Quotes; Important lines/points

J G FICHTE

Concept of Consciousness/ “I”

Before one goes on to explain what Fichte understands by self-consciousness, self-awareness,
one has to look at German Idealism.
German Idealism was a philosophical movement which was centered in Germany during the
period of enlightenment in the late 18th and early 19th century. This movement basically
developed out of the works of Immanuel Kant. Apart from Kant, the other thinkers who
contributed to German Idealism, had all been influenced by Kant and their philosophies
reflected to a great extent their agreement or disagreement with Kant. One amongst those
thinkers was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, apart from Hegel, Schelling and many others.
The German idealists were not satisfied with the idealism that had been put forward by
Berkley and Kant did try to bridge rationalism and empiricism, when he put forward his
transcendental idealism. Transcendental Idealism claimed that one knows more than ideas in
one’s minds and that we do know about the actual phenomena which we perceive but which
are not necessarily real, and we can never know how things are in themselves or Noumena.
German philosophers at that time used Kant’s works as a starting point and added their own
interpretations and Fichte was one among them. Fichte went on to assert that he did not agree
with Kant’s concept of a Noumenon or thing in itself, and this became the point of departure
and the beginning of his own thought. Fichte held that Kant’s concept of thing in itself which
we can never know but whose existence Kant went on to affirm was basically a dogmatic
position and he decided that he would simply do away with the concept of Noumenon and
instead assert that consciousness does not have grounding in a so-called real world. Fichte
actually got a lot of recognition for arguing/stating that the consciousness, self-awareness is
not dependent on anything outside of itself. Thus, for Fichte, the ultimate reality is something
the conscious subject recognizes spontaneously. Further, the self can not only know the
ultimate reality which is within itself and this led to what is termed as knowing self-
observation or Fichte’s system – the Wissenschaftslehre or the doctrine of knowledge. One
must know however that this is not the title of one book, rather, it is the name of his life-long
project which he introduced in 1794 and went on to give more than 10 different versions.
As stated in the article, Fichte in the second person focuses on the idea that all our
consciousness is conditioned or determined by our immediate consciousness. He begins by
thinking how one is able to think “I” and as soon as one does this, one discovers that one’s
consciousness is determined internally in a manner whereby we try to understand what we
would like to put under the concept of “I”. Fichte, while addressing the readers is not
concerned with what one may have included in the concept “I” than what he may have
thought about. All that he is focusing on is that when one is engaged in an act of thinking
where one moves from the thinking of the eye, to thinking about the chair or table, one is
immediately able to note the activity and the freedom. In other words, the individual is
immediately aware of how one has made a jump to how one is acting when one is thinking of
something. Here, Fichte is emphasizing that how thinking is an acting, and when one thinks
of some specific thing, one acts in a specific manner.
His doctrine of knowledge basically is to be understood that not only Fichte believed himself
to be Kantian yet his views were different from that of Kant. Fichte, as stated earlier, rejected
the concept of thing in itself but how the world is to be looked at. As he rejected the thing in
itself, Fichte has to give a metaphysical account of the world and according to him, one can
do this simply by understanding the nature of thought or reason.
In other words, Fichte sees all reality as the product of thought. As Fichte regarded reality as
the product of thought or the “I”, the aim of Wissenschaftslehre is to demonstrate that the
ground of all beings is an infinite intelligence.
Fichte is not wanting to explain why anything exists at all, rather he wants to answer the
question how can we have knowledge of the external world and tis is dependent on Fichte’s
view of self-consciousness. Fichte’s self-consciousness is characterized by the subject-object
identity.
Fichte in chapter one of the fourth installment of an attempt at a new presentation of the
Wissenschaftslehre asks the reader what they understand by “I”. He points out how we are
conscious when we are thinking of “I” and how he is not concerned with what one may have
included in the concept “I”. His concern is whether the concept of “I” is inclusive of what
Fichte by “I”. He goes on to explain that how when one is thinking and when one is engaged
in the act of thinking, one may say for example thinking of the table and how one is aware of
the activity of one is immediately conscious when one is thinking.
Here, Fichte is asserting that thinking is like acting because whenever we think of some
specific object we act in a specific manner. Then, his task is to focus on how one is to
proceed when one thinks I (self-conscious/self-awareness).
Here, Fichte elaborates what he thinks is involved in this particular thought “I”. He states
how when we are thinking of the table or our wall, we are involved as a thinking subject who
is involved in this act of thinking and thereby, we made a distinction between the thinking
subject and what we thought of. “In short the thinking subject and what is thought of are two
distinct things.” In contrast, when you redirect and think of yourself, you are not only the
thinking subject but you are also that about which you are thinking. Therefore, the subject
