Johann Gottlieb Fichte (B. Rammenau, Saxony, 1762-1814 (Typhus) in Berlin (Founded in 1810)

Fichte’s idealism

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (b. Rammenau, Saxony, 1762-1814 (typhus) in Berlin (founded in 1810)

Philosophy ought to be a science (hence Fichte had little in common with the Romantics); philosophy ought to be a system of propositions where each proposition had a logical order and these propositions are prioritized – i.e., having a fundamental proposition (on risk that otherwise it would not be one science) and this proposition must be self-evidently true. Evidently, this notion of science was inspired by mathematics (geometry) as one science, and philosophy is the science of science: or the doctrine of knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre). The question is what is the fundamental proposition?

Philosophy is called upon to clarify the ground (basis of) of all experience, and experience (the contents of acts of consciousness) is of two kinds: (1) presentation accompanied by feelings of freedom and (2) presentations accompanied by feelings of necessity. Hence, the question is what is the ground of these two presentations of consciousness? Since consciousness is always consciousness of an object (intelligence), philosophy is called on to abstract from this relation of consciousness in order to isolate intelligence-in-itself (S) and the thing-in-itself (O). Therefore in order to answer the question what grounds these two presentations of consciousness we can (1) try to explain experience in terms of the thing-in-itself (dogmatism, materialism, and determinism) or (2) we can try to explain experience in terms of intelligence-in-itself (idealism). If we choose the former, then the latter will eventually be considered an epiphenomenon (as is evident in the new science and in our contemporary world, also of psychology).

Kant tried to find some compromise between these two options (idealism and dogmatism/materialism), and he did by presupposing the thing-in-itself (which could not be “known” but belonged to the noumenal world) but had to function as an apriori condition of the possibility of phenomenal knowledge (i.e., in how it affected the mind). However, Fichte is uncompromising and he held that our choice of either option is dependent on “inclination and interest” (presumably of the philosopher, scientists, etc.). That is, the choice is made on the basis of the kind of “man” (human being) one is (and needless to say Fichte was the kind of man who favored idealism). On the other hand neither system has yet been worked out completely and there is no principle on which to choose one over the other.

Fichte held that the philosopher who is maturely aware of his freedom as revealed in practical moral experience will always be inclined to idealism, while the philosopher less mature in moral consciousness is inclined to dogmatism/materialism. Thus, the “inclination and interest” is a question of the self and it was the self that was Fichte’s highest interest. In other words, Fichte was convinced of the primacy of human beings’ practical free moral activity. In that sense he continues Kant’s insistence on the primacy of the practical reason or the moral will (in Kant’s 2nd Critique), but Fichte insisted that this position would have to follow the path of pure idealism. The reason is that Fichte detected behind Kant’s thing-in-itself (which could not be known but was deemed to be noumenal) lurking the specter of Spinoza’s exaltation of nature (monism) and therefore the disappearance of freedom. Hence, if we are to exorcise this lurking specter of Spinoza we must reject Kant’s compromise (and his distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal).

[Of course, one can detach Fichte’s focus on the philosopher’s inclination and interest by understanding this choice and merely focus on “philosophy’s options” and this in fact happened when in the late 19th c. Wilhelm Dilthey and later Karl Jaspers, considered “inclination and interest” under the heading of (the psychology of) “world-views” but world-view itself would then become an “object” for consideration of the same two options.]

If we choose as Fichte did idealism, then the first principle of idealism must turn to the question of what is intelligence-in-itself, or as Fichte would ask it, “what is the ego?” Hence the origin of experience begins on the side of the ego – consciousness is derived from the ego. But of course the idealist immediately finds that there is also a natural/material world which affects us in various ways – always, we are contingent beings. Hence, idealism must also account for this material world.

Before looking at this problem of the world, let me first ask “what is the ego such that it can serve as the first principle of idealism? Obviously to answer this question we must go behind the objectifiable (empirical) self (as a phenomenon of perception or as of introspection to the pure ego. Fichte once said: “gentlemen think of the wall”, now “think him who thinks the wall” (clearly we can proceed in this way in infinite fashion). In other words, no matter how we try to objectify the self, it is always possible to ask about the self that transcends the objectification of the self. Hence, the ego transcends objectification and so the ego must be the condition of possibility of the unity of consciousness (very Kantian). It is presumably the latter, pure consciousness, deprived of its objectification, which is the first principle of philosophy of idealism.

Obviously if one were to ask Fichte but where is this pure ego Fichte would answer that the pure ego cannot be found by asking “where is it?” since it is always a necessary condition of possibility of our being able to ask this question or make the necessary observations. But note that this reply also is also one that takes Fichte away from his own methodological starting point in experience or in consciousness. Having repudiated Kant’s view of theoretical knowledge (and bifurcation of the phenomenal and noumenal), Fichte now seems to have fallen into the same trap.

