstract in that context or between contingent and necessary. It then found out what cannot be abstracted from in any context or what is absolutely necessary in all being and thinking. In the theory of knowledge, these necessary elements were called categories, which Fichte takes as forms of both thinking and being. The categories as a whole can be called the system of absolute forms of actuality, distinguished from their possible content.

Fichte suggests that just like the theory of knowledge modelled the fullness of pure thinking through the speculative intuition of the absolute, the ontology in its part models the more concrete philosophies of nature and spirit, to which ontology has to introduce us. It is thus a characteristic of ontology that it is presented as a separate science, but it has to also show its one-sidedness. In other words, the purely a priori content of ontology is not the highest, but the simply first and most universal truth and precondition of all concrete knowing that desires to be speculative. The forms of ontology cannot exist by themselves, Fichte explains, but this is just the dialectical life driving them from one level to another until the highest or absolute form. Ontology thus relates to later parts of philosophy like pure science to applied sciences. Thus, Fichte concludes, speculative knowledge about objectively real or God, nature and spirit comes in two kinds. Firstly, there is the quantitatively limited knowledge of their pure a priori forms. Secondly, there is the infinite knowledge of experience of these objects that is shot through with a priori concepts, but goes further than them. This imperfection of ontological forms must be revealed in the ontology itself.

From the overall structure of philosophy, Fichte moves on to describe the structure of ontology itself. He notes that while until now he could look back on the results already achieved in the theory of knowledge or their immediate consequences, from here on he is going to give a preliminary look on things he will properly justify in the ontology itself. An important point in the structure of ontology, Fichte explains, is the distinction between concepts and ideas, where ideas are more complex forms than categories and refer to actual entities. He also makes the crucial point that due to the limited space of the book, he will not be dealing with ideas here, leaving that part of ontology to a later publication.

Fichte also quickly describes his method of organising ontology, which unsurprisingly works in three steps of position, opposition and synthesising mediation. In other words, at every point of the development of the concept we begin with something that has the character of immediacy and is therefore a negation of something. Due to it being a negation, it can then be placed against its opposite. Finally, both are united in the third member, which contains in itself the opposites as reconciled in relation. Although this trivision seems rather formulaic, Fichte assures us that it is derived from the characteristics of the topic investigated. Since we are dealing here only with concepts appearing from a dialectical process of thinking, the content of ontology is only consciousness of form, and because ontology applies the just described dialectical method, it uses this form also as a method. Thus, in ontology, the method is derived strictly from the nature of the topic, or the form and content of the ontology go inseparably together. Fichte notes that this is true only of ontology, because the form and content cannot coincide in any science that requires empirical impulses, therefore not even in the concrete parts of philosophy.

Fichte connects his description of the dialectical method with the distinction between categories and ideas by noting that the characteristic of all categories and also their dialectically further driving principle is that all of them appear as mere members or one-sided moments of a higher conceptual totality or idea. In other words, only in ideas do the categories find their truth. System of isolated categories consists therefore of ideas differentiated into their moments. Thus, all of these moments as isolated are constrained by the contradiction of not being in totality. This contradiction, Fichte explains, drives them ever higher until full completion in the reproduced idea. In other words, through contradictions driving it further, ontology raises itself over all one-sided concepts until something real is found that isn’t anymore affected with contradiction. The result or the ideas, Fichte says, are fundamental forms and paradigms of actuality. When ontology turns into a theory of ideas, there is no contradiction to lead it further, but even here dialectical progress does not stop, Fichte insists, but receives a new, positive meaning.

Ideas as principles of actuality, Fichte thinks, express in their relations toward one another at the same time real relations. Progress within theory of ideas models the real processes of the world, and the ideas in their mutual relation present the eternal forms of the world, while this must be completely denied of categories in their isolation. Categories are in general to be thought merely as conceptual moments of ideas and are not enough for actuality, while ideas show themselves shaping and moving the actuality. Fichte hints that the dialectical progress will show that all ideas return to the idea of spirit and personality and only in this find their full truth. Thus, the meaning of the world process is that all reality tries to push itself to consciousness, spirit and personality, and in the universe, like in ontology, God remains the highest idea solving all contradictions.

