Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings, 1797-00

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Daniel Breazeale (Editor)

These selections provide a brief but comprehensive introduction to Fichte’s philosophical system and his place in the history of German Idealism. In addition to some of Fichte’s most influential texts, such as the First and Second Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and The Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World, Breazeale has translated, for the first time into English, several other writings from the same period, including Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre, Other short essays, including Fichte’s replies to the charge of atheism, extend the discussions of the Introductions and respond to criticisms. Breazeale’s substantial Introduction supplies the context needed for a sound appreciation of Fichte’s enterprise and achievement.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, 18th Century, Germany, German Literature

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Fichte is often perceived as a figure whose philosophy forms a bridge between the ideas of Kant and the German Idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Like Descartes and Kant before him, the problem of subjectivity and consciousness motivated much of his philosophical rumination. Fichte also wrote political philosophy, and is thought of by some as the father of German nationalism.
His son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, was also a renowned philosopher.

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fichte has been the German Idealist I have read the most of. I can't deny thinking that some of the ideas he was working with were interesting. I don't know if this collection of introductions to his idealist system are more clearly and comprehensively elucidating, but they do offer further explanations of the system that may allow one to see it from a greater vantage point. His letters, I am finding, provide an even greater context to his Wissenchaftslehre (loosely translated as the science of knowledge). They do make more evident the theological implications of his system. I would definitely advise people studying Fichte to consult his correspondences as well.
This volume also contains his notorious essay on divine governance where he claimed that there was no God beyond the moral ordering of the world. Obviously, that statement was ridiculous and got him into trouble. Some going so far as to even claim Fichte was an atheist. He wasn't an atheist, but some of his statements, including that one, indicate some amount of erroneous thinking and more than a tinge of arrogance. Some of his responses to the charge of atheism are included here. They do not help to vindicate the statement however. His main defense was that people failed to understand what he was thinking. Often Fichte resorts to the defense that people cannot critique his system until they understand his system. This usually amounts to anyone who criticizes it, fails to understand it; in other words, understanding it means to believe it, thus it is beyond criticism until one agrees with it! Part of his defense to the atheist charge is bound up with his system and boils down to the way he uses terminology; order cannot be static, it must be dynamic; and dynamism denotes life and thus God in actuality, or some such line of thinking. Even aside from the misusing of standard terminology in idiosyncratic ways in a public setting, my main issue is that the statement in question still makes God dependent on mundane notions; at least that is the way it appears from wording. The wording is poor and really indefensible as it stands. No amount of rhetorical gymnastics saves the statement. It is one example of a number of statements that show that Fichte imbued his system with a Godlike perfection. He was not the last idealist to do that. Hegel was certainly guilty of doing the same. In Hegel's case, certain members of the New Hegelians (e.g. Marx) were able to interpret his system atheistically. It stands to reason that much of the erroneous hubristic system building found in Fichte was also found in Hegel. Both found themselves in close proximity to charges of atheism (in the latter case positively, and in the former negatively) because of the kinds of claims they were making; at least through implication, if in no other manner.
I like Fichte to a degree. Some of his notions are indeed profound, so I think he is worth reading. I feel the same way about Hegel; although I have had a tendency to favor Fichte. I don't have all of the antipathy towards Idealism that was often found in Kierkegaard, although I approach Idealism with some amount of ambivalence. I recognize that there are problems with Idealism; but in certain respects, and in very particular contexts, some of the ideas found in this tradition are accurate -if not used as some all-encompassing box wherein we fit all of existence, that is. Many of Kierkegaard's criticisms are my own, but I find more things of value here than Kierkegaard did, or at least would've admitted to.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well translated collection of writings pertaining to the wissenschaftslehre. Helpful in introducing the reader to fichte's system. I only wish that the editor included a preface to each work individually in order to contextualise it within fichte's complex philosophical development.

[Anmol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won't claim to say that I understood everything in this admittedly dense text which deserves a much closer reading. However, my reaction to the first and the second introductions were wholly different - the first introduction read like an insubstantial rant against people who don't understand Fichte with an unjustified (and convenient) exclusion of his opponents as folks who are just not "meant for" it because their personality is not oriented towards freedom. In contrast, the Second Introduction and Chapter One are quite interesting and could have been a fantastic book if Fichte had fully carried it out.

The "I" which must always be posited, as per Fichte, cannot be mistaken with the ego or personality:

The relationship between reason and individuality presented in the Wissenschaftslehre is just the reverse: Here, the only thing that exists in itself is reason, and individuality is something merely accidental. Reason is the end and personality is the means; the latter is merely a particular expression of reason, one that must increasingly be absorbed into the universal form of the same. For the Wissenschaftslehre, reason alone is eternal, whereas individuality must ceaselessly die off. Anyone who will not first accommodate his will to this order of things will never obtain a true understanding of the Wissenschaftslehre.