But Fichte insists that is not so. For Fichte maintains that the pure ego (intelligence-in-itself) has intellectual intuition about the world of experience (intellectual intuition is something that Kant’s attributes solely to God – we cannot have intellectual intuition about “reality”, hence the thing-in-itself cannot be known strictly speaking). However, it is important to note also that for Fichte this intellectual intuition attributed to the pure ego is not some mystical force/thing existing behind consciousness; rather, Fichte claims that the ego is theactivity of consciousness, and it is through intellectual intuition that I am always conscious that my actions, all my activities, are mine. Consciousness is an activity aware of itself as activity and in this sense consciousness as activity is the foundation of life (and, writes Fihcte, this principle is without death). In other words, anyone who is conscious of an action as his own is aware of himself acting, and in this sense he has an intuition of the self as activity. Fichte writes: if you are not convinced of this, then reflect on your consciousness (there is no logical proof and there is no observation that will convince you of its existence). Just reflect on your own consciousness and you will be convinced that the ego is not a thing (being) but an activity. [Note how different this is from the empiricists who held consciousness to be an accompaniment of passive impressions/ideas.]

A word here is necessary about the meaning of “activity”. In psychology we think of activity as “behavior” - this is obviously the result of psychology buying into scientific materialism – but “activity” is much broader than this for Fichte. Activity includes thinking, feeling, willing, acting as in conduct; in other words, it includes what we might call “mental” and “physical” activity, doing, performing, behaving, believing, and touching, etc. etc. Incidentally, that is also how Russian activity theory psychology (e.g., Vygotsky) thinks of activity; it is also how Marxist oriented thinkers, following Hegel, think of activity.

It does not follow of course that in reflecting on consciousness I am reflective aware of this intellectual intuition as a component element of consciousness. It is only the philosopher who is reflectively aware of it and this for the simple reason that transcendental reflection (in which reflection is directed at the pure ego) is a philosophical act abstraction from ordinary conscious relations to objects in the world. Hence, the philosopher who wishes to convince anyone or the reality of his intuition can only draw attention to consciousness and invite others to reflect for themselves. One cannot show another that intuition exists in a pure state unmixed with other functions for it never exists that way. Nor can we convince others by some abstract proof. We can only invite others to reflect on their own consciousness – better self-consciousness in that it is directed towards the “subject” – to see that it includes an intuition of the pure ego, not a thing, but an activity. That is, the power of intellectual intuition cannot be demonstrated through concepts nor can it be developed through concepts - everyone must find it immediately in him/herself, or else one will never know it.

Thus, the pure ego cannot be turned into an object for/of consciousness in the way say that a desire can become objectified, say, as a “drive” (in psychology). In fact, it is absurd to say that through introspection I can see a desire, an image, or a pure ego. The reason is that every act of objectification already assumes/presupposes a pure ego, and for this reason it can be called the transcendental or pure ego. But it does not follow from this that the pure ego is an inferred occult entity, for it manifest itself in the activity of objectification.When I say, for example, ‘I am walking”, I objectify my action in the sense that I make it (my walking) an object for a subject (walking is what I am doing). Now it is the pure ego (“I”) that reveals itself in reflection as engaged in this activity of objectifying my activity of “walking”. Hence, consciousness or pure ego (intelligence) is simple the activity of doing. For idealism, intelligence (ego) is activity and not a (objectified) thing.

Note that this position as first sight appears to contradict Kant’s claim that the transcendental ego cannot be known but is simply a transcendental condition of the possibility of the unity of consciousness and can neither be sensibly intuited (sensed) nor proven. But Fichte disagrees and claims that his position is not contrary to Kant’s. Fichte’s claims his position is the same as Kant’s namely that we cannot know the ego as a thing (since we cannot know supersensible realities as Kant rightly noted) but then it was not Fichte’s claim that we can know the ego as some entity, material or spiritual; rather, his claim is that we know the pure ego as activity and we do this in reflection on consciousness. In fact, Fichte claims that Kant should have seen this (given that Kant also always begins in experience/consciousness) since obviously Kant spoke of practical reason as having priority over theoretical reason; Kant spoke of the “moral imperative”, and consciousness of the moral imperative involves the intellectual intuition of the pure ego as activity. That is Fichte claims that Kant should have seen that the moral imperative (of the 2nd C) is the pure ego’s activity in freedom; that is, it is only through the moral law that I apprehend my-self; that is, I apprehend my-self in the pure ego’s activity of freedom. [We once again see Fichte’s strong moral bend.]