Study of ideas becomes then in its highest truth speculative theology, Fichte explains. In this end, all contradictions are resolved and all categories and ideas comprehended and explained. Thus, Fichte concludes, the only true or absolute idea is the idea of absolute personality, which is then also the only complete definition of God. The goal and result of ontology is then absolute theism, and ontology is therefore an attempt to lead all other, more imperfect ways to understand God to theism as their absolute truth. Every category and every idea, Fichte thinks, is a subordinate definition of the concept of God and thus corresponds to some religious or speculative consciousness of God, and therefore ontology should also contain the principles of an internal history of religions and philosophies from an ontological standpoint, just like the theory of knowledge contained principles of all philosophies from the standpoint of self-consciousness. Each lower conception of God is then just a confused opinion lacking final evidence, while with the highest religion, Fichte insists, we also reach the standpoint of true philosophy.

Fichte notes that theory of knowledge as the foundation of ontology could be called a proof of God’s existence. Similarly, he argues, ontology must be understood as a demonstration of God’s essence. Still, he admits, even here ontology is just a science of forms and the highest idea of the divine personality is also just a form, although it is the highest form. Like all ideas, it corresponds to the positive, infinitely filled actuality of divine person, but unlike many other ideas, it can be realised only once, which Fichte suggests as the formal proof of the unity of God.

When we move from ontology to speculative theology, Fichte thinks, the a priori necessity of negative dialectics is completed, but just because of this also destroyed. Behind all more abstract categories and ideas we find the idea of personality or freedom as the only truth without any contradiction. Since thinking of the highest idea is free of all contradictions, the validity of negative dialectics ends, because it could move forward only through contradictions. A higher method of knowledge is thus required, Fichte says, and this method has to use a different methodological principle: unlike Hegel thought, Fichte points out, negative dialectics cannot be the absolute method of knowledge. Just like it was the character of negative dialectics to return from categories as one-sided parts to their totality, from here on the valid methodology has to be completely opposite. This positive dialectics, as Fichte calls it, is then progressive and descends from the height of the absolute idea, and here the leading principle is the development and unfolding of what is already implicitly present.

Just like in negative dialectics the contradiction in every subordinate concept was the impulse to search for something truer and more essential, Fichte continues, in positive dialectics the principle is ever fuller confirmation of what is in itself already real, or more shortly, its life and freedom. In the sphere of speculative theology and concrete systems of natural and spiritual philosophy, he explains, all the moments shown by positive dialectics can be actual, that is, not affected by self-negation of contradiction. Yet, he at once adds, since there is no contradiction forcing these moments to exist, it is completely free whether they do. Thus, there is no dialectical contradiction in that God would not reveal itself in creation or that God would just be the world creator, but not a redeemer in world history. That God is more is thus no necessity in God, but a free act that cannot be derived from God with negative, but only with positive dialectics. Similarly, Fichte continues, nature could exist without human spirit and this would lead to no logical contradiction, but spirit still is the truth of nature. Shortly, it is not an abstract necessity that lies behind the creation and the development of the world, and positive knowledge of the world cannot be derived from a necessary chain of mere a priori conceptual moments. Content of positive dialectics, Fichte concludes, lies in thinking about the process of life and spirit, not a priori, but by dialectically working through experience as the actualisation of these powers.

