Hegel's Criticisms of Fichte's Subjectivism. I. Edward L. Schaub The Philosophical Review, Vol. 21, No. 5. (Sep., 1912), pp.

566-584.
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HEGEL'S CRITICISMS OF FICHTE'S SUBJECTIVISM. I. HILOSOPHICAL systems are of a very complex nature and may consequently be regarded from many different points of view, varying with the interests of the individual and the particular problems and temper of the age. Quite distinct from the question as to the exact meaning which thinkers may themselves have intended, is that regarding the light which their systems of thought throw on the formulation and solution of living problems. When we consider also the fact of an increasing knowledge of source material and of more perfect methods of attack and investigation, it is not surprising that the history of philosophy must, to a certain extent a t least, be rewritten by every age. I t is only natural, therefore, that even the account which Hegel has given is no longer regarded as entirely satisfactory. Its interpretations are determined by certain conceptions of the nature of philosophy which can no longer be accepted without reservation; they suffer, moreover, in many cases, both from an inadequate knowledge of facts and from the exasperating way in which these are forced into more or less artificial moulds. In spite of this, however, there is still much to learn from him who gave the first great impetus to the historical approach to philosophy. Particularly true is this in the case of his criticisms of the philosophy of Fichte. Fichte's thought is again assuming a place of importance in philosophical discussion and his message finds an accordant response in the strenuous and moralistic age in which we live. Human life, it tells us, and our whole world of experience rest on the moral nature of man, on a system of ideals and of values. Back of all Sein is an eternal and transcendent Sollen; reality and worth depend on the degree of'conformability to this imperative and the measure of usefulness in realizing its demands. This, in brief and stripped of certain inconsistencies, is Fichte's doctrine of the primacy of the practical reason-the doctrine which,

566

FICHTE'S SUBJECTIVISM.

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though frequently overlooked by his expositors, really constitutes the heart of his philosophy. A more striking feature of Fichte's philosophy is the insistent attempt to exhibit the various principles and aspects of experience as interrelated parts of an organic whole and as logically necessary for the possibility of self-consciousness. Historical conditions, no doubt, were largely determinant here; besides, the man aus einem Gusz must have a philosophy aus einem Stuck. The question regarding the nature of Fichte's ultimate principle, therefore, and the consistency with which the system is developed from it, is of fundamental importance, and critics still express the widest disagreement concerning it. Hegel has taken account of both these aspects of Fichte's thought. Again and again in his most important works he recurs to a criticism of the doctrine of So1len.l His discussions of Fichte's fundamental principle and the r6le this plays in the construction of the system are, perhaps, less familiar. He touches upon the subject, of course, in his history of philosophy, but the more important and fuller treatment must be sought in his earlier treatises, Glauben und Wissen,and Diferenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems. From these sadly neglected essays a better understanding may be gained of Hegel's conception of the nature and method of philosophy and of the history of philosophy, as well as of his views concerning the philosophical significance of the principle of contradiction, the important distinction between pure thought and absolute thought, the necessity of avoiding Formalismus and of regarding conception and thinking as essentially processes of concretion. The more direct discussions of Fichte are of particular value because Hegel does not hurl criticisms a t random from some dogmatically assumed, external point of view, but attempts to trace faithfully the logical course of the system and to determine what difficulties are really immanent in it. Thus we are led on to the philosophical position which Hegel himself assumed, and are thus prepared to understand its true meaning and spirit as well as to estimate its shortcomings and its failures. Such a method of
Cf.e. g., S. W., I, pp. 222 ff.; 111, pp. 140ff.; VI, pp. 11, 186; XV, pp. 633 ff.

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treatment, on the other hand, cannot but prove helpful also for an understanding of Fichte, and had critics taken due account of i t we might have been spared many of the expositions with which we are now afflicted. A brief survey of the various interpretations that have been given of Fichte will not only be of value on its own account but will also help us to see precisely what Hegel meant when he charged Fichte, as well as Kant and Jacobi, with subjectivism, and will define Hegel's criticismsin relation to the views of other expositors. Fichte's own contemporaries offered the most divergent interpretations of his fundamental principle, and modern critics parallel all of these. Unable to understand by the ego anything but the empirical self or individual person, the humorists of the day ridiculed the bombast of the professor a t Jena who regarded himself as absolute, and wondered how his good wife could tolerate such pretensions on his part. Even Schelling, though this statement is in contradiction to other things that he has said, asserts that in Fichte's earlier period the ultimate principle is found "in the ego and, indeed, in the ego of human consciousness ";l "the ego of each individual is the only sub(for stan~e" ~ it). And when the enraged student societies raided Fichte's house, breaking windows and demolishing doors, Goethe, we remember, remarked that it was certainly a forcible demonstration of the existence of a non-ego. In recent times Sturt has expressed himself to the same effect. Fichte, he says, "is the great exemplar of a metaphysician who would create his own universe; and how unconvincing he is ! Even Pfleiderer has said: "The Wissenschaftslehre starts from the ego whose consciousness had been the object of Kant's criticism, i. e., from the empirical human ego, and makes the whole objective world a phenomenon of its consciousness, placed there by itself; and the human ego thus appears as the creator of the ~ o r l d . " ~

