Fichte's Critique of Subjectivism

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Introduction: The Interpretation of Fichte’s Idealisms

There are two interpretations of Fichte’s idealism. According to one interpretation, Fichte’s early idealism is essentially a form of “absolute idealism” because it affirms the existence of an absolute ego that posits itself as all reality, and that creates not only the form but also the content of experience. According to the other interpretation, Fichte’s early idealism is basically a form of “subjective idealism” because it limits all knowledge down to the representations of the finite subject and confers only a regulative status upon the absolute ego. Such subjective idealism is essentially a form of solipsism, because it either denies or doubts the reality of anything beyond our own representations.

Both interpretations has their strengths and weaknesses, the best interpretation would be the one that combine the strengths, and avoid the weaknesses, of both interpretations.

We shall see in subsequent chapters that he departed from subjectivism in three fundamental respects. First, he argued that I am self-conscious only because I am also conscious of an external world. Second, he questioned the privacy of the Cartesian subject by defending the thesis that all self-knowledge is intersubjective, depending on a normative structure of mutual recognition. Third, and most radically, he contended that all knowledge is based on our practical activity, and ultimately on the will; in other words, we acquire knowledge not through contemplation but through action.

There are four differences between Fichte’s critical idealism and Kant’s formal idealism: First, Fichte makes practical reason, the root of all reason, the fundamental basis of experience itself. Second, Fichte understands the transcendental activity by which we form experience not only in a theoretical but also a practical sense; it is not only an intellectual but also a practical operation. Third, Fichte makes the distinction be- tween understanding and sensibility a matter of degree rather than kind. Fourth, Fichte assumes a greater self-awareness of freedom than is possible in the Kantian system: he thinks that I can know not only that I am free but also how I am so, or in what my activity consists.

Fichte and the Subjectivist Tradition

Fichte maintained that Kant’s philosophy alone could provide a rational basis for our belief in the existence of the external world, other minds, and the self. But Fichte believe that critical philosophy had to be rebuilt on a completely new basis. Fichte tries to show how transcendental idealism could demonstrate the reality of the external world, or how it could provide a basis for an empirical realism and dualism. The main task of philosophy, said Fichte, is to answer the question: “What is the basis for our claim that there is something outside of us which corresponds to our representations?” Our task in this chapter is to examine one limited aspect of Fichte’s early concern with subjectivism: his early break with the subjectivist tradition regarding the foundations of knowledge.

That the spirit of the critical philosophy is anti-subjectivist was one of the formative insights of Fichte’s early intellectual development. Fichte recognized that according to Kant’s principles, ideas or representations cannot be basic and given because they are the products of more fundamental activities. The starting point of our analysis of experience, should not be “facts of consciousness”, but “activities” below the level of consciousness itself. The possibility of representation depends on the acts (possible or actual) by which the subject relates itself to, and distinguishes itself from, the conscious state and its object.

Fichte’s argument that the first principle of philosophy should express an act rather than a fact marks an important break with the subjectivist tradition, for it questions the simplicity and givenness of representations or ideas, a central premise behind “the way of ideas” so central to that tradition. However this is just the beginning. Fichte also went further than Kant in questioning another central premise of the subjectivist tradition: the separation of the theoretical and practical, or the distinction between the realms of speculation and action. Fichte traced the source of the activities behind representation to the faculty of desire itself. It is not only that representation is derivative because it is created by activities, but also that these activities have their source in the faculty of volition. These activities are not theoretical or contemplative but practical or moral, because they are ultimately directed and created by the will itself.

Fichte’s doctrine of the primacy of practical reason was crucial to his break with the subjectivist tradition, and indeed it was the heart and soul of his Jena Wissenschaftslehre. If we carefully examine Fichte’s Jena writings, we find three different, though closely related, senses of the primacy of practical reason.

In the first sense practical reason has primacy over theoretical because it explains the fundamental presupposition of theoretical reason: that there exists an external world. The assumptions of theoretical reason are: (1) Why, given the presence of an affection, must we have representations at all? (2) What justification do we have for referring representations to things outside us as their cause? (3) What justification do we have for even assuming a faculty of representation? In ascribing primacy to practical reason in this sense, Fichte made the principles of morality nothing less than a transcendental condition of the possibility of experience itself. This means that we can assume that there is an external world, the fundamental presupposition of our experience, only as a condition for moral action. In other words, what justifies belief in the external world is that it is the medium and means for the execution of moral duty. As Fichte summarized this view: “Our world is the sensibilized material of our duty; this is the proper reality in things, the true fundamental content of all appearance.”

According to the second sense, practical reason has primacy because it gives us the warrant or justification to hold certain moral and religious beliefs that we cannot demonstrate or refute through theoretical reason. This is the similar to what Kant gave as the reason for the primacy of practical reason as well. However, Fichte’s claim differs from Kant since Fichte thinks that we are justified in holding the moral ideas of God, immortality, and providence not as objects of belief but only as goals for action. The primacy of practical reason does not give us the warrant to believe in the existence of entities beyond experience but only the right to act for the sake of certain ideals.

According to the third sense, practical reason has primacy over theoretical because knowledge is the result of action rather than contemplation. Fichte agrees with Kant that we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into them and that the paradigm of knowledge is the self-awareness of our own activity, or that only the activity of the mind is completely transparent to itself, so that the mind knows objects only to the extent that it creates them. And he goes beyond Kant in seeing such activity not only in intellectual or theoretical but also in practical or moral terms. The activity by which we know objects is ultimately directed by the will itself, and it takes place not in the mind alone but in its deeds and actions in the external world. “We do not act because we know, but we know because we are destined for action; practical reason is the root of all reason.” It would be anachronistic to read into it any of the many forms of relativism characteristic of postmodernism. For Fichte never ceased to hold that our creative activity must comply with the norms of reason, which are universal and necessary.