This addition of positive dialectics, Fichte believes, changes the whole manner of philosophical investigation. Creation of nature and spirit becomes a history of divine revelation through the will of God, which finally assists speculation out of its abstract spinning in itself. Such an abstract fixation on a priori is overcome, firstly, by complementing negative dialectics with and by lifting it to positive dialectics, which ontologically finds its realisation in the speculative theology. Then again, here the validity of a priori completely ends, because the field of freedom begins. Thus, positive revelation of the personality of God or God’s actions can be experienced only in the actual things. The a priori is then complemented for the second time, Fichte suggests, by a transition into speculative empiricism that knows the world as a creative act of God and as an artwork of divine understanding and will. This infinitely concrete, natural and spiritual universe is also the counterpoint that confirms the reality of the eternal ideas of ontology: just like ideas are forms of God’s actuality, the concrete infinite world is the fulfilled actuality of divine revelation. Ontology thus ends with complete self-awareness of ending, because it has recognised its own, necessary limits.

Fichte goes back from these fancy preliminary speculations to the more pressing question where and why should ontology begin. He returns to the simple result of the theory of knowledge: absolute is. Thinking of this simple result, he says, is pure thinking. We have to think through the absolute, that is, to separate the differences contained in its seeming simplicity. This separation should also raise categories to consciousness in their necessary, dialectical connection.

First step in this thinking of absolute, Fichte explains, is to ignore all the indeterminate representations that the provisional thinking of absolute suggests semi-unconsciously. Indeed, he insists, all provisional thinking should be completely forgotten and all its valid results should be demonstrated from the beginning of pure thinking. Just like consciousness at the end of the theory of knowledge finally broke through all oppositions and found the knowledge that absolute is, it provisionally harbours in this thought of absolute many concepts (it is the eternal in all change, highest mediating of all oppositions, absolute power over everything etc.). True, Fichte admits, this thought of absolute can be regarded from different viewpoints, but even more so a deeper justification of this synthesis is crucial. In other words, it hasn’t been yet shown why specifically this set of concepts is found in the absolute nor is it solved how the unity of the absolute in general suffers a manifold of properties. Similarly, from other predicates involved in the thought of absolute should be evoked a series of problems or contradictions that thinking should work through. We are thus left with the task of showing how all these concepts or categories within the thought of absolute reciprocally determine one another.

All this, Fichte points out, takes us back to the provisionally drawn field of investigation. Just like the theory of knowledge left us at the end the thought of absolute, so the provisional thinking through of this thought shows the necessity of investigating it systematically. Thus, Fichte insists, we must return to the absolute beginning of thinking that is also the absolute beginning of being, since the opposition of objective being and subjective thinking is not valid here. The theory of knowledge gave us the insight that absolute is, as simply evident and certain truth. Then again, thinking the absolute reveals a series of problems, and only their full solution justifies the universal certainty of this insight. Here, Fichte thinks, we have described the task of ontology from a new angle. He also notes that we could now completely separate ontology from the first part of the system. If we do this, knowledge of the being of absolute remains a presupposition that as self-justifying should be placed at the start of the ontology.

Returning to the absolute beginning or the first act of thinking, Fichte suggests, we have to search for the most universal principle of this activity. This universal principle, he thinks, is positing of something as still thoroughly undetermined. The aim of this positing, Fichte thinks, is to move from this indeterminateness to determination and fix what we are thinking as something that is placed within a universal sphere of distinctions, where one in general is determined as not something else. Thus, he points out, determining always relates to denying something else, and this relation connects positing and denying: both are just opposed to one another, but therefore also united in a relation. Only this relating is their truth, not their isolation, since they are what they are only in this relation. Going through all the different forms of this relating of distinctions Fichte takes as a new way to describe the task of ontology. He also thinks that the unity of these three moments should not yet be counted among the proper categories. Indeed, he calls them the Ur-categories or the general field for all further categories. It should thus not be possible to express any determined thoughts in them, but ontological thinking must begin with them.

Even before going to this trinity of related opposition, Fichte insists, we must still isolate its absolute beginning, expressly separating from its both other moments, although it is irresistible to move further from this beginning. In relation to thinking, he says, the beginning is to be designated only as positing of a formal starting point for further determinations. This could also be expressed as mere being or “is” without any further addition: logically, Fichte explains, we could take it as the empty, indeterminate subject of a judgement that has not yet developed to its copula and predicate. Since this mere being is just purely determinable, it is not yet even something that is: it is or has no predicate, but is only absolute predicability. We can determine this absolute indeterminacy, Fichte explains, only when we move to further members of the Ur-categories. Its contradiction is then simply that we try to remain in it, when it expresses its absolute determinability and the need to move to determining.