"'

W . , Zw. Abt., 111, p. 51. Ibid., p. 54. a Idola Theatri, p. 139. The same interpretation underlies Stirner's contention that Fichte's philosophy justifies us in behaving exactly as we like. "Cannot," he asks, "the ego which creates the universe do what it will with its own?" Quoted by Sturt, ibid., p, 143. 4 The Philosophy of Religion, I , p. 278. A similar view is advanced by Haym, Hcgel und seine Zeit, p. 129.
1 S.
2

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A second group of writers, approaching Fichte with Kantian distinctions and Kantian terminology in mind, have found in him the doctrine that the formal element of experience alone is ultimately real, the material element being illusory, or phenomenal, or, a t any rate, dependent on, and deducible from, the form of knowledge. Kant, for example, repudiated the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte on the ground that a "pure Wissenschaftslehre is nothing more or less than mere logic which does not carry its principles beyond legitimate bounds to the material element of knowledge, but, as pure logic, abstracts from the content of knowledge."l Reinhold too seems to have found in Fichte the doctrine of "absolute subjectivity." His interpretation, however, a t least had the merit of having provoked Hegel's first essay on the subject. Nevertheless, the interpretation survived and still prevails in the works of neo-Kantian writers as a stock argument against the doctrines of post-Kantian idealism. In America this view is represented by Burt, who tells us, in summing up his discussion, that "the system of Fichte is a rationalistic attempt a t the union of the subjective and objective elements of experience by the deduction of the latter from the f ~ r m e r . " ~ A third class of critics refuse to go to this extreme. They are inclined to believe that, in some of his works a t least, Fichte does not pass beyond the legitimate bounds of the critical philosophy by attempting to derive the matter of experience from its form, but that his chief concern was to complete the work of Kant by exhibiting the necessary and systematic connection of the various categories and faculties of the mind, or, in the opinion of others, by developing certain important conceptions underlying the philosophy of history and the logic of the historical sciences. The former was the task which Reinhold had set himself some years earlier and therefore Fries writes: "We must concede to Reinhold the discovery of critical rationalism (as one might well designate his Elementar$hiloso$hie and the Wissenschaftslehre) which Fichte only developed further. The great problem which both alike tried to solve is the d'iscovery of a first, all-sufficient principle of human knowledge, and it is in just this respect that
IS.W. (Hartenstein ed.), VIII, p.
2

600.

A History of Philosophy, 11, p. 40.

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Reinhold supplemented the Kantian Critigue."l I t should be mentioned, however, that, in addition to this critical rationalism, Fries finds confusing threads of dogmatic rationalism in Fichte, but believes that in the course of the various expositions these gradually became di~entangled.~ The spirit of criticism, he believes, prevailed as far as Fichte's own conception and account of the nature of the Wissenschaftslehre are concerned, but dogmatism came to predominate in the actual development of the system. Lask has recently attempted to prove that Fichte's system, so far from being unitary as many have urged3 against such positions as that of Erdmann,4 really manifests a radical change even in the so called first period. From a position very similar to that of Hegel, he holds, Fichte returned in 1797 to the critical standpoint of Kant, having come to a clear recognition of the absolute distinction and opposition of form and content within experience.' In still other expositions of Fichte we are told that the fundamental principle which expresses the unity of the system is the ego of pure self-consciousness in its abstraction from the empirical consciousness of the individual. This ego is not pure subject but subject-object, such as we experience in introspection or intellectual intuition. As thus stated the principle does not really differ from the formal element of experience, being, in fact, but another expression for the transcendental unity of apperception which occurs as the Ich denke in all conscious experience. But other elements are fused with it so that, instead of being epistemological, it becomes metaphysico-psychological in character. For, it is identified with the principles of ration'Reinhold, Fichte, Schalling, p. 214. Cf. also pp. 72 f. Ibid., pp. 215 f. a Cf. particularly Loewe's classic work Die Philosophie Fichtes nach dem Gesammtergebnisse ihrer Entwickelung; Fortlage, Genetkche Geschichte der Philosophie seit Kant, pp. 136 ff.; Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, V , pp. 779 ff., 827 ff.; A. B. Thompson, The Unity of Fichle's Doctrine of Knowledge; Maria Raich, Fichte, seine Ethik und seine Stellung zum Problem des Indiuidualismus. 4 History of Philosophy (tr. by W . S. Hough), 11, pp. 496 f. Due to the influence
9

particularly of Loewe, it should be noticed, Erdmann's position is here not as extreme as in the earlier edition of the work. 6 Cf. Lask's chapters on this period in the second part of his volume Fichtes ff., 116 ff., 132 ff., 167 ff. Idealismus und die Geschichte, particularly, pp. ~ o g

