Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy
Fichte created a great sensation in his time; his philosophy is the Kantian philosophy in its completion, and, as we must specially notice, it is set forth in a more logical way. He does not pass beyond the fundamentals of Kant's philosophy, and at first regarded his own philosophy as no more than a systematic working out of the other.(1) In addition to these systems of philosophies, and that of Schelling, there are none. Any that pretend to be such merely pick out something from these, and over this they fight and wrangle among themselves. Ils se sont battus les flanes, pour être de grands hommes. For in those times there were in Germany many systems of philosophy, such as those of Reinhold, Krug, Bouterweck, Fries, Schulze, &c.; but in them there is only an extremely limited point of view, combined with boastfulness — a strange medley of stray thoughts and conceptions or facts which I find within me. But their thoughts are all derived from Fichte, Kant, or Schelling — that is in so far as there are thoughts there present at all. Or else some slight modification is added, and this for the most part merely consists in making the great principles barren, what points in them were living are destroyed, or else subordinate forms are changed, whereby another principle is said to be set forth, though when we look closer we find that these principles are but the principles of one of those philosophies that have gone before. This may serve as a justification for my not speaking further of all these philosophies; any exposition of them would be no more than a demonstration that everything in them is taken from Kant, Fichte, or Schelling, and that the modification in form is only the semblance of a change, while really it indicates a deterioration in the principles of those philosophies.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born on the 19th of May, 1762, at Rammenau, near Bischoffswerda, in Upper Lusatia. He studied at Jena, and for some time was a private tutor in Switzerland. He wrote a treatise on Religion, termed a “Critique of all Revelation,” where the Kantian phraseology is employed throughout — so much so that it was thought to be the work of Kant. After this he was in 1793 summoned to Jena by Goethe as Professor of Philosophy, which appointment he, however, resigned in the year 1799, on account of an unpleasantness which had arisen through his essay “On the ground of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World.” For Fichte published a journal in Jena, and a paper in it which was by someone else was regarded as atheistical. Fichte might have kept silence, but he published the above-mentioned essay as an introduction to the article. The authorities wished an investigation to be made into the matter. Then Fichte wrote a letter which contained threats, and respecting it Goethe said that a Government ought not to allow itself to be threatened. Fichte now taught privately for some time in Berlin; in 1805 he became professor at Erlangen, and in 1809 at Berlin, at which place he died on the 27th January, 1814.(2) We cannot here deal more particularly with the details of his life.
In what is termed the philosophy of Fichte a distinction must be made between his properly-speaking speculative philosophy, in which the argument is most consistently worked out, and which is less well known, and his popular philosophy, to which belong the lectures delivered in Berlin before a mixed audience, and, for example, the work termed a “Guidance to a Blessed Life.” These last have much in them that is affecting and edifying — many who call themselves the disciples of Fichte know this side alone — and they are expressed in language most impressive to a cultured, religious temperament. In the history of Philosophy, however, such cannot be taken into consideration, although through their matter they may have the highest possible value; the content has to be speculatively developed, and that is done in Fichte's earlier philosophic works alone.(3)
As we mentioned above (p. 478), the shortcoming in the Kantian philosophy was its unthinking inconsistency, through which speculative unity was lacking to the whole system; and this shortcoming was removed by Fichte. It is the absolute form which Fichte laid hold of, or in other words, the absolute form is just the absolute Being-for-self, absolute negativity, not individuality, but the Notion of individuality, and thereby the Notion of actuality; Fichte's philosophy is thus the development of form in itself. He maintained the ego to be the absolute principle, so that from it, the direct and immediate certainty of self, all the matter in the universe must be represented as produced; hence, according to Fichte, reason is in itself a synthesis of Notion and actuality. But this principle he once more in an equally one-sided manner set aside; it is from the very beginning subjective, conditioned by an opposite, and its realization is a continual rushing onward in finitude, a looking back at what has gone before. The form in which it is presented has also the disadvantage, and indeed, the real drawback of bringing the empiric ego ever before one's eyes, which is absurd, and quite distracting to one's point of view.
The claims of Philosophy have advanced so far that in the first place self-consciousness refuses any longer to regard absolute essence as immediate substance which does not in itself possess difference, reality, and actuality. Against this substance self-consciousness ever struggled, for it does not find its explicit Being there, and consequently feels the lack of freedom. But besides this it demanded that this essence, objectively presented, should be personal, living, self-conscious, actual, and not shut up in abstract metaphysical thoughts alone. On the other hand consciousness, for which the other is, demanded the moment of external actuality, Being as such, into which thought must pass, truth in objective existence; and this is what we more especially noticed in connection with the English. This Notion, which is immediately actuality, and this actuality which is immediately its Notion, and that indeed in such a way that there neither is a third thought above this unity, nor is it an immediate unity which does not possess difference, separation, within it, is the ego; it is the self-distinction of opposites within itself. That whereby it distinguishes itself from the simplicity of thought, and distinguishes this other, is likewise immediately for it; it is identical with, or not distinguished from it.(4) Hence it is pure thought, or the ego is the true synthetic judgment a priori, as Kant called it. This principle is apprehended actuality, for the taking back of the other-Being into self-consciousness is just apprehension. The Notion of the Notion is from this point of view found in the fact that in what is apprehended self-consciousness has the certainty of itself; what is not apprehended is something foreign to it. This absolute Notion or this absolutely existent infinitude it is which has to be developed in knowledge, and its distinction as the whole distinction of the universe has to be represented from itself, and this has in its distinction to remain reflected within itself in equal absoluteness. Nothing other than the ego anywhere exists, and the ego is there because it is there; what is there is only in the ego and for the ego.(5)
Now Fichte merely set forth this Notion; he did not bring it to a scientific realization from itself. For to him this Notion maintains and asserts itself as this Notion; it has absoluteness for him in so far as it is merely the unrealized Notion, and thus indeed comes once more into opposition with reality. The Fichtian philosophy has the great advantage of having set forth the fact that Philosophy must be a science derived from one supreme principle, from which all determinations are necessarily derived. The important point is this unity of principle and the attempt to develop from it in a scientifically consistent way the whole content of consciousness, or, as has been said, to construct the whole world.(6) Beyond this no progress was made.(7) But the great necessity in Philosophy is to possess one living Idea; the world is a flower which is eternally produced from one grain of seed. Thus Fichte does not, like Kant, throw his work into narrative form because he begins with the ego; but he has proceeded further, inasmuch as he sought to bring about a construction of determinations of knowledge from the ego. The whole extent of knowledge in all the world must be developed, and further this knowledge must be the consequence of the development of determinations; but because Fichte says that what is not for us does not concern us, he has not grasped this principle of the ego as Idea, but solely in the consciousness of the activity which we exercise in knowing, and consequently it is still laid hold of in the form of subjectivity.
