Fundamentals of Fichte's Speculative Philosophy (1)
excerpts from
MEMOIR OF JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE
by
William Smith
(2) The final results of the philosophy of Locke were twofold. In France, the school of Condillac, imitating the example of the English philosopher rather than following out his first principles, occupied itself exclusively with the phenomena of sensation, leaving out of sight the no less indisputable facts to which reflection is our sole guide. The consequence was a system of unmixed materialism, a deification of physical nature, and ultimately, avowed atheism. In Great Britain, the philosophy of experience was more justly treated: both sources of human knowledge which Locke indicated at the outset of his inquiry - although in the body of his Essay he analyzed one of them only - were recognised by his followers in his own land, until Berkeley resolved the phenomena of sensation into those of reflection, and the same method which in France led to materialism, in England produced a system of intellectual idealism. Berkeley's principles were pushed to the extreme by Hume, who, applying to the phenomena of reflection precisely the same analysis which Berkeley applied to those of sensation demolished the whole fabric of human knowledge, and revealed, under the seemingly substantial foundations on which men had hitherto built their faith, a yawning gulf of impenetrable obscurity and scepticism. Feeling, thought, nay consciousness itself became but fleeting phantasms without any abiding subject in which they could inhere.
It may be safely affirmed that, notwithstanding the outcry which greeted the publication of the "Essay of Human Nature," (3) and the senseless virulence which still loads the memory of its author with abuse, none of his critics have hitherto succeeded in detecting a fallacy in his main argument. Admit his premises, and you cannot consistently stop short of his conclusions. The Aristotelian theory of perception, which up to this period none had dared to impugn, having thus led, by a strictly necessary movement, to the last extreme of scepticism, the reaction which followed, under Reid and the school of Common Sense, was naturally founded on a denial of the doctrine of representation, and on a more close analysis of our knowledge of the external world, and of the processes by which we acquire that knowledge. It has thus occurred that the distinguished philosophers of the Scotch School, although deserving of all gratitude for their acute investigations into the intellectual and moral phenomena of man, have yet confined themselves exclusively to the department of psychological analysis, and have thrown little direct light on the higher questions of philosophical speculation. This was reserved for the modern school of Germany, of which Kant may be considered the head. Stewart, although contemporary with the philosopher of Königsberg, seems to have had not only an imperfect, but a quite erroneous, conception of his doctrines.
Kant admitted the validity of Hume's conclusions respecting our knowledge of external things on the premises from which they were deduced. He admitted that the human intellect could not go beyond itself, could not furnish us with any other than subjective knowledge. We are indeed constrained to assume the existence of an outward world to which we refer the impressions which come to us through our senses, but these impressions having to pass through the prism of certain inherent faculties or "categories," of the understanding, by which their original character is modified, or perhaps altogether changed, we are not entitled to draw from them any conclusions as to the real nature of the source whence they emanate. Our knowledge of the outward world is thus limited to the bare admission of its existence, and stands in the same relation to the outward world itself as the impressions conveyed to the eye through a kaleidoscope do to the collection of objects within the instrument. But is the outward world, which we are thus forced to abandon to doubt, the only reality for man? Do we not find in consciousness something more than a cognitive faculty? We find besides, Will, Freedom, Self-determination; and here is a world altogether independent of sense, and of the knowledge of outward things. Freedom is the root, the very ground-work of our being; free determination is the most intimate and certain fact in our nature. To this freedom we find an absolute law addressed, - the unconditional law of morality. Here, then, in the practical world of duty, of free obedience, of moral determination, we have the true world of man, in which the moral agent is the only existence, the moral act the only reality. In this super-sensual world we regain, by the practical movement of Reason, our convictions of infinite and absolute existence, from the knowledge of which, as objective realities, we are shut out by the subjective limitations of the Understanding. Between the world of sense and the world of morality, and indissolubly connected with both, stands the Esthetic world, or the system of relations we hold with external things through our ideas of the Beautiful, the Sublime, &c.; which thus forms the bond of union between the sensible and spiritual worlds. These three worlds exhaust the elements of human consciousness.