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ality and of freedom in their conflict to subdue to their own ends a natural order of mechanical law; i t is regarded as the moral activity which must strive to overcome all that is foreign to it and to attain t o the ideal which practical reason demands. Fichte, in other words, has simply cast into philosophical form the deepest experience of his own life, the impulse to achievement and the pressing need for the exercise of moral activity. Adickes has given forceful expression to this view.l This is the way in which Fichte's philosophy appealed to his own students and is the basis of such remarks as that of Forberg that "Fichte really aims to act on the world by his phil~sophy."~ Fichte's ultimate principle is conceived by a fifth group of expositors not a s t h e mere subject of knowledge but as subjective subject-object. Fichte's ego, that is to say, is an identity of subject and object, of thought and being, but of object or being only in so far as these exist for knowledge, that is, for the consciousness of the subject. Here again, as in the case of the other groups which we have mentioned, writers manifest certain differences of thought and emphasis. Loewe, for example, though finding certain similarities between the systems of Fichte and Hegel, contrasts them by saying: "The Wissenschaftslehre, indeed, not only fails ever to attain to true objectivity but one may even affirm, without doing it an injustice, that in reality this is not a t all its intention. . . . The absolute activity of Fichte, how'German Kantian Bibliography, PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, Vo1. 111, pp. 714f. Other writers insist that much of the confusion of Fichte's thought is due to the fact that he employs the ego now as an epistemological and again as a metaphysical or an ethical principle without attempting to reconcile the two views or even perhaps being conscious of the difficulties. Two critics particularly have attempted to prove that the ultimate principle of thought from which a system of purely logical principles is deduced, shifts in character without warning or explanation and becomes the source of moral principles and moral postulates which are then themselves confused with that which is logically or theoretically necessary. Cf. Guehloff, Der transcendentale Idealismus J . G. Fichtes, pp. 16 ff.; Fuchs, V o w Werden dreier Denker. pp. 88 ff. Even though one might hesitate to accept this view in just the form that i t is presented, i t must be said that Fichte did not always distinguish clearly between the relation of form and content ,within experience, that of the absolute principle of the Wissenschaftslehre to the remaining principles, that of the practical ego to the world in which it lives, and that of the empirical ego t o forces in nature that seem hostile to i t and to defeat its ends. 2 Fichtes Leben %. I . Briefwechsel, I,,p. 2 2 0 .

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ever its designation may change, is and ever remains productive imagination and, accordingly, never emerges from the field of presentation, and thus of subjectivity; being is for it merely self-appearance (Sicherscheinen) and so a continuous reflection of itself in and to itself."l Other critics state the case somewhat differently. Besides the 'ideal' aspect of objects, they insist, there is a 'real' aspect, their an sich, and this lies wholly external to the ego of Fichte. Or, expressed otherwise, Fichte does not "break through to nature." A non-ego, an Anstoss, a thing in itself, in some form or other, be it only as the "abstract form of opposition," ever remains foreign to the ultimate principle; the ego can never overcome the condition of limitation; for i t there is ever an infinite b e y ~ n d . ~ Schiller hints a t still another thought when he refers t o the Wissenschaftslehre as subjektivirter Spinozismus. The mean* ing of this expression is brought out clearly among other things in a passage from Schelling. "Fichte's true significance consists in his having been the antithesis of Spinoza in so far as absolute substance, for the latter, was mere lifeless and inactive object. This step of having defined infinite substance as ego and accordingly, in general, as subject-object (for only that is ego which is subject and object of itself), this.step is in itself so important that one is led to forget what resulted from it in Fichte's own treatment. In the ego is contained the principle of necessary (substantial) movement; the ego is not a static thing but is necessarily and continuously self-determining. Fichte, however, does not employ it in this way. For him the ego itself does not proceed through the various steps of the necessary process by which it attains to self-consciousness, passing through the stage of nature whereby alone this can become truly posited in the ego: it is not the ego which moves but, on the contrary, everything is attached to the ego in a purely external way through subjective reflection, the reflection of the philosopher; it is not secured by the immanent evolution
1 Die Philosophie Fichtes nach dem Gesammtergebnisse ihrer Entwickelung, pp. 238 f. 2 Readers of Hegel will be familiar with this line of thought. Bensow points out the similarity of Fichte's non-ego to the thing in itself of Kant in his monograph Z u Fichtes Lehre oom Nicht-Ich, pp. 27 f., 32 f., 37 f.

