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

If at the previous stage consciousness merely abstracted emptier and emptier concepts from its perceptions and representations, now, according to Fichte, it is meant to connect these abstractions to something more concrete, like when we say that a concrete rose we perceive is or falls under the abstraction of colour red. In a manner first suggested by Hegel, Fichte goes through a progression of different forms of judgement, which outwardly resemble parts in Kantian 3 times 4 -classification of judgements: only outwardly, since the Kantian classification is meant to be read as every judgement having four dimensions with three possible characteristics, while with Hegel and Fichte the twelve forms are all distinct from one another.

Although Fichte appears to follow the same route as Hegel, there is the clear difference that Hegel relates the different modes of judgement to ontological categories, which is something that Fichte cannot do, since he hasn’t yet developed these categories. This creates some differences in their accounts, the most obvious being that Fichte picks different titles for his groups of judgements. More subtle difference is that the development of Fichtean judgement, unlike Hegel’s, does not involve more and more complex properties of things, but instead, more and more delicate knowledge that we have of things.

Judgements, Fichte begins, like everything else in consciousness, start developing from what is immediately given. In other words, the first type of judgement starts from some immediately given and contingent individual or subject and points out an equally contingent given property or predicate of it: fruit is ripe. Such judgement, which Fichte calls positive, has an air of contingency: fruit might not be ripe tomorrow. Thus, like everything contingent, positive judgement is variable and changes into its opposite: a contingent individual has a contingent property, but might as well have a different one. Fiche also notes that a positive judgement has a particular predicate, which cancels others. In conclusion, positive judgement is always bound to some negative judgement.

Negative judgement as a mere inversion of positive judgement, Fichte suggests, makes even more poignantly explicit the contingency of affirmative predicating: fruit was ripe, but now is not. Just like positive judgement implicitly contains negative judgement, similarly negative judgement always contains implicitly a positive judgement. In other word, when negative judgement negates a determined predicate, it still presupposes a sphere of possible determinations of which the subject has one: rose is not red means that it does not have this specific colour, but must have the more general concept of being coloured.

The notions of positive and negative judgements are thus separated just contextually, since a positive judgement implies a negative judgement and vice versa. Fichte points out that we could try to form negative judgements that did not imply anything positive: examples of such infinite judgements include statements like “stone is not happy”, where the predicate has no discernible relation to the subject: saying that stone is not happy says really nothing, since stones are not things that even could be happy. Similarly, Fichte says, we could make a very abstract affirmation that e.g. a stone is – a stone – in other words, an identical judgement, which doesn't deny anything. Neither of these types of judgements, according to Fichte, are real judgements, because they do not literally say anything.

The result Fichte wants us to learn is that finding a mere contingent predicate of an individual subject is not that satisfying. The next task is then to find a predicate that belongs to more than one individual. The former positive and negative judgements, Fichte says, can now be called singular judgements, meaning just that we are conscious of the need to find more than this individual having the predicate in question.

We should then find several individuals having a certain property, which brings us to what is called a particular judgement. Such a judgement, Fichte insists, cannot refer to a completely contingent property any more, but approaches a universal judgement, where all individuals of a certain kind share some predicate: “all bodies are heavy” designates a property based on the essence of the concept of body. Yet, Fichte notes, we have the problem that we can never really go through all individuals, since there is at least a potential infinity of individuals and all of them can never be accounted for.

If we are then to have true universal judgements, Fichte suggests, we cannot base them on empirical collecting of all individuals, but on internal universality of concept: all bodies are heavy, only if it lies in the nature of the body to be heavy. Making this change, the subject is not anymore an individual or even a collection of individuals, but a determined genus, and the predicate expresses a property belonging to subject as this concept, while the connecting “is” or copula expresses an internal link and unity of the subject and the predicate or their a priori synthesis.This is categorical judgement, where thinking of concept A posits thinking of concept B.