But while Kant, by throwing the bridge of esthetic feeling over the chasm which separates the sensible from the purely spiritual world, established an outward communication between them, he did not attempt to reconcile - he maintained the impossibility of reconciling - their essential opposition. So far as the objective world is concerned, his system is one of mere negation. It is in this reconcilation, - in tracing this opposition to its source, - in the establishment of the unity of the sensible and spiritual worlds, that Fichte's "Wissenschaftslehre"(4) follows out and completes the philosophical system of which Kant had laid the foundation. In it, for the first time, philosophy becomes, not a theory of knowledge, but knowledge itself: for in it the apparent division of the subject thinking from the object thought of is abolished, by penetrating to the primitive unity out of which this opposition arises.
The origin of this opposition, and the principle by which it is to be reconciled, must be sought for in the nature of the thinking subject itself. Our own consciousness is the source of all our positive and certain knowledge. It precedes, and is the ground of, all other knowledge; nay it embraces within itself everything which we truly know. The facts of our own mental experience alone possess true reality for us; whatever is more than these, however probable as an inference, does not belong to the sphere of knowledge. Here, then, in the depths of the mind itself, we must look for a fixed and certain starting point for philosophy. Fichte finds such a starting point in the proposition or axiom (A = A.) This proposition is at once recognised by every one as absolutely and unconditionally true. But in affirming this proposition we also affirm our own existence, for the affirmation itself is our own mental act. The proposition may therefore be changed into (Ego = Ego.) But this affirmation itself postulates the existence of something not included in its subject, or in other words, out of the affirmative axiom (A = A) there arises the negative proposition (-A not = A,) or as before, (Non-Ego not = Ego.) In this act of negation the mind assumes the existence of a Non-Ego opposed to itself, and forming a limitation to its own existence. This opposition occurs in every act of consciousness; and in the voluntary and spontaneous limits which the mind thus sets to its own activity, it creates for itself an objective world.
The fundamental character of finite being is thus the supposition of itself (thesis), and of something opposed to itself (anti-thesis); which two conceptions are reciprocal, mutually imply each other, and are hence identical (synthesis.) The Ego Affirms the Non-Ego, and is affirmed in it; the two conceptions are indissoluble, nay they are but one conception modified by different attitudes of the mind. But as these attitudes are in every case voluntarily assumed by the Ego, it is itself the only real existence, and the Non-Ego, as well as the varied aspects attributed to it, are but different forms of the activity of the Ego. Here, then, Realism and Idealism coincide in the identity of the subject and object of thought, and the absolute principle of knowledge is discovered in the mind itself.
But in thus establishing the Non-Ego as a limit to its own free activity, the Ego does not perform a mere arbitrary act. It constantly sets before it, as its aim or purpose, the realization of its own nature; and this effort after self-development is the root of our practical existence. This effort is limited by the Non-Ego, - the creation of the Ego itself for the purposes of its own moral life. Hence the practical Ego must regard itself as acted upon by influences from without, as restrained by something other than itself, - in one word, as finite. But this limitation, or in other words the Non-Ego, is a mere creation of the Ego, without true life or existence in itself, and only assumed as a field for the self-development of the Ego. Let us suppose this assumed obstacle removed or laid aside, and the original activity of the Ego left without limitation or restraint. In this case the finite individuality of the Ego disappears with the limitations which produce it, and we ascend to the first principle of a spiritual organization in which the multiform phenomena of individual life are embraced in an Infinite all-comprehending Unity, - "an Absolute Ego, in whose self-determination all the Non-Ego is determined."
Fichte has been accused of teaching a system of mere Egoism, of elevating the subjective personality of man into the place of God. No one who is acquainted with any of his later writings can fail to see the falsity of this charge; but as it has been alleged that in these works he abandoned the principles which be advocated in earlier life, it may not be unimportant to show that the charge is utterly groundless, and inapplicable even to the first outlines of his philosophical theory. The following passages occur in a letter to Jacobi, dated 30th August 1795, accompanying a copy of the first edition of the Wissenschaftslehre,(5) and seem to be quite conclusive as to the fact that the Absolute Ego of his earlier teaching may be scientifically, as well as morally, identified with the highest results of his later doctrines.