Thus as Kant treats of cognition [Erkennen], so Fichte sets forth real knowledge [Wissen]. Fichte states that the task of Philosophy is to find a theory of knowledge; universal knowledge is both the object and the starting-point of Philosophy. Consciousness knows, that is its nature; the end of philosophic learning is the knowledge of this knowledge. Hence Fichte called his philosophy the Theory of Knowledge (Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, p. 181), the science of knowledge. That is to say ordinary consciousness as the active ego finds this and that, occupies itself, not with itself, but with other objects and interests, but the necessity that I bring forth determinations, and which determinations — cause and effect, for example, — lies beyond my consciousness: I bring them forth instinctively and cannot get behind my consciousness. But when I philosophize, I make my ordinary consciousness itself my object, because I make a pure category my consciousness. I know what my ego is doing, and thus I got behind my ordinary consciousness. Fichte thus defines Philosophy as the artificial consciousness.(8)
a. Where Fichte in his system has attained the highest degree of determinateness he begins, as we saw Kant did before (pp. 437, 438), from the transcendental unity of self-consciousness; in it I — as this — am one, this unity is to Fichte the same and the original. Ego is there a fact, says Fichte, but not yet a proposition. As proposition, as principle, the ego must not remain barren, nor be accepted as one, for to a proposition pertains a synthesis. Now Fichte proceeds in his system from the fact that Philosophy must begin with an absolutely unconditioned, certain principle, with something indubitably certain in ordinary knowledge. “It cannot be proved or defined, because it must, be absolutely the first principle.” (9) According to Wendt's account (Tennernann's Grundriss, § 393, pp. 494, 495) Fichte gives an exposition of the necessity of such a principle as follows: “Scientific knowledge is a system of cognition obtained through a supreme principle which expresses the content and form of knowledge. The theory of knowledge is the science of knowledge which sets forth the possibility and validity of all knowledge, and proves the possibility of principles in reference to form and content, the principles themselves, and thereby the connection existing in all human knowledge. It must have a principle which can neither be proved from it nor from another science; for it is supreme. If there is a theory of knowledge there also is a system; if there is a system there is also a theory of knowledge and an absolute first principle — and so on through an inevitable circle.” (10)
The simple principle of this knowledge is certainty of myself, which is the relation of me to myself; what is in me, that I know. The supreme principle, as immediate and not derived, must be certain on its own account; that is, a determination of the ego only, for it is only from the ego that I cannot abstract.(11) Fichte thus begins, like Descartes, with 'I think, therefore I am,' and he expressly brings this proposition to mind. The Being of the ego is not a dead, but a concrete Being; but the highest Being is thought. Ego, as an explicitly self-existent activity of thought, is thus knowledge, even if it is only abstract knowledge, as in the beginning at least it cannot help being. At the same time Fichte begins from this absolute certainty with quite other necessities and demands; for from this ego not only Being but also the larger system of thought has to be derived (supra, p. 230). According to Fichte, the ego is the source of the categories and ideas, but all conceptions and thoughts are a manifold reduced to a synthesis through Thought. Thus while with Descartes in connection with the ego other thoughts appear which we simply find already in us, such as God, nature, &c., Fichte sought for a philosophy entirely of a piece, in which nothing empiric was to be admitted from without. With this reflection a false point of view was at once introduced, namely that contained in the old conception of knowledge, of commencing with principles in this form and proceeding from them; so that the reality which is derived from such a principle is brought into opposition with it, and hence in truth is something different, i.e. it is not derived: or that principle for this same reason expresses only the absolute certainty of itself and not the truth. The ego is certain, it cannot be doubted; but Philosophy desires to reach the truth. The certainty is subjective, and because it is made to remain the basis, all else remains subjective also without there being any possibility of this form being removed. Fichte now analyzes the ego, reducing it to three principles from which the whole of knowledge has to be evolved.
The first proposition must be simple, in it predicate and subject must be alike; for were they unlike, their connection — since in accordance with their diversity the determinations are not directly one — would have to be first of all proved by means of a third. The first principle must thus be identical. Fichte now proceeds further to distinguish in this first principle the form and content; but in order that this same may be immediately true through itself, form and content must be again the same, and the principle conditioned by neither. It signifies A = A, the abstract undetermined identity; that is the proposition of contradiction, wherein A is an indifferent content. Fichte says, “Thought is by no means essence, but only a particular determination of Being; there are outside of it many other determinations of our Being. I merely remark this, that when 'I am' is overstepped, Spinozism is necessarily reached. Its unity is something which ought to be produced through us, but which cannot be so; it is not anything that is.” The first proposition is then that I am identical with myself, Ego = Ego;(12) that undoubtedly is the definition of the ego. The subject and the predicate are the content; and this content of the two sides is likewise their relation, i.e. form. Relation requires two sides; the relating and the related are here, however, the same; for on account of the simplicity of the ego, there is nothing but a relation of the ego to the ego. I have knowledge of myself; but in so far as I am consciousness, I know of an object which is different from me, and which is then likewise mine. But the ego is in such a way identical with its difference that what is different is immediately the same, and what is identical is likewise different; we have a difference without a difference. Self-consciousness is not dead identity, or non-Being, but the object which is identical with me. This is immediately certain; all else must be as certain to me, inasmuch as it must be my relation to myself. The content must be transformed into the ego, so that in it I have my determination alone. This principle is at first abstract and deficient, because in it no difference, or a formal difference only is expressed; whereas the principle should possess a content: a subject and a predicate are indeed distinguished in it, but only for us who reflect upon it, i.e. in itself there is no difference, and consequently no true content. In the second place, this principle is indeed the immediate certainty of self-consciousness, but self-consciousness is likewise consciousness, and in it there is likewise the certainty that other things exist to which it stands in an attitude of opposition. In the third place, that principle has not the truth in it, for the very reason that the certainty of itself possessed by the ego has no objectivity; it has not the form of the differentiated content within it — or it stands in opposition to the consciousness of an “other.”