We might remind ourselves that Hume whose assumption was that human beings were to be investigated empirically (through sense impressions, i.e., the “new science”), and who then quite naturally assumed that the ego or self was empirically nothing but a bundle of perceptions, ignored that the all-important psychical phenomena precisely become psychical phenomena (i.e., appearing to a subject) only through the objectifying activity of the subject which, however, itself transcends such objectification. At the same time, it should be obvious that it is not Fichte’s intent to reduce the world to a transcendental ego, and the relation between the self as pure subject and the other aspects of the self is also essential to a phenomenology of consciousness. In this regard Fichte clearly shows insight which was totally lacking in Hume.

Fichte was also not just concerned with consciousness and its description (his phenomenological method), he also aspires to formulate a system of idealist metaphysics (what is real). This point is important, especially for all those who reject idealism because Fichte’s talk about the transcendental ego as activity no more commits him to talk about only one such ego than say an internist talking about the stomach commits him only to the one such stomach (the one which he happens to be examining). Nevertheless, if we propose to derive the whole sphere of nature and all selves insofar as they are to be objects for a subject, from a transcendental (pure) ego, then we either (1) must embrace solipsism or else (2) we have to interpret the transcendental ego (pure ego) as a super-individual productive activity – or an supra-individual absolute ego.

Thus, when Fichte speaks about the ego he is not speaking about an individual finite self; rather, in defending his Wissenschaftslehre, he is claiming that the ego is not the individual ego but the one immediate spiritual “Life” which is the creator of all phenomena including phenomenal individual selves. Note the transition here between ego and “Life”. Starting from Kant’s position in experience and wanting to transform Kant’s critical philosophy into idealism, Fichte naturally begins with the pure or absolute ego but he quickly saw that this Kantian absolute ego cannot be the finite self (subject), and hence ego became Life as infinite activity, and this shift from absolute ego to Life is Fichte’s metaphysics of idealism.

We see that Fichte presents us with both (1) a phenomenology of consciousness; and (2) the metaphysics of idealism. In a way one can separate these two endeavors. Thus, we can embrace Fichte phenomenology of consciousness (of the ego) without having to embrace his metaphysical idealism (absolute ego). Although it would be difficult, to say the least, to combine a phenomenology of consciousness with a materialist metaphysics…..

Now by itself the ego whatever else it may be is not yet a fundamental principle of philosophy. We therefore must distinguish between the spontaneous activity of the pure ego and the philosopher’s reconstruction of this activity. Thus, importantly, the spontaneously activity of the pure egoin grounding consciousness does not exists for itself. Rather the pure ego comes to exist only in the transcendental intuition (reflection) of the philosopher. That is, it is only in reflection (“activity directed towards an activity”) that the ego comes to be originally for-itself. In intellectual intuition the pure ego may be said to posit itself, and hence, the first fundamental proposition of philosophy is that in philosophical reflection: (1)the ego simply posits in an original way its own being. This assertion is not open to logical proof; rather, in the activity of affirming itself it exists. To posit and to exists (to be) are the same.

So that while ordinarily we are aware of ourselves only in relation to the world, in reflecting on ordinary consciousness wherein we are always as selves opposed to what is not ourselves (world), we not only affirm to pure ego but we also affirm the non-ego (i.e., other than ego, or the world). This is the second proposition of philosophy then: (2)the non-ego is simply opposed to the ego. This opposition is of course done by the ego (subjectivity) itself otherwise we would have to abandon idealism.

The non-ego is infinite (unlimited) in the sense that objectivity is objectivity in general and not some particular other object. Thus, this infinite non-ego is opposed to the ego within the ego – and the reason is that Fichte is trying to reconstruct consciousness and consciousness comprises both ego and non-ego. Hence, the unlimited activity of the absolute go must posit the non-ego within itself. But if both ego and non-ego are unlimited (infinite) each will try to fill all reality to the exclusion of the other (they will try to annihilate the other and consciousness will be impossible). Therefore if consciousness is to arise there must be some reciprocal limitation of ego and non-ego. That is each must cancel each other out but only in part. In this sense both the ego and non-ego must be divisible. Hence, the third proposition in philosophy is (3)“I posit in the ego a divisible non-ego opposed to the divisible ego”. Thus, there can be no consciousness unless the absolute ego considered as unlimited activity produces within itself the finite ego and the finite non-ego each reciprocally limiting and determining each other (a plurality of selves and a plurality of non-selves).

Now if we mean by consciousness, above, human individual consciousness, the assertion that the non-ego is a necessary condition of consciousness is not difficult to understand. To be sure the finite ego can reflect on itself, but this reflection is possible only by bending the ego back from the non-self and hence the non-ego is a necessary condition of consciousness. But of course we may very well ask why there should be consciousness?Or how can we deduce the second proposition from the first?