In this first and simplest thought, Fichte thinks, we inevitably recognise the identity of thinking and being or of form and content: this beginning of all determining is only in thinking, but it still leads to all proper being or or real determinations. In other words, Fichte explains, because this beginning develops further into real determinations or ideas it cannot be merely subjective, but because as the beginning of all determining it completely lacks all concrete determinations, it cannot be called objective. From this first source, he describes, flow out all distinctions of thinking and being, but here thinking completely penetrates being, so that nothing is obscure or impenetrable for thinking. Similarly, this abstract being is completely placed in the light of consciousness, so that the highest a priori immersion of content and form is reached.

Fichte recognises that this pure beginning has been poignantly called being that is still just nothing. This properly means, he explains, that being as beginning is simply still undetermined or the negation of all further determination, hence, still nothing. This does not really mean, Fichte thinks, that nothing would be added as a predicate to being, since being in present context is more likely the absolutely predicateless, but the first thought is just described in its essential self-negation: being is expressly determined as still nothing, as simply not determined or as contradiction against itself. Then again, Fichte adds, it is completely impermissible to believe this proposition to be universally valid even beyond the beginning of the still lacking determining, as he thinks undeniably happens in the expressions like “being and nothing are same”. Here, he explains, being is more properly called actuality, and the predicate “nothing” directly cancels the first thought, because actuality directly negates nothing.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte: Outline of a system of philosophy. First division: knowledge as self-knowledge – Speculative knowing

The result of his work, in Fichte’s opinion, has been that God is the absolute content of consciousness or its only truth and reality, or because we are talking actually of a system of knowing, the original ground of all truth: everything true is true for consciousness only because it follows from God’s revelation. Fichte calls this universal, inviolable standpoint speculative knowledge. Earlier subjectivity of consciousness should now have been completely overcome, and even the most confused, one-sided errors or the most contradictory worldviews are only insofar subjective and thus false as they are mere parts or moments of truth. Consciousness in all its forms and shapes is just more implicit or explicit knowing of the divine revelation. Thus, Fichte continues, what was earlier called the sense world or world of finite things is the same reality, surrounded and interwoven with sensuous illusion, and consciousness just has to work through this illusion in order to know in it the same one truth. Since all actual in general should be revelation of God, all disunion and dualism of any kind should have vanished. In addition to the opposition of thing and consciousness, Fichte says, things are not divided into sensuous and supersensuous realities, but there should be just one world of self-revealing God that is one as well as infinite.

The immediate recognition of eternal, Fichte notes, can be characterised only as an immediate confidence or faith. In other words, it is perception or intuition, since it is not found or discovered through any mediated knowing or reflection. Yet, he adds, it is not sensuous perception, but derives from pure thought or reason, that is, from the first original thought in which and through which every further determined thinking becomes possible. Because consciousness is at all stages and standpoints just undeveloped or developed thinking, Fichte’s argument continues, its absolute, even if not consciously recognised essence is at the same time to recognise eternal, infinite or divine. Fichte immediately draws the conclusion that any purely atheistic worldview would be only highest unconsciousness, or at best, in trying to understand this original intuition of the eternal it remained with such unsatisfying abstractions like natural necessity and unconscious fate. Intuition of reason is then just a beginning leading to the truth, because divine is to be comprehended according to more special determinations than mere abstract infinity.

Fichte clarifies that although the intuition of reason is original and absolute, it cannot be called immediate, because it is mediated by the previous stages of reflection, through which consciousness arrived at it. This mediation should justify and prove the possibility of the intuition of reason for philosophy that starts from other standpoints. Still, the content of this intuition is not invented through reflective consciousness, but consciousness has just returned from its engagement with various individual instances of knowing and illuminated the original knowledge and truth behind these individual truths.