Now in order that determination should come to pass, i.e. a content and difference, it is essential for Fichte that a second principle should be established, which in regard to form is unconditioned, but the content of which is conditioned, because it does not belong to the ego. This second principle, set forth under the first, is, “I assert a non-ego in opposition to the ego,” and in this something other than absolute self-consciousness is set forth.(13) To this pertains the form therein present, relation; but the content is the non-ego, another content from the ego. We might say that through this content the proposition is independent, since the negative therein is an absolute, as truly as the reverse — that it is independent through the form of opposition which cannot be derived from the original. Here, then, we have no more to do with derivation, although this derivation of opposition from the first proposition was all the same demanded. Inasmuch as I posit another in opposition to the ego, I posit myself as not posited; this non-ego is the object generally, i.e. that which is opposed to me. This other is the negative of the ego; thus when Fichte called it the non-ego he was expressing himself in a very happy, suitable, and consistent manner. There has been a good deal of ridicule cast on the ego and non-ego; the expression is new, and therefore to us Germans it seems strange at first. But the French say Moi and Non-moi, without finding anything laughable in it. In this principle the positing belongs, however, to the ego; but because the non-ego is independent of the ego, we have two sides, and self-consciousness relates itself to another. This second proposition thus signifies that I posit myself as limited, as non-ego; but non-ego is something quite new to be added. On the one side we thus have before us a field which is merely appropriated from the ego; and in this way we have before us the non-ego as our object.
To these is added yet a third proposition, in which I now make this division into ego and non-ego: it is the synthetic principle, the proposition of ground, which in content is unconditioned, just as in the second was the case in regard to form. This third proposition is the determination of the first two through one another, in such a way that the ego limits the non-ego. “In and through the ego both the ego and the non-ego are posited as capable of being mutually limited by means of one another, i.e. in such a way that the reality of the one abrogates the reality of the other.” In limitation both are negated, but “only in part” ; only thus are synthesis and deduction possible. I posit the non-ego, which is for me, in myself, in my identity with myself; thus I take it from its non-identity, its not-being-I, that is to say I limit it. This limitation of the non-ego Fichte expresses thus: “I place in opposition to the ego,” and indeed “to the divisible ego, a divisible non-ego.” The non-ego I destroy as a complete sphere, which it was according to the second principle, and posit it as divisible; I likewise posit the ego as divisible in so far as the non-ego is present in it. The whole sphere which I have before me is supposed indeed to be the ego, but in it I have not one but two. The proposition of ground is thus the relation of reality and negation, i.e. it is limitation; it contains the ego limited by the non-ego, and the non-ego limited by the ego.(14) Of this synthesis there is nothing, properly speaking, contained in the two earlier propositions. Even this first presentation of the three principles does away with the immanence of real knowledge. Thus the presentation is here also subject to an opposite from the first, as it is with Kant, even if these are two acts of the ego merely, and we remain entirely in the ego.
Now that limitation may take place for me in two different ways: at one time the one is passive, at another time the other is so. In this limitation the ego may posit the non-ego as limiting and itself as limited, in such a way that the ego posits itself as requiring to have an object; I know myself indeed as ego, but determined by the non-ego; non-ego is here active and ego passive. Or, on the other hand, the ego, as abrogating other-being, is that which limits, and non-ego is the limited. I know myself then as clearly determining the non-ego, as the absolute cause of the non-ego as such, for I can think. The first is the proposition of the theoretic reason, of intelligence: the second the proposition of practical reason, of will.(15) The will is this, that I am conscious of myself as limiting the object; thus I make myself exercise activity upon the object and maintain myself. The theoretic proposition is that the object is before me and it determines me. The ego is, since I perceive, a content, and I have this content in me, which is thus outside of me. This is on the whole the same thing as we meet with in the experience of Kant: it comes to the same thing whether it is by matter or the non-ego that the ego is here determined.
b. In the theoretic consciousness the ego, although the assertive generally, finds itself limited by the non-ego. But it is identical with itself; hence its infinite activity ever sets itself to abrogate the non-ego and to bring forth itself. Now the different methods whereby the ego sets forth itself are the different methods of its activity; these we have to understand in their necessity. But since philosophic knowledge is the consideration of consciousness itself (supra, p. 483), I can only know knowledge, the act of the ego. Fichte thus appeals to consciousness, postulates ego and non-ego in their abstraction, and since philosophic knowledge is the consciousness of consciousness, it is not sufficient that I should find its determinations in consciousness, for I produce them with consciousness. Common consciousness, indeed, likewise brings forth all the determinations of the ordinary conception and of thought, but without — on the theoretic side at least — having any knowledge of it; for it is the fact of being limited alone that is present to it. Thus, when I see a large square object, such as a wall, my ordinary consciousness accepts these determinations as they are given to it; the object is. In so doing I do not think of seeing, but of the object; seeing, however, is my activity, the determinations of my faculty of sensation are thus posited through me.(16) The ego as theoretic is, indeed, aware in philosophic consciousness that it is the ego which posits; but here it posits that the non-ego posits somewhat in me. The ego thus posits itself as that which is limited by the non-ego. I make this limitation mine; thus is it for me in me, this passivity of the ego is itself the activity of the ego. As a matter of fact, all reality which appears in the object for the ego is a determination of the ego,(17) just as the categories and other determinations were in Kant's case. Thus it is here more especially that we should expect Fichte to demonstrate the return of other-Being into absolute consciousness. However, because after all the other-Being was regarded as unconditioned, as implicit, this return does not come to pass. The ego determines the 'other,' indeed, but this unity is an altogether finite unity; non-ego has thus immediately escaped from determination once more and gone forth from this unity. What we find is merely an alternation between self-consciousness and the consciousness of another, and the constant progression of this alternation, which never reaches any end.(18)
The development of theoretic reason is the following-out of the manifold relationships between the ego and non-ego; the forms of this limitation which Fichte now goes through are the determinations of the object. These particular thought-determinations he calls categories, and he seeks to demonstrate them in their necessity; from the time of Aristotle onwards no one had thought of so doing. The first of these forms is the determination of reciprocity, which we already met with in the third proposition: “By the determination of the reality or negation of the ego, the negation or reality of the non-ego is equally determined;” the two in one is reciprocal action. In the second place, “Causality is the same degree of activity in the one as of passivity in the other.” In so far as something is considered as the reality of the non-ego, the ego is considered as passive, and, on the other hand, in so far as 'I' am real, the object is passive; this relation, that the passivity of the object is my activity or reality, and the opposite, is the conception of Causality. “As many parts of negation as the ego posits in itself, so many parts of reality it posits in the non-ego; it therefore posits itself as self-determining in so far as it is determined, and as suffering determination in so far as it determines itself. In so far,” in the third place, “as the ego is regarded as embracing the whole absolutely determined realm of all reality, it is substance; on the other hand when it is posited in a not absolutely determined sphere of this realm, in so far there is an accidence in the ego.” (19) That is the first rational attempt that has ever been made to deduce the categories; this progress from one determination to another is, however, only an analysis from the standpoint of consciousness, and is not in and for itself.