Fichte to Jacobi.
"I have read your writings again this summer during the leisure of a charming country residence, - read them again and again, and I am everywhere, but especially in "Allwill," astonished at the striking similarity of our philosophical convictions. The public will scarcely believe in this similarity, and perhaps you yourself may not readily do so, for in that case it would be required of you to deduce the details of a whole system from the uncertain outlines of an introduction. You are indeed well known to be a Realist, and I to be a transcendental Idealist more severe than even Kant himself; - for with him there is still recognised a multiform object of experience, whilst I maintain, in plain language, that this object is itself produced by us through our own creative power. Permit me to come to an understanding with you on this point.
"My absolute Ego is obviously not the Individual although this has been maintained by offended courtiers and chagrined philosophers in order to impute to me the scandalous doctrine of practical Egoism. But the Individual must be deduced from the Absolute Ego. Thus the Wissenschaftslehre enters at once into the domain of natural right. A finite being - as may be shown by deduction - can only conceive of itself as a sensuous existence in a sphere of sensuous existences, over one portion of which - (a portion which can have no beginning) - it exercises causality, and with another portion of which - (a portion to which we ascribe the notion of causality), - it stands in relations of reciprocal influence - and in so far it is called an Individual: (the conditions of Individuality are Rights.) So surely as it affirms itself as an Individual, so surely does it affirm such a sphere; for both are reciprocal notions. When we regard ourselves as Individuals - in which case we always look upon ourselves as living, and not as philosophizing or poetizing, - we take our stand upon that point of view which I call practical; - that of the Absolute Ego being speculative. Henceforward, from this practical point of view there is a world for us, independent of ourselves, which we can only modify; and thus too the Pure Ego, which does not disappear from this region, is necessarily placed without us, objectified, and called God. How could we otherwise have arrived at the qualities which we ascribe to God, and deny to ourselves, had we not first discovered them in ourselves, and only denied them to ourselves in one particular respect - i.e., as individuals? This practical point of view is the domain of Realism; by the deduction and recognition of this point from the side of speculation itself arises that complete reconciliation of philosophy with the Common Sense of man which is promised in the Wissenschaftslehre.
"To what end, then, is the speculative point of view, and with it all philosophy, if it belong not to life? Had humanity never tasted of this forbidden fruit, it might indeed have done without philosophy. But there is implanted within us a desire to gaze upon this region which transcends all individuality, not by a mere reflected light, but in direct and immediate vision; and the first man who raised a question concerning the existence of God, broke through the restrictive limits, shook humanity to its deepest foundations, and set it in a controversy with itself which is not yet adjusted, and which can be adjusted only by a bold advance to that highest region of thought from which the speculative and practical points of view are seen to be united. We begin to philosophize from presumption, and thus become bankrupt of our innocence; we see our nakedness, and then philosophize from necessity for our redemption.
"But do I not philosophize as confidently with you, and write as openly, as if I were already assured of your interest in my philosophy? Indeed my heart tells me that I do not deceive myself in assuming the existence of this interest.
"Allwill gives the transcendental Idealists the hope of an enduring peace and even of a kind of alliance, if they will but content themselves with finding their own limits, and making these secure. I believe that I have now fulfilled this condition. If I have moreover, from this supposed hostile land, guaranteed and secured to Realism itself its own proper domain, then I may lay claim not merely to a kind of alliance, but to an alliance of the completest kind."