The intuition of reason, Fichte explains, does not immediately have any determined content expressible as propositions or as a system of truths. Instead, it is just a beginning or a principle for further speculative progress. This intuition must then be extended from its simple abstraction to mediated comprehending of all truth as an absolute revealing itself in consciousness. The next question, Fichte notes, is  how this absolute is to be comprehended, since its abstract understanding as eternal or infinite seems too sparse to exhaust its concept. He reveals that religious mysticism and church faith have anticipated this development, when they have expressed God as the highest personality or as the conscious original good. According to Fichte, this religious notion has to be just confirmed in philosophical thinking.

More definitely, Fichte continues, unsatisfactory in the knowledge of absolute or God at this standpoint is that the intuition of reason has not been balanced with the consciousness of immediately given, and this imbalance drives us to speculative investigation. In other words, Fichte expounds, intuition of reason shows God alone as undeniable truth, but in immediate consciousness this confidence is replaced by finite, variable things: consciousness of eternal and consciousness of finite fall completely apart. Eternal appears to become a beyond for finite, which on its part is immediately certain, and thus a struggle is created between the absolute confidence of knowing God and the immediate consciousness of merely finite beings. The original certainty of eternal is driven to test and justify itself, Fichte continues, in other words, the eternal becomes a topic of investigation and at least a theoretical uncertainty. Thus, the immediate confidence of God, Fichte insists, turns into Jacobian yearning for eternal as unknown.

Finite is just an illusion, Fichte ensures us, but we still must explain the appearance of finite from eternal, which requires developing one concept from the other through thinking. Since these are pure concepts, that is, not abstracted from concrete intuitions, this investigation can happen only in speculative or dialectical thinking. Fichte notes beforehand that the investigation breaks into three phases. First, the eternal must be comprehended as such, and secondly, the finite must be derived from this comprehension of eternal: this will be the content of ontology. Thirdly, the essence of the finite must then be further determined, which will then be content of the philosophy of nature and spirit. Despite dividing it into these three parts, Fichte assures us, the whole investigation is dialectical development of one fundamental concept of self-revelation of God in consciousness.

At the stage of speculative thinking, Fichte says, the previous opposition between subjective and objective has not just been cancelled, but the concept of objectivity has received a higher meaning: objective is just divine revelation in consciousness and thus not a world opposed and impassable to knowledge. Consciousness and objective being are at this standpoint not identical, Fichte emphasises, since there is still some difference between them, but they do correspond to one another. Consciousness, just because it is consciousness, takes simply part in objectively real or lives in truth. It should thus know the essence of the finite things as they are in God, which Fichte compares to Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge.

The first manner in which speculative thinking understands God or absolute, Fichte begins, is to note that all the oppositions of finite thinking have vanished and are without meaning in it: absolute is the abstract indifference to oppositions. Yet, Fichte continues, this is not the whole truth, since the absolute also determines these opposites and is thus their underlying identity, like in the early Schellingian philosophy. Even further, the absolute is not just a passive identity, but it is an absolute process that in its identity determines itself to oppositions or differences, but again cancels and returns all these oppositions and differences in itself as mere moments: in other words, Fichte notes, it is the Hegelian self-related negation.

Fichte follows the lead of Hegel in emphasising the role of contradiction. Contradictions, Fichte says, were generated in incomplete forms of thinking by fixating on isolated categories, while here these must be developed from the concept of the absolute identity. In this development, the categories must be shown as moments that have their truth only in the final category, in which all earlier categories converge as their common result. This final category, Fichte concludes, will be the correct, contradictionless standpoint of the whole truth, which will itself be this dialectics that again and again complements itself from its individual contradictions and one-sided oppositions and reinstates them into reconciled contradictions that alone are the result and the truth.