The Battle against Skepticism

One of Schulze’s major criticisms of Kant’s philosophy is that it ends in a complete subjectivism. He maintains that it is guilty of “formalism” because it reduces all of reality down to nothing more than “an aggregate of forms and effects of the mind.” Fichte’s reply to this objection is that it tacitly presupposes the transcendental realist criterion of truth, and so begs the question against Kant. Fichte repudiates this criterion of truth because it involves an absurd presupposition. The criterion presupposes the idea of a thing-in-itself, of something that could exist apart from any possible conception of it. But it is nonsense, Fichte argues, to think of a thing-in-itself that exists apart from how it must be conceived according to any rational being. Fichte then announces the general principle, one central to his idealism: “what is logically true for any intellect… is at the same time true in reality and there is no other truth than this”. Fichte thinks that the criterion of truth consists not in correspondence with a thing-in-itself, but in conformity with the universal and necessary laws of understanding.

When responding to Schulze’s meta-critical arguments, Fichte states as his counter principle: “The faculty of representation exists for the faculty of representation and through the faculty of representation”, or “The I is what it is… for the I”. The principle has a methodological, an ontological, and an ethical meaning, all of them implicit in the review but never disentangled by Fichte himself. In the methodological sense, the principle implies that any explanation of the mind must be in terms that could be given by the mind itself; in other words, we cannot understand the mind by accounting for it from some third-person standpoint, such as the laws of physics; rather, we must interpret it from within, according to its own self-conceptions or self-understanding. In its ontological sense, the principle means that the ego does not exist, or at least does not fully realize its nature, apart from and prior to its self-conceptions; its very essence and existence is constituted by its self-conceptions. Finally, in its ethical sense, the principle means that the essence of the ego consists in its activity of self-determination, of autonomy, of making itself what it is; the categorical imperative of the ego is to realize this autonomy, to become completely independent.

The heart of Maimon’s skepticism, and the main challenge it posed for Fichte, lies in its critique of the Transcendental Deduction. The essence of Maimon’s critique is that Kant cannot solve the problem behind the Deduction—’How do a priori concepts apply to experience if they do not derive from it?’—because of his rigid and sharp dualism between understanding and sensibility. The gulf between understanding and sensibility is simply unbridgeable. Thus the ultimate challenge of Maimon’s skepticism—for Fichte, and in- deed the whole post-Kantian generation—was how to bridge the gap between understanding and sensibility, noumena and phenomena.

Fichte concedes that this is in effect to admit the skeptic’s case: that we have no reason to believe that our concepts apply to an object independent of them. But he still insists that we do not have to accept the skeptic’s conclusion that all of our experience consists only in an illusion. This is because there is simply no given object to which our concepts have to conform. All of our experience is the work of the imagination, and indeed all reality de- pends on it, so that there is no criterion of truth outside it to which we can appeal. Illusion must be opposed to truth, and illusion must be avoidable. But the activity of the imagination provides the rule of truth, and its activity is inescapable. We can no more doubt the reality of the productive imagination, Fichte argues, than we can doubt the reality of our existence, because the activity of the imagination is a necessary condition of our own self-consciousness. Imagination unites the two fundamental elements of all experience: form and matter. It engages in the infinite task of attempting to create order out of chaos, of striving to determine the infinitely determinable matter of sensation. Fichte does not hold that the imagination creates ex nihilo the entire world, as if nothing exists prior to its act of creation. He constantly stresses how we, as finite beings, are limited by a reality external to ourselves, which is simply given to us, and that an idealism is transcendent or dogmatic when it fails to acknowledge such a reality. What the imagination does create for Fichte is the object of experience, that is, its universal and necessary form, the structure that makes objective knowledge of experience possible.

Fichte has another strategy, another line of defense against Maimon’s skepticism, which is much more promising and interesting. We are all finite beings because we are limited by and acted on by a world outside us; we are divided into reason and sensibility, where our sensibility is purely passive, subject to the influence of nature. It is the fundamental demand of reason, the essence of the categorical imperative, however, that we attain complete autonomy and independence, or that we become only what we posit ourselves to be. We can fulfill this demand—we can achieve such complete independence—only when we attain complete control over all of nature, for only then are we no longer dependent on, or influenced by, an external world. According to Fichte, the only solution to this predicament - the only means to overcome the vast discrepancy between the demands of reason and our actual condition as finite beings - is for us to strive to realize the ideal of complete independence. All this makes it plain how Fichte’s doctrine of the primacy of practical reason serves as his final response to the challenge of skepticism.

Though Fichte’s pragmatism marks an important break with the contemplative model of knowledge characteristic of the subjectivist tradition, it would be absurd to stress its originality. For Fichte is not only borrowing an insight of Maimon’s; he is also going back to a tradition of thought as old as Francis Bacon. According to this tradition, knowledge is the product of action rather than contemplation, of making the world conform to our demands rather than trying to mirror its essence through rational theorizing.

Criticism versus Dogmatism

The Transformation of the Kantian Problematic

Fichte developed some of the most important principles of his idealism in combating skepticism. That things exist only as any rational being must conceive them, that the ego is only for itself, that knowledge is the result of practical activity, and that transcendental philosophy has to be completely immanent. However we are far from a complete and accurate account of Fichte’s idealism. We need to interpret Fichte in his own system. Even when Fichte uses the same terms as Kant, we should not take for granted that he means the same thing by them; placed in Fichte’s context, they take on a completely different sense.

