1. Fichte's “Theory of Science”

1. Fichte's “Theory of Science” Introduction. I. When a person's consciousness awakens, he finds himself transported into a world whose objects are given to him through perception. How and in what way we will see in a later investigation. But the human mind does not stop at the given; it goes further and wants to understand and grasp what is given. It strives for knowledge. So here we are dealing with two things: with a given, which is the first; but not satisfied with that, man still needs a second, knowledge. This is something sought after, something striven for. But one must not think that the sought-after thing is somehow known, because otherwise one would not seek it, but it is something completely unknown, something to be acquired, which one has never possessed. This striving of the human spirit characterizes its nature. The satisfaction that man seeks depends on the attainment of this striving. Open world and cultural history at any page, and you will find this striving for a certain goal on every page. Things are perceived and one strives to unravel their nature, one strives to recognize “what holds the world together at its core”. Look at the ancient Indians. The world was given to them, but they could not stop at that; they sought for another, one that was not given to them directly, but indirectly through the given. They came up with Brahma and all that is associated with him. We see, then, that the character of the striving of the human spirit consists in going beyond the given objects and fathoming their nature. II. Now knowledge is to be true knowledge, i.e., knowledge and cognition are to bear the character of validity, or in other words: knowledge is to convince. The question now is; how can knowledge convince, how can cognitions have validity? This question is not discussed in the individual sciences, because they deal with knowledge in so far as it is knowledge of objects, without examining the foundations of knowledge itself. Since none of the individual sciences can prove the latter by their means, there must be a separate science for this, a science in which the reasons for conviction are dealt with. We can call such a doctrine the science of knowledge itself or the theory of science. The first question is whether such a science is needed. Various facts indicate that it is. For one thing, ever since man began to think, this need has been felt. The fact that this need has always existed would be enough to make clear the necessity, first, that such a need is not feigned or contrived, and then, however, also that it requires satisfaction. A second fact is that there have indeed been people who have doubted the possibility of any knowledge. Now, first of all, we have to decide whether a science of science is possible, whether the above-mentioned need can be satisfied. But this possibility is a necessary postulate of human reason. If one denies the possibility of a theory of science, one can do nothing but fully embrace the skeptical point of view indicated above. Something must be certain because something is given, and it is only a matter of identifying what is actually certain. For if we assume the opposite and say that nothing is certain, then, if the proposition is to be universally valid, it must, by its very nature, be applicable to itself, i.e., it is not certain itself. It thus cancels itself out, but only insofar as it is valid itself; it is therefore a complete contradiction and we can do nothing with it. We must therefore admit both the possibility and the necessity of a philosophy of science as a postulate of reason. This establishes the task of knowledge in general and at the same time the task of the philosophy of science. III. Knowledge has the peculiarity of first having to arise and develop. This gives rise to various difficulties, especially when we consider that the knowledge of different people at different times is different, and when we further consider that world history gives us very different views of people in different eras, who at the time of their appearance always claim to be valid. What are we to do now? Are we to regard our present views as the only correct ones and all earlier ones as errors? Or are we to despair of the validity of our views altogether? It would be impossible to accept either of these; neither can ever stand the test of reason. The latter has already been dealt with above, the former leaves the question open: yes, if all previous views were wrong, why should ours be the right ones? There seems to be no other way out than to assume that all these views are valid. But then you have admitted at the same time that everything is right, there is no error. Now, the dubious nature of this assumption is strikingly obvious. Only one hypothesis remains, which can be formulated as follows: there is something true and valid about all these views, that is, the truth is capable of modification. So far, this is only presented as a hypothesis, and nothing is inferred from it. IV. Neither the views of the individual human being nor those of entire circles stand, when they occur one after the other, out of context; they develop from one another and are conditioned by one another. This can be observed always and everywhere. The individual ways of looking at things form levels, with each following one growing out of the one before. This close relationship between ways of looking at things allows us to surmise that they may all have something in common, which is only modified over time. It could well be that the core is unchanging, but that it takes on different forms, which are determined by the narrower or broader perspective of each individual or entire peoples, so that what changes is valid for an earlier perspective, but no longer for a later one. Indeed, experience shows that our assumption is a perfectly valid one. This is one side of the relationship between the views of different times, people and entire nations. We now move on to the presentation of a second. V. A view is only valid to the extent that it applies to a person, i.e., to the extent that it is formed by that person. Person is now something very specific, which cannot be any other, and whose specificity consists precisely in the fact that it forms its views in a certain way. It cannot form them this way today, that way tomorrow, not this way with this group of perceptions and that way with that, but it must form them in a way that is peculiar to it, and in this way they take on a very specific character; they are precisely views of the person and are subject to its laws of formation. What they become through these laws, that they are as views, and they cannot be anything else. These laws of formation thus imprint the stamp on them, they first make them what they are, and in this respect they are and must also be related. They are related because they have arisen in the same way. The business of the science of science is to explore this path, on which all views have arisen and are still arising. It is therefore clear from the outset that the