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of the ego, that is, not by the movement of the object itself. And this subjective process of attaching things to the principle occurs through a reflection so capricious and accidental in its nature that it is difficult . . . to recognize the thread that runs through the whole."l In spite of this external procedure, however, Schelling maintains that Fichte's "great and immemorable service will always remain that of having been the first t o have grasped the idea of a completely a @riori ~cience."~ Finally, we notice a seventh interpretation. Passing over
1 S. W., Zw. Abt., 111, p. 54. Classifications of philosophical views must inevitably purchase their sharpness of outline and their definiteness a t the cost of a certain artificiality. Critics, moreover, are not always self-consistent. This, a s we have already noticed, is the case wtih Schelling; and Fries, i t may be said, suggests a t times (cf. op. cit., p. 54) our fifth interpretation as well as that which we have described above. With reference to Schelling i t should perhaps be stated that he has been ascribed a view which would place him in our second group of expositors. Thus, Miss Talbot says: "There can be little doubt, indeed, that many o f his [Fichte's] contemporaries interpreted him as teaching that the ultimate principle is the formal or subjective aspect of experience. Schelling, e. g., apparently understood him in this way, " etc. (The Fundamental Principle of Fichte's Philosophy, p. 26.) The present writer would challenge this statement. In so far as Schelling has expressed views other than those we have already quoted, he would incline to the fifth mentioned interpretation of Fichte. In support of her position Miss Talbot quotes the following passage from the Darstellung: "But now i t may very well be that the idealism, e. g., which Fichte a t first worked out and which even now he still defends, has a significance quite different from mine. Fichte, e. g., seems to have regarded idealism in a wholly subjective sense, whereas I regard i t in a n objective sense. Fichte in his idealism seems to have remained a t the standpoint of reflection, while I, with my principle of idealism, have placed myself a t the standpoint of production. Idealism in the subjective sense might say, 'The Ego is all'; idealism in the objective sense would reverse this and say, 'All is the (Ibid., p. 26, n.) But will this passage bear the interpretation which Ego."' Miss Talbot puts upon it? The second and fourth sentences indicate our fifth interpretation as well as the second. Referring to the original we find that the second and third sentences of 'the translation are there separated merely by a semicolon and the next follows after a colon, introduced by the remark (omitted in the translation), "To express this distinction in the most intelligible way, idealism," etc. It, therefore, does not seem unreasonable to regard the distinction between the standpoints of reflection and production as a key to Schelling's meaning in this case, and what he intends by this we have just heard in his own words quoted from a somewhat later work. If this contention is not granted, we might refuse to lay great stress on the passage in the Darstellung since it speaks throughout only in hypothetical terms (Fichte kiirtnte gedacht haben) and adds in the sentence following those quoted: " I do not say that this is actually true but state it only as a possibility." 2 Ibid., p. 51.

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the earlier writers who discerned in Fichte (and in Kant) a genuinely speculative principle, let us turn a t once to one who spoke without their reservations. I n the preface to his father's works, the younger Fichte writes: " Thus, this pure, all-creating, absolute unity which posits all things both subjective and objective in itself, is evidently the same principle which Schelling, with the same designation, indeed, called the identity of the subjective and the objective and which also constitutes the content of Hegel's logic."l Fichte is "the originator of the principle in its complete determinateness, not merely, as has been supposed, of the expression or word for it."2 Of recent writers no one has accepted this interpretation more unreservedly than Miss E. B. Talbot. Her monograph throughout emphasizes the similarity of Fichte's doctrine to that of Hegel. " I t is perfectly true that the doctrine of the transcendental Ego suggests to us the way in which its fundamental defects may be corrected, but it is equally true that Kant himself refuses t o make the correction. We know that someone, coming after him, conceived the idea of trying to show that human experience, in its inmost essence, must be that very unity of form and content which is the ideal of all its striving. This is what Fichte and Hegel attempted to do, but it is precisely in this direction that they went beyond anything that Kant ever dreamed of."$ In Fichte are found "the germs of Hegel's conception of the Idea which realizes itself through successively higher stages, the universal which develops by becoming more ~ o n c r e t e " ;further~ more, the "dialectic nature of thought, which Hegel makes the basis of his system, is thus recognized by Fichte, though he does not work it out so fully as his successor did."" Thus we have the widest imaginable divergence of interpretation in which the philosophy of Fichte ranges from mere Schwarmerei to the highest level of speculation. And all of these views except the last would justify a charge of subjectivism. The first
1 S.
2

...