Still more decisive on this point is the following passage from a review of Schulz's "Ænesidemus," in the Literatur Zeitung for 1794: -
"In the Pure Ego, Reason is not practical, neither is it so in the Ego as Intelligence: it becomes so only by the effort of these to unite. That this principle must lie at the root of Kant's doctrine itself, although he has nowhere distinctly declared it; - further, how a practical philosophy arises through the representation by the intelligent Ego to itself of this hyper-physical effort in its progressive ascent through the various steps which man must traverse in theoretical philosophy, - this is not the place to show. Such an union, - an Ego in whose self-determination all the Non-Ego is determined (the Idea of God) - is the highest object of this effort. Such an effort, when the intelligent Ego conceives this object as something external to itself, is faith; - (Faith in God.) This effort can never cease, until after the attainment of its object; that is, Intelligence cannot regard as the last any moment of its existence in which this object has not yet been attained, - (Faith in an Eternal Existence.) In these ideas, however, there is nothing possible for us but Faith; - i.e. Intelligence has here no empirical perception for its object, but only the necessary effort of the Ego; and throughout all eternity nothing more than this can become possible. But this faith is by no means a mere probable opinion; on the contrary, it possesses, at least according to the testimony of our inmost convictions, the same degree of certainty with the immediately certain postulate 'I am,' - a certainty infinitely superior to all objective certainty, which can only become possible mediately, through the existence of the intelligent Ego. Ænesidemus indeed demands an objective proof for the existence of God and the Immortality of the soul. What can he mean by this? Or does objective certainty appear to him superior to subjective certainty? The axiom - 'I am myself' - possesses only subjective certainty; and so far as we can conceive of the self-consciousness of God, even God is subjective so far as regards himself. And then, as to an objective existence of Immortality! (these are Ænesidemus' own words), - should any being whatever, contemplating its existence in time, declare at any moment of that existence - 'Now, I am eternal!' - then, on that very account, it could not be eternal."
We have seen that the attitude of the finite Ego towards the Non-Ego is practical; towards the Infinite Ego, speculative. In the first relation we find ourselves surrounded by existences, over one part of which we exercise causality, and with the other (in whom we suppose an independent causality) we are in a state of reciprocal influence. In these relations the active and moral powers of man find their sphere. The moral law imparts to its objects - to all things whose existence is implied in its fulfilment - the same certainty which belongs to itself. The outward world assumes a new reality, for we have imperative duties to perform which demand its existence. Life ceases to be an empty show without truth or significance; - it is our field of duty, the theatre on which our moral destiny is to be wrought out. The voice of conscience, of highest reason, bids us know, love, and honour beings like ourselves; - and those beings crowd around us. The ends of their and our existence demand the powers and appliances of physical life for their attainment; - that life, and the means of sustaining and using it, stand before us. The world is nothing more than the sphere and object of human activity; it exists because the purposes of our moral life require its existence. Of the law of duty we are immediately certain; - the world becomes a reality to us by means of that previous certainty. Our life begins with an action, - not a thought; we do not act because we know, but we know because we are called upon to act.
But not only does the law of human activity require our faith in its immediate objects and implements; it also points to a purpose, an aim, in our actions, lying beyond themselves, to which they stand related as means to an end. Not that the moral law is dependent on the perception of this end - the moral law is absolute and imperative in itself - but we necessarily connect with our actions some future result as a consequence to which they inevitably tend, as the final accomplishment of the purpose which gave them birth. The moral sense cannot find such a fulfilment in the present life; - the forces of nature, the desires and passions of men, constantly oppose its dictates. It revolts against the permanence of things as they now are, and unceasingly strives to make them better. Nor can the individual look for such an accomplishment of the moral law of his nature in the progressive improvement of his species. Were the highest grade of earthly perfection conceived and attained in the physical and moral world - (as it is conceivable and attainable) - Reason would still propose a higher grade beyond it - conceivable only after the attainment of the grade previously conceived of as the highest. And even this measure of perfection could not be appropriated by humanity as its own, - as the result of its own exertions, - but must be considered as the creation of an unknown power, by whose unseen agency the barest passions of men, and even their vices and crimes, have been made the instruments of this consummation; while too often their good resolutions appear altogether lost to the world, or even to retard the purposes which they were apparently designed to promote. The chain of material causes and effects is not affected by the motives and feelings which prompt an action, but solely by the action itself; and the purposes of mere physical existence would be as well (if not better) promoted by an unerring mechanism as by the agency of free beings. Nevertheless, if moral obedience be a reasonable service, it must have its result; if the Reason which commands it be not an utterly vain delusion, its law must be fulfilled. That law is the first principle of our nature, and it gives us the assurance, our faith in which no difficulty can shake, that no moral act can be fruitless, no work of Reason utterly lost. Thus a chain of causes and effects, in which Freedom is superfluous and without aim, cannot be the limit of our existence: the law of our being cannot be fulfilled in the world of sense; - there must then be a super-sensual world, in which it may be accomplished. In this purely spiritual world, will alone is the first link of a chain of consequences which pervades the whole invisible realm of being; as action, in the sensual world, is the first link of a material chain which runs through the whole system of nature. Will is the active living principle of the super-sensual world; it may break forth in a material act, which belongs to the sensual world, and do there that which pertains to a material act to do; - but, independently of all physical manifestation, it flows forth in endless spiritual activity. Here human Freedom is untrammeled by earthly obstructions, and the moral law of our being may find that accomplishment which it sought in vain in the world of sense.