and object of thinking are one and the same. Thus, Fichte states that the concept of the “I”
simply involves acting upon itself and nothing more. When our thinking turns back upon
your own self as the thinking subject, this concept of self-reverting simply demonstrates what
the “I” stands for. It is this method of self-reverting that Fichte is following in his enquiry.
“The only “I” that I am is concerned with here is the one that comes into being through the
sheer self-reverting act of your own thinking.” While stressing that his focus is only on what
immediately appears within my consciousness or the concept of I, Fichte is stating that he is
not concerned with any being the “I” may have.
Fichte adds the phrase for the “I” to criticize Descartes by stating how he has stated one had
to exist in order to think. According to Fichte, he went on to postulate an existence one’s own
self that was independent of thinking and if one can exist before one can actually think this
argument seems redundant.
After Fichte postulated the self-positing “I” as the explanatory ground of all experience, he
went on what exactly the construction of self-positing “I” involved. The “I”, so far as Fichte
explains is aware of itself not only as an object but also as a subject which is free and it
becomes aware of a difference between representations of objective world from our
representations of it, and representations that are a product of our own mental activity. The
point Fichte here is making is that although the “I” is free, yet it somehow comes to posit
itself as limited by something other than itself and these limitations hinder its activity.
He next asks his reader that he must pay attention to what he focused on in the enquiry when
he paid attention to yourself. This attentiveness, thinking of yourself was something which
was common as a subjective element between the reader and Fichte. The reason Fichte is
emphasizing on this act of attending to self-positing is because unless one understands this,
Fichte asserts one would not be able to understand his theory which is based upon this.
Therefore, he asks the reader to guide him and place Fichte close to what he is going to
observe.
Fichte, then, goes on to explain why he has issues regarding how consciousness has been
accounted for by Philosophers. They went on to distinguish in every consciousness the
subject and the object, which means that we are conscious of ourselves as a subject and of
something that is aware -- the object. According to Fichte, one can never fully understand
consciousness in such a manner. Therefore, he does away with the subject object distinction
and states: "There is a type of consciousness in which what is subjective and what is
objective...are absolutely one and the same."
As Fichte explains that the consciousness he is talking about the subjective and the objective
are united. However, how will one represent this? In other words, one is conscious of one's
own thinking and this self-consciousness, which is immediate, is often referred to in scientific
terms as 'Intuition'. For Fichte, the fact that self-consciousness is the same as being conscious
of one's own thinking is important to be understood for that is what forms the basis of the
system that he's presenting in the Wissenschaftslehre.
Thus, according to Fichte, unless one has understood this unity between the subject and the
object, one will fail to understand what consciousness is. Therefore, any Philosophy which
does not do this would be superficial and incomplete.
Thus, Fichte's focus is on the "I", the intuition, the self-positing, the awareness and here he
criticizes Kant, without taking his name, by stating that the most famous Philosopher had
asserted the existence of a thing, which continued to exist independently of consciousness.
The reason Fichte is critical is because, in his opinion, if one cannot talk about anything of
which we are not conscious, will amount to saying that we are talking of something without
knowing anything about it; and further, whatever we are aware or conscious of cannot be
conditioned or determined by some determinate object. Thus, as Fichte states, one is talking
of Transcendental idealism, but where the intellect is self-intuiting itself. He prefers to use the
term "I would" or the "self" reverting activity. For Fichte, the word "self" presupposes the
concept of "I".
Fichte states how one discovered yourself in the act of representing an object and in the act
representing yourself, and how the mind was active in both these representations. As Fichte
had asked the reader to think of "your table, your wall" and the reader had successfully
succeeded in producing the thoughts of those objects, Fichte asked the reader to "think of
yourself and pay special attention to this act of thinking". For the reader to focus on the act of
thinking, the reader had to distance itself from the contemplative state and refocus on the act
of thinking. Fichte says that all that he can do is to try and make you understand through your
own inner intuition, to focus on something that can exist only within you. Fichte, here, is
explaining that how through the process of self-reverting, the reader understood the meaning
of the term "I", and once the meaning was understood, how your thinking was also involved
in your activity and thus, through the process of self-reverting activity, you were able to grasp
"I". "The concept of "I" is the self-reverting activity, grasped as something stable and
enduring." Thus, for Fichte, it is only through this self-reverting activity, which he terms as
'intuition', that "I" as active and "I" as the object of my activity coincide. Hence, Fichte
explains in the fourth published installment of "Wissenschaftslehre" his understanding of
consciousness.