The ego is so far the ideal ground of all conceptions of the object; all determination of this object is a determination of the ego. But in order that it may be object, it must be placed in opposition to the ego, i.e. the determinations set forth through the ego are another, the non-ego; this placing of the object in opposition is the real ground of conceptions. The ego is, however, likewise the real ground of the object; for it is likewise a determination of the ego that the non-ego as object is set in opposition to the ego. Both, the real ground and the ideal ground of the conception, are thus one and the same.(20) Regarding the ego as ideal principle and the non-ego as real principle, Krug has likewise talked a great deal of nonsense. Regarded from the one point of view, the ego is active and the non-ego purely passive; while from the other side the ego is passive and the object active and operative. But since the ego in the non-philosophic consciousness does not have the consciousness of its activity in the conception of the object, it represents to itself its own activity as foreign, i.e. as belonging to the non-ego.
We here see the opposition adopting various forms: ego, non-ego; positing, setting in opposition; two sorts of activity of the ego, &c. The fact that I represent is undoubtedly my activity, but the matter of main importance is the content of the positing and its necessary connection through itself. If one occupies oneself only with this content, that form of subjectivity which is dominant with Fichte, and which remains in his opposition, disappears. As the ego is affirmative and determining, there now is in this determination a negative likewise present; I find myself determined and at the same time the ego is like itself, infinite, i.e. identical with itself. This is a contradiction which Fichte indeed endeavours to reconcile, but in spite of it all he leaves the false basis of dualism undisturbed. The ultimate, beyond which Fichte does not get, is only an 'ought,' which does not solve the contradiction; for while the ego should be absolutely at home with itself, i.e. free, it should at the same time be associated with another. To Fichte the demand for the solution of this contradiction thus adopts the attitude of being a demanded solution only, of signifying that I ever have to destroy the barriers, that I ever have to reach beyond the limitation into utter infinitude, and that I ever find a new limit; a continual alternation takes place between negation and affirmation, an identity with self which again falls into negation, and from this negation is ever again restored. To speak of the bounds of human reason is, however, an unmeaning form of words. That the reason of the subject is limited is comprehensible from the nature of the case, but when we speak of Thought, infinitude is none other than one's own relation to self, and not to one's limit; and the place in which man is infinite is Thought. Infinitude may then be likewise very abstract, and in this way it is also once more finite; but true infinitude remains in itself.
Fichte further deduces the ordinary conception thus: the fact that the ego in going forth at once finds its activity checked by a limitation, and returns once more into itself, brings about two opposite tendencies in me, between which I waver, and which I try to unite in the faculty of imagination. In order that a fixed determination may exist between the two, I have to make the limit a permanent one, and we have that in the understanding. All further determinations of the object are, as categories of the understanding, modes of synthesis; but each synthesis is a new contradiction. New mediations are thus once more necessary, and these are new determinations. Thus Fichte says: I can always continue to determine the non-ego, to make it my conception, i.e. to take from it its negation as regards me. I have to deal with my activity alone; but there is always an externality therein present which still remains, and which is not explained by my activity. This Beyond which alone remains to the undetermined ego Fichte calls the infinite check upon the ego, with which it ever has to deal, and beyond which it cannot get; thus the activity which proceeds into infinitude finds itself checked and driven back by this repulsive force, and then it reacts upon itself. “The ego in its self-determination has been considered both as determining and determined; if we reflect on the fact that the absolutely determined determining power must be an absolutely indeterminate, and further, that ego and non-ego are absolutely opposed to one another, in the one case ego is the indeterminate and in the other case non-ego.” (21)
Inasmuch as the ego here makes the object its conception and negates it, this philosophy is Idealism, in which philosophy all the determinations of the object are ideal. Everything determinate which the ego possesses it has through its own positing; I even make a coat or a boot because I put them on. There remains only the empty repulsive force, and that is the Kantian Thing-in-itself, beyond which even Fichte cannot get, even though the theoretic reason continues its determination into infinitude. “The ego as intelligence” ever “remains dependent on an undetermined non-ego; it is only through this that it is intelligence.” (22) The theoretic side is thus dependent. In it we have not therefore to deal with the truth in and for itself but with a contingent, because ego is limited, not absolute, as its Notion demands: intelligence is not here considered as spirit which is free. This is Fichte's standpoint as regards the theoretic side.
c. Practical reason comes next; the point of view from which it starts is that “The ego posits itself as determining the non-ego.” Now the contradiction has thus to be solved of ego being at home with itself, since it determines its Beyond. The ego is thus infinite activity, and, as ego=ego, the absolute ego, it is undoubtedly abstract. But in order to have a determination, a non-ego must exist; ego is thus activity, causality, the positing of the non-ego. But as with Kant sensuousness and reason remain opposed, the same contradiction is present here, only in a more abstract form, and not in the rude empiricism of Kant. Fichte here turns and twists in all sorts of ways, or he gives the opposition many different forms, the crudest form is that ego is posited as causality, for in it another is necessitated on which it exercises its activity. “The absolute ego has accordingly to be” now “the cause of the non-ego, i.e. only of that in the non-ego which remains when we abstract from all demonstrable forms of representation or conception — of that to which is ascribed the check given to the infinitely operative activity of the ego; for the fact that the intelligent ego is, in accordance with the necessary laws of the conception, the cause of the particular determinations of that which is conceived as such, is demonstrated in the theoretic science of knowledge.” (23) The limits of intelligence must be broken through, the ego must alone be active; the other side, the infinite repulsion, must be removed, in order that the ego may be liberated.