But although we are immediately conscious that our Will, our moral activity, must lead to consequences beyond itself, we yet cannot know what those consequences may be, nor how they are possible. In respect of the nature of these results, the present life is, in relation to the future, a life in faith. In the future life we shall possess these results, for we shall then make them the groundwork of new activity, and thus the future life will be, in relation to the present, a life in sight. But the spiritual world is even now with us, for we are already in possession of the principle from which it springs. Our Will, our free activity, is the only attribute which is solely and exclusively our own; and by it we are already citizens of the eternal world; the kingdom of heaven is here, or nowhere - it cannot become more immediately present at any point of finite existence. This life is the beginning of our being; the outward world is freely given to us as a firm ground on which we may commence our course; the future life is its continuation, for which we must ourselves create a starting-period in the present; and should the aim of this second life prove as unattainable to finite power as the end of the first is to us now, then the fresh strength, the firmer purpose, the clearer sight which shall be its immediate growth, will open to us another and a higher sphere of activity. But the world of duty is an infinite world - every finite exertion has but a definite aim - and beyond the highest point toward which we now strive, a higher still appears; and to such progression we can conceive no end. By free determination - in the effort after moral perfection, - we have laid hold on Eternal Life.
In the physical world we see certain phenomena following each other with undeviating regularity. We cannot see that what we name cause has in itself any power over what we call effect, that there is any relation between them except that of invariable sequence. But we suppose a law under which both subsist, which regulates the mode of their existence, and by the efficiency of which the order of their succession is determined. So likewise, in the spiritual world, we entertain the firmest conviction that our moral Will is connected with certain consequences, though we cannot understand how more Will can of itself produce such consequences. We here again conceive of a law under which our Will, and the Will of all finite beings, exists, in virtue of which it is followed by certain results, and out of which all our relations with other beings arise. So far as our Will is simply an internal act, complete in itself, it lies wholly within our own power; - so far as it is a fact in the super-sensual world - the first of a train of spiritual consequences, it is not dependent on ourselves, but on the law which governs the super-sensual world. But the super-sensual world is a world of Freedom, of living activity; hence its principle cannot be a mechanical force, but must itself possess this Freedom - this living activity. It can be nothing else than self-determining Reason. But self-determining Reason is Will. The law of the super-sensual world must thus be a Will; - a will operating without material implement or manifestation, which is in itself both act and product, which is eternal and unchangeable, - so that on it finite beings may securely rely, as the physical man does on the laws of his world, that through it, all their moral acts of Will, and these only, shall lead to certain and unfailing results. In this Living Will, as the principle of the spiritual world, has our moral Will its first consequence; and through Him its energy is propagated throughout the series of finite beings who are the products of the Infinite Will. He is the spiritual bond which unites all free beings together - not immediately can they know or influence each other, for they are separated from each other by an impassable barrier; - their mutual knowledge comes through Him alone, to whom all are equally related. Our faith in duty, and in the objects of duty, is only faith in Him, in His wisdom, in His truth. He is thus the creator and sustainer of all things; for in Him alone all the thronging forms which people our dream of life "live and move and have their being." All partake His essence: - material nature disappears, but its images are invested with a new reality. All our life is His life; and we are eternal, for He is eternal. Birth and the grave are no more; but, in their stead, undying energy and immortal youth. Of Him - the Infinite One, - of the mode of His being, we know nothing, nor need we to know; we cannot pierce the inaccessible light in which He dwells, but through the shadows which veil His presence from us, an endless stream of life, power, and action flows around and about us, bearing us and all finite things onward to new life, love, and beauty. . . .