W., I , xix. Ibid. 3 The F%ndamental Principle of Fichte's Philosophy, p. 136. 4 Ibid., p. 41. 6 Ibid., p. 32.

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one mentioned is, sad to say, the one most frequently expressed. We may now proceed, however, to rule it summarily out of court. Its status was determined as decisively as anyone could wish five decades ago when Loewe cited refutations from Fichte's own pen, dating from his pre-Jena period to his latest works1 T o add other quotations or to submit the proof which the principles and the logic of the system afford, would be an easy though a n unnecessayy task. The quotations that have been urged as making for the view are first torn from their context and then seen through other eyes than those of Fichte. And yet the present writer is not inclined to deal harshly even with this interpretation in view of certain extenuating circumstances. The word 'ego' inevitably suggests any one of a number of things; Fichte's terminology, moreover, constantly changes, shifting even in the course of a single page;2 he employs in his metaphysical and epistemological discussions terms whose significance is derived from empirical consciousness and which, in the absence of definition, therefore, naturally suggest the most extreme subjectivism; he approaches his subject from starting points which vary from the highest abstraction of the Grundlage to the conscious experience of the individual in the Einleitungen; he, of all great philosophers, most lacks technique and the mental discipline that comes from sympathetic contact with, and study of, other thinkers; and, finally, let us admit it, his own thought was involved in most serious confusions and perplexing entanglements against which he continually struggled but from which he never entirely succeeded in freeing himself. Rejecting, then, the first interpretation as false, we still have the claims of six others to adjudicate. Let us here call Hegel to our aid. "The pure thinking of itself, the identity of subject and object, in the form ego = ego, is the principle of the Fichtean system; and, if we limit ourselves to the immediate consideration of this principle, just as we might do in the Kantian philosophy with the transcendental principle which underlies the deduction
Philosophie Fichtes, etc., pp. 238 ff. Fichte's statement is interesting, and it is characteristic of the man, that he sought "as much as possible to avoid a fixed terminology" (S. W., I, p. 87), "not wishing to explain everything but to leave something for the thought of the reader." (S.W., I, 89.)
2

1 Die

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of the categories, we have the true principle of speculation boldly expressed. As soon, however, as the speculation passes from the conception of itself which it sets up and forms itself into a system, it abandons itself and its principle and does not again return to them. I t delivers reason into the hands of understanding, and passes over into the series of the finite in consciousness from which it does not again reconstruct itself into an identity and true infinity. The principle itself, transcendental intuition,' thus attains the false position of something that is opposed to the manifold deduced from it. The absolute principle of the system reveals itself only in the form of its appearance, comprehended by philosophical reflection; and this determinateness which is given it by reflection, that is, finitude and opposition to another, is not annulled. The principle, subject-object, proves t o be a subjective subject-object. That which is deduced from it hereby assumes the form of a condition of pure consciousness, ego = ego, and pure consciousness itself the form of something conditioned by an objective infinity, namely, an infinite temporal process. In this process transcendental intuition loses itself and the ego does not attain to an absolute intuition of itself; thus ego = ego is transformed into the principle ego ought to equal ego.jy2 This passage gives us an excellent epitome of Hegel's earliest essay on Fichte. On the one hand, credit is given Fichte for having discovered in Kant, and having then given original expression to the principle that underlies all true speculative philosophy. On the other hand, however, the charge is raised that this principle did not prove fundamental or genuinely operative in the construction of the system, which consequently never succeeds in transcending the standpoint of subjectivism. The principle of unity, that is, of the real identity of subject and object, is not to be found in Fichte's actual philosophical system. Here transcendental intuition is displaced by a principle (some1 By this expression Hegel means the unity of thought and being, or o f universal and particular. "In transcendental knohing both are united, being and intelligence. Thus, transcendental knowing and transcendental intuition are one and the same; the difference in expression merely points to the predominance of the ideal or real factor." (Hegel's S. W., I, p. 195 f . ) 2 S. W., I, pp. 163 f.

