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

Fichte wants to determine what the activity of the “I” is. He finds: “The ‘I’ as absolute subject is something whose existence (being) consists solely in its positing itself as existing” ( Foundation of the Total Theory of Science). For Fichte, this positing of the “I” is the primal unconditional action that “underlies all the rest of consciousness.” In Fichte's sense the “I" can therefore begin its activity only through an absolute decision. But for Fichte it is impossible to help this activity, which is absolutely posited by the “I,” to find any content for what it does. For he has nothing upon which to direct this activity and by which this activity could determine itself. His “I” is meant to carry out an action; but what should it do? Because Fichte did not set up the concept of knowledge that the “I” is meant to realize, he struggled in vain to And any kind of progression from his absolute act to further characterizations of the “I.” In fact, with respect to such a progression, he finally declares that investigation of it lies outside the boundaries of the theory. In deducing what the mental picture is, he takes his start neither from any absolute activity of the“I” nor of the “not-I,” but rather from something being determined, which is at the same time a determining, because nothing else is directly contained in consciousness nor can be contained in it. What in turn determines this determining remains totally undecided in the theory; and by not determining this we are driven out of and beyond the theory into the practical part of the theory of science. By this declaration, however, Fichte totally annihilates all knowing. For, the practical activity of the “I” belongs in a completely different region. It is indeed clear that the postulate[^3] we set up above can be realized only through a free act of the “I”; but when the “I” is to carry out the activity of knowing, the whole point is precisely that the purpose of the “I's” decision is to realize the idea of our activity of knowing. It is certainly true that the “I” can carry out many other things out of a free decision. But in laying an epistemological foundation for all the sciences, the point is not to establish that the “I” is free but rather that it is knowing. Fichte allowed himself to be influenced far too much by his subjective inclination to place the free inner activity ( Freiheit) of the human personality in the spotlight. Harms, in his address “On the Philosophy of Fichte” (p. 15), rightly states: “His world view is predominantly and exclusively an ethical one, and his epistemology bears only this character.” Our activity of knowing would have absolutely no task if all regions of reality were given in their totality. But now since the “I,” as long as it has not been inserted by thinking into the systematic totality of the world picture, is also nothing other than a directly “given,” it by no means suffices merely to show what it does. Fichte, nevertheless, is of the view that in the case of the “I,” mere seeking already accomplishes everything. “Our task is to seek out the absolutely first, altogether unconditional principle of all human knowing. It cannot be either proven or determined if it is to be the absolutely first principle.” We have seen that it is simply and solely with respect to the content of pure logic that proving and determining are out of place. The “I,” however, belongs to reality, and there it is necessary to determine the presence of this or that category within the “given.” Fichte did not do this. And that is why he gave his theory of science such a mistaken form. Zeller remarks ( History of German Philosophy since Leibniz, Munich, 1871 to 1875, p. 605) that the logical formulations by which Fichte wants to arrive at his “I”-concept barely conceal the fact that he wants at any price to achieve his predetermined purpose of arriving at this starting point. These words apply to the first form Fichte gave to his theory of science in 1794. When we realize that Fichte, in accordance with the whole predisposition of his philosophizing, could want nothing other, in fact, than to have science begin with an absolute decree, then there are indeed only two ways to make this beginning appear comprehensible. One way is to grasp consciousness in one or another of its empirical activities, and, by gradually peeling away everything that does not originally spring from it, to crystallize out the pure concept of the “I.” But the other way is to start directly with the original activity of the “I,” and to demonstrate its nature by self-reflection and self-observation. Fichte took the first way at the beginning of his philosophizing; in the course of it he nevertheless went over gradually to the second.