Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Systems of necessity, mysticism and pantheism

Jouffroy has indicated that there are three philosophical stances that contradict natural right as he envisions it: firstly, denying the possibility of obligations for reasons independent of moral phenomena, secondly, denying the existence of obligations, because no such things can be found within moral phenomena, and thirdly, accepting the existence of obligations, but misunderstanding their nature. Starting with the first stance, Jouffroy finds four types of philosophical systems exemplifying it: systems of necessity, mysticism, pantheism and skepticism. I shall look in this post three of them and leave skepticism for the next post.

Joyffroy means by a system of necessity any philosophy that explicitly denies the existence of human freedom: if humans aren’t free, they cannot have any obligations. He does not attempt to give a full listing of all philosophical systems of this kind, but only mentions four prominent examples. First of these examples is Hobbesian philosophy, where the true notion of liberty is replaced, Jouffroy thinks, with a fictitious definition of liberty as the power of doing what we will. He dismisses this idea quickly, noting that this definition could make all unrestrained beings free – even rivers and wind – and that true liberty lies in our capacity to make spontaneous resolutions.

Jouffroy is equally quick with his second example or the Humean philosophy. Jouffroy reads Hume as insisting on the illusory nature of causality and thus indirectly also denying human freedom, which hinges on the possibility of humans being causes. Jouffroy’s short answer to Hume is that we do have a notion of cause and that we even can apply it in experience, because we feel ourselves as the cause of our actions.

Jouffroy takes more seriously the third example of such philosophical systems, which says that human volition is constrained by motives, so that the strongest motive inevitably determines human will. He quickly mentions Thomas Reid’s objection that there might be motiveless actions, but is not very convinced about it. Instead, Jouffroy concentrates his critique on the point that motives do not seem like constraints: even if I have a good motive for not throwing myself out of the window, I still could do it. He is especially doubtful about the notion of the strongest motive. Jouffroy reminds the reader about the three kinds of things motivating our actions – passions, motives arising from self-interest and obligations. He suggests that while we can compare the strength of two motives of the same type, we cannot quantitatively compare e.g. the strength of passions and obligations.

Jouffroy brings forward two arguments for the idea of motives determining the will. First, he notes that we often try to guess what a person will do, when we know their motives. Jouffroy admits this, but adds that such predictions are never meant to be fully certain. Secondly, he points out that we often do speak of governing human beings, as if they were just mechanical things. Jouffroy’s answer is that this a case of an analogy and that rewards and punishments used for governing people can at most influence, but never determine their behaviour.

The final example of a system of necessity Jouffroy gives is the idea of divine foreknowledge: because God knows what will happen, for instance, what we will do tomorrow, we cannot really do anything freely. Jouffroy admits that he would be more willing to reject the notion of divine foreknowledge, since the idea of free will seems more certain. Yet, he is doubtful whether the two ideas really contradict one another. Jouffroy emphasises that we should not judge divine foreknowledge by human standards and suggests that it is more like us observing past events: we know what a person has done yesterday and still what they did was freely chosen by them.

Jouffroy moves from the systems of necessity to mysticism. He describes it as an answer to the correct observations that we humans cannot achieve our absolute end in this life and that we can achieve even imperfect good only through great efforts. Mysticism explains these facts, Jouffroy notes, by introducing a Manichean figure of evil, who has ruined the current world, or by interpreting our current life as a punishment for earlier sins (he even thinks that the Christian story of fall merges these two idea by combining the notion of devil with the notion of original sin). The conclusion mysticism draws from the lousy state of the human condition is that there is no reason for us to do anything at all, except wait for a better world.

Jouffroy describes in more detail the consequences of mysticism. Mystics often distance themselves from the world that constantly nullifies all human efforts. Furthermore, he adds, they also abhor the human body, because it makes the human being suspect to the influence of the material world. Mystics also avoid all physical actions with a meaningful goal, Jouffroy notes, although they sometimes do something futile, in order to show how all actions are in vain. In addition, they avoid all human connections, preferring solitude over the affairs of any community, and even reject all scientific efforts. The only form of action they cannot deny of themselves, Jouffroy states, is the passive contemplation of things. Indeed, they even endorse contemplation as the only possible form of fulfilling human desires, holding ecstatic states in high regard.

The necessary consequence of the mystical idea that all actions are futile, Jouffroy thinks, is that there are no moral differences between any of them. A clear result of this stance is the denial of obligations, since no action is inherently better than any other. Jouffroy notes that some mystical schools have thus decided to just engage with mere pleasure seeking, since it is inherently no better than asceticism.

Jouffroy’s argument against mysticism is that the desire to instantly jump to the absolute end of human beings is a childish desire. Indeed, he insists, if we would be instantly happy, when we are born, we would be mere things and not moral persons, with notions of merit and demerit. Thus, Jouffroy concludes, the imperfection of our current world must be explained by a need for a moral proving ground, where we can grow to become good people.

Moving on to pantheism, Jouffroy begins by studying Spinoza’s philosophy, because Joyffroy thinks Spinoza to have been the most consistent pantheist in the history of philosophy. Still, despite this consistency, Jouffroy notes in Spinoza a fundamental contradiction: Spinoza states that human souls follow the laws of necessity and are nothing but combinations of ideas, yet, he appears to hold that human souls can freely affect the ideas they consist of.

Pantheism in general, Jouffroy thinks, leads to a denial of human freedom, because it assumes that only God exists and is free, relegating human beings into mere phenomena that cannot really produce, but only transmit actions. It is thus quite understandable, he says, that pantheism often leads to passivity. Jouffroy tries to explain the lure of pantheism by noting that it is based on the tendency of our reason to regard everything from the standpoint of absolute universality that forgets the existence of individual objects. He suggests as a cure the other method of knowledge, namely, perceptions of real things before us, since they confirm very vividly that there is more to the world than mere abstract universality of being.

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.