science of science will have to take its starting point from the person. But we want to shed light on the matter from another side in order to gain insights into the source of the science of science. VI. Experience cannot be the source. After all, experience cannot determine for us what power of persuasion it has for us. All the means that the individual sciences apply are not sufficient to explain the least thing in the theory of science. It is supposed to prove the validity of the individual sciences, and yet one must not use that which one doubts to escape doubt. The theory of knowledge must therefore have a substantially different source than all other sciences. If we want to get to the bottom of this source, we have to ask ourselves what is actually needed to arrive at a realization. This includes: 1. Apparently an object to be recognized; however, as we have already seen, we cannot start from this. 2. The act of recognition itself. But since the point is to examine what the foundations of the validity of truths are, we cannot start from the act of recognition, and so what remains is:
2. only the knower. In this, we must seek the foundations of knowledge, insofar as they are to be regarded as certain. The source of certainty and thus also of the science is the knowing person. These words characterize the point of view adopted here. We do not consider it our task to deal with positive truths in the sense in which the individual sciences do so, but to show how such truths are possible, how they can arise and what significance they have. Most philosophical systems have the fundamental flaw that they attempt to derive truths before they have even examined how truth itself arises, just as they attempt to determine what is good or beautiful before they have posed the question of how a good or a beautiful thing is. The theory of knowledge is not concerned with the “what” of knowledge; it deals only with the “how” of knowledge. All the individual sciences, except the theory of knowledge, have the peculiarity that they can only arise when the knower seemingly goes out of himself, when he seemingly disappears in the face of the objects; for the theory of knowledge, on the other hand, it is characteristic that the knower does not go out of himself. We see, then, that in the diversity of views, the own I of the cognizing personality forms a calm pole from which we must start. I. Chapter. VII. The Doctrine of the Person or the “I”— Our striving must first go to the understanding of the essence of this I. Man says of himself: I think, I comprehend, I look at, I feel, I will, and so forth; in all this he refers to a certain point, which he calls his “I”. This ego is always one and the same, no matter how often it asserts itself: I think, I act, etc. We cannot even assume that a split occurs in the ego if the ego is to remain an ego. If we assume that the I that thinks is different from the one that wills, then we have to imagine the matter as follows: Let the first I that thinks be A, its action a, the second I that wills be 2, its action b. If b is to have any meaning at all for A, then it must also be something for A , i.e., it must be included in the laws of formation of A, e.g., in the manner £; and if a is to be something for B, then it must enter into its laws of formation, for example in the manner a. We can now visualize the whole process using the following scheme.

We see that for the one ego (A) that is to be distinct from B, the actions of ( )B are significant only if they become its own actions. If we call the ego that is the subject of this discussion the pure ego, we arrive at the proposition: The pure ego is a unique entity. This ego is to be distinguished from the empirical ego, which we will discuss later. What is meant here is the qualitative and numerical identity of the I with itself, apart from all temporal conditions, which of course is out of the question here. It would be a duality of the I, for example, if I were to make the history of the ancient world according to completely different laws from those of the middle and modern times. This cannot be, but everything must be related to a common point, to a unified I. In all the diversity of views, cognitions, etc., the I is that focal point which it is impossible to grasp, since it always slips backwards when we want to focus on it. VIII. The I meant here is essentially different from the empirical or psychological I. The latter already presupposes the former. The psychological ego arises from the fact that I relate all my ideas to a common center, in which they intersect. This relatedness of the ideas to a common center is the psychological ego. But relatedness is preceded by the act of relating, and cannot take place without it. This psychological ego is therefore no longer the original pure ego, but an ego that has come into being through reflection, through the activity of the pure ego. The pure ego is neither this nor that in the strictest sense of the word. Its entire tangible essence is given by its activity; we cannot know what it is, only what it does. When Fichte said that the pure essence of the ego is the positing of itself, this is a very arbitrary statement, for the ego not only posits itself, but posits also something else, as Fichte himself would have to admit. But in all cases it is always active; its whole essence consists, therefore, in its activity, which can be expressed in the proposition: The ego is active. Everything that is not active like the ego would not be an ego. That one cannot know more about the ego than this can be seen from the following. What we indicated above, we can now express clearly. If the ego wants to know, it must include an object in its activity of knowing; in the above, it is now required that it include itself as this object. In order to recognize itself, it must rise to a higher level, but in order to recognize itself, it would have to descend a level, which is obviously impossible. However, nothing is more suitable for getting to the bottom of the most important thing than the above remark. It shows with complete clarity that the self is nothing other than what it makes of itself. Since we have seen that the ego is not something that can be experienced or recognized, it can only be that which it makes of itself. Without making itself into something, the ego is nothing at all; it is as good as non-existent. It is a mistake of some philosophical systems that they have not properly clarified this essence of the ego. Rather, they have presented the ego as something other than an ego, and they further assume that the ego is something other than what it makes of itself; whatever this other may be, it is not an ego. If the ego is to be a willing one, then it must make itself a willing one, and so with all its activity. Its “what” is its own product. One could figuratively say that the ego gives itself its character. Fichte came very close to what has been said, but he thought he could and had to specify a very specific what, a specific essence of the ego, which is neither necessary nor