Idealism as an Awakening of the Soul: Johann Gottlieb Fichte

It is within the soul itself that Descartes finds the point upon which he can base conviction: The mental pictures form for myself of the world's course are no dream; they live a life that is a part in the life of the whole world. Even though I can doubt everything, there is one thing I cannot doubt, for to express doubt in it would belie my own words. For is it not certain that when I give myself over to doubt I am thinking? I could not doubt if I did not think. Therefore I cannot possibly doubt my own experience in thinking. If I wanted, through doubt, to kill thinking: it would just rise up living again out of the doubt. My thinking lives, therefore; it does not stand in some dream world; it stands in the world of being ( Sein). If I could believe that everything else, even my own body, gave me only the illusion of being, still my thinking does not deceive me. Just as true as it is that I think, it is true that I am, insofar as I think. It was from sentiments such as these that Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” ( Cogito ergo sum) rang out into the world. And whoever has an ear for such things will also hear the power of this statement resounding in all subsequent thinkers until Kant.