Note 3 — V KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY

Fichte tries to determine the activity of the “Ego.” He declares “that the being, the essence of which consists solely in this that it posits itself as existing, is the Ego as absolute subject.”3 This positing of the Ego is for Fichte the original, unconditioned act “which lies at the basis of all the rest of consciousness.”4 It follows that the Ego, in Fichte’s sense, can likewise begin all its activity only through an absolute fiat of the will. But, it is impossible for Fichte to supply any sort of content for this activity which his “Ego” absolutely posits. For, Fichte can name nothing upon which this activity might direct itself, or by which it might be determined. His Ego is supposed to perform an act. Yes, but what is it to do? Fichte failed to define the concept of cognition which the Ego is to realise, and, in consequence, he struggled in vain to find any way of advancing from his absolute act to the detailed determinations of the Ego. Nay, in the end he declares that the inquiry into the manner of this advance lies outside the scope of his theory. In his deduction of the idea of cognition he starts neither from an absolute act of the Ego, nor from one of the Non-Ego, but from a state of being determined which is, at the same time, an act of determining. His reason for this is that nothing else either is, or can be, immediately contained in consciousness. His theory leaves it wholly vague what determines, in turn, this determination. And it is this vagueness which drives us on beyond Fichte’s theory into the practical part of the Wissenschaftslehre.5 But, by this turn Fichte destroys all knowledge whatsoever. For, the practical activity of the Ego belongs to quite a different sphere. The postulate which we have put forward above can, indeed, be realised—so much is clear—only by a free act of the Ego. But, if this act is to be a cognitive act, the all-important point is that its voluntary decision should be to realise the idea of cognition. It is, no doubt, true that the Ego by its own free will can do many other things as well. But, what matters for the epistemological foundation of the sciences is not a definition of what it is for the Ego to be free, but of what it is to know. Fichte has allowed himself to be too much influenced by his subjective tendency to present the freedom of human personality in the brightest light. Harms, in his address on The Philosophy of Fichte (p. 15), rightly remarks, “His world-view is predominantly and exclusively ethical, and the same character is exhibited by his Theory of Knowledge.” Knowledge would have absolutely nothing to do, if all spheres of reality were given in their totality. But, seeing that the Ego, so long as it has not been, by thinking, inserted into its place in the systematic whole of the world-picture, exists merely as an immediately-given something, it is not enough merely to point out what it does. Fichte, however, believes that all we need to do concerning the Ego is to seek and find it. “We have to seek and find the absolutely first, wholly unconditioned principle of all human knowledge. Being absolutely first, this principle admits neither of proof nor of determination.”6 We have seen that proof and determination are out of place solely as applied to the content of Pure Logic. But the Ego is a part of reality, and this makes it necessary to establish that this or that category is actually to be found in the Given. Fichte has failed to do this. And this is the reason why he has given such a mistaken form to his Theory of Science. Zeller remarks7 that the logical formulæ by means of which Fichte seeks to reach the concept of the Ego, do but ill disguise his predetermined purpose at any price to reach this starting-point for his theory. This comment applies to the first form (1794) which Fichte gave to his Wissenschaftslehre. Taking it, then, as established that Fichte, in keeping with the whole trend of his philosophical thinking, could not, in fact, rest content with any other starting-point for knowledge than an absolute and arbitrary act, we have the choice between only two ways of making this start intelligible. The one way was to seize upon some one among the empirical activities of consciousness and to strip off, one by one, all the characteristics of it which do not follow originally from its essential nature, until the pure concept of the Ego had been crystallised out. The other way was to begin, straightway, with the original activity of the Ego, and to exhibit its nature by introspection and reflection. Fichte followed the first way at the outset of his philosophical thinking, but in the course of it he gradually switched over to the other.