Fichte explains idealism in terms of his basic distinction between criticism and dogmatism. He contends that the explanation of experience is the only possible answer to the fundamental problem of transcendental philosophy. While criticism ex- plains experience from some immanent principle within consciousness, the self, ego, or I in itself (das Ich an sich), dogmatism accounts for it from some transcendent principle beyond consciousness, the thing in itself (Ding an sich). Criticism maintains that experience is the product of the self in itself, or that we know objects because we create them according to the laws of reason; dogmatism holds that experience is the result of the thing in itself, or that we know objects because our consciousness reflects the world that acts on it. Fichte saw the opposition between criticism and dogmatism in terms of a dramatic choice: freedom or fatalism. While criticism preserves the possibility of freedom by seeing the subject as pure activity, dogmatism undermines freedom by viewing the subject as passive, the product of nature. This looks like similar to Kant’s distinction between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, however there are differences. Unlike Kant’s transcendental idealism, Fichte’s criticism does not distinguish between appearances and things-in-themselves. Rather, it explains all of experience as the product of the subject alone, eliminating things-in-themselves entirely. criticism is entirely idealistic, explaining all reality in terms of the ego, while dogmatism is entirely naturalistic, explaining everything according to mechanical laws.

It is also important to see that Kant’s and Fichte’s distinctions arose from different formulations of the basic problem of transcendental philosophy. The purpose of Kant’s transcendental idealism is to resolve the specific problem of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments: How do we explain the truth of such judgments if they are not derived from experience and if they cannot be demonstrated according to the law of contradiction? The task of Fichte’s criticism, however, is to explain how representations can correspond with objects if the mind and the world are so different from one another. Hence the Fichtean problem is broader than the Kantian: it extends to any class of representations, even empirical or synthetic a posteriori ones, and it does not arise for synthetic a priori concepts alone.

The Two Systems

Fichte said there are only two systems because subject and object are the basic entities of all experience and criticism and dogmatism explain experience according to either the subject or object, it seems there are no other alternative. But dualism might ask why not both subject and object. Fichte regard dualism not as a possible solution to his problem but the very source of the problem itself. The central issue in explaining the possibility of knowledge is how to account for the correspondence between the mind and the world, given that the subject and object seem to be such heterogeneous things. Although Fichte’s language is metaphysical, it is important to recognize that he still refuses to make any metaphysical commitment with it. To say that the ego is absolute or infinite does not mean that it is the whole of all reality, the totality of all determinations. Rather, it is something purely formal and indeterminate, and so the absence of all determinations. All that can be said about it is that it is; as the ground of all predication, it has no predicates at all.

The Refutation of Dogmatism

While Fichte does not attempt a refutation of dogmatism in the sense of a valid deductive argument proceeding from self-evident premises, he still insists that dogmatism should be rejected be- cause it is unable to explain experience. The starting point of Fichte’s argument is his principle that the ego or subject is essentially for itself. there is an immediate unity of being and seeing in the case of the subject, whereas there is no such unity in the case of the object, whose existence is separable from any consciousness of it. Now, Fichte maintains, it is just this feature of subjectivity—the necessity of self-consciousness—that dogmatism cannot explain.

Fichte and the Thing-in-Itself

Fichte repudiates the concept of the thing-in-itself insofar as it is the unthinkable and also dismisses the concept of the thing-in-itself insofar as it is the transcendental cause of appearances. For all his resistance to the thing-in-itself, Fichte still endorsed the idea in important respects, assigning it a pivotal role in his own critical idealism. He does not reject the thing-in-itself provided that it is understood as a noumenon, the idea of something that is the product of pure thinking alone. The noumenon is the object that is created by the necessary laws of our reason, and that we add to appearances to give them objectivity. Fichte also reintroduces the idea of the thing-in-itself in the role of a “stimulus” or “check” (Anstoß) to the activity of the ego. Although all of its known determinations are created or posited by the activity of the ego, there is still an extent to which it resists its activity and so remains forever indeterminable and unknowable. Fichte feels compelled to postulate the existence of this unknowable entity to explain the finitude of the human predicament, the fact that we do not have the creative power to produce the entire world.

It is here that a serious question of consistency arises. It would seem as if this check to the ego’s activity also acts on it, so that it is a cause of our representations; but this would involve, of course, a transcendent application of the category of causality. Fichte makes a distinction between representation and feeling and claims that though we represent things only as appearances, we feel them as things-in-themselves. He explains that although we cannot know things-in-themselves directly through representation, we can know them indirectly through feeling.

Freedom and Subjectivity

The Meaning of Freedom

The great value of idealism, and its fundamental advantage over dogmatism, is that it alone can preserve freedom. This means that only idealism provides a sufficient support for the fundamental principles of morality, which are undermined by the fatalism of dogmatism. Also, Fichte saw freedom as the key to the basic problem of transcendental philosophy: how to explain the possibility of experience and the consciousness of the external world. The self-consciousness of freedom is his first principle for the deduction of experience, his basic premise to establish the awareness of an objective reality. “Freedom is the vehicle for our knowledge of objects; but not the converse: that our knowledge of objects is the vehicle for our knowledge of freedom.”

it is important to recognize that Fichte, like Kant, has two very different concepts of freedom. There is the freedom of the pure will (Wille), which he identifies with the law of reason, the categorical imperative. There is also the freedom of choice (Willkür), the power to do or not do something. We become aware of freedom only as choice, because we feel the moral law only as a command on our sensible nature, as an imperative that we might or might not obey. Freedom in the sense of pure will cannot be an object of consciousness, Fichte explains, because it is the condition of any consciousness whatsoever. The main focus of Fichte’s discussion of freedom is on the concept of choice.

Freedom excludes necessity, but also chance. There must be some reason for our actions; but it cannot be a cause that compels us to act so that we cannot do otherwise. This means that any adequate theory of freedom must reject compatibilism, according to which a free action is consistent with natural necessity, as well as indifferentism, according to which the will can act without a reason so that it is indifferent whether it does one thing or another.

