The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (39 page)

Kant was worried that, if we are allowed to accredit the subject with knowledge of itself, as it is in itself, then

no one could deny that we are entitled to extend ourselves further into [the field of things in themselves], settle in it, and … take possession of it. For … synthetic propositions
a priori
would not … be feasible and accessible merely in relation to objects of possible experience …, but rather they could reach as far as things in general and in themselves, which consequence would put an end to this whole critique and would bid us leave things the same old way they were before. (Kant (
1998
), B410)

Fichte sees no such danger. Once we have accredited the subject with this highly distinctive knowledge of its own essence, this practical knowledge concerning what it is to act, there is neither need nor possibility to invoke any things in themselves beyond that: no need, because transcendentalism provides for an explanation of the subject’s knowledge of other objects within the framework of that distinctive self-knowledge; no possibility,
because transcendentalism precludes reference to anything beyond the subject (‘Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge’, §6).

Concerning the first of these, the dispensability of things in themselves beyond the subject, I shall say some more in the next section. Concerning the second, the unavailability of things in themselves beyond the subject, note that Fichte sometimes defends it by appeal to a variation of the Limit Argument, which we considered in §8 of the previous chapter, the argument for the incoherence of our drawing a limit to what we can make sense of. In Fichte’s variation, for the subject to be able to ‘make sense of’ something is simply for the subject to be capable of thought in which that thing occurs, which is in turn for that thing not to transcend the subject, in one sense of the word ‘transcend’; and the conclusion of the argument is that there is no such limit to be drawn, hence that nothing does in that sense transcend the subject.
²⁷
In the terminology of §8 of the previous chapter, this is a particularly ‘thin’ interpretation of sense-making under which, for all that was said there, the argument may succeed.
²⁸
Here is one formulation of it:

Of any connection
beyond the limits of my consciousness
I cannot speak; … for even in speaking of it, I must … think of it; and this is precisely the same connection which occurs in my ordinary natural consciousness, and no other. I cannot proceed a hair’s breadth beyond this consciousness, any more than I can spring out of myself. All attempts to conceive of an absolute connection between things
in themselves
and the I
in itself
are but attempts to ignore our own thought, a strange forgetfulness of the undeniable fact that we can have no thought without having thought it. (
Vocation
, p. 74, emphasis in original)

Here is another:

[We must be] rid of the thing-in-itself; for … whatever we may think, we are that which thinks therein, and hence … nothing could ever come to exist independently of us, for everything is necessarily related to our thinking. (I, 501)

This feature of Fichte’s metaphysics may be its best known. It is often portrayed as an anti-Kantian repudiation of the very idea of a thing in itself. Fichte, for reasons that we have glimpsed, does not see it as anti-Kantian at
all. But he does cast it as a repudiation of the very idea of a thing in itself, which he elsewhere describes as ‘the uttermost perversion of reason, and a concept perfectly absurd’ (I, 472). This is less bizarre than it looks. The argument above rests on such a thin interpretation of sense-making, and thereby places such exigent demands on the notion of a thing in itself, that Kant need have no quarrel with it, except possibly a terminological quarrel. Kant’s own idea of a thing in itself was far less exorbitant than Fichte’s. What Kant called ‘things in themselves’ were not beyond the reach of thin sense-making, certainly not sense-making as thin as this. If we adopt a more Kantian way of speaking, and if we recall how little Kant himself was prepared to venture about things in themselves, then we shall surely want to describe Fichte, not as repudiating the very idea of a thing in itself, but rather as giving one particular minimalist account of how things in themselves are. It is an account in which the subject (or subjects) is (or are) the only ultimate reality.

What
now
of the appearance of a departure from Kant? Well, such a minimalist account of how things in themselves are, at least as far as its minimalism goes, is not obviously incompatible with anything in Kant. But that is a matter of its content. There is also the matter of the confidence that we are being invited to place in it. Kant could surely not have tolerated that. Such confidence would be an entitlement only to those who could take their spectacles off. So the real departure from Kant now appears to be just what it initially appeared to be: not a recoil from the notion of things in themselves, but, on the contrary, a professed insight into them.

4. Fichte’s System II: Conditions of the Subject’s Intuition of Itself. The System’s Self-Vindication

This is not
per se
an objection to Fichte’s system. Perhaps Kant was wrong to deny us any such insight into things in themselves, as some of his own struggles with that denial have already suggested. But still, what are the prospects for a Fichtean minimalism, for providing a satisfactory explanation of the subject’s knowledge of objects without appeal to any things in themselves beyond the subject?

We cannot hope to address this question without some further reflection on what counts as ‘the subject’. For even if the subject’s knowledge of objects is not a result of its being given that which is independent of it, there does seem to be a passive element in the knowledge which suggests that, at the very least, the subject is given (does not create) that which is
different
from it – as it may be, some part of itself, some feature of itself, some aspect of itself – such as happens when I literally look through my spectacles at my own hand. But what then
makes
what it is given a part of itself, a feature of itself, or an aspect of itself? Is Fichte simply relying once again on his own
extreme conception of independence whereby the sheer fact that the subject is given something means that that thing is not independent of it? Or is he perhaps advocating that the subject is creative in its knowledge of objects, and is not thereby given anything?

