Rametta - The Speculative Structures of Fichte's 1807 WL-2007

2007. Idealistic Studies, Volume 37, Issue 2. ISSN 0046-8541. pp.
121142
THE SPECULATIVE STRUCTURES OF
FICHTES 1807 WISSENSCHAFTSLEHRE
1
Translation and Notes, Garth Green
Gaetano Rametta
Abstract: This paper provides a synthesis and translation of Le strutture specula-
tive della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 18011807
(Genova: Pantograf, 1995) by Gaetano Rametta. The 1807 Wissenschaftslehre
offers important insight into Fichtes mittlere Phase (18011807). Fichtes text and
Ramettas work on it remain untranslated into English; this translation, the notes to
which offer a running commentary and defnitions of key terms, intends to make
the former known through the latter. Rametta focuses on Fichtes analysis of vision,
and the vision of vision. In his middle-period and later work, Fichte developed this
theme far past the early Jena-period doctrine thereof, as treated by Dieter Henrich.
Within this thematic context, Rametta also discusses the proof-structure of the
1807 WL, the distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Phnomenologie, and the
concept of Weisheit or wisdom. The article concludes with a treatment of the
signifcance of Fichtes later philosophy for the philosophy of religion.
I. Prolegomena
During the winter semester course he offered in Knigsberg in 1807, Fichte devoted the
frst lecture to prolegomena to the Wissenschaftslehre, to the fundamental indications
that should guide students during the course and along its Gang des Denkens, the path
of thought that is the Doctrine of Science.
2
For this reason, Fichte emphasized that such
indications, although only preliminary, should be listened to with a complete dedication,
unnecessary, perhaps, in other cases. The difference between the Wissenschaftslehre,
as a unique and authentic philosophical discourse, and all other systems, is already
suggested.
3
The former apparently does not intend only knowledge, understood as a
collection of objectively valid propositions, but instead intends, as will be stated at the
end of this frst lecture, Weisheit, wisdom, which itself implies a mastery at oncemit
einem Schlag, as Fichte writesnot only refective but lived (Leben).
It is clear, then, why in the Wissenschaftslehre a prolegomenon must assume a dis-
tinct and more profound signifcance. A prolegomenon must provide for the student not
IDEALISTIC STUDIES 122
only such fundamental concepts as would allow her to follow and learn passively what
an instructor proclaims ex cathedra. It must be concerned above all with the awakening
of an attitude, a disposition, which will allow the student not only to follow logically
and memorize what an instructor asserts, but to adopt (or, as Fichte better expresses it,
to participate in) a new sensibility.
4
These prolegomena must not, then, be received
passively, but must be taken up by each for herself, in a way that incorporates the whole
being of the person who continues to acknowledge each moment of progress along the
course of the investigation as it is disclosed.
In what way, then, should we understand the new sense which Fichte invites us to
adopt? How does Fichte approach and depict its context, and content, in this Prolegomena,
and throughout, the 1807 Wissenschaftslehre? Although it is of course too early to answer
with any precision, here already in this introductory context Fichte provides a helpful in-
dication. He suggests a determination of the concept by means of its effect; Fichte invites
us to participate in a sensibility that is new insofar as it discloses a new world.
5
Such
a sensibility must then indicate a fundamental position, or disposition, constructed so
as to allow this new world to open or disclose itself. This represents in fact a sort of
conversio, or Kehre, on the part of the whole person, by means of which alone the appear-
ance of a new world becomes possible, that investigated within the Wissenschaftslehre,
and that we both practice and indeed are, in its Gang des Denkens, or progress.
Sense then appears as a receptivity, in and through which this new world
will come to light. For this reason, we can defne this central concept as a capacity for
apprehending and acknowledging that which appears, or shows itself. Evidently, this
acknowledgment already implies a disposition by means of which such apprehension is
possible, by which the latter is conditioned. There can be no appearance of, or opening
upon, a new world or novel experience, without a preliminary disposition to its acknowl-
edgment by the subject, just as, vice versa, there can be no such disposition without the
new world apprehended in and through our investigation.
But from where, then, does any diffculty arise? What is the problem-context of the
1807 Wissenschaftslehre? Fichte identifes an evident contradiction in the fact that phi-
losophy, in order to investigate and observe the cognitive and conative activity of the
fnite subject, must necessarily distantiate itself therefrom, and not only in a horizontal
sense. The distantiation produced by philosophy, that alone makes such observation pos-
sible, implies an irreducible element of verticality as well. In order to observe the fnite
subject, the philosopher must elevate herself above the fnite subject, in order to attain
to a vision (Ansicht) of or insight (Einsicht) into the focus of investigation that is
transparent and complete, a vision in this case of vision itself, as representative of both
the cognitive and conative activity of the fnite subject.
Two consequences, which we will attempt to better understand throughout the follow-
ing essay, follow from this problem-context; (1) a thematization of the relation between
theory and practice, or philosophy and experience, and (2) a more precise differentiation
between the status and signifcance of the theme of vision pertinent to the fnite subject
and that of vision in stricto sensu, understood transcendentally according to its universal
formal character. This analysis will direct itself to the reunifcation of philosophy and ex-
123
perience, life, then, insofar as philosophy can be understood as a mode and type of vision,
and therefore a disposition of the soul or mode of comportment, and a form of life.
By means of this hypothesis, one could account for important terminological develop-
ments within this 1807 WL, which appears to attribute an amplifed semantic signifcance
to the term vision, an attribution that will amplify the functional role of the concept in
the economy of the work as a whole. The denotation of vision in fact develops from the
Ansicht of the early, Jena period Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, in which the objective
moment of vision is explicit.
6
Therein, vision was understood as the act of seeing. Ansicht there denoted that which
is seen, that which opens itself to vision. Consciousness is consciousness-of, in contem-
porary terms. This objective moment is transformed, or recontextualized, in the Einsicht
of the Privatissimum and the subsequent Wissenschaftslehren. In the latter, Fichte appears
concerned to focus upon and make explicit the transcendental and genetic aspect of vision
as an activity and as the constitutive act of the Wissenschaftslehre itself, which is to expose
the originary activity of the fnite subject that, in the WL, is investigated and observed, or
seen.
7
In this acceptation, Einsicht, insight, would denote the transcendental vision
in stricto sensu, which would have its objective moment, its Ansicht, only as the derived
and derivative result, its accomplishment.