Fichte thinks that freedom excludes necessity because it essentially involves independence. Independence means that the will does not depend on external causes to act. Hence any explanation for the acts of the will must be in terms of the will itself. Because he thinks freedom means independence, Fichte accepts Kant’s definition of freedom as spontaneity, the power of the will to be a first cause, to begin a causal series without determination by some prior cause. Another reason freedom excludes necessity, Fichte argues, is because it involves choice, that is, the decision to act between opposing courses of action. Freedom, by its very nature as choice, involves indeterminacy, the fact that something can be either X or −X.

Although freedom involves choice, Fichte insists that it is not possible that we decide for no reason at all, as if it were completely indifferent whether we opt for X or −X. Since freedom excludes chance, there must be some reason for choice. Fichte explains that we can formulate this reason in terms of a practical syllogism. But if there must be a reason for choice, how do we escape determinism? The reason for a free action is not the cause for the action, but its end or purpose as conceived by an intelligent or rational being. How is this different from the causes in nature? In nature one being is the cause of another being, and so on ad infinitum; but in the case of a rational agent something merely thought is the reason for action. Also such reasons are a specific kind of purpose or end: that chosen by an intelligent or rational being.

Fichte summarizes his concept of freedom in the term ‘self-determination’. He explains that this concept means two things. First, that the self exists prior to its determinations, so that it can determine itself to be X, Y, or Z, depending on its choice; hence it must have an existence independent of any one of its determinations. A free beings has a distinction between existence and essence, but a thing does not. Second, self-determination means that the self acts according to its own concept of itself, that it becomes only what it conceives itself to be, so that its essence or nature conforms entirely to its own rational choice.

There are two distinct things of Fichte’s theory of self-determination. First, it maintains that the activity of self-determination does not realize a nature that is already complete and fixed; rather, it holds that there is no such fixed nature or essence at all. Second, the activity of self-determination does not take place of necessity but conforms entirely to the acts of rational choice, which could have been otherwise. In both these respects Fichte’s account of self-determination anticipates the later existentialist concept of radical freedom. “I am that to which I make myself according to freedom, and I am this simply because I so make myself.”

Fichte also stresses that we are free only in a formal but not a material sense, that is, though we have the power or capacity to conceive purposes and to act according to them, what we are - our determinate properties or characteristics - still depends on nature. The break between Fichte and Kant is that Fichte’s ideal of complete self-determination commits him to something Kant regarded as impossible, and indeed as undesirable: self-identity, the unity of the noumenal and phenomenal selves.

The Theory of Subjectivity

Fichte sometimes writes that the fundamental principle of his idealism - the ultimate basis for its explanation of experience - is the ‘I in itself’ (Ich an sich). The essence of Fichte’s theory of subjectivity is captured in his odd proposition that the essence of the ego consists in “subject–object identity.” This proposition is best explained as an attempt to capture the interdependence of the two distinguishing features of the self or the rational subject: freedom and self-consciousness.

The first aspect of the self is freedom. The second aspect or characteristic trait of the self is self-consciousness. Corresponding to these characteristics, Fichte distinguishes be- tween the subjective and objective aspects, or the ideal and the real, aspects of the self.22 Its subjective or ideal aspect consists in its self-consciousness, its power of representing or thinking about its own activity; its objective or real aspect consists in its freedom, its power of willing and acting.

That they are inseparable is indeed the main thrust of Fichte’s theory of subjectivity. The point of his theory of the self as subject–object identity is to show that the subjective and objective, ideal and real, aspects of the self are ultimately one. This means that we cannot be self-conscious and reflective unless we are free, and that we cannot be free unless we are self-conscious and reflective.

The unity of the subjective and objective sides of the self, of freedom and self-consciousness, emerges most forcefully in Fichte’s idea of the self-positing subject. “The ego, as absolute subject, is that whose being (essence) consists only in positing itself”. The concept of self-positing (sich setzen) unites both thinking and willing, conceiving and acting. This concept has two meanings. First, the I posits itself when it becomes conscious of itself, that is, when it becomes an object for itself. Second, the I posits itself when it constitutes or makes itself. Positing therefore contains an aspect of both knowing and doing, of perceiving and making. When I posit myself, I know myself; but I also make or create myself. In self-positing, self- knowing and self-making are intertwined: I know myself because I make myself; and I make myself because I know myself. Hence when the ego posits itself—when it reflects on its existence as a pure subject—it also creates or makes its existence through this very act.

Woes of the Absolute Ego

One of the most notorious problems in the interpretation of Fichte’s ideal- ism concerns the status of his subject or ego. Who is this ego? Is it my finite self? Or is it the absolute and infinite self? The result has been confusion and controversy.

By its very nature a finite ego has limited powers of creation, and so it confronts a given and contingent manifold; only an absolute ego has the power to produce what it perceives. Second, if the ego is the fundamental condition for the explanation of experience—as Fichte insists it is—then it would seem that it cannot be finite itself, for it is the necessary condition under which we identify or determine any finite thing. Upon closer examination, however, both of these arguments prove to be questionable, not only in themselves but also as interpretations of Fichte.

Whatever the difficulties with these arguments, Fichte would be grossly inconsistent if he were to claim knowledge of the existence of an absolute ego. Such a claim would violate one of his fundamental principles: that all our knowledge is limited to possible experience.

A serious problem of consistency arises in another direction. Existence must be determinate, but an absolute ego is by definition not something determinate but the negation of all limitation. He raises the question: “What would be the properly mental in a person, the pure I - absolute in itself and apart from all relation to something outside itself?” He replies that the question is absurd since ego exists only in embodied form, through its empirical determinations and relations to other selves and the world outside it.

The Two Egos

For all the problems in admitting the existence of an absolute ego in his system, the fact still remains that Fichte writes of an absolute ego. The problem is then how to interpret such language.

