6. Epistemology without Presuppositions and Fichte's Theory of Science

We have now ascertained what the idea of knowledge is. This idea is directly “given” within human consciousness insofar as consciousness acts cognitively. For the “I,” as the center of consciousness, outer and inner perception and the “I's” own existence are directly “given.” (It need hardly be said that we do not mean here to connect any theoretical view about the nature of consciousness with this term “center,” but are using it only as a stylistic abbreviation for the total physiognomy of consciousness.) The feels the urge to And more in this “given” than what is directly “given.” When the “I” is confronted by the “given” world, there arises for it a second world, that of thinking, and the “I” unites these two worlds by realizing in action, out of a free decision, what we have ascertained the idea of knowledge to be. Herein lies a fundamental difference between the way concept and directly “given” prove to be united into total reality when human consciousness is made an object of knowledge, and the way applicable to the rest of world content. With every other part of the world picture we must picture to ourselves that the union is the original state and necessary from the beginning, and that only at the beginning of our activity of knowing does there occur, for knowledge, an artificial separation; this separation, however, is finally nullified again through knowing activity, in accordance with the original being of the objective world. With human consciousness this is different. Here the union is present only if effected by consciousness in real activity. With every other object the separation has no significance for the object, but only for knowledge. There, union is primary, and separation is derivative. Our knowing activity effects the separation only because by nature it cannot possess the union if it has not first performed a separation. But the concept and the “given” reality of consciousness are originally separated; their union is derivative, and therefore our knowing activity is of the nature we have described. It is because idea and “given” necessarily arise as separate within consciousness that total reality splits itself for consciousness into these two parts; and, because consciousness can effect the union of the above two elements only by its own activity, it can attain full reality only by accomplishing the act of knowledge. The other categories (ideas) would still be connected necessarily with the corresponding forms of the “given,” even if they were not taken up into knowledge; [but] the idea of our activity of knowing can be united with the “given” corresponding to this idea only by the activity of consciousness. A real consciousness exists only if it realizes itself in action. These reflections should enable us to see the basic mistake in Fichte's Theory of Science[^1] and also provide us with a key for understanding his Theory. Fichte is that philosopher who, of all Kant's followers, felt most keenly that a basis for all the sciences could consist only in a theory of consciousness; but he never arrived at a knowledge of why this is so. He felt that what we call the second step of epistemology and give the form of a postulate[^2] must actually be carried out by the “I.” We can see that this is so, for example, in the following words: “The theory of science arises, therefore, insofar as it is meant to be a systematic science, in exactly the same way as all possible sciences, insofar as they are meant to be systematic: through establishing what free inner activity ( Freiheit) is; and this last is particularly supposed to lift to consciousness the way intelligence in general acts;... through this free act ( freie Handlung) something, which in itself is already form — the necessary action of intelligence — is now taken up as content into a new form of knowing or of consciousness...” ( On the Concept of the Theory of Science or of So-called Philosophy, Berlin, 1845). What is meant here by “the way intelligence acts” when one expresses in clear concepts what Fichte dimly felt? Nothing other than realizing in action, within consciousness, the idea of our activity of knowing. If Fichte had been clearly conscious of this, he would have had to formulate the above sentence like this: The task of the theory of science is to raise our activity of knowing, insofar as it is still an unconscious activity of the “I,” into consciousness; it has to show that within the “I" the objectification of the idea of our activity of knowing is carried out as a necessary act.