Robert Adamson

“ The pure activity, as self-related, is infinite; the objective activity is finite and limitative. If the Ego is to unite both, it must be an infinite activity which is at the same time, though not in the same sense, finite; it must be an infinite striving. Striving implies opposition, for without obstacle, without impediment, there is only boundless activity. How shall the infinite activity of the Ego be thought as infinite striving? The Ego is, but it is only for itself. Reflection is thus the very law of existence for a conscious Ego. The Ego is only the Ego, in so far as it reflects. ”

“ My vocation as moral, and whatever is involved in the consciousness thereof, is the one immediate certainty that is given to me as conscious of self,—the one thing which makes me for myself a reality . . . Our world is the sensualised material of our duty . . . What compels us to yield belief in the reality of the world is a moral force the only force that is possible for a free being. ”

“ All life is its life, and the manifestation of this life is the infinite development of humanity. The life does not exist as a completed fact,—hence the point of view is in no way to be identified with Pantheism or with Spinozism,—but eternally is to be. The individual, finite Ego, in acceptance of his position as a member in this supersensible order, realises his infinite vocation, tends more and more to lose his apparent individuality, and approaches ever more nearly to the idea of infinitude which is the characteristic mark of self-consciousness. ”

“ To the speculative inquirer, endeavouring to reconstruct that which is immediately given in experience, the first and common ground for all experience is the result of that act whereby the Ego or self becomes an Ego or self. Of the necessary implications of this fundamental activity and its product, nothing requires at first to be said; philosophy is simply the attempt to give a systematic and complete account of them. But no philosophy can transcend the fact ”

“ It is certainly shown that categories are implied in self-consciousness, but how or why they should be so implied—how or why there should be so many of them and no more—how they are connected with one another and form a system in human knowledge,—these questions, likewise, are left unsolved. Further, when the categories, having been deduced as the forms of the activity of the synthetic Ego, are brought into relation with the forms of receptivity, the results, though rich in consequences, leave much to be desired. The fusion into the unity of knowledge is a merely mechanical one. ”

“ But sense, intuition, and feeling are just as impossible without intellectual intuition. I cannot be for myself without being something (etwas = a definite somewhat) , and I am this only in the world of sense; I can just as little be for myself without being Ego,—and this I am only in the intelligible world, which discloses itself to me through intellectual intuition. The point of union between the two lies in this, that what I am in the first, I am for myself only through absolute self-activity regulated by thought. Our existence in the intelligible world is the moral law ”

“ Fichte was well aware that the deduction of the categories, which he was the first to undertake in a genuinely philosophical fashion,—nay, that the exposition of the modes of subjective thinking, such as representation, understanding, judgment, reasoning,—can have, within the limits of theoretical Wissenschaftslehre, nothing but formal worth. It was for him a simple and incontrovertible truth, that knowledge, as knowledge, is of necessity opposed to, and distinct from reality. Such opposition is the very essence of knowledge ”

“ Beck’s admirable discussion of the Kantian distinctions between analytic and synthetic judgments, synthetic a priori and synthetic a posteriori truths, intuition and thought, phenomena and things-in-themselves, sufficiently showed that these were but excrescences on the Kantian doctrine, merely temporary expedients for bringing the real problems into light; while the definiteness with which he expressed the cardinal doctrine of Kant’s theory, the original synthetic unity of self-consciousness, threw light on all the subordinate points. ”

“ Nature—i.e., our nature—as a system of tendencies, has, therefore, one supreme end, satisfaction of desire, pleasure or enjoyment. The Ego, however, is not merely nature, but consciousness of self, and in so far is independent of objects. It is at once tendency towards objects and tendency towards self-activity, realisation of its own independence. The very essence of the real Ego is the constant coexistence in apparent isolation of the two impulses—natural tendency and tendency towards freedom. ”

“ The Ego, or subject, is known to be. But when the Ego, or subject, is taken per se, and the attempt is made to deduce from it the multiplicity of experience, we find a hiatus which is absolutely impassable, unless our method is at once guarded and comprehensive. An imperfect or half-understood idealism regards the Ego as merely subject, and is thus driven to the conception of self-consciousness as somehow one of the facts discoverable in intelligence. ”

“ Not only is each of these expressions a contradiction in itself, but they are mutually contradictory, and, if the unity of consciousness is to be preserved, must be united through some synthetic and more concrete notion. Such notion is readily seen to be but a richer form of the category of limitation or determination, from which the opposites took their rise. The Ego is partly determined, partly determines itself. So much reality as the Ego posits in itself, so much does it negate in the non-Ego; so much reality as it posits in the non-Ego, so much does it negate in itself. ”

“ At the root of the infinite striving of the Ego lies the idea of the infinitude of the absolute Ego—an idea which, from the necessary reflection of the Ego, is never completely realised, but towards which there is an endless tendency in the Ego. The Ego, as infinite but reflective activity under the idea of the absolute tendency towards self-realisation, is the practical Ego, and the series of stages throughout which it passes is the ideal series. ”

