Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ But a philosophy of religion is not religion, and is not written for all men, and for the criticisms of all men. Religion itself is living and powerful; the theory of religion is dead in itself Religion fills us with feelings and sentiments; the theory of religion only speaks of them; it neither destroys them nor seeks to create new ones.
The true seat of the misunderstanding of my philosophy, and of its controversy with opposite doctrines, which are more or less conscious of this opposition, is concerning the relation of cognition to actual life. ”

“ Hence, when the reality of a cognition is to be proven through philosophy or through argumentation, a feeling must first be shown up—I shall call it feeling for the present, until I more definitely account for the use of this word—with which this cognition immediately connects. Free argumentation can only penetrate and sift the contents of this feeling, separate and connect the manifold of it, and thus facilitate the use of it, and bring it under the power of consciousness ”

“ Fichte, Jacobi, and Spinoza are something different from their philosophy. The philosopher has no God at all, and can have none; he can only have a conception of the conception or of the idea of God. God and religion are only in life; but the philosopher as such is not the whole complete man, but is man in a condition of abstraction; and it is impossible that any one should be only philosopher. Whatsoever is posited through reason is absolutely the same for all rational beings. ”

“ Through virtuous sentiments religion creates itself; and all the teacher needs to do is to call attention to this faith of religion, which accompanies all moral consciousness, and neither needs proof, nor is capable of proof, because it announces itself as the most original part of our being. Religious culture, indeed, must not be regarded as something which is to be placed into a man—for whatever thereof you place into him is surely false—but as something, which is already in him, and needs only to be developed, of which he is only to be reminded. ”

“ Every mediated certainty presupposes an original certainty. In the consciousness of every one, who is convinced of any thing at all, that certainty exists also; and every one can arise to that certainty from any conditioned and mediated knowledge.
I may here allude to another misunderstanding of my system. It is charged that, in my system, faith in God exists only for the moral, not for the immoral man. This is very correct when it means that faith is true only for man, in so far as he is moral; but not when it is interpreted that faith exists only for those men who are moral. ”

“ That this determining of the will through the voice of conscience (not through argumentation as regarding the possible result of my will) can never deceive is known through faith, is known immediately, not mediately, through argumentation. Here, therefore, is the first connecting link between pure morality and religion.
From that determination of the will an act results, and from this act, again, other consequences result in the world of rational beings; for I see only this world, the sensuous world being simply a means for me—consequences which I can neither foresee nor calculate. ”

“ Now, life is object; and speculation is only the means. It is not even means to cultivate life, for speculation lies in an altogether different world, and life can only be influenced by what arises from out of life. Speculation is only means to know life. ”

“ It is either a step in the system, to proceed from it to other propositions; or, if it is the final proposition of speculation concerning some particular branch of knowledge, it is a proposition to which perception and sensation must first be added, as comprehended in it, in order to be fit for use in real life. Even the completed system of philosophy can not give you sensation, nor replace it. Sensation is the only true inner principle of life. Kant already has stated this often enough, and it is the innermost soul of his philosophy. ”

“ In stating our final result, we have stated the manner in which only the philosopher views religion; not exactly as a transcendental philosopher, but generally as an abstract thinker, precisely as he seizes also the conceptions of duty, morality, etc., only in their abstraction. The command of duty can never appear in its generality to man in actual life, but only in concrete determinations of the will. In so far as a man truly and always determines his will by that command of duty, (conscience,) he is a moral man, and acts morally. ”

“ It will, therefore, have to be described not as spirituality pertaining to some substance, which, being not spirit itself, could thus only be thought as matter, but as pure spirit; not as a substantiated world-soul, but as a pure, for itself existing being; not as a creating, maintaining, and governing, but as creator, maintainer, and governor. And this very properly and in accordance with the laws of our thinking, if we are once resolved to rise from the immediateness of life and activity to the field of theoretical abstraction. ”

“ Both life and speculation are determinable only through each other. Life is most properly not-philosophising; and philosophising is most properly not-life. This is a complete antithesis, and a point of union is here quite as impossible as it is to point out the X, which is the ground of the subject-object of the Ego. The only union is in the consciousness of the true philosopher, that both stand-points do exist for him.
No proposition, therefore, of a philosophy which knows itself, is, in that form, a proposition for real life. ”

“ The word “principle,” for instance, which I have used, signifies, in a system of real being, a first, from which I can calculate a second and third, even without sensuous perception and with categorical certainty, thereby anticipating experience. But in this sense of the word the intelligible principle, freedom, is never principle of a real cognition, is never ground of an explanation and anticipation, that is, you can not foresee what will become actual through freedom. We only know through perception what is actual ”

“ Our philosophical thinking is merely the instrument wherewith we construct our work. When the work is finished, the instrument is thrown aside as useless.
We compose before the eyes of our spectators the model of a body from the models of its several parts. ”

“ Philosophy is pedagogical in the widest significance of this word, for the immediate practical life. Because this science has to teach us to comprehend the whole man, it shows from the highest grounds how men should be cultured, in order to make permanent in them moral and religious sentiments, and gradually to universalize these sentiments.
For theoretical observation, for the knowledge of the sensuous world, that is to say, for natural sciences, philosophy is regulative, showing what we must inquire of nature, and how we have to question her. ”

“ Since, therefore, certainty is only immediate and feelable, it can not be demonstrated to any one, but can certainly be presupposed in every one, since those who have it, and who, moreover, reflect concerning the connection of human knowledge, must recognize that every other knowledge is only grounded upon it, and that every one, who knows any thing with certainty, has started from that knowledge, although, perhaps, unconsciously. ”