Instead, Fichte's "I" is simply the existence of a subject which reflects upon itself, and no name/form may be necessarily associated with this subjective self.

Though you may have included many things in your concept of the I which I have not (e.g., the concept of your own individuality, for·this too is signified by the word "I"), you may henceforth put all of this aside. The only "I" that I am concerned with here is the one that comes into being through the sheer self-reverting act of your own thinking.

To me, in Chapter One, Fichte's positing of an infinite subject and object being present in the act of self-consciousness at first suggests that rational knowledge (involving a mental positing of the "I") will always retain duality - this is why the mind cannot reach the true Self. One must go beyond the rational processes of the mind involved in thought to reach a nondual Self:

what was the gist of the line of reasoning we just pursued, and what is the real reason why the nature of consciousness could not be grasped in this way? The gist of the argument was as follows: I can be conscious of any object only on the condition that I am also conscious of myself, that is, of the conscious subject. This proposition is incontrovertible. It was, however, further claimed that, within my self-consciousness, I am an object for myself and that what held true in the previous case also holds true of the subject that is conscious of this object: this subject too becomes an object, and thus a new subject is required, and so on ad infinitum. In every consciousness, therefore, the subject and the object were separated from each other and each was treated as distinct. This is why it proved impossible for us to comprehend consciousness in the above manner.

But then I don't understand how his saying, on the next page, that our self-consciousness is the only place where subjectivity and objectivity is united, is possible. Doesn't the argument of the previous paragraph (that we become conscious of ourselves as an object only and hence retain duality still apply?) - they may be inseparably united, but it doesn't follow that the subject-object distinction is entirely dissolved - it may still continue in ordinary existence.

He says that the self-positing act does not produce a noumenal I and considers this "the greatest of absurdities" - while this suggests a possible argument against nondual Indian thought, even in those disciplines Brahman is describes as pure consciousness, so they may still stand.

This is where many of the hitherto assumptions of philosophy break down - that we can be rationally convinced of truth (Fichte famously exclaims here that our philosophy depends on the kind of person we are), but we also get a more subjective emphasis on intuitions that may not be rationally thought of, but still remain necessary for our existence.

[TL]

1795
'Mine is the first system of freedom. Just as France has freed man from external shackles, so my system frees him from the fetters of things in themselves, which is to say, from those external influences with which all previous systems—including the Kantian—have more or less fettered man. Indeed, the first principle of my system presents man as an independent being.' (vii)


1800
'My system is from beginning to end nothing but an analysis of the concept of freedom, and freedom cannot be contradicted within this system, since no other ingredient is added.' (vii)


1798
'...Not one of his many followers seems to have noticed what Kant is really talking about. Believing himself to possess such knowledge, the author resolved to dedicate his life to presenting this great discovery in a manner entirely independent of Kant, and this is a decision he will never renounce... he knows that nothing true and useful that appears among human beings is ever really lost, though it may be that only a distant posterity will know how to make use of it.'

'I am not concerned to rectify or bring to completion any set of philosophical concepts that may already be in circulation—be they "anti-Kantian" or "Kantian". Instead, I desire to uproot current conceptions completely and to accomplish a complete revolution in the way we think about these issues, so that—in all seriousness and not simply as a figure of speech—the object will be posited and determined by our power of cognition and not vice versa.

Accordingly, my system can be evaluated only on its own terms and cannot be judged by the principles of any other philosophy. It only has to agree with itself. It can be explained only by itself, and it can be proven—or refuted—only on its own terms. One must either accept it completely or reject it in its entirety...

I write only for readers who continue to harbor an inner sense for the certainty or the dubitability, the clarity or the confusion, of their own cognition. I write for readers for whom science and conviction still retain some meaning and who are themselves driven by a lively zeal to seek the same. I wish to have nothing to do with those who, as a result of protracted spiritual servitude, have lost their own selves and, along with this loss of themselves, have lost any feeling for their own conviction, as well as any belief in the conviction of others.' (2-6)


'A finite rational being possesses nothing whatsoever beyond experience. The entire contents of his thinking are comprised within experience. These same conditions necessarily apply to the philosopher...' (10)

'Attend to yourself: turn your gaze from everything surrounding you and look within yourself: this is the first demand philosophy makes upon anyone who studies it. Here you will not be concerned with anything that lies outside of you, but only with yourself.' (7)

'Some of these determinations appear to us to depend entirely upon our own freedom, and it is impossible for us to believe that anything outside of us, i.e., something that exists independently of our own efforts, corresponds to representations of this sort. Our imagination and will appear to us to be free.

We also possess representations of another sort. We refer representations of this second type to a truth that is supposed to be firmly established independently of us and is supposed to serve as the model for these representations. When a representation of ours is supposed to correspond to this truth, we discover that we are constrained in determining this representation. In the case of cognition, we do not consider ourselves to be free with respect to the content of our cognitions.