“ Thus for Fichte there are historically but two reasoned systems of philosophy—that of Spinoza and that of Kant. The one is dogmatic,—that is, it neglects to give due weight to the principle of self-consciousness, and hence endeavours to explain existence by a notion which is limited, and applicable only within the experience of a self-conscious subject. The other is critical,—that is, it recognises the great truth that all consciousness is determined by self-consciousness, and so acknowledges the due limits of thought. ”

“ Do we explain experience as the product of the non-Ego, we have the system which may be called Dogmatism; do we explain the whole as springing from the Ego, we have Idealism. Of the one, the typical example is the system of Spinoza, in which the order and connection of thoughts are explained by reference to that which does not contain in itself the element of self-consciousness,—where, therefore, the Ego appears as a mechanically determined unit in the sum total of things. ”

“ Firm adherence to the idea of the transcendental method; determination to accept nothing, whether as fact, law, or notion, which is not deducible from self-consciousness and its necessary conditions,—such is the spirit of the Fichtean philosophy, and from it follows the demand for systematic unity of conception, for a single principle out of which the multiplicity of experience may be deduced, and therefore for a single, all-embracing philosophical science. ”

“ Belief in the reality of the moral order of the universe,—conviction that the morally good will is a free and effective cause in the intelligible system of things,—this, and this only, is belief in God. For a rational being, God is the moral order of the universe,—not an order which has its ground external to itself—not an ordo ordinatus,—but the order which is the ground of all reality, ordo ordinans. ”

“ The Ego, therefore, if it is to be aware of itself, if it is to be self-conscious, must posit itself as acting—i.e., as willing, and as willing freely. This important proposition, which lies at the root of law and morals, may be examined from two sides. We may consider what is necessarily implied or involved in it, and we may consider the conditions under which consciousness of free activity is possible. So far as the first aspect is concerned, the following are Fichte’s results. An intelligence can ascribe to itself free activity only if it posit or assume a world external to itself. ”

“ The final result—the world of sense-experience determined throughout by intelligence, but in itself an empirically endless series of finite, limited objects—is not one which can satisfy the demand for unity of cognition. The constant striving to transcend the limits of this world of experience, to reach the final synthesis in which its relation to self-consciousness shall be deduced, is what Kant calls Reason. ”

“ Such constant coexistence is not to be thought as a state or condition, but as a process. The final end which is posited by the free self-consciousness—viz., absolute self-dependence, independence of nature—is not one to be realised as a finite state, but to be continually approached in an infinite series. “The Ego can never be independent, so long as it remains an Ego; the final end of a rational being lies necessarily in infinity, and is therefore one never to be attained, but continually to be approached.” ”

“ The Ego as cognitive recognises reality in the non-Ego, and as active or practical, as determining the non-Ego, likewise ascribes reality to it. But how is it possible that there should be for the Ego, which is pure activity, mere self-position, a negation or opposition? ”

“ Productive imagination it is which wins for us definite things from the “void and formless infinite.” All reality is for us through imagination—a proposition which may afford matter for reflection to those who assume that a speculative philosophy in any way endeavours to transcend experience. The product of imagination, the representation (Vorstellung) , is at once objective, for it can only be thought as related to the non-Ego—and subjective, for it is only for the reflective subject. ”

“ But such a relation can only be for intelligence, if there be given some activity of consciousness which is at once determining and determined, which shall at once posit the Ego as limited by the non-Ego, and the non-Ego as the limit of the Ego. The Ego itself is pure activity, total reality. ”

“ Knowledge, Kant sees clearly enough, is possible only as a synthetic combination in the unity of self-consciousness. The conditions or forms of such combination determine experience, or give general laws to it, but such determination is merely formal. Nothing can be presented in self-consciousness which contradicts or is out of harmony with these conditions, but the specific determination of this matter of knowledge is not to be deduced from the conditions themselves. ”

“ Outer intuition is the process thought as determined with respect to the content or attributes of its product; inner intuition, the process thought as subjectively mine, and therefore free or unconstrained as to mode of action by the object. There thus arises for consciousness the important difference between necessity and contingency in the sphere of intuition,—a difference which rests upon and implies the distinction of intuitions from one another, their reciprocal determination, and the determined sequence of acts of intuition. ”

“ Nay, further, the recognition of individuality, which is possible only in a community of free, active intelligences, demands as its conditions the positing of an external means of realising free activity—i.e., of a material organism or body. The sense world thus receives a deeper interpretation as the common ground or means of communication between free intelligences. A community of free beings, finally, is only conceivable if each regard himself as standing to the others in a certain relation, which may be called that of right or law. ”

“ The complete synthesis of the opposed propositions from which the start was made, has now been reached; the practical and theoretical activities of the Ego are shown to be necessarily related to one another, and to the absolute Ego. Without simple self-position of the Ego—i.e., without the absolute Ego as the idea of all reality—there can be no infinite striving, and without infinite striving, no intelligence. ”