Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ I say we only need to surrender ourselves to them, for even these fundamental determinations cannot pull us irresistibly towards them; we having, moreover, the faculty to pull ourselves (a fact which was forgotten in those determinations) loose again from them, and to create freely out of ourselves a higher series of life and actuality for ourselves. We can, for instance, think and seize ourselves as the knowing in that fundamental consciousness, or as the living in that fundamental life ”

“ To begin, you surely know how to distinguish the really actual, that which is the true fact of your present experience and life, or that which you actually live and experience, from the non-actual, the merely imagined. ”

“ All reality of the first kind—however much it may proceed in its course without your knowledge and co-operation, or may exist in itself, i.e. unrelated to any possible consciousness, a point which we shall not discuss here—all such reality is at least for you, and as an event of your life, only in so far as you at some time direct your attention to it, throw yourself into it, and take hold of that reality with your consciousness. ”

“ But I should think something at least, even in this latter state, is an actual and real event of your life; for tell me, do you not in the meanwhile continue to live—does not your life pass away in the meanwhile—is it not filled up with something? ”

“ But try to become thoroughly conscious of your procedure in this judgment concerning actuality and non actuality; look into yourself, and you will at once become conscious of the ground of your procedure, and will internally contemplate it. All that can be done to assist you is to guide you in the right direction, and this guidance is indeed all that can be obtained from philosophical teaching. The presupposition must always be that you have within yourself, and contemplate and observe, that towards which the teacher guides you. ”

“ The absolute freedom arbitrarily to give a determined direction to your mind, and keep it in that direction, is an essential condition, not only of philosophical, but even of healthy common thinking. But in the hope that you will, at least during our present investigation, keep these foreign images away from your mind, and resist that blind operation of an association of ideas, I will drop this doubtful point of sensuous representation, and solely make use of your confession concerning the freedom of argument. ”

“ The whole distinction between that first degree and the higher degrees, between the previously given life—which was presented to us, and which we need only to accept in order to make it our actual life—and that life which is not given to us, but which must be produced by our self-activity, is probably this: that from each of the higher degrees you can look down and descend into a lower one; whereas from the lowest one you cannot look down, because it is itself the deepest, and cannot go lower except into the realm of nothingness ”

“ A. Hence, both your arguing and the movement of the clock are, according to what you say, true and actual events of the same moment of time; the latter, to be sure, is not an event of your life, since you lived something else during the time, but it might have become an event of your life, and would have become so necessarily, if you had paid attention to the clock? ”

“ A. Hence, each reality, each true and actually occurring event in life is that wherein you forget yourself. This is the beginning and real focus of life, whatever further subordinated determinations this focus may involve, because it happens to be such a particular focus. ”

“ R. In the representing of the representation, that representing was the actual event; the representation the further determination of it, since it was not a representing in general, but the representing of a representation; and the conversation, finally, was the further determination of the (represented) representation, since the representing had for its object not a representation in general, but a determined representation, namely, that of a determined conversation. ”