All Death in nature is Birth, - the assumption of a new garment, to replace the old vesture which humanity has laid aside in its progress to higher being. And serene above all change, the unattainable object of all finite effort - fountain of our life - home of our spirits - Thou art - the One Being, - the I AM, - for whom Reason has no idea, and Language no name.
"Sublime and living Will, named by no name, compassed by no thought, I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided. Thy voice sounds within me, mine resounds in Thee; and all my thoughts, if they are but good and true, live in Thee also. In Thee, the Incomprehensible, I myself, and the world in which I live, become clearly comprehensible to me, all the secrets of my existence are laid open, and perfect harmony arises in my soul.
"Thou art best known to the childlike, devoted, simple mind. To it Thou art the searcher of hearts, who seest its inmost depths; the ever-present true witness of its thoughts, who knowest its truth, who knowest it though all the world know it not. Thou art the Father who ever desirest its good, who rulest all things for the best. To Thy will it unhesitatingly resigns itself: 'Do with me,' it says, 'what thou wilt; I know that it is good, for it is Thou who dost it.' The inquisitive understanding, which has heard of Thee, but seen Thee not, would teach us Thy nature; and, as Thy image, shows us a monstrous and incongruous shape, which the sagacious laugh at, and the wise and good abhor.
"I hide my face before Thee, and lay my hand upon my mouth. How Thou art, and seemest to Thine own being, I can never know, any more than I can assume Thy nature. After thousands upon thousands of spirit-lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this earthly house. That which I conceive, becomes finite through my very conception of it; and this can never, even by endless exaltation, rise into the Infinite. Thou differest from men, not in degree but in nature. In every stage of their advancement they think of Thee as a greater man, and still a greater; but never as God - the Infinite, - whom no measure can mete. I have only this discursive, progressive thought, and I can conceive of no other: - how can I venture to ascribe it to Thee? In the idea of person there are imperfections, limitations - how can I clothe Thee with it without these?
"I will not attempt that which the imperfection of my finite nature forbids, and which would be useless to me: - how Thou art, I may not know. But Thy relations to me - the mortal - and to all mortals - lie open before my eyes; were I but what I ought to be, - and surround me more clearly than the consciousness of my own existence. Thou workest in me the knowledge of my duty, of my vocation in the world of reasonable beings - how, I know not, nor need I to know. Thou knowest what I think and what I will: - how Thou canst know, through what act Thou bringest about that consciousness, I cannot understand, - nay, I know that the idea of an act, of a particular act of consciousness, belongs to me alone, and not to Thee, - the Infinite One. Thou willest that my free obedience shall bring with it eternal consequences: - the act of thy will I cannot comprehend, - I know only that it is not like mine. Thou doest, and Thy will itself is the deed: but the way of thy working is not as my ways, - I cannot trace it. Thou livest and art, for Thou knowest and willest and workest, omnipresent to finite Reason; but Thou art not as I now and always must conceive of being."(6)
(7) Fichte's doctrine concerning God has already been spoken of in a general way. It was the necessary result of his speculative position. The consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone; his knowledge cannot pass beyond the limits of his own being. His conceptions of other things and other beings are only his conceptions, - they are not those things or beings themselves. Consciousness is here alone with itself, and the world is nothing but the necessary limits which are set to its activity by the absolute law of its own being. From this point of view the common logical arguments for the existence of God, and in particular what is called the "argument from design" supposed to exist in the material world, entirely disappear. We invest the outward universe with attributes, qualities, and relations, which are the growth and product of our own minds, and then build up our faith in the Divine on an argument founded upon phenomena we have ourselves called into existence. However plausible and attractive such an argument may appear to those who do not look below the mere surface of things, it will not bear the light of strict scientific investigation. Only from our idea of duty, and our faith in the inevitable consequences of moral action, arises the belief in a principle of moral order in the world - and this principle is God. But this living principle of a living universe must be Infinite; while all our ideas and conceptions are finite, and applicable only to finite beings - not to the Infinite. Thus we cannot, without inconsistency, apply to the Divinity the common predicates borrowed from finite existence. Consciousness, personality, and even substance, carry with them the idea of necessary limitation, and are the attributes of relative and limited beings; to affirm these of God is to bring Him down to the rank of relative and limited being. The Divinity can thus only be thought of by us as pure Intelligence, spiritual life and energy; - but to comprehend this Intelligence in a conception, or to describe it in words, is manifestly impossible. All attempts to embrace the Infinite in the conceptions of the Finite are, and must be, only accommodations to the frailties of man.