8
This new sense, then, can be expressed alternately through the affrmation that the
transcendental philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre is to actualize the possibility, by
means of its account of vision, of a vision of vision itself. This proposition can be used
to orient ourselves within Fichtes later philosophy of self-consciousness as such. In fact,
just as would a self-refexive vision, so self -consciousness implies not only a posit-
ing or a positing of self, but a positing of itself as itself. The I does not simply posit
itself, but posits itself (in a moment of self-objectifcation), and posits itself as itself,
as an I (in and through the consciousness of that self-objectifcation, and therefore in a
self-consciousness of all possible consciousness).
II. Vision: Natural and Transcendental
From this general theme of the constitutive refexivity of vision follows a distinction
between two modalities of vision; natural and transcendental. In the former modality, the
I can without doubt observe itself. But how could it appear to itself in such observa-
tion? The I would fnd itself already predetermined. The I would be perceived simply
as always already accomplished, given, in one or another manner, either materialiter or
formaliter.
9
Such natural or factical (faktisch) vision results therefore only in the sem-
blance of a self-consciousness. At this stage, even though the I is conscious of itself, it
is an I as a datum among data, a fact among other factsin Fichtes own simile from
the Grundlage of 1794/95, it is like a piece of lava.
10
In fact, natural vision, even when
turned upon itself, cannot capture or comprehend the genetic and transcendental move-
ment which alone makes possible its determinable and determinate existence; it cannot
grasp the series of free acts in which manifest or take form the constituent conditions of
vision itself.
Fichte for this reason, almost paradoxically, calls blind, hidden, or invisible what also
is or pertains to vision. More precisely, this hiddenness at the root obtains because
what is invisible to and in an act of vision is the root itself, its own root, the origin
(Urquell) of the act of vision. This root or point of origin, Fichte continues in the Second
Lecture, is the incognito of the Absolute, =X. Indeed, this will be represented by the
symbol A, the image of a supreme unity which Fichte expresses also with the concept
of Life (Leben).
11
This point of unity cannot be comprehended in abstraction from or
independently of its particular phenomenological determinations or manifestations, the
products of its activity; but neither it is not clear how this point of unity can be understood
in relation to such manifold determinations.
Fichtes exposition cannot yet claim to have derived transcendentally the originary
character of this Urquell in its constitutive correlation with the actuality of the external
world and of consciousness. But because such manifold determinations imply such a unity
as their source, the multiplicity of these manifold elements has constantly to be subtracted
(abziehen) from it, in a way and with a signifcance that will be clarifed below.
12
One is
concerned principally, as above, with the manner in which one observes what is given
to us. This dynamic, however, does not obtain merely at the level of empirical percep-
tion, or on the superfce of a simple presence. According to this second acceptation of
sensibility, and the concept of a new sense, I see the other only insofar as I see
otherwise. Fichte determines precisely the alterity of this transcendental vision, which
consists in the fact that this latter sees the coming-to-be of the form (Gestalt).
13
In this
lies the truly essential point, and task.
An x; the task was to comprehend it, in order to subtract it: this proposition defnes
the specifcity or particular character of the WL according to the prolegomena of 1807.
This task of penetrating the x, as an x, as an unknown quantity, and as a determination
of the I, coincides with its subtraction from A, as just described. This A indicates,
as above, the Absolute as Life (Leben), and presupposes the possibility of retracing the
course of transcendental philosophy back to this unique and unconditional principle. On
occasion, Fichte utilizes the term One (Eins) in order to indicate the directionality of
the movement ad quem made by our refection, in its retracing or return of fnite determi-
nations to the principle of their origin or genesis. According to Fichte, only the doctrine
of science posits this presupposition; only the doctrine of science demonstrates that the
implication of the principle or principium is internal to each act of refection.
14
In this way, the WL is able to posit the presupposition; but since it does so in and
through refection, it cannot do so except as (Als) that which has been presupposed; it
can posit its principle only as assumed, as comprehended inside the act and movement
of refection which posits it as such.
15
This presupposition, however, is lost by refection,
to refection, once again; in refecting upon it, it refects upon it as posited, or as ob-
jectifed. The presupposition in this way eludes or escapes this effort at recovery. Precisely
insofar as one attempts to capture the presupposition by means of refection, determine
it as posited, or objectifed, one is trapped by a systematic and even necessary inability
to render this X as presupposed. In the search for the Principium, then, we can only
subtract or negate each determination as and insofar as posited, in order, fnally, to reach
the presupposition in its purity.
The fact that (Dass) such a refection is posited, then, the actuality of our refective
activity, exceeds the possibilities of refection. Once identifed as refection, refection
125
itself poses the problem of the implication between position and presupposition. As Fichte
will suggest in the Eighth Lecture, only once weve seen the schematism or effect of
the faculty of knowledge as a schematism, as a product or result, can we subtract it
as being the effect of a Vermgen.
16
But the fact that it posits itself as itself, as refection,
is not itself an act or an instance thereof that can be derived by means of refection.
Now, however, refection can indeed refect that fact, posit it as that fact that refection
has not posited and cannot posit, in order to be able to, by means of this processus, refect
its self-negation in the moment of its transcendental self-derivation. In this way, refec-
tion posits and refects precisely its own self-subtraction. The genetic demonstration
that philosophy conducts upon itself is equivalent, then, and isomorphic, to the genetic
movement through which refection demonstrates the necessity of a self-subtraction (as
ground for all positing), with the intent of grasping, again according to the text of 1807,
the pure A.
17
Here, then, Fichte returns again, in beginning the Third Lecture of the
1807 WL, to the fundamental question we have indicated throughout our exegesis; to the
proper transcendental determination of the condition for the possibility of experience
as an Urquell, the original source of all appearance. The Third Lecture of the 1807
WL dwells on precisely this theme, deepening the understanding already achieved of the
way in which we may progress in our Gang des Denkens toward a genetic or originary
determination of its intrinsic character.
18
III. The As-Structure of Vision: Position and Presupposition
As is well-known, these general themes provide the basic structure of the doctrine of science
as such. But they are treated within the frst lectures of the Knigsberger Wissenschaftslehre
in an apparently merely assertoric or thetic manner, either without or with only adumbrated
demonstrations. For this reason, it is important for us to pause over each proposition or
term, and consider its signifcance in light of the thematic and argumentative context of this
work. We will also need to consider such signifcance in light of complementary exposi-
tions that Fichte had formulated more thoroughly elsewhere during the same period, and
that appear to underlie and be presupposed by the more obscure assertions, fragments of
arguments, and polemical passages present within the manuscript of 1807. However, far
from revealing only fragments more thoroughly and satisfactorily expressed elsewhere,
this work delineates an original and organic vision of the fundamental principles of the
Wissenschaftslehre as defned in this mittlere Phase, the systematic structure of which we
will be able to reconstruct in spite of and by means of the fragmentary and stylistically
unfnished character of the manuscript.