We have an intellectual intuition of the form of the ‘I’ because we can intuit that we are self-determining; but we have no such intuition of the matter of the ‘I’ because we cannot intuit how we are self-determining, in what specific properties or determinations its activity consists. The ‘I’ that is not only form but also matter is simply an idea, a goal for our infinite striving, because we are not yet everything that we posit ourselves to be.

The absolute I would have to transcend the principle of sufficient reason and be a purely formal condition of all determination, stating the existence of the I and nothing more. This is the subject of a special kind of thetic judgment. The perfect example is “I am”, which states nothing about the ‘I’ and the place of predicate is “left empty for the possible infinite determination of the I”.

‘the ego posits itself absolutely’ have an essentially practical meaning. They do not refer to something that exists, he explains, but to something that ought to exist. They express the demand of practical reason that everything in the world conform to our rational activity.

While the ego is perfectly self-determining and rational in its mere form or existence, it remains passive and sensible in its essence. It knows that it exists as a self-determining being, and that it has at least the power to act according to the demands of reason; but it also knows that how it exists - its essence, nature, or specific properties - depends on the sensible world outside it. Its predicament in the sensible world contradicts the fundamental law of morality: that the ego should be completely autonomous and independent, free not only in its mere form and existence but also in its matter and essence. The only way to resolve the contradiction between the demands of morality and the actual existence of the ego, Fichte then explains, is to read the constitutive principle ‘the ego is self-positing’ as the regulative ideal ‘the ego ought to be self-positing’. This means that the ego must set itself the infinite task to make itself perfectly free and self-positing, not only in its form but also in its essence. This demands that it acquires power over nature, so that it is no longer passive and determined by it but so that everything conforms to the requirements of its reason.

There are two senses in which the ego is absolute in the Wissenschaftslehre. It is absolute in the purely formal sense, in which it is self-determining only in its existence; and it is absolute in the material sense, in which it is self-determining in not only its existence but also its essence.

If we strictly adhere to these distinctions, we can also see that Fichte’s general position is perfectly consistent. There is no real contradiction in saying that the ego is both absolute and individual, infinite and finite. If the ego is absolute or infinite only in the formal sense, having only the power of self- determination, then it is also possible for it to be individual or finite in the material sense, where all its specific determinations are still the result of nature rather than its own activity.

Knowledge of Freedom

The Break with Kant

The pivotal role Fichte gave to freedom in the Wissenschaftslehre is the decisive factor behind Fichte’s break with Kant. This forced Fichte to stress the role of volition in the constitution of experience and to question the contemplative tradition and way of ideas. It also compelled him to emphasize the role of free activity in the concept of the self and thus to reject the view that the self is a special kind of substance.

To place such weight on the concept of freedom makes the question inevitable: How do I know that I am free? Fichte seem to content to reaffirm Kant’s solution to the problem, the “fact of reason” of the second Kritik. We know we are free through the voice of conscience within us, which informs us that despite temptation, we still have the power to act according to the dictates of duty.

In the second edition of the Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, he raises the possibility that the self-consciousness of our freedom is based on nothing more than ignorance of the underlying causes of our actions. In this case, however, the self-consciousness of freedom might be illusory, so that we would have to embrace fatalism.

To avoid such a dire and drastic conclusion, Fichte attempts to provide a demonstration that we have a moral will, a pure faculty of desire. We know that we have such a will, he argues, only if we are conscious of something that could be created only by us, something that derives from our spontaneity alone. That we have such self-consciousness becomes clear by considering the content of our representations of the will, that is, what it is we are aware of when we intend to act on the moral law. Unlike all other representations, whose content arises from sensation and so from some source outside ourselves, the content of this representation arises only from ourselves since it is the pure form of the moral law, the categorical imperative. Here Fichte’s argument presupposes a claim that he will often make later: that what arises from pure thinking alone, universalizability, must have its source in ourselves alone.

The crucial move away from Kant appeared in two reviews Fichte wrote in the autumn of 1793. In the first review, Fichte states that the unity of the realms of freedom and nature exists in some higher ground, which is incomprehensible to us. In the second review, Fichte discovered that the fact of moral feeling is also explicable according to sentimentalism, which regards it as nothing more than an expression of moral sympathy. The crucial question is not about the existence of any facts, but about competing explanations of them. While the Kantian derives moral feeling from practical reason, the sentimentalist deduces it from sympathy.

Rather than appealing to facts of consciousness, then, the critical philosopher must demonstrate the reality of freedom. He can do so, Fichte proposes, only if he shows that freedom is a necessary condition of the possibility of consciousness itself. This proof would proceed from the unity of consciousness, show that this unity is not possible without something un-conditioned in us, and then conclude that this something unconditioned is nothing less than the will or practical reason.

A Philosophy of Striving

Fichte is explicit that we cannot have a proof for the existence of freedom since that belongs to theoretical reason, instead it is better to say that we strives and hopes to be free. Although we are not free in the sense of having absolute independence, we still must strive to attain this goal. Ideal freedom requires complete independence, not only from, but over the causes of nature; it consists in having causality over everything that is not ourselves. Although we cannot achieve such complete independence, we can still strive to approach it.

Prima facie it is not clear how the striving to realize complete independence, or to unify the two sides of our nature, proves the existence of our freedom. It only seems to beg the question, because even this striving could be determined by natural causes, so that it too acts by natural necessity. Throughout his Jena writings Fichte had expressed two general principles concerning freedom and knowledge: (1) that to be free we must make ourselves free because freedom is not something given but something that we create; (2) that knowledge is the result of action rather than contemplation. It follows from these principles that there cannot be any a priori guarantee of our freedom. If we are to know that we are free, then we must first strive to make ourselves free. We know that we are free only by striving to make our- selves free, and we know that we have become free only if we succeed in our efforts to dominate and control nature. Like all knowledge, then, the self-knowledge of freedom is the result of action, and there can be no guarantee of its reality except through the success of action.