“ The word law has, therefore, here also no actual significance from which external and necessary results might be derived, but only logical significance, as gathering together that infinite content of freedom of the individuals into one conception. ”

“ In short: the duplicity which extends throughout the whole system of reason, and which is grounded in the original duplicity of subject and object, is here seized in its highest form. Life is the totality of the objective rational being; and speculation is the totality of the subjective rational being. One is not possible without the other. Life, as an active surrendering to a mechanism, is not possible without the activity and freedom (otherwise speculation) which surrenders itself; though the latter may not arise to the clear consciousness of every individual ”

“ All reality arises for us only through not-philosophising, that is, when either men have never elevated themselves to philosophical abstraction, or when men have again suffered themselves to descend from its height to the mechanism of life, and vice versa, this reality vanishes necessarily as soon as men rise to pure speculation, because then they have torn themselves loose from that mechanism of thinking which reality is based upon. ”

“ The system of Wolf and Baumgarten, which immediately preceded Kant, placed itself with consciousness, on the stand-point of ordinary thinking, and had no less an object in view than to extend the sphere thereof, and to produce new objects of their ordinary thinking by the power of their syllogisms.
Now, to this system ours is absolutely opposed in this very matter, that ours utterly denies the possibility of producing, by mere thinking, an object valid for life and for (material) science ”

“ Hence, the faith in my conscience involves also the faith that the world of reason, which must be presupposed for the acts of all individuals, is equally produced and ordered by that principle. Expressing this popularly, or illustrating it by the analogies of our finite consciousness, it means: the world of reason is created, maintained, and governed by that absolute principle. ”

“ So long as I remain in this consciousness, as I am wholly practical, wholly life and deed, I only know my feeling, desiring, willing, etc., as they occur one after the other, but I do not expressly know myself as the unity and as the principle of these various determinations. ”

“ True, it has heretofore always been customary for the philosopher to make Christianity harmonize with his philosophy, and for the Christian to make his faith agree with his philosophical thinking; but this only proves that the men who undertook to do this knew neither philosophy nor Christianity. Our philosophy does not dream of such a thing. Christianity is wisdom of life, is popular philosophy in the true and highest sense of the word ”

“ As soon as this is done in any region of knowledge, it is done in all its regions, and hence certainly in the region of religion and morality, if morality and religion are dear to men.
But it is not necessary that they should rise to the highest abstraction, to a conception which unites all others of the same kind, and from the unity of which all others may be derived; for this would require a systematic, philosophical thinking. As a general rule, men are content to reduce the manifold to several forms and fundamental conceptions. ”

“ What does it mean to make feelings dependent upon the culture of reason? It means that you want to produce the above immediate through argumentation, to force upon others and yourself through syllogisms what neither you nor the others originally feel or possess. Well, try and make yourself and others weep and laugh through syllogisms as much as you please. ”

“ Even the conception of pure spirit can not assist in such further conclusions. Even the determinations, borrowed from our soul, do not suit that conception. We ascribe them to our soul, not through mediating thinking, but through immediate consciousness. But concerning God immediate (moral) consciousness says only what has been stated. And to draw conclusions from this beyond it, we have no ground, and there is no possibility to do it.
What I have here stated is transcendental philosophy, not life-philosophy. From it the regulatives for the construction of a life-wisdom must first be deduced. ”

“ Now, if I am but ripe for that abstraction, that is, if I take it from out myself, and do not accept it traditionally, then that one principle can only be thought as a for itself existing and working principle, but not as a mere quality or predicate, inherent to some substance or another. ”

“ It likewise shows how in the human heart religiousness is generated and developed, and thus how mankind can be educated to be religious; not by means of philosophy, which does not influence life, but only teaches a knowledge of it, but by awakening the true supersensual motive-powers of life.
The tendency of a philosophical system of religion can, therefore, not be correctly apprehended until it is completed, until it is an exhaustive picture of the whole sphere of human reason. ”

“ It is clear that we here think only acts, events, a flow of action, but no being, no dead permanency; a creating, maintaining, governing, but by no means a creator, maintainer, governor. The faith we have spoken of does not enter upon these theoretical questions. ”

“ But the chief use of philosophy, as has been frequently stated, is negative and critical. What is usually called world-wisdom labors not under the difficulty of containing too little, but too much. The just mentioned reasoned out truths of former metaphysics have been carried into that general culture and mode of thinking; whereas they ought to have been separated therefrom. Transcendental philosophers propose to separate all those reasoned out truths from general culture, and to bring back that culture to its truly human, and hence, necessary and ineradicable basis. ”

“ The word being signifies always immediately an object of thinking, a thought. Now, either to this word is also applied the predicate of an existence, a permanent and lasting, in sensuous perception outside of thinking, and in that case it signifies real being, and when applied to an object means, that object is—or to that word is applied no other predicate of being, but its thinking—and, in that case, the significance of such being is purely logical; and the word is only signifies the logical copula in which the manifold of predicates is fixed by thinking in a unity of the logical subject. ”

“ This system of feelings is throughout determined in consciousness, and involves an immediate cognition, not derived from conclusions or from a free argumentation. Only this immediate cognition has reality, and is, therefore, alone the moving principle of life, being itself generated in life. ”

“ Only in so far as these two stand-points are possible, it is possible for man to know himself. You may live, and perhaps live very rationally, without speculating, for you can live without knowing life ”