“According to our hypothesis the ego must now posit a non-ego absolutely, and without any ground, i.e. absolutely and without any ground it must limit or in part not posit itself.” This, indeed, it already does as intelligent. “It must therefore have the ground of not positing itself” only “in itself.” The ego is, however, just the ego, it posits itself, “it must” therefore “have the principle of positing itself within it, and also the principle of not positing itself. Hence the ego in its essence would be contradictory and self-repellent; there would be in it a twofold or contradictory principle, which assumption contradicts itself, for in that case there would be no principle within it. The ego would” consequently “not exist, for it would abrogate itself. All contradictions are reconciled through the further determination of contradictory propositions. The ego must be posited in one sense as infinite, and in another as finite. Were it to be posited as infinite and finite in one and the same sense, the contradiction would be insoluble; the ego would not be one but two. In so far as the ego posits itself as infinite, its activity is directed upon itself and on nothing else but itself. In so far as the ego posits limits, and itself in these limits, its activity is not exercised directly on itself, but on a non-ego which has to be placed in opposition,” upon another and again upon another, and so on into infinitude; that is the object, and the activity of the ego “is objective activity.” (24) In this way Fichte in the practical sphere also remains at opposition, only this opposition now has the form of two tendencies in the ego, both of which are said to be one and the same activity of the ego. I am called upon to proceed to determine the other in relation to which I am negative, the non-ego, in accordance with my freedom it has indeed all determinations through the activity of the ego, but beyond my determination the same non-ego ever continues to appear. The ego clearly posits an object, a point of limitation, but where the limitation is, is undetermined. I may transfer the sphere of my determination, and extend it to an infinite degree, but there always remains a pure Beyond, and the non-ego has no positive self-existent determination.
The last point in respect of the practical sphere is hence this, that the activity of the ego is a yearning or striving(25) — like the Kantian “ought” ; Fichte treats this with great prolixity. The Fichtian philosophy consequently has the same standpoint as the Kantian; the ultimate is always subjectivity, as existent in and for itself. Yearning, according to Fichte, is divine; in yearning I have not forgotten myself, I have not forgotten that I possess a superiority in myself; and therefore it is a condition of happiness and satisfaction. This infinite yearning and desire has then been regarded as what is highest and most excellent in the Beautiful, and in religious feelings likewise; and with it is connected the irony of which we have spoken before (Vol. I. pp. 400, 401). In this return the ego is merely an effort, on its side it is fixed, and it cannot realize its endeavours. Striving is thus an imperfect or implicitly limited action. The ultimate result is consequently a “circle” which cannot be broken through, so that “the finite spirit must necessarily posit an absolute outside itself (a thing-in-itself), and yet on the other hand it must recognize that this same is only there for it (a necessary noumenon).” (26) To put it otherwise, we see the ego absolutely determined in opposition only, we see it only as consciousness and self-consciousness which does not got beyond this, and which does not reach so far as to Spirit. The ego is the absolute Notion in so far as it does not yet reach the unity of thought, or in this simplicity does not reach difference, and in motion does not have rest; that is to say, in so far as positing, or the pure activity of the ego, and setting in opposition, are not by it comprehended as the same. Or the ego does not comprehend the infinite repulsion, the non-ego; self-consciousness determines the non-ego, but does not know how to make this Beyond its own.
The deficiency in the Fichtian philosophy is thus firstly that the ego retains the significance of the individual, actual self-consciousness, as opposed to that which is universal or absolute, or to the spirit in which it is itself a moment merely; for the individual self-consciousness simply signifies standing apart as far as another is concerned. Hence, if the ego was ever called absolute existence, the most terrible offence was given, because really the ego only came before us as signifying the individual subject as opposed to the universal.
In the second place, Fichte does not attain to the idea of Reason as the perfected, real unity of subject and object, or of ego and non-ego; it is only, as with Kant, represented as the thought of a union in a belief or faith, and with this Fichte likewise concludes (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 301). This he worked out in his popular writings. For because the ego is fixed in its opposition to the non-ego, and is only as being opposed, it becomes lost in that unity. The attainment of this aim is hence sent further and further back into the false, sensuous infinitude: it is a progression implying just the same contradiction as that found in Kant, and having no present actuality in itself; for the ego has all actuality in its opposition only. The Fichtian philosophy recognizes the finite spirit alone, and not the infinite; it does not recognize spirit as universal thought, as the Kantian philosophy does not recognize the not-true; or it is formal. The knowledge of absolute unity is apprehended as faith in a moral disposition of the world, an absolute hypothesis in accordance with which we have the belief that every moral action that we perform will have a good result.(27) As in Kant's case, this Idea belongs to universal thought. “In a word, when anything is apprehended it ceases to be God; and every conception of God that is set up is necessarily that of a false God. Religion is a practical faith in the moral government of the world; faith in a supersensuous world belongs, according to our philosophy, to the immediate verities.” (28) Fichte thus concludes with the highest Idea, with the union of freedom and nature, but a union of such a nature that, immediately regarded, it is not known; the opposition alone falls within consciousness. This union of faith he likewise finds in the Love of God. As believed and experienced, this form pertains to Religion, and not to Philosophy, and our only possible interest is to know this in Philosophy. But with Fichte it is still associated with a most unsatisfying externality of which the basis is the non-Idea, for the one determination is essential only because the other is so, and so on into infinitude. “The theory of knowledge is realistic — it shows that the consciousness of finite beings can only be explained by presupposing an independent and wholly opposite power, on which, in accordance with their empirical existence, they themselves are dependent. But it asserts nothing more than this opposed power, which by finite beings can merely be felt and not known. All possible determinations of this power or of this non-ego which can come forth into infinity in our consciousness, it pledges itself to deduce from the determining faculties of the ego, and it must actually be able to deduce these, so certainly as it is a theory of knowledge. This knowledge, however, is not transcendent but transcendental. It undoubtedly explains all consciousness from something independent of all consciousness, but it does not forget that this independent somewhat is again a product of its own power of thought, and consequently something dependent on the ego, in so far as it has to be there for the ego. Everything is, in its ideality, dependent upon the ego; but in its reality even the ego is dependent. The fact that the finite spirit must posit for itself somewhat outside of itself, which last exists only for it, is that circle which it may infinitely extend but never break through.” The further logical determination of the object is that which in subject and object is identical, the true connection is that in which the objective is the possession of the ego; as thought, the ego in itself determines the object. But Fichte's theory of knowledge regards the struggle of the ego with the object as that of the continuous process of determining the object through the ego as subject of consciousness, without the identity of the restfully self-developing Notion.
