Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ Now, when you tell this to a "Natural Philosopher," and say to him that Nature is merely a limit, merely a negative, and nothing positive at all, he gets angry, and cries out aloud about the outrage committed on Nature. But that is all he does. For to enter upon the arguments of the Science of Knowledge, and to refute them by proving the opposite of what has just been advanced, would require a faculty of acute and logical thinking, of following a very extensive series of thoughts, and of employing a more than usual degree of dialectical art. ”

“ According to all that we have said before, the sensuous world is no more an object of experience than the previously established parts of the self-representation of life in its unity, but is altogether a something a priori. It is not a foreign something, which enters into contemplation and thinking, but is necessarily grounded in them. Its universal, external form, materiality and quality in general, originates in the peculiar form of the power of imagination; hence it does not belong to itself, but to the latter, and is formed in opposition to it. ”

“ We have stated that not only the body of a rational being, but also the product of its activity, must be perceivable, and perceivable as such, by all other rational beings; and this absolute perception of the products of free beings, as such, belongs to the objective representations of the world. This perceptibility of the products, etc., we have established as a mere naked fact of consciousness. ”

“ Now, as an image of this Ego we form necessarily, through free—here poetizing—productive imagination, because we have no other creative faculty, a soul, and this soul necessarily assumes an extended shape, no matter how we twist around, simply because extension is the form of contemplation for the productive power of imagination. But this forming was a very superfluous piece of business, throwing an unnecessary and uncomfortable burden upon original thinking. The Ego, as a pure noumen, ought to have no image at all ”

“ It is quite true that the individuality is altogether pushed back into the inner sphere of contemplation, and that it does not occur at all on the field of objective world-contemplation, where only the unity occurs. ”

“ But all previous philosophical systems, without exception, rose no higher in this undertaking than to explain the consciousness of a single individual subject, which naturally meant the individual subject just then philosophizing. The consciousness that was to be explained has never been thought as the consciousness of one life, embracing and canceling all individuality. The Science of Knowledge is the first system that has done this, and has done it in such a manner that no one has observed it, but imagined that Science to be also an individualism. ”

“ Hence in so far as we hold both propositions seriously, which we do, we consider all thinking as producing through an absolute power of imaging, and vice versa. Thinking is, therefore, nothing passive, receptive, or anything like that.—If former philosophers had made the conception of thinking clear in this way, they would have necessarily ere this put Philosophy on the right track.—Above, we described thinking as a going out of an inner and immediate consciousness. But this inner is feeling and contemplation, both as the immediate being of freedom, and is thus immediate consciousness. ”

“ Whence does this determination or limitation arise as the only genuine, true, and original limitation? Evidently through original thinking itself, and in the following way:
The world, even in its inner character, as a force, and as a resisting force, is to be object of the causality of the one common Ego; and the force or power of this world is to be overcome by the power of that one common life. In this subjugation a certain determined power of life, peculiarly and essentially belonging to it, will, no doubt, make itself visible to universal contemplation. ”

“ We, therefore, utterly repudiate the separation of the individual into body and soul, and the composition of the individual out of these two pieces; a doctrine which perhaps even asserts that the soul alone will continue to exist after the decease of the body. The Ego is in itself principle, and as such a pure thought altogether unsensuous and supersensuous. ”

“ The Ego, which at first was enchained and deprived of all its power to have causality, has now, through the mere conception, completely freed itself in such a manner that it can begin the proposed causality at the conceived point of beginning—as soon as it does begin it—needing only itself for this causality. ”

“ Previously thinking represented the reposing and dead power of life; the mere fixed being of that power; and the image of that power in contemplation was nature. Hence, nature is as unchangeable as its prototype; and not only is it not involved in, but it is downright contradictory to, the conception of nature to think in it a change, a deviation from its eternal law, a new creation. Anything like this is altogether excluded by that thinking of a nature, and is impossible. ”

“ Now, if we stopped here, life in the background as the matter of the manifold facts of reflection might well remain one and the same, as we have just now maintained; but it could certainly never arrive at a unity, at least in consciousness, since all consciousness would be altogether individual. Indeed it would even remain inexplicable how we, who confess ourselves to be individuals, could think such a unity, though it were simply problematically, and how we could possibly make ourselves understood about the matter. ”

“ He would have to show up the many and the all as the form of contemplation of a categorical imperative, precisely as we have represented the sensuous world as the form of contemplation of the development of the living power, and as will probably, indeed, appear to be the fact. Hence, he has neither deduced that consciousness of the unity of life in the many—though we have, also, not done this as yet—nor has he expressly stated it to be a fact of consciousness—which we have done in the preceding—but he has simply presupposed it, quietly, driven thereto by common sense. ”

“ For if it is my Ego as individual, then that objective validity holds good only for me the individual, and we cannot understand how any one else can be presumed to acknowledge it. But if that principle is absolutely the one and universal life of reason, and if it is immediately posited as such unmistakable, then it becomes evident that the universal validity must hold good for this life of reason, and for every one in whom it manifests itself, and that each one who comprehends this is entitled to presume that every one else will admit it. ”