FICHTE'S SUBJECTIVISM.

times itself called intellectual intuition) of which we can become conscious in intellectual intuition and this, as is clear, is never self-complete but occurs only in connection with empirical or sensuous intuition. The principle of intellectual intuition, therefore, is an abstraction and cannot be said to condition empirical intuition any more truthfully than the latter conditions it. The only 'absolute' of the system, therefore, is an object of philosophical reflection, and proves t o be finite in character, since it is conditioned by a particularity and a reality that fall beyond it. Such an absolute is not a true subject-object, but a subjective subject-object; external to i t is the real or an sich aspect of things which, Hegel sometimes insists, should be regarded as objective subject-object. I t is the identity of these two, distinct and yet unified, which constitutes the fundamental principle of a speculative or an 'absolute' philosophy. To this principle, however, Fichte's system never rises. I t attains only to a consciousness of its own impotence and its inability ever to reach its ideal, the absolute. The true principle of philosophy, ego = ego, occurs only in the form 'ego ought to equal ego.' In his later treatise, Glauben und Wissen (which, however, stands first in the Werke) Hegel dwells exclusively on this subjective character of Fichte's philosophy and emphasizes i t even more strongly than in the earlier essay. This probably does not indicate a change of heart so much as a difference in purpose suggested by the subjects of the essays. I t should be noticed, however, that Hegel's discussion now centers particularly about the Bestimmung des Menschen, which brings certain ideas of Fichte's earlier writings to a sharper focus. We present the essential points of the criticism in Hegel's own words. "This critical idealism which Fichte emphasized . . . is formal in character. The universal aspect of the world opposed to the subject is posited as universal, as ideal, as thinking, and thus as ego; but the particular aspect necessarily remains and thus the most interesting aspect of the objective world, the aspect of its reality, remains unexplained. '. And it is immaterial whether this reality is an infinite number of sensations1 or of qualities

...

..

1As held by Fichte. Cf.for example, S. W.. 11, pp. zoo ff.

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of things. The practical part of the Wissenschaftslehre, indeed, pretends that the reality which is absolute from the theoretical point of view, things as they are in themselves, should have been constructed from the practical point of view of what we ought t o make of them. But nothing is done with this problem except to analyze the formal conception of the ought. External to this formal principle, however, is feeling itself as a real system. . The manifoldness of reality appears as an incomprehensible, original determinateness and an empirical necessity. Particularity and difference as such constitute an absolute. The standpoint for this reality is the empirical standpoint of every individual. . . The pure concept or empty thinking acq6ires its content or determinateness and, conversely, the determinateness acquires the indeterminateness in an incomprehensible manner. . . . If, according to Fichtean idealism, the ego perceives and intuits not objects but merely its own intuiting and perceiving, and knows only of its knowing, then pure, empty activity, purely free action, is that which is fundamental and alone certain; and the ego is absolutely nothing but pure knowing and pure intuition and the perception ego = ego. . . Fichte's position, however, that we know only knowing, that is, only pure identity, itself prepared a way to particularity through its own formalism. I t is recognized that the only truth and certainty, pure self-consciousness and pure knowing, are incomplete and conditioned by something other, that is, that the absolute of the system is not absolute and that for this very reason it is necessary to proceed t o something other. This . . . is the principle underlying %he deduction of the sense world. The absolute emptiness from which we start, has, because of its absolute want, the advantage of containing an immanent and immediate necessity of completing itself, of being obliged to proceed to another and from this to other others into an infinite objective world. . . In this way the principle plays a double rdle, now that of being absolute, and again that of being absolutely finite, in which capacity it can become a point of departure for the whole infinity of empirical e~perience."~

...

. ..

..

1 S.

W. I pp.

118-121.

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These criticisms, although not necessarily excluding the views held by the fourth and sixth groups, are essentially an elaboration of the fifth mentioned interpretation and, in the opinion of the presentwriter, they are fundamentally sound. That Fichteinsisted throughout on unity and on the necessity of basing our entire experience and therefore the whole system of philosophy on a single absolute principle, all, no doubt, are agreed. And various passages can be pointed out, particularly in his later works, which go to show that he conceived this fundamental principle as identity of subject and object, that is, of 'being' and 'thinking,' or 'consciousness.' Prior t o Kant, he naively writes in 1813, all philosophers found the absolute principle of reality in being, "in the lifeless thing, as thing." But it must be clear to all who reflect that "absolutely all being implies a thinking or a consciousness of i t ; mere being, therefore, is always only one factor in relation to a second factor, the thinking of it, and thus a member of an original and more ultimate disjunction. . . Absolute unity, therefore, is to be found in being no more than in the opposing consciousness, in the thing no more than in the presentation of the thing. I t consists in the absolutez~nity and inseparability of the two . which also constitutes the principle of their disjunction."' In his earlier period Fichte is far less definite and unambiguous with the exception perhaps of a few statements in the Sittenlehre of 1798. Here we are told that the problem of philosophy cannot be solved until there is found ' ' a point of unity in which the objective and the subjective are not separated a t all but are absolutely one." Such a point, Fichte maintains, his system establishes in its principle of "egohood, intelligence, or r e a ~ o n . " ~"Knowing and being are not separated outside of consciousness and independently of it, but only within consciousness, since this separation is the condition of the possibility of all consciousness. The unity which is separated and which thus lies a t the basis of all consciousness and by reason of which the subjective and the objective elements in consciousness are immediately posited as one, is absolutely X, that is, can in no wise enter consciousness as a simple ~ n i t y . " ~

..