God is not an object of Knowledge but of Faith, - not to be approached by the understanding, but by the moral sense. Our intuition of a Moral Law, absolutely imperative in its authority and universal in its obligation, is the most certain and incontrovertible fact of our consciousness. This law, addressed to free beings, must have a free and rational foundation: - in other words, there must be a living source of the moral order of the universe, - and this source is God. Our faith in God is thus the necessary consequence of our faith in the Moral Law; the former possesses the same absolute certainty which all men admit to belong to the latter. - In his later writings Fichte advanced to a more profound conception of the Infinite Being than even that founded on the argument by which the existence of a Lawgiver is inferred from our intuition of the Moral Law.
(8) It was . . . during this season of repose [1799] that the great leading idea of his system revealed itself to his mind in perfect clearness, and impressed upon his subsequent writings that deeply religious character to which we have already adverted. The passage from subjective reflection to objective and absolute being, had hitherto, as we have seen, been made by Fichte on the ground of moral feeling only. Our Faith in the Divine is the inevitable result of our sense of duty; it is the imperative demand of our moral nature. We are immediately conscious of a Moral Law within us, whose behests are announced to us with an absolute authority which we cannot gainsay; the source of that authority is not in us, but in the Eternal Fountain of all moral order, - shrouded from our intellectual vision by the impenetrable glories of the Infinite. But this inference of a Moral Lawgiver from our intuition of a Moral Law is, after all, but the "cause and effect" argument applied to moral phenomena; and it is not, strictly speaking, more satisfactory than the common application of the same course of reasoning to the phenomena of the physical world. Besides, it does not wholly meet the facts of the case, for there can be no doubt that in all men, and more especially among savages and half-civilized people, the recognition of a Divinity precedes any definite conception of a Moral Law. And therefore we do not reach the true and ultimate ground of this Faith until we penetrate to that innate feeling of dependence, underlying both our emotional and intellectual nature, which, in its relation to the one, gives birth to the Religious Sentiments, and, when recognised and elaborated by the other, becomes the basis of a scientific belief in the Absolute or God, - the materials of the edifice being furnished by our intuitions of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Fichte's thoughts being now directed more steadily to the strictly religious aspect of his theory, he sought to add such an intellectual validity to our moral convictions, to raise our Faith in the Divine from the rank of a mere inference from the Moral Sense, to that of a direct intuition of Reason. This he accomplished by a deeper analysis of the fact of consciousness. What is the essential character of our knowledge - that which it preserves amid all the diversities of the individual mind? It is this: - that it announces itself as a representation of something else, a picture of something superior to, and independent of, itself. It is thus composed of a double conception - a Higher Being which it imperfectly represents; and itself, inferior to, derived from, and dependent upon the first. Hence it must renounce the thought of itself as the only being whose existence it reveals, and regard itself rather as the image or reflection of a truly Highest and Ultimate Being revealed in human thought, and indeed its essential foundation. And this idea cannot be got rid of on the ground that it is a merely subjective conception; for we have here reached the primitive essence of thought itself, - and to deny this would be to deny the very nature and conditions of knowledge, and to maintain an obvious contradiction; this namely, - that there can be a conception without an object conceived, a manifestation without substance, and that the ultimate foundation of all things is nothing. By this reconciliation, and indeed essential union of the subjective with the objective, Reason finally bridges over the chasm by which analysis had formerly separated it from the simple Faith of common humanity. Consciousness becomes the manifestation, - the self-revelation of the Absolute; - and the Absolute itself is the ground and substance of the phenomena of Consciousness, - the different forms of which are but the various points wherein God is recognised, with greater or less degrees of clearness and perfection, in this manifestation of himself; - while the world itself, as an infinite assemblage of concrete existences, conscious and unconscious, is another phase of the same Infinite and Absolute Being. Thus Consciousness, - far from being a purely subjective and empty train of fancies, contains nothing which does not rest upon and image forth a Higher and Infinite Reality. Idealism itself becomes a sublime and Absolute Realism.