The Origins of Intellectual Intuition

Fichte tried to develop a new theory of self-knowledge without postulating an unknowable subject and a new theory of freedom, so that freedom and self-consciousness are no longer incompatible. Fichte turned to the doctrine of intellectual intuition. How does the transcendental philosopher know that his reflections on the conditions of consciousness reflect consciousness itself? How do his thoughts correspond with the activities of the mind, how can such a correspondence be shown? To answer this question, Fichte envisages an intellectual intuition along the lines of Kant’s theory of mathematical construction. Just as we prove a proposition in geometry through the construction of a figure in pure intuition, so in philosophy we should demonstrate the forms of the mind by constructing them in a pure intuition.

The Meaning of Intellectual Intuition

The general meaning he gives to this term is self-knowledge as a spontaneous, acting subject. Fichte defines it in these terms: “Intellectual intuition is the immediate consciousness that I act, and of what I do when I act.” When I have an intellectual intuition, I know myself as acting rather than acted on, as self-determining rather than determined. less than the perfect identity of subject and object: the self-knowing self is the self known; there is no distinction between the subject and object of self-knowledge, such that the subject is active and self-determining and the object passive and determinable. In short, an intellectual intuition consists in the active self-knowing self knowing itself as an active self-knowing self.

Fichte versus Kant on Intellectual Intuition

Kant denies the possibility of intellectual intuition while Fichte affirms it. Kant was compelled to deny intellectual intuition because of two central doctrines of the first Kritik: that all knowledge, including self-knowledge, is discursive, requiring the application of concepts; and that all knowledge, including self-knowledge, is empirical, demanding a manifold given to sensation.

But Fichte protested that he was simply using the term ‘intellectual intuition’ in a different sense from Kant. According to Fichte’s interpretation, Kant’s intellectual intuition is the divine understanding’s knowledge of the archetypes, which are pure noumena transcending all experience. His intellectual intuition is not of some entity beyond our experience, but merely of an activity within it.

Self-Knowledge and Freedom

Kant denies the possibility of intellectual intuition to protect the possibility of freedom. For Kant, freedom excludes self-knowledge: self-knowledge involves the application of the categories to myself, and so makes me passive and determined. Fichte maintains, however, that freedom requires self-knowledge. If we assume that the acting self, which is the basis of all my actions, is unknowable, then to be deter- mined by it is to be determined by some cause external to myself. I have nothing to do with this self, which is nothing for me; and so in making me do something it acts as an alien cause. On these grounds Fichte insists that freedom requires self-consciousness.

Fichte talks about two conditions of possibility of self knowledge.

  1. The self-constitution condition. The self as object does not exist apart from and prior to the self as subject. In other words, the known self is not given to the self-knowing self. Rather, the known self is only what the self-knowing self knows itself to be; in other words, the self as object is posited or constituted by the self as subject.

  2. The self-expression condition. The self as subject expresses, manifests or embodies itself in the self as object. This means that the self-knowing self consists in nothing more than its self-expressions, self-manifestations, or self-embodiments.

Self-constitution says that the self as object is constituted by the self as subject; self-expression says that the self as subject is expressed by the self as object. If we join these two conditions, then we have exactly what Fichte says is required by intellectual intuition: subject–object identity.

If these conditions are joined, then they lead to a very striking result: the self is nothing more than what it conceives itself to be. It is neither a subject nor an object existing apart from, and prior to, its actual or potential acts of self-knowledge itself. Though it is strange and radical, Fichte draws just this conclusion: “I am this [intellectual] intuition and absolutely nothing further, and this intuition itself is who I am”.

Faith in Freedom

The theory of intellectual intuition seems hopelessly idealistic. It seems to prescribe an ideal experience rather than to describe a real one. All that the theory does is spell out the conditions for self-knowledge of our spontaneity; but it does not show that they are actual. However the purpose of the theory is only to explain the possibility of self-knowledge of our freedom, not to demonstrate its reality.

The critical philosopher cannot demonstrate the reality of freedom through his experience, because it is always possible that there are some causes, unknown to him, of his actions. On the other hand, the dogmatist cannot refute the reality of freedom, because he cannot find sufficient evidence for the hypothetical causes of all our actions. Since we cannot know that we are free, we are left with the question: Should we believe that we are so?

Whether we should believe we are free, Fichte argues, ultimately has to be determined on practical grounds. This means that we have to decide the question according to the demands of action. We should choose to believe in the reality of freedom for the simple reason that we ought to, or because the moral law commands us. Morality demands that we be responsible agents, and the condition of responsibility is freedom.

Like Kant, then, Fichte attempts to decide the question of the reality of freedom by an appeal to conscience, the awareness of the moral law. We have the duty to believe that we are free because, when we do something contrary to duty, the voice of our conscience tells us that we could have always done otherwise.

Critical Idealism

Problems of Idealism

Now that we have examined the fundamental concepts of Fichte’s ideal- ism—freedom, intellectual intuition, the self-positing ego, subject–object identity—we have crossed the threshold of the Wissenschaftslehre. Nevertheless, we have not entered its inner sanctum. To take that final step, we have to consider Fichte’s solution to the fundamental problem of transcendental philosophy: How is it possible to demonstrate the reality of the external world?

It seems almost impossible to explain the external world on the principles of idealism, especially those laid down by Fichte. The first concerns the status of the ego or subject in itself. It would seem that this subject must be infinite or absolute, because, to avoid the problems of dualism, it must create not only the form but also the content of experience, something beyond the powers of any finite subject. The second problem arises from the conflict between the transcendental and empirical standpoints. According to the transcendental standpoint, there is an identity between the subject and object, between the form and content of experience, because the self-positing ego creates its object in the very act of knowing it. According to the empirical standpoint, however, there is a dualism between the subject and object, between the form and content of experience, because it is a simple fact of experience that the object is given to the subject. The dilemma is: we must unify and separate the transcendental and empirical standpoints. The third and final problem is the infamous paradox of ‘inner affection’: If the absolute ego is infinite, active, and independent, then how does it make itself finite, passive, and dependent? Why does the ego limit its activity by putting itself under laws?

