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

Through inner freedom the “I” can activate itself; this enables it — out of itself, by self-determination — to realize the category of knowing activity, whereas in the rest of the world the reveal themselves as connected by objective necessity with the “given” corresponding to them. To investigate the nature of free self-determination will be the task of an ethics and metaphysics based upon our epistemology. These will also have to deal with the question whether the “I” can realize other ideas besides knowledge. But that the realization of our activity of knowing occurs through inner freedom is already clear from the above discussions. For, when the directly “given” and the thought-form belonging to it are united by the “I” in the process of knowledge, this union of the two elements of reality, which otherwise always remain separated within consciousness, can occur only through an act of inner freedom.