Thirdly, because the ego is thus fixed in its one-sidedness, there proceeds from it, as representing one extreme, the whole of the progress that is made in the content of knowledge; and the deduction of the philosophy of Fichte, cognition in its content and form, is a progression from certain determinations to others which do not turn back into unity, or through a succession of finitenesses which do not have the Absolute in them at all. The absolute point of view, like an absolute content, is wanting. Thus the contemplation of nature, for instance, is a contemplation of it as of pure finitenesses from the point of view of another, as though the organic body were regarded thus: “Consciousness requires a sphere entirely its own for its activity. This sphere is posited through an original, necessary activity of the ego, in which it does not know itself as free. It is a sensuous perception, a drawing of lines; the sphere of activity thereby becomes something extended in space. As quiescent, continuous, and yet unceasingly changing, this sphere is matter, which, as body, has a number of parts which in relation to one another are called limbs. The person can ascribe to himself no body without positing it as being under the influence of another person. But it is likewise essential that I should be able to check this same influence, and external matter is also posited as resisting my influences on it, i.e. as a tough, compact matter.” (29) These tough matters must further be separated from one another — the different persons cannot hold together like one mass of dough. For “my body is my body and not that of another; it must further operate and be active without my working through it. It is only through the operation of another that I can myself be active and represent myself as a rational being who can be respected by him. But the other being should treat me immediately as a rational being, I should be for him a rational being even before my activity begins. Or my form must produce an effect through its mere existence in space, without my activity, i.e. it must be visible. The reciprocal operation of rational beings must take place without activity; thus a subtle matter must be assumed in order that it way be modified by means of the merely quiescent form. In this way are deduced first Light and then Air.” (30) This constitutes a very external manner of passing from one step to another, resembling the method of the ordinary teleology, which makes out, for instance, that plants and animals are given for the nourishment of mankind. This is how it is put: Man must eat, and thus there must be something edible — consequently plants and animals are at once deduced; plants must have their root in something, and consequently the earth is forthwith deduced. What is altogether lacking is any consideration of the object as what it is in itself; it is plainly considered only in relation to another. In this way the animal organism appears as a tough, tenacious matter which is “articulated” and can be modified; light is a subtle matter which is the medium of communication of mere existence, &c. — just as in the other case plants and animals are merely edible. As regards a philosophic consideration of the content there is nothing at all to be found.
Fichte likewise wrote both a Science of Morals and of Natural Rights, but he treats them as sciences pertaining to the understanding only, and his method of procedure is destitute of ideas and carried on by means of a limited understanding. The Fichtian deduction of the conceptions of justice and morality thus remains within the limitations and rigidity of self-consciousness, as against which Fichte's popular presentations of religion and morality present inconsistencies. The treatise on Natural Rights is a special failure, e.g. where he, as we have just seen (p. 502), deduces even nature just as far as he requires it. The organization of the state which is described in Fichte's Science of Rights is furthermore as unspiritual as was the deduction of natural objects just mentioned, and as were many of the French constitutions which have appeared in modern times — a formal, external uniting and connecting, in which the individuals as such are held to be absolute, or in which Right is the highest principle. Kant began to ground Right upon Freedom, and Fichte likewise makes freedom the principle in the Rights of Nature; but, as was the case with Rousseau, it is freedom in the form of the isolated individual. This is a great commencement, but in order to arrive at the particular, they have to accept certain hypotheses. The universal is not the spirit, the substance of the whole, but an external, negative power of the finite understanding directed against individuals. The state is not apprehended in its essence, but only as representing a condition of justice and law, i.e. as an external relation of finite to finite. There are various individuals; the whole constitution of the state is thus in the main characterized by the fact that the freedom of individuals must be limited by means of the freedom of the whole.(31) The individuals always maintain a cold attitude of negativity as regards one another, the confinement becomes closer and the bonds more stringent as time goes on, instead of the state being regarded as representing the realization of freedom.
This philosophy contains nothing speculative, but it demands the presence of the speculative element. As the philosophy of Kant seeks in unity its Idea of the Supreme Good, wherein the opposites have to be united, so the Fichtian philosophy demands union in the ego and in the implicitude of faith; in this self-consciousness in all its actions makes its starting-point conviction, so that in themselves its actions may bring forth the highest end and realize the good. In the Fichtian philosophy nothing can be seen beyond the moment of self-consciousness, of self-conscious Being-within-self, as in the philosophy of England we find expressed — in just as one-sided a way — the moment of Being-for-another, or of consciousness, and that not as a moment simply, but as the principle of the truth; in neither of the two is there the unity of both — or spirit.