19
It is evident in any case that Fichte limited himself until this point in the manuscript
to a thetic or assertoric presentation of what would require a genetic deduction in order
to attain to a proper theoretical status and legitimacy. We could say that the evidence
reached at this point maintains itself at the level of facticity. This factical evidence has
not yet been demonstrated as the result of a process of genesis. Only in this way could
such evidence be justifed epistemologically according to fundamental and necessary
laws, rather than merely epiphenomenal and derivative principles that presuppose rather
than produce such originary evidence.
20
Although the basic structure of the principles and
conception of the WL has emerged, and although a system of thought in its general, factical
characteristics has been delineated, these elements have not yet emerged as the result of
a demonstration, and have not yet been illuminated within a construction that represents
them genetically as elements in a mutual relation to a common origin or source.
Fichte hints at this theoretical problem-context when, already in the Second Lecture,
he affrms that with the determination of the incognito of the Absolute (=X) as life the
pure truth, the original source (Urquell) of all the rest, although not yet as such an original
source has been found. Life has been discovered as the truth of being; however, it has not
yet tied to its originary effectivity. Its original character in relationship to the transcendental
derivation of the real determinations of the world and of consciousness has not yet been
shown. In any case, the fact of having reached the knowledge of X as life allows Fichte
to formulate the following scheme:
A
|
a-b
This schema corresponds exactly to the narrative that we have reported above, according
to which we have found the concept of life (Leben) as the original source of every-
thing that is actual (Wirklich) but not yet as an original source. This has not yet been
established as the theme of transcendental, and genetic, refection. Here, Fichte fnds
the demonstrative and not merely assertoric character of his doctrine as an authentic
transcendental philosophy, in the dis-covery of how particular determinations can be
represented in the movement or processus or Fortgang of their genetic arising. We are
to focus our analysis, then, on the dynamic of, and dynamics within, this movement. We
are to reconstruct, within the form of its becoming, what to the natural attitude appears
only on the basis of presupposed factuality, and that dogmatic philosophical thought is
unable, for itself and on its own terms, to think.
In the disjunction a-b, the elements and relation between the fnite subject (a) and the
multiplicity of its empirical objects (b) is represented. The attention of the transcendental
philosopher will turn to the genesis of this disjunction, in order to pose the question; how,
and from what source, does this disjunction arise?
21
Importantly, Fichtes response to
and resolution of this problem will not appear as exhaustible or exhausted within a system.
Fichtes analysis will result instead in the discovery and recognition that this problem-
context is irreducible to conceptual determination.
IV. Wissenschaftslehre and Wisdom (Weisheit)
It seems plausible to suppose that a key to understanding this relation of an original identity
or source to these two fundamental elements of disjunction can be found in the recognition
that the two elements I (a) and Being (b) do not constitute original poles of a relation,
but simply the conditions for the apparition (Erscheinung) of life. Since I and Being
result from the projective nature of vision, they themselves appear as conditioning the ap-
parition of life only insofar as they are more fundamentally conditions of the visibility
(Sichtbarkeit) of life. Hence, it results that without visibility, vision would not be given,
while without vision, the apparition of life would not be given.
22
127
One can already see here how this exposition will imply a particularly Fichtean cri-
tique of the concept, of the pretension to derive by theoretical deduction the principle
and possibility thereof. This critique that distinguishes Fichtes philosophy most funda-
mentally from that of Hegel.
23
Fichte intends here the subtraction or negation and even
self-negation of the concept, a negation that obtains in and through the concept, in order
to determine conceptually that which exceeds the concept. This conceptual indication of
the projective character of conceptuality is advanced in order to attain to a unity that
maintains itself within the disjunction, and at the same time supersedes this disjunction,
or rises above it.
If regarding this unity of identity and difference we persist with questions of the form
what is this X, the response will take necessarily a negative character; since X can
be determined neither as I (a) nor as Being (b), X could not defne itself except as
not-conceptual (NichtBegriff). Because one can fnd this X only above the concept,
according to the form of the concept itself such a defnition will always and only appear
through a via negationis. As soon as a concept or defnition is advanced or added it must
be taken away or subtracted. Once it is understood that Seyn, als Begriff, [is] tod, the
nonconceptual must necessarily be advanced, in opposition thereto, as life (Leben).
In fact, within this Knigsberger Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte advances an equation; the
nonconceptual = life.
24
Fundamentally, this equation expresses the fundamental insight
of Fichtes philosophy as suchprecisely because, with and by means of the concept,
the concept itself is exploded.
This self-limitation of and in the concept pertains both with regard to the fact of ap-
pearance, the fact that (Dass) there is appearance, experience, life, at all, and with regard
to the manner, the how (Wie) appearance is producedand thus how that which appears
(the Was of the Erscheinen) comes to form. In the attempt to clarify the question of the
Was, we come to recognize that in neither the principal case of the Dass or the Wie, can
we deduce logically the appearance of life in its concreteness. Fichte intends to express,
in both cases, the same result; that the appearance of life, or life as the root of appearance,
is not deducible theoretically, but can only be performed, enacted, and recognized in the
concreteness of our existing and experience.
For the WL there is of course no question of a philosophy of life, or even a philoso-
phy of existence, but, most fundamentally, of a transcendental ontology of experience
or of the phenomenon in the process of its construction in a sense that will be clarifed
below. One could even say that, if either the fact that (Dass) or the how (Wie) of the
phenomenon had been determined in advance, phenomenal existence would be purely
logical or fctive. In fact, the signifcance of the ex- lies precisely in its expression of
an origin and as an originary development. However such an ex- would fnd itself re-
presented, posited in-front-of and by the subject (vor-gestellt), again, necessarily, as
the condition for the possibility of such activity. Therefore the genetic question of the
how would again neutralize any claim of the projective imagination to any originality
of its appearance.
That is why in the question of how appearance is possible, Fichte appears to recognize
and labor against an inertia, to which both natural and philosophical consciousness has
been subject and to which it has long since become habituated. Consciousness appears as
if compelled to fnd a predetermined answer to this question, in spite of its categorically
necessary and evident impossibility, in this more than in any other case. The real in its
concreteness cannot be deduced theoretically, anticipated, or projected in advance. And
this, as we have already seen, is due to the irreducible character of its own actuality. Here,
then, is Fichtes non-answer: do not lose either the the supersensible or the sensible
world, but always maintain yourself in the unity that links (bindende Einheit) both, in the
bond (Band) of both (ibid.). In this way, we are to look (siehe . . . in), give yourself to
the current of life.