This change in the spirit of his philosophy has been ascribed to the influence of a distinguished contemporary, who afterwards succeeded to the chair at Berlin of which Fichte was the first occupant.(9) It seems to us that it was the natural and inevitable outcome of his own principles and mode of thought; and that it was even theoretically contained in the very first exposition of his doctrine, although it had not then attained in his own mind that vivid reality with which it shines, as a prophet-like inspiration, throughout his later writings. In this view we are fully borne out by the letter to Jacobi in 1795, and the article from the Literatur Zeitung, already quoted [above]. In the development of the system, whether in the mind of its author or in that of a learner, the starting-point is necessarily the individual consciousness, - the finite Ego. But when the logical processes of the understanding have performed their office, and led us from this, the nearest of our spiritual experiences, to that higher point in which all finite individuality disappears in the great thought of an all-embracing consciousness, - an Infinite Ego, - the theoretical stage of the investigation is superseded by the loftier conception of a Divine Presence. From this higher point of view Fichte now looked forth on the universe and human life, and saw there no longer the subjective phenomena of a limited and finite nature, but the harmonious, although diversified, manifestation of the One Universal Being, - the self-revelation of the Absolute, - the infinitely varied forms under which God becomes "manifest in the flesh."(10)
The first traces of this rise to a higher speculative position are observable in his "Bestimmung des Menschen," [The Vocation of Man] published in 1800, in which, as we have already said, may be found the most systematic exposition of his philosophy which has been attempted in a popular form. In 1801 appeared his "Antwortschreiben an Reinhold" (Answer to Reinhold), and his "Sonnenklarer Bericht an das grössere Publicum über das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophie" (Sun-clear Intelligence to the general public on the essential nature of the New Philosophy.) These he intended to follow up in 1802 with a more strictly scientific and complete account of the 'Wissenschaftslehre,' designed for the philosophical reader only. But he was induced to postpone the execution of this purpose . . . .
1. The title of this document was ascribed by its editor, J. Carl Mickelsen. Memoir of Johann Gottlieb Fichte is taken from Volume I of The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (William Smith trans., Trübner & Co.- London, 4th ed. 1889).
This e-text and its footnotes were created by J. Carl Mickelsen. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. No permission is granted for commercial use of this material.
J. Carl Mickelsen - carlmick@moscow.com2. This section is excerpted from pages 60 - 76 of the Memoir.
3. The author is apparently referring to Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40).
4. Wissenschaftslehre is the science of knowledge. For Fichte, this is comprised of metaphysics and the theory of knowledge together.
5. Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge) (1794). Fichte published successive versions of his Wissenschaftslehre, the later ones becoming more idealistic and religious in nature.
6. Quoted from The Vocation of Man, Book III.
7. This section is excerpted from pages 102 -103 of the Memoir.
8. This section is excerpted from pages 114 -117 of the Memoir.
9. The author presumably refers to Hegel, who in 1818 became the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin (founded in 1810).
10. Author's footnote omitted.