The Role of Striving

How can idealism explain the reality of our experience, the fact that some representations appear to depend on causes independent of our will and imagination? Fichte introduces his concept of striving. The main assumption behind this concept is that the activity of the ego consists in infinite striving, the ceaseless struggle against a hostile world. The finite ego never ceases to be opposed to, and limited by, the non-ego, which acts as both a stimulus and check to its activity. Although it does not have complete power over the non-ego, the finite ego must forever exert itself to acquire it, and so aspire toward the status of an infinite ego, which is now only its un- attainable ideal. After introducing the concept of striving, Fichte begins to reinterpret the concept of the absolute ego in practical and regulative terms. All that this principle should mean, he writes, is that the ego ought to be independent; it states only the ideal that everything conforms to its rational activity.

The Synthesis of Idealism and Realism

Critical idealism is a synthesis of both idealism and realism, hence Fichte summarizes its basic idea by the slogan “No subject, no object; no object, no subject.” Critical idealism has a realistic and idealistic aspect. According to its idealistic aspect, the object depends on the subject because all of the object’s properties or determinations, at least insofar as they are perceived by the subject, are producible by the activity of the subject alone. According to critical idealism’s realistic side, however, the subject depends on the object because the subject is finite and limited, conditioned by something outside itself, which it cannot further analyze or explain away. Fichte postulates the existence of a check, obstacle, or impetus to the infinite activity of the ego. He stresses that this check cannot be the product of the ego’s activity, for the simple reason that activity requires some obstacle, some resistance, if it is to be activity at all.

Reintroducing and Reinterpreting the Thing-in-Itself

Does not this concept of a check or obstacle to the ego’s activity amount to a covert reintroduction of the thing-in-itself? The truth of the matter is that while Fichte intentionally reintroduces the thing-in-itself he also reinterprets it so that it no longer means the utterly unthinkable.

According to the concept of striving, the more the ego strives and gains power over the non-ego, the more it makes the object, which was previously an unknowable thing-in-itself, conform to the laws of its activity so that it can become part of its consciousness; but because its activity has to be limited, there is always something more beyond its reach, which transcends the realm of consciousness. The non-ego is therefore both a noumenon, a pure creation of reason, and an unknowable thing-in-itself, depending on the degree to which the ego strives and acquires control over nature.

The Refutation of Idealism

Later Arguments against Idealism

Fichte’s argument is that we ought to believe that there is an external world. So it does not refute the more radical skepticism that whatever necessities of our conceptual scheme, it is still possible for the world not to exist.

The Fichtean versus Kantian Refutation

In fundamental respects, Fichte’s later arguments for the reality of the external world follow in the footsteps of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism in the first Kritik. Like Kant, Fichte wants to show that the possibility of self-awareness requires awareness of an objective world; in other words, to be conscious of myself, I must also be conscious of some external object, which will be something in space outside me.

Beyond this general similarity, Fichte’s strategy is different. The starting point of Fichte’s arguments is not a form of empirical self-consciousness - my self-awareness in time, but a form of transcendental self-consciousness - my self-awareness as a rational and free being. The central thrust of Fichte’s arguments is that I can be self-conscious as a free agent—I can ascribe to myself a will and rational ends—only if I am also aware of a world outside myself in which my actions take place. The existence of the external world therefore becomes a necessary condition of moral action. It is in this sense that Fichte derives the realm of objective experience not from cognition or theoretical reason but from desire or practical reason.

Fichte’s arguments differ from Kant’s not only in their starting point but also in their conclusion. The external world he intends to demonstrate has not only an empirical but also a transcendental reality. It is not only that which conforms to the formal conditions of experience, as in Kant’s argument, but that which exists independent of any consciousness whatsoever. This is not the thing-in-itself in the Kantian sense of something completely unthinkable, but it is the check or obstacle to the ego’s activity.

The Deduction of the External World

  1. I posit myself, or I exist only in and through the activity of thinking of myself. Fichte is saying that I exist in the activity of thinking, and refutes “I think therefore I am” from Descartes.

  2. If I posit myself, I must ascribe free activity to myself. This is talking about self-consciousness rather than self-knowledge, I find myself willing in self-consciousness.

  3. If I ascribe free activity to myself, I must also assume the existence of something outside myself toward which it is directed. This is the starting point of Fichte’s deduction of the objective world. Proposition 1: “A rational being cannot ascribe a power [of freedom] to itself unless it also thinks of something outside itself toward which its power is directed”. To ascribe freedom to myself is to conceive of several specific actions as possible through me; in other words, it is to attribute a power of choice to myself, such that I can choose between opposing courses of action.

The mere fact that my purposive activity involves the production of something, Fichte argues, involves a distinction between myself and the external world. To aim to realize my ends means that I intend to bring something into existence, something that will continue to exist independent of me. I ascribe freedom to myself only if I also assume the permanent existence of the world outside me.

  1. If I ascribe free activity to myself, I also must assume that I have the power to act on and change things in the sensible world.

“Through its positing of its capacity for free activity the rational being posits and determines a sensible world outside itself”.

If I assume I am a free agent, he argues, I must be able to choose a specific action. In other words, I must will something determinate, this or that end, and not simply some- thing in general; and I must do something determinate, this or that action, and not just act in general. If my actions must be determinate, then they must take place in the sensible world. The Proof concludes by introducing the idea of a temporal manifold. If I know my specific actions only through experience, then my awareness of them involves the sensible intuition of a temporal magnitude, a definite degree or quantity.