25
It appears that neither A nor x, taken separately, can be the truth of appearance, but
rather that only together can they become the exponents thereof. It appears that this truth
fnds itself in both elements and in their structural co-implication. This in turn appears
to imply a defnition of the phenomenon as dependent upon an origin, as manifest from
A. And that in turn implies the impossibility of predetermining the phenomenon in and
by means of an anticipatory representation (vor-stellen).
If all of this obtains, then it also appears that the Wie of the absolute in its appearing,
in its actual existing in the concreteness of Erscheinen, cannot be constructed in theory,
demonstrable by way of concepts, or otherwise mastered. This irreducible remainder is
impossible without theory, since it is the theory that alone discovers it, while also being
irreducible to theory. It is deduced from within and by means of the Darstellung, but as
its insuperable limit. The Fichtean concept of Weisheit, or wisdom, occupies this phe-
nomenological space. This is the locus in which the relationship between philosophy and
life comes to its maximum problematic expression, and at the same time to its decisive
resolution.
That relation, in fact, seems marked by an aporia. It is true that the WL theoretically
grasps and conceptually formalizes the implication A-x, the bindende Einheit of both. In
this lies the accomplishment of the WL. But it is also true that nothing at all could change
in us and for us (as readers of the WL) in relation to the existential concreteness of our
experience and self-expression (leben, u. erleben). This bindende Einheit could be intended
as a philosophical theory among others, and indeed this letter of the exposition could
reduce the effcacy of the spirit, which alone contains the practical, concrete signifcance
thereof. It is possible that the new sense of our Introduction could remain unaffected.
To welcome that bindende Einheit according to its pure letter would be to fail to grasp
it at all, since it would imply an affrmation of the separation of life from philosophy, of
practical activity from its theoretical formulation.
One could not understand this unity, then, as exclusively theoretical; to do so would
be to miss and to misunderstand it. Such an interpretation of Fichtes WL would in fact
radically negate it, and would reduce the WL to a theory alongside others, since it would
make absolute the duality of these elements in abstract opposition to their unity. To reduce
the bond to a theoretical concept is to move oneself inside a closed and vicious circle,
as a function perhaps under the burden of a contradiction that consciousness doesnt and
cant dominate. Thus, this bindende Einheit exceeds both theory and practice, and more
precisely, it shows both, in their pretentions to independence or absoluteness, to be as
such impossible. The understanding of the Band between A and x is neither merely
thought nor blindly lived, but is rather both at once. As such, the question of the
129
relation between philosophy and life, or theory and practice, comes to a maximum point
of concentration with the implicative structure of the Erscheinung as A-x.
But the irreducible remainder to experience in the original link A-x also attests to a
fundamental unity between theory and practice. This unity coincides with the understanding
of phenomena as phenomena, or of the absolute in its Existenz. In knowing phenomenality
as such, consciousness discovers the radical unfoundedness of its own reality, and knows
itself as an activity originally undetermined, free, open to the infnity of its theoretical-
practical horizon and realizations. Consciousness knows itself as the medium through
which that connection is enacted and produced. In other words; the activity of conscious-
ness institutes this bindende Einheit in all aspects of its actuality, its concreteness, and
therefore also in the spontaneity of its own being qua activity. It is not then possible to
imagine a fundamental division within this Weisheit.
It is no longer possible to theorize the incompatibility and the confict between the
two parts of consciousness, e.g., the noumenal-rational and the phenomenal-sensible.
Otherwise put, Weisheit indicates the agreement, the unifying and vital link between the
two parts that for this reason are impossible to conceive as either two, or parts. On
the contrary, activity as such, whether theoretical or practical, is possible only through
the retention of the link A-x, without any privilege or absolutization of either, but rather
throughto use a term from the Grundlagea hovering between one and the other.
Fichtes formulization of phenomenality in fact announces the reciprocal implication of
activity and contemplation, in the above sense of a vision-coming-to-form, the con-
templative character of action and the eminently practical character of contemplation.
Of course, we must be willing to see the conceptuality of the WL itself as a Bild and as
phenomenal in the same sense.
26
V. Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Visibility
In this way, the reciprocal involvement of consciousness and self-consciousnessthe fact
that consciousness cannot obtain without self-consciousness, just as self-consciousness
cannot obtain without a contemporaneous institution of consciousnessFichte expresses
in terms of the reciprocal relationship between vision and the vision of vision. As above,
this reciprocity obtains between the capacity of the subject to see, or grasp, objects of
experience in a frst moment, and the capacity of the subject to experience or to see that,
its own, objectual vision or activity in a second moment. This latter moment is one of
self-refection, in and through which vision refects the disjunction between conscious-
ness and object, and recuperates it. It does so in an identity with itself that is gained or
accomplished through the disjunction and its refection.
Vision sees itself, as above, as seeing: but in order to see itself as seeing, it must project
outside of itself something as an object that is seen. Without that object seen, of course,
no vision would obtain. But nor would the vision of vision as the self-refection of vision
upon that objectual vision obtain. Vision then could not refect itself as seeing; it could
not see itself tout court. More precisely: vision sees itself, refects upon itself, and is there-
fore self-consciousness, subjectivity, the I. In other words, there is no self-consciousness
without consciousness. On the other hand, vision could not see any object if it did not
project outside of itself what it distinguishes and differentiates from itself. Only as such
can vision refect on itself as that original identity of itself with itself. Indeed, the object
could not be distinguished, and pro-jected as external, without the self-refection of vision
as seeing, as the subject of vision, without, as it were, the self-retraction of vision from its
objectual pole. In other words; no consciousness without self-consciousness.
The activity of the real Iboth cognitive and conativeis constituted by the unity of
this distinction. This unity presents itself, toward its philosophical exposition, in the form
of the exchange and the reciprocal determination of consciousness and self-consciousness.
In the real I, then, such determinations appear as inseparable, and therefore always inex-
tricably linked in every activity of the I. This simultaneous co-penetration appears for and
in transcendental refection as a reciprocal exchange. Not only does one imply the other,
but each is included necessarily in the unity of the other and in a unity with the other.
Importantly, however, in the order of genetic derivation, as an Erscheinungslehre or
Phnomenologie, the priority of self-consciousness over consciousness, as the condition
for the possibility of the latterthe priority of the vision of vision above the activity of
simple objectual visionis impossible to ignore. This latter, in fact, can determine itself
as such, in the disjunction a-b, or I-Being, only because that distinction has always already
been overcome and refected transcendentally as constitutive of vision as such. Vision must
always already possess an intuition or consciousness of itself as vision, in order to then
be refected in the form of the disjunction a-b, in order that experience, life, possess its
actual structure. We are now in a position to comprehend more thoroughly this question
of priority and implication.