The conceptual connection is still left implicit in categorical judgement, Fichte remarks, since the statement is expressed in the same form as in previous judgements. The dependence of the two concepts is highlighted in a hypothetical judgement: if A is, B is also (or if A is not, B is not; if A is, B is not etc.). A hypothetical judgement does not indicate whether A or B is, just the absolute combination or synthesis in thought that existence or non-existence of B follows from the (hypothetical) existence or non-existence of A. Here thinking has vindicated the power to posit being of something from being of another or deduce immediately one from the other, Fichte thinks: because A and B are internally one in thought, they are posited as one in being so that certainty of the being of one makes the being of the other immediately certain, which Fichte indicates as the principle of all a priori synthesis.

In Fichte’s opinion, both categorical and hypothetical judgement highlight only one predicate or consequence of the subject, although it should contain more possible predicates. This richness of connections is expressed in a disjunctive judgement: A is either B or C, where the form “either-or” presupposes that all connections contained in A are expressed and no alternative is left out. Disjunctive judgement presents then exclusive opposites that are united in completing the whole subject: in other words, they exclude not just one another, but also any other option.

Fichte notes that the disjunction can be expressed in the “either-or” form, but also in the “both-and” form. He means that the extension of the subject of disjunctive judgement comprehends the extension of both alternative predicates. In this sense, the subject is a unity behind the opposites, although it is determined as neither of them: in Schellingian and Hegelian terms, it is the indifference or identity of opposites. Yet, Fichte adds, saying “A is both B and C”, is not literally true, since the subject could not be determined as both sides of the disjunction. The indifference or unity that the subject is, Fichte concludes, is then just the possibility that A could be B as well as C. We have thus arrived at a problematic judgement.

In a problematic judgement “A can be B or C”, we are left with an abstract possibility, where the subject and therefore also the predicate is left undetermined. The next step, Fichte thinks, is then to determine the subject, leading us to an assertoric judgement: A as determined in this manner is B. Here the differentiating characteristic, in comparison with e.g. categorical judgement is that the judgement is based on the very constitution of the subject. Furthermore, an assertoric judgement expresses also a progression of thought from mere possibility and indeterminateness to determinateness. In other words, Fichte suggests, true assertoric judgement is always related to a previous problemitisation.

Fichte admits that an assertoric judgement contains something more than what the form of the judgement shows, because its predicate is not just contingently actual, but necessitated by the constitution of the subject. On basis of an assertoric judgement is then always an apodictic truth: A as x is necessarily B. In other words, the very character of A to be x is the very ground of its being B. This form of judgement is, according to Fichte, the goal of the whole development of judgements, since in apodictic judgement to a determined concept because of its determinacy is linked another concept as absolute and universally valid. Here individual and concrete, Fichte says, has lost its independent and contingent existence and is now understood as an expression of universal: an apodictic judgement “person or action of certain nature is necessarily virtuous” shows that virtue is embodied by individual persons and actions of certain kind.

At the same time, Fichte adds, an apodictic judgement is already something more than just a judgement. While a judgement in general relates something concrete to a universal concept, in apodictic judgement the concrete side of the equation has been divided into a concrete individual (e.g. action) and its determined characteristic (the nature of the action), which then connects the individual to a higher universal (virtuous). Such a three-membered relation, Fichte continues, is deduction, the topic of the next post.

Antoine Destutt de Tracy: Elements of ideology, First part, Ideology in the proper sense (1804)

(1754-1836)

Destutt de Tracy is a figure I should have considered far earlier. His influence especially on Maine de Biran’s philosophy is remarkable, but even Ricardo borrowed a few quotations from his work. His probably most important work, Élémens d'idéologie, was originally meant as a textbook for the growing citizens of revolutionary France. The work and especially it first part on Idéologie proprement dite was intended as a sort of theory of theories, that is, a kind of methodological bedrock, upon which all the other sciences could be founded.