possible. Instead, as is done here, one can completely dispense with this what, only one must state that such a what of the ego must be produced by the ego itself. To illustrate Fichte's train of thought, we can choose the following pictorial representation: Let (A) be the I, this is active and posits itself ( = A), this is the What, and the action is represented by (A = A); the essence of (A) should consist precisely in the positing of (A). Our train of thought can be depicted as follows: The ego is represented by (A), it is active in the modes (\alpha), (\beta), (\gamma),... and thereby always takes on a very specific character (a), (b), (c),...; which gives the overall character A. We now assert that if (A) and also (a), (b), (c), etc. are really to have a meaning for the ego, then the ego itself must make itself into (a), (b), (c), etc., respectively A, without deciding what (a), (b), (c), etc., (A) is. IX. It is very easy to get confused here if one does not strictly distinguish between philosophical reflection and common reflection. The philosopher seeks only to become aware of what both he and the non-philosopher do, just as the naturalist wants to explain only what he and the non-naturalist perceive. The philosopher does not do something different from the non-philosopher, but he is only aware of what both do, while the latter is not. But there is a very important difference between the natural scientist and the philosopher. While the former can only take possession of his objects indirectly, namely, as we shall later fully realize, by incorporating them into his activity, the philosopher is in a position to assert what he himself does, and since his cognitions are nothing other than those made by the ego, that makes them and is only now becoming aware that it makes them, he can claim that what he says must be so because he is the one who makes it so, whereas the naturalist can only say that what he asserts appears to him to be so, is so included in his activity. This is why the philosopher can be critical and dogmatic at the same time. A critical procedure is that which determines how something can be recognized. A dogmatic procedure is that which itself makes assertions. As soon as we have understood this, scientific theory as criticism immediately appears to us as an impossibility. For in order to say how knowledge is possible, one must oneself make dogmatic assertions. Now, these dogmatic assertions must not precede the investigation, but the investigation is impossible without them. Just as dogmatic philosophy fails because one asserts something that one must not assert, because it is perhaps impossible to assert such things, critical philosophy fails because it must itself be dogmatic. A purely critical philosophy is therefore just as impossible as a purely dogmatic one. X. If, then, philosophy can be neither critical nor dogmatic, only one thing is left possible if one does not want to fall back into skepticism, which has already been shown above to be completely absurd: a philosophy that is critical and dogmatic at the same time, and so it with the philosophy of science; let us examine how this can be. In asserting that the self is nothing other than what it makes of itself, the philosophy of science is dogmatic, i.e., actually the self is dogmatic; in asserting that it is only that and cannot be anything other than what it makes of itself, it is critical. By seizing a principle and making it into what it can be, it is critical and dogmatic at the same time; it is the only middle way possible. True philosophy is thus the doctrine of science, i.e., critical dogmatic philosophy. II. Chapter. XI. The Doctrine of the “Not-I”. — We have seen so far that everything we want to regard as belonging to the I must be designated as its activity. But activity as such is quite empty and without content; it must first take up a certain something within itself. The pure character of the ego would be that of activity, but this only comes to light in individual activities. However, an action that does nothing would be a “pure act,” a “mere ability,” a “dead force,” an action outside of action, an inaction. This reproach by no means applies to the activity of the ego that appears in empirical activities. But as soon as the activity of the ego comes to light, an alien element, one that is completely alien and opposed to the ego, seems to enter into it. The question now is: how can such an alien element enter into the ego? This seems completely incomprehensible and quite contrary to our above discussions. For when something alien enters, the ego is no longer what it is through itself, but through something else. Let us now consider this relationship in the case of imagining in the narrower sense. Every act of imagining involves two things: a cognizing subject and an object to be cognized. The first is the active one, the second the suffering one. By the one presenting, the other is presented. That an object is presented is the business of the subject, that an object is presented is the business of the object. If I am the presenter and I present a rose, then the presentation of the rose is my product, the presentation of the rose, on the other hand, is the product of the rose. Let us choose another example. When I say, “I feel,” I am active, but I must feel something specific, I must have an object of my feeling. This object can never be given to me by the mere “I”. The question arises again and again: How can something completely alien enter into the activity of the ego. Here only the ego itself can decide how to remedy the situation, and it is immediately clear that it is impossible for an alien element to enter the ego without the ego's intervention. It must therefore enter through the ego, it must be transformed by the ego into its own essence, so that the ego can remain what it makes itself. This happens in the determining. In the act of determining, these two completely opposed elements are united. Here, a precise distinction must be made: 1. the act of determining, 2. the determining elements. There are always two determining elements: an “I” and a “not-I”. The I is always the active element. We must distinguish here, above all, between two things. This is probably best made clear by means of a diagram. Let us assume that the determining thing is the I, as the active determining thing. Let the external object be A; A is therefore a non-ego, it has come into being through determination, and through determination by the ego, in that it has come into being through the activity of the ego, and in its entirety as A, that is, it has come into being through determination by something other than the ego and apart from the ego, in that it has become A through the activity of the ego. Let us call the first kind of determination the active and the second the suffering, in order to have words for them. In fact, both kinds of determination are essentially different and must not be confused with each other. Above, we spoke of another by which the ego is to determine itself, and this still requires discussion.