As we have established, vision is constituted by means of an internal distinction, be-
tween a subject of vision and an object of vision, the latter obtaining as that which is seen
by means of an activity, the act of seeing. But even if subject and object, I and Being, are
established as reciprocal poles of a relation, we must still determine their status in and for
the WL. Do they represent simple facts, original conditions, underivable transcendentally,
or will they able to represent elements within a dynamic relation that can in its turn also
be determined genetically?
We have already encountered the outlines of the Fichtean response. Without both the
I and Being, as well as their interaction, no vision is possible. Without vision, understood
as the activity of consciousness, appearance itself is impossible. In other words, I and
Being (a and b), come from, in the order of transcendental derivation, that for which
they constitute the conditions of real possibilityfrom appearance. They do not have an
autonomous status in relationship to appearance, but are simply the factual possibility
conditions thereof. The WL does not arrest its progress at the mere facticity of this dis-
junction, however, but reconstructs its transcendental genesis from the unity (Eins) and
effectivity, the actuality, of life (Leben). In this way, the two poles of the disjunction, and
indeed the disjunction itself, lose their character as merely factical.
The disjunction a-b now appears as the product of visibility, in the sense that the latter
designates the movement with which A comes to appearance, in the process of its original
self-division into the disjunction I-being. This latter, as the product or result of the coming
to visibility of the absolute as esse in mero actu emerge at the same time as the factual
conditions, from which the WL constructs the process of genesis, transcendentally.
27
The
disjunction is demonstrated transcendentally as the factual condition of the appearing
131
of life, and is then derived genetically in its transcendental necessity. Visibility, then, as
the coming-to-manifestation and self-appearance of A, produces, transcendentally, the
factual conditions (the x as disjunction a-b) within which it realizes itself. The disjunc-
tion is genetically derived in its transcendental necessity, and at the same time dissolved
in its character as merely factual: it passes, from original, non-genetic, condition to the
transcendental result produced by such an appearance.
VI. The Epistemological Structure of the 1807 WL
Once it has accounted in this way for the disjunction a-b, the WL may be thought to have
completed the genetic deduction of the possibility-conditions for Erscheinung. Explaining
the disjunction as the result or effect of visibility, it accounts for it precisely as that fact
beyond which it is no longer possible to proceed. However, it cannot arrest its derivation
of the disjunction at such a point. On the contrary, the categorical certainty which char-
acterizes the derivation of this presupposition is confrmed by the result of the genesis.
This result, in the disjunction, evinces the factual conditions of appearance. However,
appearance must contain within itself the further possibility of seeing itself in light of
the implication that binds it to the Principle = A. Otherwise said; appearance must refect
itself not only as self-consciousness, but as refection upon its refection, or as doctrine of
science. Only in this way can self-consciousness bind itself to the principium from which
it originates; only in this way can the WL come to the self-refection of its own construc-
tive procedures, and restore itself in unity with the principle from which it proceeded in
order to derive consciousness genetically.
From this problem-situation arises the necessity of not arresting our progress at the
disjunction. Instead, we must retrace, from the latter, back to the unity of the Principle.
Because in the disjunction a and b are derived as factual conditions of the appearance of
A, it derives consciousness as the factual condition of this latter. But the WL is to present
the movement through which consciousness links itself again, within the exposition, to
the principle that is its ground. As we have seen, objectivity is the result of the projective
structure of vision. Vision necessarily doubles or divides itself into the subject that sees
and the object that is seen, and dis-locates itself onto one side of the disjunction within
the activity of seeing, within the I.
We may take as demonstrated, then, that each real seeing projects, looks-at [schaut
hin]. But it is also the case that if it did not see anything, it could not posit itself as
seeing. Presuming the prior and frst moment of objective vision, this second moment
of self-vision implies the following; to see itself means: to look-at an I.
28
In order to
see itself, it must see itself as an I. To see itself as an I it is necessary but not suffcient
to posit the frst moment of objectivity, that projective structure through which vision,
consciousness, is real, synthetic. To see itself as an I requires also that the I is to see itself
seeing; to not be able to see itself in this way would be tantamount to its being unable
to see itself tout court. However, it cannot see itself while it sees; in seeing itself as that
which sees, it divides itself once again between the I that sees and the seen object. We have
already reconstructed this movement above, and Fichte here summarizes his progress in
the following way: it sees itself seeing means that intuits itself as looking-at [hinsehend]
an object, a being!
29
The I has been determined as that which sees, the medium, the Durch through which
life erupts into appearance.
30
In and through it, life and seeing are fused together.
31
The
1807 WL designates the frst movement of the I, however, as follows; the I, in its attempt
at a self-consciousness, divides itself into two elements; seeing, or that which sees, and
that which is seen. To the degree to which the I takes itself, and absolutizes itself as, that
which sees, it projects life, as the process of genesis and the unity of these elements,
outside of itself, as that which, in its self-vision, is seen. Life becomes, for the I that sees,
merely objectual, the object of vision, and thus is no longer life, in Fichtes acceptation,
but is a mere product or epiphenomenon thereof, always already accomplished. In order
to institute itself as that which is capable of seeing, the I again projects what, in vision, is
seen, outside of itself. But since what is seen is life, it is life itself that is separated from
and projected outside of the I. Insofar as life itself is comprehended as the opposed pole,
or opposite to, vision, it is necessarily reifed. Life is reduced to the multiplicity of entities
objectifed and in principle always objectifable by and for the vision of the subject. Fichte
depicts this occurrence as follows; What happens? In seeing, life vanishes from it.
32
The particular character of this reunifcation with the principle by means of the WL
does not allow for the claim to a coincidence between the self-refection constitutive of
real consciousness and the self-refection which the WL attains in its epistemological
construction thereof. In other words, the WL closes itself, in the sense that reinstates the
Principle = A, with and from which it began. But it does so only in the sense that such a
reinstatement of the unity with A coincides with the awareness of the difference that opens
up between A and consciousness, through which A frst appears.