Categories receive in this dialectical process a new, higher meaning, Fichte thinks, where they are original forms of the divine self-revelation. Fichte emphasises against Hegelian school that universals are actual only in their individuality as concrete, while universal as such is to be understood as untrue and one-sided. Thus, the categories, according to Fichte, are merely the most external and formal abstractions that are actual only in individuals, but are nothing in themselves. Hence, even the poorest and most imperfect of natural entities are infinitely richer than abstract categories. Indeed, Fichte points out, the very dialectical process of thinking categories shows how these abstractions are cancelled and lead to concrete actuality as their truth. We shall see this process in more detail when dealing with Fichte’s ontology, but he already reveals that one important result of this process will be that self-conscious personality is the most real feature in both God and in creatures. Fichte also emphasises against Hegel that this whole development of categories through contradictions does not mean that reality itself would be governed by contradiction, but the contradictory categories refer merely to incomplete philosophical standpoints about the absolute or God and its relation to creatures. Fichte especially objects to the idea he thinks Hegel had in mind with the notion of contradiction that divinity is nothing but destruction of finite entities: instead, the seemingly finite or imperfect entities are supported by divinity.

Even this standpoint of dialectical thinking is still the one-sided, Fichte notes: speculative thinking still stands opposed to previous states of consciousness, like perceiving and representing. As long as speculative knowing grasps itself as the only form of truth, the disunion in consciousness and opposition between a priori and a posteriori remains in full force. Thus, the final task, Fichte insists, is to collect all the previous moments of consciousness under speculative thinking: consciousness has known itself in all forms, not just as speculative thinking, as being in truth or as revelation of God. In other words, consciousness has always dealt with just one world and reality that remains present at all stages of its development. Therefore even immediate consciousness or perception immediately grasps the actuality of this revelation in its absolute presence, and just like there is one world or divine revelation that is all, similarly there is only one knowing of it in both perception and in thinking, which both complement one another.

Fichte calls this highest form of consciousness speculatively intuiting or perceiving knowing. Here intuition or perception is required to emphasise the importance of individuation that speculative thinking forgets, when it fixates on pure concepts. Thus, Fichte insists, perception as such lives already in truth, as long as it is not ruined by one-sided thinking. When this harmony between perception and speculative thinking is understood, God is not anymore just a yearned beyond, but omnipresent, originally certain truth, because it reveals itself in all consciousness infinitely. Furthermore, Fichte continues, God is known not just as abstract omnipresence, but as original personality, whereby its creation does not remain an absolute process of creating and then destroying individuals. Instead, Fichte suggests, the created universe is the actualisation of infinitely individualised thoughts of God or of one original thought developed into a system. This creative thought of God, Fichte explains, does not create mere abstract universal concepts, as if the spirit of God would be so poor that it thought only abstractions, but infinitely concrete individuals.

As the universe should be the effect of divine thought, Fichte continues, we knowing the universe become conscious of it by thinking about it afterwards (pun on German word Nachdenken, meaning contemplation, but literally thinking afterwards), just like God has thought it previously or originally. In other words, we know the essence of ourselves and other things only insofar as we take part in the original knowledge, through which all is: we as subjects can reach objective things, because they are not dead beings or chaotically obscure, but divine thoughts.

Philosophy has finally become, Fichte concludes, theosophy or knowledge of divine in its works, but it does not possess this content exclusively, because consciousness is in all moments only knowing this infinite self-revelation of God. The final opposition between a priori and a posteriori therefore vanishes. True knowing in both perception and thinking is not opposed to any dead object that would remain absolutely unknown, but is essentially the immanent genesis of what is to be known. In other words, like speculative thinking is dialectical unfolding of pure concepts, the correct experience is also the genetic perception or living through and developing an object through its whole course of life and its connections to other things. Such a genetic perception does not reveal just an individual, but the universal or eternal in this individual, thus complementing speculative thinking. After philosophy has completed its immanent course through pure concept, it finally is reconciled with itself and turns back to the perception of immediate actuality in order to recognise in it the presence of divine revelation, with which it is to infinitely rejuvenate itsef.