...

1 Nachgelassene 2

Werkc. 11, p. 95 f.

S. W.. IV, p. I . Ibid. p. 5.

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL RE VIEW.

[VOL.XXI.

These passages from the Sittenlehre are really not as unambiguous as they may appear to one who is not initiated in Fichte's thought, since, as we shall see, much depends upon the significance which is attached to the words 'objective' and 'being.' The meaning which the bare sentences suggest, however, finds a certain corroboration in other lines of thought in the same work. We conclude, then, that there is some ground for holding that Fichte has given original and, possibly, independent expression to the principle of identity with which the names of Schelling and particularly of Hegel are most frequently associated. But several things must be remembered. In the first place, these philosophers were in such close contact during their earlier years that it is difficult to say just how much one may owe to the other, either consciously or unconsciously. I t is, therefore, not a t all unreasonable to hold that Fichte did not himself realize the full import of those passages in his earlier writings which are not essential to the main course of argument. His statements, i t should be noticed, grow both more numerous and more definite in his later writings. Indeed, it is difficult to find any unambiguous expression of the doctrine before 1798, which is three years after the publication of Schelling's Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, where there are unmistakable evidences of a more objective viewpoint than is offered in the Grundlage of 1794. The passages, furthermore, in which Fichte maintains the principle of identity to which we have referred, are much less numerous than is held by those who are inclined to read Hegel into Fichte. Let us consider, to illustrate this contention, the following footnote which Fichte added in the second edition of the Grundlage (1802) explaining the nature of his fundamental principle. "All this means, in other words in which I have since expressed it, that the ego is necessarily identity of subject and object, subjectobject; and it is this absolutely without further mediati~n."~ Statements very similar to this occur much earlier in the writings of Fichte and are quite frequent. , But are we justified in identifying the ego referred to with the principle of the unity of form and matter as is sometimes done? The context, in the opinion of
'S.W.,I,p.gS,n.

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the present writer, certainly forbids, as we trust will appear in the case of the quoted passage when we come to discuss the procedure of the Grundlage. Here we can only point briefly to other evidence. Fichte often bids the reader to turn his gaze inward that he may become aware in his own experience of the nature of egohood and of self-consciousness. This principle, it is pointed out, differs from all others and from all mere being in that it not only exists but knows of its own being, is not only object but subject and object a t once, or subject-object. Thus, the ego which he is describing is not an original principle of identity which is "absolutely X" and "can in no wise enter consciousness,~~ not the principle which antecedes consciousness and from which the disjunction of consciousness and being proceeds, but it is the principle of self-consciousness itself such as it reveals itself in intellectual~ intuition. As early as 1795 Fichte writes: "The procedure of the Wissenschaftslehre is as follows: I t bids everyone observe what he (in entire abstraction from all individuality) does, and is in general and of necessity obliged to do, when he says, I. I t asserts that everyone . . will find that he posits himself, or, what may be clearer to some, that he is subject and object a t once. In this absolute identity of subject and object, egohood consists. The ego is that which cannot be subject From this without being object in the same undivided act. identity and from it alone without requiring the addition of anything further, the whole of philosophy proceeds. . . . Through it critical idealism is established a t the very outset, the identity of ideality and reality; this is neither idealism, which regards the ego only as subject, nor dogmatism, which regards it only as object."l A thought very similar to this pervades all of Fichte's earlier writings. No reader who approaches the Grundluge without prepossessions can avoid the impression that the absolute ego is conceived as that principle or activity of selfconsciousness which reveals itself in introspection, or, to use Fichte's term, intellectual i n t ~ i t i o n . ~ The Recension des Aenesidemus had emphasized this character of the fundamental principle

...

IS. W., 11, pp. 441 f . S. W., I, pp. 96 ff., 243 ff.

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL R E VIEW.