The name of the science, which Destutt de Tracy supposed to have found, ideology, refers back to Lockean term “idea”, which described the elements of human mental life - ideas was whatever we happened to have in our minds while thinking something. Thus, the primary question of this science of ideology, for Destutt de Tracy, was what we do when we happen to think. His simple answer was that all thinking was actually sensing, where sensations could be had not just of things outside us, but also of our own internal states. In a sense, one can undoubtedly ascribe to this idea - if by sensing we mean being aware or conscious of something, certainly when we are pondering something, we are conscious or aware of this something. The major unanswered question is whether this description merely loses some essential differences within our mental life - that is, whether being conscious of what lies in front of our eyes isn’t quite different from being conscious of, say, memory of what lied before my eyes yesterday.

Indeed, de Tracy himself admits as much, when he divides sensations into four different species: sensations proper, memories, judgements and volitions. Still, even here we find that de Tracy emphasises more their unity than their diversity. Firstly, he quite correctly points out that these four types rarely occur in isolation, but an individual experience is often a combination of many sorts of sensations - when we perceive an apple, we may also remember the taste of other apples, judge that the taste of an apple would be pleasant and desire to eat this particular apple. Secondly, de Tracy constantly emphasises that even memories, judgements and volitions are still just sensations. This insistence makes de Tracy’s idea of judgements and volitions especially peculiar. Judgements, he says, are nothing but sensations of agreement between other sensations or ideas. That is, judgement is not an active assertion of such an agreement, but just a passive perception of it. Similarly, volition is not for de Tracy an act of wanting something, but merely a passive perception of a need.

De Tracy appears to be quite oblivious of the possibility of describing mental life as consisting of acts rather than through mere concept of awareness. This ignorance might well be behind his opinion that all other supposed species of thinking or mental life reduce to the four basic types. For instance, attention is, according to de Tracy, no independent form of sensation, since it is just quantitatively differentiated sensation proper, in which some part of a sensation has greater vividness than other parts. Or deduction is on his opinion just a concatenation of many judgements. One might object that attention is quite a different act from mere perception or sensation - it is an active concentration on some part of sensation - while reasoning or deducing is quite a different act than mere judgement - it is an act of justifying one judgement through others.

Despite de Tracy’s rather passive notion of sensation, he does not completely forget the active side of human being. Instead, he speaks of active muscular movement as the other necessary ingredient of human life. This muscular movement is peculiarly connected with the type of sensations called volition - when we move voluntarily, we feel both a desire to move in a peculiar manner and at the same time the actual activity of our muscles. This combination forms our sense of self. On the other hand, when we feel that our movements are hindered, we conclude at once that this hindering is caused by another existing thing. Our activity is then our only link to the existence of other things.

Since the existence of other things is revealed especially through movement, de Tracy takes them to be especially characterised through attributes relating to movement. They can be moved, but they also resist attempts to be moved, and together these two features imply that they can also impart movement to other things. Space and time are then in a sense abstractions from movement. Duration is generally something pertinent to all processes, including movement, and duration becomes time, when we choose one type of movement - for instance, apparent movement of the sun around earth - for measuring how long some processes take. Distances are compared according to how long it takes us to traverse them with a constant effort, and when similarly a scale of measure is applied to them, we get a metric space. Because all things we can experience have limits in space, we get different shapes and can do basic geometry.

Something which Maine de Biran was to investigate was more detail was the influence of habit to our different mental faculties. Still, we can find some basic details of Maine de Biran’s theories already implicit with de Tracy. Habit makes mental activities easier and at the same weakens the vividness of the sensations - we can do more, but we are less aware of doing it. Indeed, one might ask if in this description de Tracy is implicitly accepting the idea that mental acts are something completely different from mental awareness and that both are necessary ingredients of human mental life.

The final chapters of de Tracy’s work provide a link to the following parts of Ideology. He investigates the use of signs in general and language in particular. De Tracy notes that we have a sort of natural language, consisting of gestures and interjections. Yet, it is only a proper language, in which the use of sounds and inscriptions is codified, that lets us truly think beyond some simple sensations - for instance, we couldn’t really understand mathematical truths, unless we could speak of units and their sums. But this is already more appropriate topic for de Tracy’s next book on grammar.