  1. If I have the power to act and change things in the sensible world, then I must perceive this power in a manifold having a definite and irreversible order, that is, my experience must have a necessary and universal form. Fichte’s proof of this premise consists in two propositions. (1) My causality is perceived in succession or as a manifold in a continuous series. (2) The successive order of the manifold is determined independent of me, and it is only as such a limitation of my activity.

The conclusion is that: I cannot be aware of my activity as a free agent unless I am also aware of an objective time order of events, an order that is independent of my representation and my will. Fichte concludes that I arrive at an objective view of the world because my activity encounters resistance, so that it can be realized only through following a definite order of means to ends.

Fichte suggests that all properties of the material world—apart from its formal characteristics—are explicable in terms of their relation to my activity.

  1. If I have the power to act in the sensible world, then that world must also have a power to act on me, that is, it must follow its own objective laws. This is the general condition of Proposition 5: “A rational being cannot ascribe any power to act to itself without also presupposing a certain power to act of its objects.”

Fichte attempts to prove this premise by introducing the concept of a drive. As a free being I do have some control over my drives: I can choose to satisfy or not satisfy them; but that I have these drives, and that they are satisfiable only in certain ways, does not depend on me. Insofar as I am a thinking and willing being I am free; but insofar as I have drives and feelings I am part of nature.

Appealing to some of his early propositions, Fichte now contends that it is not only that through these drives I posit myself as nature; I also posit a nature outside my own. This is because (1) there must be some matter outside me for my activity to shape and form, and (2) this matter must have a definite form because it is necessary for me to realize my ends in a determinate order. My nature should be explained according to the whole system of nature. Fichte thus concludes his argument by placing the subject within the whole of nature. The subject is not the whole of nature but only one of its parts.

This is the proof for the existence of an objective world, which consists in his practical refutation of subjectivism, his attempt to prove the reality of the external world by appealing to the limits of our activity as agents having a will. For Fichte, the only effective proof of the reality of the external world is that I cannot make that world conform immediately, entirely, and automatically to my desires. Hence the limits of the objective world consists in that which resists or opposes my activity.

The Structure of Intersubjectivity

Kant versus Fichte on the Problem of Other Minds

Fichte’s attempt to resolve this problem - his general argument for intersubjectivity - is one of the most original and interesting aspects of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. It was only by solving it, Fichte was firmly convinced, that he could finally slay the monster of nihilism.

If intersubjectivity means everyone sharing the same structure for experiencing and explaining the world, then it involves at least two elements. First, that every self-conscious or human being has a conceptual structure like my own, which, at least on the Kantian analysis, consists of the twelve categories and the forms of intuition, space and time. Second, that the other creatures who inhabit my world are really self-conscious or human beings like myself. The weakness of the Transcendental Deduction is that it has established at best the first but not the second element of intersubjectivity. We can see Fichte’s efforts to demonstrate the reality of other minds as an attempt to fill in this gap in Kant’s argument.

Firs Reflections

We cannot prove the existence of other minds through experience, he argues, because a skeptic will claim that all the evidence of our senses provides us only with a representation of other beings like ourselves, and that does not prove that the representation corresponds with some mind outside it. Furthermore, what is essential to our subjectivity is our freedom, our spontaneous activity, which cannot ever be an object of experience. We cannot prove the existence of other minds, or know of it on the basis of sufficient evidence. Instead, it’s based on practical principles, although they cannot provide us with knowledge that other minds exist, they lay down moral imperatives that we ought to act as if they exist.

The essential distinguishing feature of subjectivity, Fichte holds, is rationality. The question is then how to determine whether another being is rational. The distinguishing feature of rationality is not only action according to ends, Fichte claims, but action according to ends determined by freedom. Such free actions will not be explicable according to natural laws alone.

We only realize our nature as rational beings, Fichte argues, when we live in reciprocal interaction with others according to freedom, granting others the same rights as we would have them bestow on us.

The Argument for Intersubjectivity

In the introduction to his work Fichte returns to the original context of his discussion of the problem of other minds: the need to provide a foundation for natural right. We must show that a rational being’s self-awareness as an individual depends on it recognizing the equal and independent reality of others outside itself.

  1. For a rational being to posit itself as a rational being it must ascribe free activity to itself.

  2. To posit my free activity, I must oppose it to my activity in the perception of the external world.

  3. What limits and opposes my activity must be the source of a demand (Aufforderung) that I act freely.

  4. What makes the demand on me must have a concept of me as something rational and free; otherwise, its demand that I act freely would be pointless.

  5. What assumes that the object of its activity is rational and free must be rational and free itself.

From these premises, Fichte comes to his main conclusion: that to posit myself as a free and rational being I must posit the existence of another free and rational being; I must ascribe to someone else the same free activity that I ascribe to myself

The Normative Structure of Intersubjectivity

Fichte makes it clear that we assume the existence of other rational beings outside ourselves because we are part of a general normative order established by natural right. This requires that I ascribe the same rights to others as I would have them ascribe to me; alternatively, it demands that I freely decide to limit my external freedom in a manner consistent with the external freedom of others. Now it is because of this system of mutual rights and duties that we assume the existence of other minds outside ourselves.

Fichte goes on to explain that even our concept of ourselves, our sense of self-identity, depends on the normative order of which we are part. We define ourselves in terms of the rights and duties we have with respect to others, and that others have with respect to us.

However, there is a vicious circle in Fichte’s argument: I must assume the existence of other minds only because of the principles of natural right; but I am justified to apply the principle of natural right only because I must assume the existence of other minds.

This means that Fichte’s argument has not met the challenge of the skeptic after all. The skeptic would happily admit that if I assume the concept of natural right, then I am indeed obliged to assume the existence of other beings outside myself; but he would then point out that I am not under any obligation to make such an assumption in the first place, because I still do not know whether the concept of natural right applies.

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