[VOL. XXI.

even prior to the Grundlage,' and intellectual intuition is made the organon of philosophical knowledge throughout the Einleitungen and the Darstellung of 1797 as we1L2 In marked contrast to this are the suggestions of the' principle of identity in the Sittenlehre to which we have referred.3 "Egohood," we are here told, "consists in the absolute identity of the subjective and the objective, in the absolute unity of being and consciousness, of consciousness and being. . . Is it possible for anyone to think this identity as himself? Assuredly not. For, to think one's self, one must make the very distinction between the subjective and the objective which is not to be made in this concept."4 We must, to state the point briefly, discriminate carefully between Fichte's use of the word ' object ' as denoting one aspect of the principle of self-consciousness, and as signifying that being or reality which is correlative to the subject of experience and the principle of self-consciousness; and, similarly, between the ego which is revealed in intellectual intuition and the absolute X or simple unity which "can in no wise enter consciousness." If we bear this distinction in mind, we will find far less evidence than is frequently maintained for the assertion that Fichte was the first to give expression to the principle of speculative philosophy.

In turning, now, to a more direct examination of Fichte's method and thought-and we shall confine ourselves to that period which was of importance for the historical development of philosophy-we should distinguish between two kinds of writings. In most of the expositions of the Wissenschaftslehre, the Grundlage is introduced by, and read in the light of, the later Einleitungen as though these simply paralleled the former and certain parts of them could be inserted almost bodily wherever the Grundlage seemed perplexing or hard to make consistent. This procedure may have a certain pedagogical justification but it is apt to prove misleading. Even though Lask's aontention of a radical change
1
2

s. W.,

I, p. 16.
ff.9

S. W., I, pp. 448, 458

522 ff.

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in philosophical position, to which we have referred,l does not seem warranted, yet the treatises of 1797 have quite a different point of departure from the earlier works. Furthermore, the Grundlage, Grundriss, Naturrecht, Darstellung, and Sittenlehre, in presenting Fichte's actual philosophical system, start from its fundamental principle and develop the various phases of theoretical experience by means of elaborate deductions, thus exhibiting the true character and the specific interrelationships of the various pasts and principles of the system. The two Einleitungen, on the other hand, aim to explain in the simplest possible way the problem and the method of the Wissenschaftslehre and t o ward off certain misapprehensions; they make no claims to presenting a philosophy-their purpose is similar to that of the Begrif which is a "philosophizing concerning the philosophizing in the Wissen~chaftslehre."~ Fichte's philosophy, as all others, should be judged primarily on the basis of the actual system rather than by what the writer may himself have said concerning the nature of this system or the method i t aims to pursue. Since, however, the Einleitungen and the Begrif have received so important a place in exposition and argument, no examination of the Wissenschaftslehre will be satisfactory which neglects to consider what Fichte has to say in these treatises. Due to historical conditions and temperament alike, Fichte's particular bdte noire, as is perfectly evident from these treatises, was the ' thing-in-itself.' He realized its difficulties for a theory of knowledge and felt that it made impossible the freedom of the individual and all morality worthy of the name. T o free philosophy, therefore, from the ' thing-in-itself ' was one of the principal incentives of his thinking, and the same motive explains, in part a t least, the particular method which he adopted. He agreed perfectly with the results of the Kantian philosophy as he understood them, but realized that these needed careful and thorough restatement if the misapprehensions concerning things in themselves were t o be removed. Kant had raised the question: How is experience possible? and sought the answer in a careful analysis of the experience in question. He thus arrived a t certain a priori

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL R E VIEW.

forms of the mind, supreme among them the unity of self-consciousness, which appeared entirely distinct from the matter of experience. Quite naturally, therefore, the data of sense came to be regarded as derived from things in themselves external to mind. Thus, it was brought forcibly home to Fichte that "until one allowed the entire thing to arise before the vision of the thinker, dogmatism will not be pursued to its last retreat.lll T o accomplish this he simply reversed the procedure of Kant. His question might fairly be stated as, How is self-consciousness possible? and his contention is that any serious attempt to answer this question leads regressively from condition to previous conditions without halt until we have reached the bounds of that system of experience which, to the man who lives it, appears as given. Thus "for a thorough-going idealism, the a priori and a posteriori are not a t all two distinct things but are one and the same, representing only two points of view and differing in their manner of a p p r ~ a c h . " ~ What is given as a totality in actual experience is by the philosopher exhibited part by part in their necessary interconnectedness. Thus the last vestige of the thing in itself seemed to Fichte to have been destroyed and the whole of experience shown to have its ground in an original and absolute principle of self-consciousness. And i t might also appear, a t first sight, that the fundamental principle of such a philosophy could not be other than the concrete identity of subject and object. That this is not the case, however, either with regard to Fichte's own conception of the Wissenschaftslehre or to the system itself, it remains for us to show, and thus also to determine the force of Hegel's criticisms of the SoZlen and the nature of his advance over Fichte.

EDWARD L. SCHAUB.
THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
1 s . W., I, p. 443. 2 S. W., I, p. 447.