To this closure evident in this epistemological construction there corresponds a structur-
al opening that characterizes the implication A.-x. One could almost say that, to the degree
to which the exposition closes itself by restoring and confrming the initial hypothesis, it
confrms the impossibility of the complete adequation of the phenomenon compared to
that which, in it, becomes phenomenal. In other words, Fichte confrms a disproportion,
internal to the phenomenon, between manifestation and what appears in it. There obtains
a relation, then, that expresses itself necessarily in terms of an excess or surplus to the
phenomenon in the phenomenon, and in its self-relation. If the transcendental deduction
of consciousness and self-consciousness yielded not such a surplus or disproportion, but
rather a full transparency, we would have concluded to the absolutization of knowledge,
the re-absorption of the Principle in the Concept. It was with precisely this equation that
Hegel was contemporaneously closing the Jena Philosophy of Spirit of 1805/06, according
to which: the I in philosophy appears as knowledge of absolute spirit, in the concept in
itself . . . here the I knows the absolute . . . and is nothing else.
33
However, the relation A-x, that determined the phenomenality of the phenomenon,
its necessary character, now becomes concrete in relationship to the I, as a restriction
upon self-transparency. Pure self-adequation appears in the demonstration instead as a
limit-concept; as neither possible nor actual but rather as impossible, necessarily. Any
and every attempt on the part of the I to know itself with full adequacy results instead
in its interminable reclusion and systematic elusiveness. In its attempt to produce a self-
transparency, the I produces instead its own non-transparency. Through the recognition
thereof, the I is summoned to begin again its search for self-comprehension, to restore
133
visibility in its self-relation. This movement is interminable, an infnite task. Thus, with
Fichte, we are able to arrive at a principle which grounds conceptualization and yet is
impossible to conceptualize, but which can be made comprehensible as that which both
makes knowledge possible, and is at the same time irreducible to knowledge.
34
This also means that the I is always at the same time becoming as I. The I is no more
self-veiling than it is revelatory, no more hidden than it is manifest.
35
Nonetheless, this
openness toward determination does not and cannot result in a complete determinacy, an
omnimoda determinatio. Such determinability is always on-the-way, parallel to its being
sought out. The I is only in its positing of itself and comprehension of itself as Ionly
because it sees itself as the I that sees. The WL understands the self-comprehension of the
I as a vision of its own inevitable and ineliminable non-transparency, which it possesses
necessarily as an element of its self-relation. The Fichtean concept of the I includes within
it its own supererogation.
The I is spurred to search for a conceptual clarity regarding this surplus progressively,
as a function of the non-transparency that arises again, serially, with every progressive
determination. Since the latter dynamic constitutes the I and its self-consciousness, the
functional concept of the I, of self-consciousness, is of one striving for, in search of, its
full self-determination, an I which is still in the process of becoming I, becoming itself.
In Fichtes words, the I is on the way to grasping itself as itself in a beyond that it
never reaches and always is (5r). It is precisely what it has not-yet realized itself as be-
ing. This beyond is internal to the I, but is at the same time that which incites the I to
the overcoming of its present state, to search out and actualize new projections of itself,
in which can recognize itself.
VII. Conclusions
We have seen that the Knigsberg WL is characterized by the centrality of the notion of the
phenomenon (Erscheinung), and by the transcendental relation of implication that binds
the latter to the absolute. The search for conditions that allow for such an implication
coincides with the genetic derivation of the conditions that allow consciousness, intended
as the locus of disjunction between subject and object, to function as the scheme through
which life emerges into appearance (erscheinen u. sich ussern). In the better-known terms
of the 1804 WL, this concept of Erscheinung and its process of emergence is determined by
means of a distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Erscheinungslehre or Phnomenologie.
While the ascending series of the Wahrheitslehre occupies the frst ffteen conferences of
the 1804 WL, it is the subsequent task of an Erscheinungslehre to descend again from the
truth to its phenomenal appearance.
36
The simplifed structure of the WL of Knigsberg
instead stresses the determination of the transcendental philosophy as Erscheinungslehre,
in the sense that it does not present anymore the distinction between this latter and a
Wahrheitslehre, but rather comprehends the latter in and through the former.
This methodological unifcation of Wahrheitslehre and Erscheinungslehre, and the
transcendental implication A.-x., that occupies the center of the exposition, allow Fichte
to safeguard the full systematic signifcance of the concept of the phenomenon, while also
retaining at the same time the excess or surplus of A compared to its each appearance as
x. In this way, despite its incompleteness, the WL 1807 contains for us a fundamental de-
velopment within the Fichtean doctrine of science in this mittlere Phase (18011807). On
one hand, proceeding on the basis of the implication A-x, it gathers together movements of
thought more fundamental than those uncovered within the Jena period, that frst express
themselves in their proper systematic confguration in the 1801 and the 1804 WL. On
the other hand, on the basis of this same development and transformation of perspective,
Fichte is able in our text to recuperate explicitly the full range of concepts, relations, and
problems defnitive of this later work within the determination of phenomenality. In this
point lies the signifcance of the speculative structures of the WL 1807.
37
Notes
1. [Citations of the 1807 Wissenschaftslehre (WL) are taken from the Gesaumtausgabe der
Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (hereafter GA), ed. R. Lauth, H. Jacob, and H. Gliwitzky
(Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964), II, 10, 103202. For the Nebenbemerkungen,
see GA II, 10, 21978. The principal scholarly works on the 1807 WL, and the later Wissenschaft-
slehren more generally, include C. Asmuth, Fichtes Theorie des Ich in der Knigsberger WL
1807, Fichte-Studien, vol. 17 (2000), pp. 26982; J. Dreschler, Fichtes Lehre von Bild (Stuttgart:
W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1955); M. Guroult, Lvolution et la structure de la Doctrine de la Science
chez Fichte, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1930); M. Ivaldo, I principi del sapere. La visione
trascendentale di Fichte (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987); W. Janke, Fichte. Sein und RefexionGrun-
dlagen der kritischen Vernunft (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970); H. Radermacher, Fichtes Begriff des
Absoluten (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1970); and G. Schulte, Die Wissenschatslehre des
spaeten Fichte (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1971). Unfortunately, there is neither an English-
language translation, nor scholarly treatment, of the 1807 WL, nor indeed of most of the major works
after the early Jena Period and the Atheismusstreit. The English-language reader may nonetheless
consult The Vocation of Man (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1965 [1800]); The Science of Knowing:
J. G. Fichtes 1804 Lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre, ed. and trans. Walter E. Wright (Albany:
SUNY, 2005); and The Way Towards the Blessed Life; Or, The Doctrine of Religion (1806), trans.
William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 2 vols. (Bristol: Thoemmes Press,
1999). Throughout these notes, comments in square brackets are those of the translator.]