Fichte’s system is an attempt, in part, to address and clarify just such questions. He entitles his system ‘
Wissenschaftslehre
’. This is a term that is variously translated as ‘science of knowledge’, ‘theory of knowledge’, ‘theory of scientific knowledge’, ‘theory of science’, and ‘science of science’. The last of these is in several respects the most appropriate.
²⁹
It signals how, yet again in this drama of ours, we are dealing with something reflexive. Fichte is offering us an account of our knowledge which is meant to apply, in particular, to the very knowledge with which it is meant to furnish us. He is trying to make sense, at the highest level of generality, of how we make sense of things, including how we make sense of things at that level of generality.
³⁰
From that point of view we do well to remind ourselves that this whole exercise is supposed to be a fundamentally practical exercise. That whereof Fichte is offering us an account must also therefore be, to a significant extent, practical. Seen in this light, both his questions and his answers assume a new significance.

At the very beginning of the previous section I provided a sketch of Fichte’s system. That sketch gave it the appearance of a wild metaphysical yarn in which the subject, enjoying a kind of infinitude, does indeed create all the objects of its knowledge – though only having first created itself, and prior to creating a second, finite version of itself. This appearance was later reinforced when I spoke of the subject’s intellectual intuition as self-creative. In fact the appearance is grossly misleading. But it can soon be dispelled. The verb I applied to the subject was ‘posit’, not ‘create’, ‘posit’ being the standard English translation of ‘
setzen
’, and any connotations that positing has of creation, a notion that I used in connection with the subject’s intellectual intuition but not in connection with the subject itself, are to be dismissed.

Each person’s starting point is himself, as a knowing willing subject, confronted with a practical choice about how to affirm himself, both in his dealings with the world and in his thinking about the world: whether to take seriously that starting point, and to accept himself as a free agent with respect to whose free agency all other questions arise, or to regard himself
as a mere part of nature, buffeted along in accord with freedom-precluding mechanical laws. It is a choice that ultimately disappears, since only the first alternative is genuinely liveable. The second is a pretence. But living that first alternative, in good faith, does involve infinitude of sorts. For the freedom in question, together with the person’s commitment to it, is a kind of unconditionedness. It is a freedom from limitations. The person does posit himself, or, in the impersonal formulation that I have been using, the subject posits itself, but this self-positing is to be understood as
self-assertion
or
self-expression
, not self-creation. Where there
is
an element of self-creation is in the person’s exercise of his unconditioned freedom, to adopt laws – conditions – for the proper exercise of that freedom. The person’s intellectual intuition of himself is his knowing how to act in accord with those freely adopted laws, thus how properly to act, in fact how properly to
be
. For what the person most quintessentially
is
is an agent, or, as Fichte also sometimes goes as far as to say (see the previous section), an act. And as for what it is for him properly to act or properly to be – just as in Kant, that is the same as for him to act morally, or to be dutiful.

None of this makes sense, however, without some field of activity in which to act. There has to be something distinct from the person, constraining him in various ways, presenting him with real concrete choices about how to exercise his freedom.
³¹
Here is Fichte:

Our consciousness of a reality external to ourselves is … not rooted in the operation of supposed external objects, which indeed exist for us … only in so far as we already know of them; nor is it an empty vision evoked by our own imagination and thought …; it is rather the necessary faith in our own freedom of power, in our own real activity, and in the definite laws of human action, which lies at the root of all our consciousness of a reality external to ourselves…. We are compelled to believe that we act, and that we ought to act in a certain manner. We are compelled to assume a certain sphere for this action: this sphere is the real, actually present world, such as we find it – and the world is absolutely nothing more than this sphere, and cannot in any way extend beyond it…. We act not because we know, but we know because we are called upon to act. (
Vocation
, p. 98)

The person accordingly posits a distinct reality. But, as before, this is not to be thought of as an act of creation. To say that the person posits a distinct reality, having posited himself, is in a sense merely to say that the person’s
acknowledging a distinct reality is an indispensable part of his positing (asserting, expressing) himself.

Likewise indeed where the third positing is concerned. A necessary condition of the person’s acknowledging a distinct reality which constrains him in various ways is that he should acknowledge that he himself is distinct from something by which he is thus constrained, and is therefore finite. Thus, as well as possessing infinitude in his freedom, indeed as a condition of possessing infinitude in his freedom, he must also possess, and must recognize that he possesses, finitude in other respects. His practical use of reason, in the exercise of his infinite freedom, becomes an effort to impose his will on a resistant, recalcitrant world which he must learn to negotiate, in particular by investigating its contours through a theoretical use of reason.
³²

I have already remarked on the reflexivity in the execution of this project. There is also an important reflexivity in its outcome. Though the original espousal of transcendentalism is based on an unprincipled choice, anyone who has made this choice, and who has thought through its implications, can see it as the right choice. In particular, he can see it as the only choice that involves his properly confronting the demands of his own freedom, by doing his duty. ‘Transcendental idealism,’ Fichte proclaims, ‘… appears … as the only dutiful mode of thought in philosophy’ (I, 467). Again: ‘
Wissenschaftslehre
is the only kind of philosophical thinking that accords with duty’ (
Gesamtausgabe
, Series I, Vol. 4, p. 219). But of course, no one can acknowledge that this choice is the only dutiful one unless he accepts that there
is
such a thing as duty and hence, by Fichte’s account, unless he has already made this very choice – this unprincipled choice. There is nothing here with which to
win over
naturalists. (That is precisely what it is for the choice to be unprincipled.) These reflections, as Fichte himself puts it, lie ‘altogether beyond [the purview of naturalists] … and hence this whole statement [sc. the statement of the superiority of transcendentalism over naturalism], which is necessarily beyond them, is made, not for their benefit, but for the sake of others who are attentive and awake’ (I, 510).