Fichte's philosophy constitutes a significant epoch in Philosophy regarded in its outward form. It is from him and from his methods that abstract thought proceeds, deduction and construction. Hence with the Fichtian philosophy a revolution took place in Germany. The public had penetrated as far as the philosophy of Kant, and until the Kantian philosophy was reached the interest awakened by Philosophy was general; it was accessible, and men were curious to know about it, it pertained to the ordinary knowledge of a man of culture (supra, p. 218). Formerly men of business, statesmen, occupied themselves with Philosophy; now, however, with the intricate idealism of the philosophy of Kant, their wings droop helpless to the ground. Hence it is with Kant that we first begin to find a line of separation which parts us from the common modes of consciousness; but the result, that the Absolute cannot be known, has become one generally acknowledged. With Fichte the common consciousness has still further separated itself from Philosophy, and it has utterly departed from the speculative element therein present. For Fichte's ego is not merely the ego of the empiric consciousness, since general determinations of thought such as do not fall within the ordinary consciousness have likewise to be known and brought to consciousness; in this way since Fichte's time few men have occupied themselves with speculation. Fichte, it is true, in his later works especially, wrote with a view to meeting the popular ear as we may see in the “Attempt to force the reader into comprehension,” but this end was not accomplished. The public was through the philosophy of Kant and Jacobi strengthened in its opinion — one which it accepted utiliter - that the knowledge of God is immediate, and that we know it from the beginning and without requiring to study, and hence that Philosophy is quite superfluous.
The times called for life, for spirit. Now since mind has thus retreated within self-consciousness, but within self-consciousness as a barren ego, which merely gives itself a content or a realization through finitenesses and individualities which in and for themselves are nothing, the next stage is found in knowing this realization of self-consciousness in itself, in knowing the content in itself as a content which, penetrated throughout by spirit, is self-conscious and spiritual, or a spirit full of content. In his later popular works Fichte thus set forth faith, love, hope, religion, treating them without philosophic interest, and as for a general public: it was a philosophy calculated to suit enlightened Jews and Jewesses, councillors and Kotzebues. He places the matter in a popular form: “It is not the finite ego that is, but the divine Idea is the foundation of all Philosophy; everything that man does of himself is null and void. All existence is living and active in itself, and there is no other life than Being, and no other Being than God; God is thus absolute Being and Life. The divine essence likewise comes forth, revealing and manifesting itself-the world.” (32) This immediate unity of the self-conscious ego and its content, or spirit, which merely has an intuition of its self-conscious life and knows it as the truth immediately, manifested itself subsequently in poetic and prophetic tendencies, in vehement aspirations, in excrescences which grew out of the Fichtian philosophy.
On the one hand, in respect of the content which the ego reaches in the philosophy of Fichte, the complete absence of spirituality, the woodenness, and, to put it plainly, the utter foolishness therein evidenced, strike us too forcibly to allow us to remain at his standpoint; our philosophic perception likewise tells us of the one-sidedness and deficiencies of the principle, as also of the evident necessity that the content should prove to be what it is. But on the other hand self-consciousness was therein posited as reality or essence — not as a foreign, alien self-consciousness, but as ego — a signification which all possess, and which finds an answer in the actuality of all. The Fichtian standpoint of subjectivity has thus retained its character of being unphilosophically worked out, and arrived at its completion in forms pertaining to sensation which in part remained within the Fichtian principle, while they were in part the effort — futile though it was — to got beyond the subjectivity of the ego.
a. Friedrich Von Schlegel.
In Fichte's case the limitation is continually reappearing; but because the ego feels constrained to break through this barrier, it reacts against it, and gives itself a resting place within itself; this last ought to be concrete, but it is a negative resting-place alone. This first form, Irony, has Friedrich von Schlegel as its leading exponent. The subject here knows itself to be within itself the Absolute, and all else to it is vain; all the conclusions which it draws for itself respecting the right and good, it likewise knows how to destroy again. It can make a pretence of knowing all things, but it only demonstrates vanity, hypocrisy, and effrontery. Irony knows itself to be the master of every possible content; it is serious about nothing, but plays with all forms. The other side is this, that subjectivity has cast itself into religious subjectivity. The utter despair in respect of thought, of truth, and absolute objectivity, as also the incapacity to give oneself any settled basis or spontaneity of action, induced the noble soul to abandon itself to feeling and to seek in Religion something fixed and steadfast; this steadfast basis, this inward satisfaction, is to be found in religious sentiments and feelings. This instinct impelling us towards something fixed has forced many into positive forms of religion, into Catholicism, superstition and miracle working, in order that they may find something on which they can rest, because to inward subjectivity everything fluctuates and wavers. With the whole force of its mind subjectivity tries to apply itself to what is positively given, to bend its head beneath the positive, to cast itself, so to speak, into the arms of externality, and it finds an inward power impelling it so to do.
b. Schleiermacher.
On the other hand the ego finds in the subjectivity and individuality of the personal view of things the height of all its vanity — its Religion. All the various individualities have God within themselves. Dialectic is the last thing to arise and to maintain its place. As this is expressed for philosophic self-consciousness, the foreign intellectual world has lost all significance and truth for ordinary culture; it is composed of three elements, a deity pertaining to a time gone by, and individualized in space and existence, a world which is outside the actuality of self-consciousness, and a world which had yet to appear, and in which self-consciousness would first attain to its reality. The spirit of culture has deserted it, and no longer recognizes anything that is foreign to self-consciousness. In accordance with this principle, the spiritual living essence has then transformed itself into self-consciousness, and it thinks to know the unity of spirit immediately from itself, and in this immediacy to be possessed of knowledge in a poetic, or at least a prophetic manner. As regards the poetic manner, it has a knowledge of the life and person of the Absolute immediately, by an intuition, and not in the Notion, and it thinks it would lose the whole as whole, as a self-penetrating unity, were it not to express the same in poetic form; and what it thus expresses poetically is the intuition of the personal life of self-consciousness. But the truth is absolute motion, and since it is a motion of forms and figures [Gestalten], and the universe is a kingdom of spirits, the Notion is the essence of this movement, and likewise or each individual form; it is its ideal form [Form] and not the real one, or that of figure [Gestalt]. In the latter case necessity is lost sight of; individual action, life and heart, remain within themselves, and undeveloped; and this poetry vacillates betwixt the universality of the Notion and the determinateness and indifference of the figure; it is neither flesh nor fish, neither poetry nor philosophy. The prophetic utterance of truths which claim to be philosophical, thus belongs to faith, to self-consciousness, which indeed perceives the absolute spirit in itself, but does not comprehend itself as self-consciousness, since it places absolute reality above Knowledge, beyond self-conscious reason, as was done by Eschenmayer and Jacobi. This uncomprehending, prophetic manner of speech affirms this or that respecting absolute existence as from an oracle, and requires that each man should find the same immediately in his own heart. The knowledge of absolute reality becomes a matter pertaining to the heart; there are a number of would-be inspired speakers, each of whom holds a monologue and really does not understand the others, excepting by a pressure of the hands and betrayal of dumb feeling. What they say is mainly composed of trivialities, if these are taken in the sense in which they are uttered; it is the feeling, the gesture, the fulness of the heart, which first gives them their significance; to nothing of more importance is direct expression given. They outbid one another in conceits of fancy, in ardent poetry. But before the Truth vanity turns pale, spitefully sneering it sneaks back into itself. Ask not after a criterion of the truth, but after the Notion of the truth in and for itself; on that fix your gaze. The glory of Philosophy is departed, for it presupposes a common ground of thoughts and principles — which is what science demands — or at least of opinions. But now particular subjectivity was everything, each individual was proud and disdainful as regards all others. The conception of independent thought — as though there could be a thought which was not such (Vol. I. p. 60) — is very much the same; men have, it is said, to bring forth a particularity of their own, or else they have not thought for themselves. But the bad picture is that in which the artist shows himself; originality is the production of what is in its entirety universal. The folly of independent thought is that it results in each bringing forth something more preposterous than another.