2. [The author here refers to the dissertation of M. Brggen, defended at the University of
Munich in 1964, Der Gang des Denkens in der Philosophie J. G. Fichtes. The reader may also
consult Brggens more comprehensive account of the development of the WL in Fichtes Wissen-
schaftslehre. Das System in der seit 180102 entstandenen Fassungen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1979).
Although Brggen left untreated in that text the development of the Wissenschaftslehren of 1804,
1807, and 1810, important indications are provided in the concluding chapter, Kant, Schelling,
Hegel und Jacobi im Licht der Wissenschaftslehre.]
3. GA II, 10, 111.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. [Rametta here refers to the Wissenschaftslehre nova metodo (GA, IV, 2), in English transla-
tion as Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo, trans. and ed.
Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992). The most important and infuential
account of the theme of the objective character of cognitive activity, or vision as intended by the
author, in Fichtes earliest philosophical work remains Dieter Henrich, Fichtes Original Insight,
trans. D. Lachterman, in Contemporary German Philosophy, vol. I (University Park: Pennsylvania
135
State University Press, 1982), originally published as Fichtes ursprngliche Einsicht (Frankfurt:
V. Klostermann, 1967). Therein, Henrich introduced Fichtes original insight as this had been
formulated at the start of his career (15), principally in the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre and the
1798 Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. Henrich intimated that this problem furnished the clue
that guided his refections even before he could formulate it explicitly, such that he came closer
and closer to the solution as he advanced along the tortuous path of his Doctrine of Science (16).
Henrich treated briefy (sections IV and V, pp. 3150) these advances in (principally) the 1801
WL. Henrich suggested that the idea of a look or a vision that sees itself constantly fascinated
Fichte from 1801 until his death in 1814. He wanted to express it in increasingly clear terms as
the problem of philosophy and to develop its far-reaching consequences. Henrich also suggested
the signifcance of the Wissenschaftslehren of 1804 and thereafter for the philosophy of religion;
Fichte will make the essence of the self precise and intelligible with the help of the concept of
God. According to Henrich, God and the Self are not externally linked together in this theory.
The Doctrine of Science 1804 more than any other [prior] work tries to mediate them in a docta
ignorantia of Gods essence. Even a reader who is not inclined to accept this doctrine can still
marvel at its profundity and its consistency. It deserves a comprehensive interpretation. Henrich
himself offered only a brief analysis of the Fichtean concept of manifestation, which articulated the
relation between these phenomeno-logical and theo-logical contexts. Just as Fichte can be thought
to have deepened his refection on this relation between 1800 and 1814, so recent European Fichte
scholarship has deepened its understanding of this theme upon Henrichs instigation. Regarding
Fichtes philosophy of religion in particular, the reader may see the bibliographical indications of
prominent French, German, and Italian sources in G. Morettos Introduction to his Italian translation
of the Anweisung (Naples: Guida, 1989), 1167 and its exhaustive bibliography.]
7. [For the Privatissimum, see GA II, 6, 32572. The frst ffteen conferences of the WL 1804
(II) provide Fichtes best-known exposition of Einsicht. The English-language reader may see the
Introduction to the English version of the 1804 WL by Walter Wright (121, particularly 1221).]
8. [The re-contextualization and amplifcation of the concept of vision can be seen in the
distinction in denotation and indeed function in the variants Fichte will employ. From pure vision
derives, for example, (1) Hin-sehen, which connotes the objective directionality of an orientation-to,
or penetration of, an objective contentin both thematic contexts of consciousness and self-con-
sciousness, and (2) Ansicht, which connotes instead a repose in, and grants to Fichtes analysis
of the faculty of vision, or cognition, a moment of immediacy and self-identity as well as objective
difference or alterity. It should be noted, however, that this distinction is not only epistemological,
but also ethical, in function. Fichte hopes to inform, or reform, the Wissenschaftslehrer, in order
that we not only see (hinsehen) in the manner in which each has habituated their spiritual eye, but
instead, to learn to see anew (GA II, 10, 111). Thus the theme of vision, both epistemic and ethical,
necessitates a formation (Ausbildung) of the natural attitude. Thus, introducing the following section,
the author will record that transcendental vision intends, though not exclusively, the rendering
explicit of the implicit presupposition within any positing of an object by consciousness. In this
acceptation, the vision or thought that is the WL is to derive from that which appears as a fact,
as already accomplished that complex of conditions that render such factical objectivity possible,
evincing the latter as the product of a process of genetic derivation, and thus as an act. This last
task coincides with the free self-elevation to the vision of the presupposition (Voraussetzung) in
which transcendental thought consists.]
9. [For Fichtes usage of this distinction between these two basic positions of thought with
regard to objectivity, material and formal objectivity, which Fichte treats equally as two forms of
the self-alienation of objective consciousness, see GA II, 10, 116.]
10. Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, GA I, 2, 326n. [Foundations of the Entire
Science of Knowledge, trans. Peter Heath, in Fichte: The Science of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1982), pp. 89286.]
11. [Although the signifcance of Fichtes usage of these basic symbols will only become clear
below through analysis, a basic anticipatory defnition of each may prove helpful. With the upper-
case X Fichte intends the incognito of the Absolute, the image of which in the WL is A and
the Bild or symbol of which is the concept of Life (Leben). With the lower-case a-b relation
we encounter Fichtes symbolization of the structure of consciousness and self-consciousness, or
vision, as objective; a indicates the subject and b the object of every real act of vision. The
lower-case x Fichte uses in order to indicate their hidden unity, their Band, as symbolized by the
hyphen. We may ascend from such factical distinctions (as Fichte does in the 1804 WL) or descend
to them, from unity into multiplicity (as Fichte does in the 1807 WL). Thus, by depicting together
A and a lower-case x as A-x, Fichte intends the structure of appearance, as constituted by
the relation (the Band or hyphen; -) between the intelligible (bersinnliche Welt = A) and the
sensible (sinnliche Welt = x) world. Similarly, in the formula A-(a-b), A functions as the invisible
origin or vision, the Urquell or Grund der Erscheinung from which the subject-object distinction
of a-b arises and into which it is to be resolved.]
12. [According to Rametta, subtraction is to render visible the schemata [Schema] through
and in which originary activity or life [Leben] comes to appearance, so as to provide genetically
for the deduction of the phenomenal [Erscheinung, Schein], as phenomenal, as appearances of and
from a ground, the absolute, understood as pure life. Thus the rendering visible of the schema
as a schema is propaedeutic to its subtraction, or retraction, in which moment the status of the
schema as always already produced, objectifed, can be recognized. In this way the schema can both
be brought to light as such and then pushed aside so as to allow for the dynamic process of their
emergence to itself come to light. See the authors discussion in his Italian translation of the 1807
Wissenschaftslehre; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Dottrina della Scienza; Esposizione del 1807 (Milan:
Guerini, 1995), p. 177. See also note 14, below. For an explication of the dynamics of subtraction
in the WL 1804 (II), the English-language reader may consult the excellent Translators Introduc-
tion to the WL 1804 (2).]
