The Philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

II.

Life
and Works

Doctrine
- Transcendental Idealism

I. Life and Works

Johann
Gottlieb Fichte (
picture) was born at Rammenau in Upper Lusatia in 1762. He studied theology at
the University of Jena, where, some years later, he
occupied the chair of philosophy. Dismissed from Jena as a result of a violent
controversy, he lectured at Berlin, where he became identified
with the Romantic Movement.

In
1807 and 1808 he delivered in Berlin his famous Addresses to the
German Nation, which were aimed at Stirring up the
patriotic spirit of his countrymen and enlightening them on the foundations for
national prosperity. Fichte died of typhus in 1814.

His
masterpiece is Foundation of General Science.

II. Doctrine -
Transcendental Idealism

Kantian Criticism had
broached the following question:

"What knowledge of nature are we able to
obtain?"

As an
answer Criticism had advanced the doctrine of the thinking ego, which organizes
the data of experience according to subjective a priori forms. Kant's thinking
ego does not create experience and nature; rather, it is a transcendental condition
for obtaining a knowledge of experience and nature.

For Fichte, on the contrary, the ego is creative activity and
the root of all reality. Nothing is presupposed to the ego. In the very act by
which the ego affirms that it is thinking there are contained, implicitly, all
the causes of the phenomena, and nature in its totality. Fichte
thus abolishes Kant's dualism of subject and object, of form and matter, of
thought and being.

For
him the subject alone exists; this he calls Pure Ego. Object, matter and
noumenon will depend upon the activity of the Pure
Ego. Thus the object is not something extraneous to the thinking subject;
it is a moment in its development. To know nature is equivalent to knowing the
process by which nature is derived from Pure Ego.

Thus
we are brought to complete Transcendental Idealism; and Fichte, aware of this fact, tries to demonstrate its
superiority over philosophical dogmatism, represented, as Fichte
says, by Kant's doctrine of the "thing in itself." Fichte points out that Kant, in deriving experience from
the object (the thing in itself), ended in mechanical necessity and
materialism. Instead, the new Idealism, regarding things as being produced by
the conscious activity of the ego, derives them from the world of liberty.

Nor
was that all, for Fichte advanced practical reasons
demanding that being (the object) be reduced to the status of a construction
(ideated effect) of the thinking subject. Fichte adjudged impossible the
dualism of the theoretical and practical ego which Kant had established. The
two Kantian egos from two spheres of activity, placed, as it were, in
juxtaposition. Still, they have no real contact with one another.

Fichte rejects this dualism, and bases
his teaching on Kant's doctrine of the primacy of practical reason. Such a
primary does not permit this absolute cleavage between the theoretical and the
practical, but rather implies a unification of the two, with the subordination
of the theoretical to the practical in the relationship of means to end. In
other words, the primary impulse of Pure Ego is an act of will,
the purpose or end of which is the fulfillment of a duty or obligation.

The
successive stages (moments) of development of Pure Ego -- in other
words, its objectivation in nature, and its operation
of knowledge -- are nothing more than means willed by Pure Ego itself to attain
its end. Thus the spirit (Pure Ego) which thinks is one and the same with the
spirit which is obliged. Pure Ego, by thinking, actualizes the means
(nature) enabling this Pure Ego to fulfill its duty (teleological view of
reality).

The
basic element of the activity of Pure Ego is conflict -- a never-ceasing
struggle between what any individual ego is and what it should be.
Thus the fulfillment of one action begets a further obligation, and the
fulfillment of this second in turn evokes another, and so on ad infinitum. Only
in this struggle, according to Fichte, can we have an
effective superiority of practical reason over all the stages (moments) of the
ego.

The
stages by which Pure Ego carries out its infinite activity are two: production
and reflection. In the first stage, the Ego, by an unconscious impulsion
towards its end, produces the object (nature). Such a production must be
understood as the act of Pure Ego, by which it takes the form of a limited
being; it is an act of auto-limitation. Limitation is the mainspring, as it
were, which renders possible the infinite activity of Pure Ego. Without such
limitation there would be no object, but only Pure Ego alone, with no
possibility of action, either theoretical or practical.

Theoretical
action consists in knowledge, and knowing implies that there is a determined
(limited) object known. Similarly, practical action consists in the fulfillment
of a duty which involves the exercise of effort to overcome or remove obstacles
or limitations. Hence, Pure Ego, when it objectivates
itself and becomes nature, also limits itself.

Whereupon
there arises the second stage of activity, reflection,
by which Pure Ego attains its individual consciousness. Fichte
calls this the empirical ego. With the rise of consciousness, or the
empirical ego, the spirit of man knows itself as a limited ego; it
becomes aware of self (ego) and non-self (non-ego). Once the spirit has
acquired this consciousness of ego and non-ego, there arise in it the various
forms of knowledge, sensible, intellectual and rational.

Reflection
is not terminated in the act of cognitive representation; cognition is not an
end in itself but only a means to the realization of an end. We know in order
to act. Thus, whatever serves as a limitation to our understanding becomes an
obstacle for the will. Practical activity consists in an effort to remove this
obstacle.

This
effort sets in motion an infinite series of ever greater realizations, an
unending activity which never finds satisfaction or surcease in any actually
acquired state of being, but tends ever toward the attainment of what should
be. Since this end is not attainable within the limited object, moral
activity will never cease to produce new and greater forms of duty.

The
deficiencies which occur in this ascending line of duties are due, according to
Fichte, to the shortcomings of individual and
national education. Thus men, both as individuals and as social groups, must be
educated to know what they are obliged to be.

The
defeats which the German people had suffered in the struggle against Napoleon
were vividly present in the mind of Fichte; he
attributed these calamities to the political division of Germany. As a means of overcoming
Napoleon, he advocated the unification of all the German states -- a strong Germany, conscious of its primacy, a
leader among nations, should be able to destroy the power of Napoleon.
Doctrines of this kind, appealing to the national spirit and to the idea of the
superiority of the German people over all others, explain why Fichte had such great influence on the future of his
country