“ The life of freedom and of consciousness has hitherto been represented as one; all our deductions have been made from the oneness, and only by its means have we proved and explained. But now this one life evidently dirempts into many lives, which in their essence are to be like each other; hence this one life is here repeated in many forms, and repeated. How does this repetition occur? Don't let us, by any means, ask as yet from what ground it occurs, for that question can probably be answered only in another place; but, through what fact does this positing of other beings outside of us occur? ”

“ We do not learn by experience that we act; we have no perception of it as we have of our passive states. That causality of ours presupposes a free conception created through absolute self-activity. This conception, and our possible causality in accordance with it, are internally contemplated—for thus we have described and accomplished it in the above—as a mere faculty, even in advance of the actual accomplishment of the intended causality; and it is already in this executed and completed prototype of such a causality that the Ego appears necessarily as a material organ. ”

“ Now, suppose that the power of life developed itself actually within this thinking, then this same power, which was at first and without this thinking of a resistance altogether invisible, would become visible in this its being developed through contact with the resistance for a form of contemplation, which contemplates only in opposition, and hence beholds everything only as limited by its opposite. ”

“ It is thinking itself which limits it. Simply because thinking is limited to posit precisely such a number of individuals, the power of imagination is limited to contemplate the very same number of organized bodies in the material world. ”

“ Hence, a fixed, independent existence, independent of free representation, does not pertain to it. Now, if we produced objects in this manner we should regard them as representations, which would drop away as soon as we should cease to represent them. (Idealism is often described as assuming this to be the case, but it is a complete misapprehension.) But we ascribe to them an independent being, as a sign that we give them an image of a being, which we, as individuals, cannot take away from them again, and which does not depend upon our inner contemplable freedom: namely, an image of the One. ”

“ Although freedom can do something by virtue of the first thinking, it shall not (must not, ought not to) do what it can. X is a prohibition of the use of a certain, undoubtedly existing, freedom. This absolute prohibition, as an inwardness—and made manifest in the external contemplation precisely as the one power of life was manifested previously—would produce in that contemplation a product of the freedom of a rational being outside of me, just as that power of life produced in contemplation a nature without any freedom at all. ”

“ But this change is not only to effect the one individual, which actually acts, but likewise at the same time all the repetitions of that individual, separated as they are by numbers. That change, since it is to be perceived by them all, is to alter the world-contemplation of them all in the same manner as it has changed that of the free originator of the change, in whom the change might be explained from the contemplation of his inner freedom. The matter to be made clear, therefore, is, how the inner absolute freedom of one individual can change and bind the contemplation of all. ”

“ It is this: the foreign body is to each individual a mere object of external contemplation, as all other material bodies are; whereas his own body is not at all an object of contemplation whether internal or external, but altogether of thinking. Not of internal contemplation, for we have no internal feeling of the totality of our body, though we have such a feeling of the parts—for instance, in pain; nor of external contemplation, for we never see ourselves as a whole, though we do see parts of ourselves. ”

“ Let us then assume that such a causality of life through its immediate being is checked: what will then arise in the checked life? That causality, in so far as it is in the life, can surely not be annihilated itself; only its manifestation can be checked; that causality or determined activity and freedom remains in the life, but in a manner as a causality which has no causality. ”

“ Because the original and absolute power of imagination is limited; and hence originates extension, quality generally, and externality outside of the Ego, all of which constitute the mere empty form of external contemplation, which has no inner significance at all. But we have already shown that the real Inner Essence of the world, as a resistance to the power of free life, must be something quite different, must be, in fact, itself a power—a pure noumenon, which no external contemplation can reach. ”

“ We have seen how the Ego, limited to a mere impulse and without any immediate causality, through its mere Being contemplated its power to arrive in time at an end through conditional states; calculating that power, at the same time, the resistance that was also contemplated in the image, and thus completing a plan of its causality. ”

“ III. Thus we have reduced the whole consciousness, in so far as we can survey it now, to two fundamental facts: immediate contemplation, which we have characterized through opposition as internal, and absolute thinking, which, in regard to the former, is externalizing. IV. But it is by no means to be understood as if the individual thinks by means of himself and his own power. He thinks only as one and with the annihilation of his individuality. ”

“ Now, since by the law of our science we never start from a presumptive world in itself, but always from life alone, how would it be if that resistance, the real inner power or force of the world, were originally posited and thought only as pure resistance and as nothing else, hence as that wherein the power of life and in opposition to which the power of life made itself visible? ”

“ But together with this universal thinking there is united always individuality, for only in individuality does life break out into self-representation and consciousness. In individuality it thus arrives at a self-representation of its form generally; in thinking, at an express genetically attained and thus visible unity. If we look at this point, we must say that this thinking is to be numerically repeated in all individuals, and occurs as often as there are individuals, though always remaining in its content the same in all these repetitions. ”

“ And if we called the thinking of such an opposite limited—i.e., limited to precisely such a thinking, the invisible limiting part of this thinking—the hidden premise of its contents would be the very being of the power of life itself. ”

“ Result of the Whole.—The presupposed life of consciousness represents itself in its unity immediately through itself. The objective views of the world hitherto established are those representations. It is true that that life of consciousness is broken, which means that it is repeatable many times as the same life—for, as yet, we have not noticed any real inner distinctions of the individuals, but have considered them all as the same. ”