c. Novalis.
Subjectivity signifies the lack of a firm and steady basis, but likewise the desire for such, and thus it evermore remains a yearning. These yearnings of a lofty soul are set forth in the writings of Novalis. This subjectivity does not reach substantiality, it dies away within itself, and the standpoint it adopts is one of inward workings and fine distinctions; it signifies an inward life and deals with the minutiæ of the truth. The extravagances of subjectivity constantly pass into madness; if they remain in thought they are whirled round and round in the vortex of reflecting understanding, which is ever negative in reference to itself.
d. Fries, Bouterweck, Krug.
Yet a last form of subjectivity is the subjectivity of arbitrary will and ignorance. It maintained this, that the highest mode of cognition is an immediate knowledge as a fact of consciousness; and that is so far right. The Fichtian abstraction and its hard understanding has a repellent effect on thought; slothful reason allowed itself to be told the result of the philosophy of Kant and Jacobi, and renounced all consistent thought, all construction. This arbitrariness gave itself entire liberty — the liberty of the Tabagie - but in doing so it regarded itself from a poetic or prophetic point of view, as we have just seen (pp. 508, 509). Then it was both more sober and more prosaic, and thus brought the old logic and metaphysic once more into evidence, though with this modification that they are made facts of consciousness. Thus Fries turns back to the faith of Jacobi in the form of immediate judgments derived from reason, and dark conceptions incapable of utterance.(33) He wished to improve the critique of pure reason by apprehending the categories as facts of consciousness; anything one chooses can in such a case be introduced. Bouterweck speaks of “The virtue, the living nature of power, the fact that subject and object are regarded as one, that is as absolute virtue. With this absolute virtue we have all Being and action, namely the eternal, absolute and pure unity; in one word we have grasped the world within us and we have grasped ourselves in the world, and that indeed not through conceptions and conclusions, but directly through the power which itself constitutes our existence and our rational nature. To know the All, or indeed to know God in any way, is however, impossible for any mortal.” (34) Krug wrote a “Groundwork of Philosophy,” setting forth a “Transcendental Synthesis — that is a transcendental realism and a transcendental idealism inseparably bound together.” It is an “original, transcendental synthesis of the real and the ideal, the thinking subject and the corresponding outer world;” this transcendental synthesis must “be recognized and asserted without any attempt being made at explaining it.” (35)
Schelling (next section) — Contents
1. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Leipzig, 1794), Preface, p. xii.
2. Fichte's Leben und Briefwechsel, edited by his son, Pt. I. pp. 3, 6, 24 seq.; 38 seq.; 142, 189; 337, 338, 348, 349, 353, 354, 358-364; Pt. II. pp. 140-142; Pt. I. pp. 370-372, 442-448, 455; 518, 540; 578.
3. Fichte's posthumous works, which were not published until after Hegel's death, nevertheless show that the writer in his lectures at the Berlin University likewise worked out scientifically this newly developed point of view in his philosophy; Fichte made a beginning in this regard even in the brochure which appeared in 1810: “Die Wissenschaftslehre in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse” (v. Michelet: Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie, Pt. I. pp. 441, 442). [Editor's note.]
4. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 10-12.
5. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 13, 14.
6. Fichte: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (Weimar, 1794), p. 12.
7. Fichte: Grundlage der ges. Wissenschaftsl., Preface, pp. x., xi.
8. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 184, 185.
9. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 3.
10. Cf. Fichte: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 13-17, 19-39, 50-52.
11. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 4, 5.
12. Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 23, 5, 15, 17, 8.
13. Fichte: Grundlage der ges. Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 17, 19-22.
14. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 34, 31, 23, 27-30 (52), 14, 18.
15. Ibidem, pp. 52-56, 74.
16. Fichte's Anweisung zum seligen Leben, pp. 80-82.
17. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 57.
18. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 78, 79.
19. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 60, 67, 59, 76.
20. Ibidem, pp. 121, 122.
21. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 194-197, 204, 221, 222.
22. Ibidem, p. 228.
23. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 225, 229, 232.
24. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 233, 238, 239.
25. Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 302, 246, 247.
26. Ibidem, p. 273.
27. Fichte: Ueber den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung (Fichte's Leben, Part II.), p. 111.
28. Fichte: Verantwortungsschreiben gegen die Anklage des Atheismus, pp. 51, 53.
29. Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts (Jena und Leipzig, 1796), Part I. pp. 55-71.
30. Ibidem, pp. 78-82.
31. Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts, Part II. p. 21.
32. Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III., § 192, p. 416; Fichte: Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten (Berlin, 1806), pp. 4, 5, 15, 25-27.
33. Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III. § 158, pp. 350, 351; Fries: Neue Kritik d. Vernunft (First edition, Heidelberg, 1807), Vol. I. pp. 75, 281, 284, 343; 206.
34. Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III. § 156, pp. 347, 348; cf. Bouterweck's Apodiktik (1799), Part II. pp. 206-212.
35. Krug: Entwurf eines neuen Organon der Philosophie (Meissen, 1801), pp. 75, 76; Rixner: Handbuch d. Geschichte d. Philosophie, Vol. III. § 157, p. 349.