In short, we could say that some of our representations are accompanied by a feeling of freedom and others are accompanied by a feeling of necessity.' (7-8)

'The dispute between the idealist and the dogmatist is actually a dispute over whether the self-sufficiency of the I should be sacrificed to that of the thing, or conversely, whether the self-sufficiency of the thing should be sacrificed to that of the I.

...If a philosopher is to be considered a philosopher at all he must necessarily occupy a certain standpoint, a standpoint that will sooner or later be attained in the course of human thinking, even if this occurs without any conscious effort on one's part. When a philosopher considers things form this standpoint, all he discovers is that he must entertain certain representations both of himself as free and of determinate things external to himself.

It is impossible for a person simply to remain at this level of thinking. The thought of a mere representation is only half a thought, a broken fragment of a thought. We must also think of something else as well, namely, of something that corresponds to this representation and exists independently of the act of representing.

In other words, a representation cannot subsist simply for itself and purely on its own. It is something only in conjunction with something else; by itself, it is nothing. It is precisely the necessity of thinking in this way that drives us from our initial standpoint and makes us ask: What is the basis of representations? Or, what amounts to exactly the same question: What corresponds to representations?

The representation of the self-sufficiency of the I can certainly co-exist with a representation of the self-sufficiency of the thing, though the self-sufficiency of the I itself cannot co-exist with that of the thing. Only one of these two can come first; only one can be the starting point; only one can be independent. The one that comes second, just because it comes second, necessarily becomes dependent upon the one that comes first, with which it is supposed to be connected.' (12)


'One's supreme interest and the foundation of all one's other interests is one's interest in oneself. [c.f. this early Romantic Grundprinzip with Book I of Aristotle's Ethics] This is just as true of a philosopher as it is of anyone else. The interest that invisibly guides all of his thinking is this: to avoid losing himself in argumentation, and instead to preserve and to affirm himself therein.

But there are two different levels of human development, and, so long as everyone has not yet reached the highest level in the course of the progress of our species, there are two main sub-species of human beings.

Some people—namely those who have not yet attained a full feeling of their own freedom and absolute self-sufficiency—discover themselves only in the act of representing things. Their self-consciousness is dispersed and attached to objects and must be gleaned from the manifold of the latter. They glimpse their own image only insofar as it is reflected through things, as in a mirror. If they were to be deprived of these things, then they would lose themselves at the same time.

Thus, for the sake of their own selves they cannot renounce their belief in the self-sufficiency of things; for they themselves continue to exist only in conjunction with these things. It is really through the external world that they have become everything they are, and a person who is in fact nothing but a product of things will never be able to view himself in any other way... [proto-Marx]

[But] anyone who is conscious of his own self-sufficiency and independence from everything outside of himself—a consciousness that can be obtained only by making something of oneself on one's own and independently of everything else—will not require things in order to support his self, for they abolish his self-sufficiency and transform it into mere illusion.

The I that he possesses and that interests him cancels this type of belief in things. His belief in his own self-sufficiency is based upon inclination, and it is with passion that he shoulders his own self-sufficiency. His belief in himself is immediate.'

'The kind of philosophy one chooses thus depends upon the kind of person one is. [proto-Nietzsche: see The Gay Science, Preface for the Second Edition 2]] For a philosophical system is not a lifeless household item one can put aside or pick up as one wishes; instead, it is animated by the very soul of the person who adopts it. Someone whose character is naturally slack or who has been enervated and twisted by spiritual servitude, scholarly self-indulgence, and vanity will never be able to raise himself to the level of idealism.' (18-20)

'...Idealism explains the determinations of consciousness by referring them to the acting of the intellect, which it considers to be something absolute and active, not something passive. The intellect cannot be anything passive, because, according to the postulate of idealism, it is what is primary and highest and is thus preceded by nothing that could account for its passivity.

For the same reason, no real being, no subsistence or continuing existence, pertains to the intellect; for such being is the result of a process of interaction, and nothing yet exists or is assumed to be present with which the intellect could be posited to interact.

Idealism considers the intellect to be a kind of doing and nothing more. One should not even call it an active subject, for such an appellation suggests the presence of something that continues to exist and in which an activity inheres. But idealism has no reason to make such an assumption...' (25-6)

[Dillon Wackerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only I could remove the Anstoss ...

[Plato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good introduction to Fichte's philosophy. And was a surprisingly easy and sassy read compared to a Kant. You can really feel Fichte's frustration with people not understanding him.

So I'd say read this before the new 1794 Wissenschaftslehre, then read the collection of early philosophical writings. All translated by the same translater of this book.

[Daniel Bashir · Rating 5 out of 5]

really was mostly here for the idealism-dogmatism content (first intro)

[Nihlah Assegaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

s25 continental thought
Maybe I AM only ever conscious of my own thinking…