Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ For to demand that it should be annihilated is to demand that human knowledge should be utterly groundless, that there should be no absolute certainty, and that all human knowledge should be only conditioned ”

“ We must always be prepared to build a new house for ourselves. No general science of knowledge will be possible as containing the ground of other sciences. Each will be grounded in itself. There will be as many sciences as there are separate immediately certain propositions. But if neither the first case is to be correct, namely, that there are one or more mere fragments of a system, nor the second, that there are to be a manifold of systems, then a highest and absolute first fundamental principle must exist as the basis of a complete and unit-system in the human mind. ”

“ On the other hand, supposing somebody were to utter a single proposition—a mechanic, for instance, the proposition that a pillar erected on a horizontal base in a right angle stands perpendicular, and will not incline toward either side, however far you extend it into infinity—a proposition which he may have heard at some time and approved as true in experience: would not all men concede that such a person had a scientific knowledge of the proposition, although he should not be able to evolve the deduction of his proposition from the first fundamental principle of geometry? ”

“ Now, why do we call the fixed system, which rests on an unproven and unprovable first principle, no science at all, and why do we assert the knowledge of the mechanic to be science, although it does not connect in his reason with a system? ”

“ If we suppose that from some reason or another the human mind can know only very little, and can have of every thing else only opinions, presentiments, or arbitrary meanings; and if we suppose, moreover, that from some reason or another the human mind can not well rest content with this limited or uncertain knowledge: then the only means of extending and securing that knowledge would be to compare all uncertain knowledge with the certain knowledge, and to draw conclusions from the equality or inequality of both as to the correctness or incorrectness of the former. ”

“ Thus a multiplicity of propositions would attain only one certainty, and result in only one science, for the very reason that they all have certainty and the same certainty. That one proposition which we have just now spoken of as positively certain, can not obtain its certainty from its connection with the others, but must have it beforehand; for by uniting parts you can not produce something which is in none of the parts. ”

“ The characteristic of science, therefore, seems to consist in the quality of its content and the relation thereof to the consciousness of the person of whom a knowledge is asserted; and the systematic form appears to be only accidental to the science; is not the object of science, but merely a means to attain that object. ”

“ Hence, the form of the absolute first principle of the science of knowledge is not only contained in that principle itself, but is also presented as absolutely valid for the content of that principle. ”

“ The hitherto true or imaginary human knowledge is not human knowledge generally; and, though a philosopher had really exhausted the former, and shown by a perfect induction that it were contained in his system, he would yet by no means have satisfied the task imposed upon philosophy; for how could he prove by his induction from present experience that in the future some discovery might not be made which would not fit into his system? ”

“ There is no light in it; and in spite of our riches we always remain poor, because we can never calculate them, never consider them as a whole, and hence never know what we really possess; we can never use part of it to improve the rest, because no part is relatable to the rest. Nay, more: our knowledge will never be completed; we must expect every day that a new inborn truth may manifest itself in us, or that experience may furnish us with a new simple. ”