13. GA, II, 10, 112.
14. [The immediate fact (Faktum) of vision (Sehen) obtains in the disjunction (Disjunktion)
of its constitutive elements; the principium or subject (the das Auge of the frst Lecture of the 1807
Wissenschaftslehre) and principiatum or object of vision. These obtain in a contradictory, exclusive,
but reciprocal relation. In so far as we are captive to this disjunction, this relation of subject and
object cannot be explicated dynamically and organically but appear only as explicitly distinct, as
not living [Nichtleben] but as mortifying [Tod] (2nd Lecture, 6th Point). Because appearance is
always an appearance-from, which contains this as-structure, appearance itself provides the con-
ditions or occasion for its genetic investigation, our Begrndung (foundation), the retracing and
return of appearance to its Grund. This founding accomplished in the 1807 WL is named by Fichte
the determination (Bestimmung) of the relation between the absolute and its image or appear-
ance. In Lectures 4 and 28, Fichte opposes this concept of determination to the (indeterminate or
insuffcient) Schellingian concept of emanation (Emanation) as set out in the latters Philosophie
und Religion of 1804. F. W. J. Schelling, Smtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling (Stuttgart: Cotta
Verlag, 18561861), 4:1170.]
15. [Most precisely, the moment of subtraction (abziehen) renders visible through indication
the ground of appearance invisible to natural vision or objective consciousness, the natural attitude
(see note 8 above). It does so by depicting the appearance as (Als) a manifest content, and thus
137
as a product, a projection. The as-structure of consciousness, then, indicates this original locus
of invisibility (Finsternis) as well as the projective character of accomplished intellectual activity,
and indicates the former by means of its depiction of the latter. From this thematic beginning fol-
lows a constant engagement of the theme of the self-alienation of intentional consciousness, and a
constant use of a series of key terms in the vocabulary of Fichtes work after the Atheismusstreit,
in, for example, the WL 180102 (GA II, 6), the Privatissimum of 1803 (GA II, 6; see pp. 32572)
and the WL 1804 (II) (GA II, 8, 2411), through this WL 1807. These basic terms, which provide a
type of glossary toward the comprehension of Fichtes later philosophy, include most prominently
for example, ex-pression (Ausdruck), ex-teriorization (uerung), and pro-jection (Projektion). With
the concept of the object of cognition (Objekt) is associated not only the fulfllment of objective
cognition or synthetic judgment, and not only the intentional concepts of Disjunktion and Projektion,
but also and most signifcantly their comprehension as a form of di-vision and self-alienation. Each
indicates, negatively, the hidden or obscure (Finsternis) ground of discursive intellectual activity.
Thus the full signifcance of the Fichtean concept of Sichtbarkeit; visibility initiates the task of
Sichtbarmachung as a rendering visible of this hidden origin of our spontaneity, activity, or life
(Leben).]
16. [GA II, 10, 13132. This accomplishment of the recognition of the schema as (Als) a
schema is termed by Fichte in the same Eighth Lecture the schema of the schema (135). Just as
the possibility-condition for material objects of consciousness is found in the apprehension and
determination thereof, their vision, so the schema as the representation of such material exis-
tence formaliter, in and by consciousness, is derived necessarily from vision. Fichte suggests that
vision is the actualization of the faculty of vision, in which life (Leben) renders itself effective;
but as soon as this actualization come to be, vision obtains, and its actualization remains invisible.
. . . Thus, knowledge is, in its root and its essential character, a process of schematization, and
furnishes only schema, and shadows (136). Nevertheless, Fichte continues, life, precisely as the
invisible principle of vision, must be brought to awareness, or rendered visible. . . . How will this
be possible? (139).]
17. [Just as the external, material objects of cognition are determined transcendentally as condi-
tioned by the faculty of cognition by means of which they appear as objects, so the identifcation of
the schematism as (als) a schematism allows for its deduction as a product of a more fundamental
power or capacity. In terms of this basic power or faculty (Vermgen), schemata appear as derivative
or conditioned (GA II, 10, 132). This power remains as ground, as the absolutely invisible root of
vision. The schema is derived necessarily from vision, as it is the actualization of the faculty of
vision, without which schemata would be impossible. The projective character of vision results
only in schema and shadows, and places us with a sphere of results derivative of a principium
both effective and undeduced (GA II, 10, 117).]
18. [The author refers here to the important initial paragraphs of both the Third and the Fourth
Lectures (GA II, 10, 118, 120). Therein, Fichte discusses the way in which natural conscious-
ness, for the dis-junctive character of its Ur-teil or objective form of its predicative judgment,
kills that which it apprehends (GA II, 10, 138). For as soon as [such vision] is confgured, and
determined to a fxed objectivity, the continually regenerative process of becoming, qua activity,
is, in and by objective vision, made rigid, mortifed, or killed. In this actualization, or process,
life (Leben) renders itself effective. But as soon as this actualization obtains, so too does vision
and its Urteilung (GA II, 10, 135). In other words, the actualization [itself, of life] remains invis-
ible, since vision in its origin and process of genesis remains invisible to itself (135). For this
reason, Fichte directs our attention not to life itself, which would result only in a contradictio in
adiecto, the determination of the in- or pre-determinate, but to its self-confguration, its process
of genesis, becoming. This process, and the unity of these elements therein, Fichte terms Leben or
life, experience.]
19. [For the authors full depiction of this distinction, between a merely assertoric and a con-
ceptually derived presentationwhich mirrors Fichtes own distinction in the Guide to the Blessed
Life or Religionslehre of 1806, between a popular and a scientifc presentationsee the Introduction
to his Italian translation of the Wissenschaftslehre 1807, 1416.]
20. [Genetic (Genetisch) herein the authors analysis, in Lecture Three, and throughout the
1807 WLindicates that vision [that] penetrates the place of its own genesis or manifestation,
and is opposed to that factical vision that appears only as always already accomplished, not in its
production but as a product, dead rather than dynamically in movement, as Leben. Leben, life,
activity, is defned in Lecture 3 as not a what [was], not a substantive [Substantivum], but rather
as a verbum activum, not neutrum, in a manner to be clarifed in the following. For Ramettas full
treatment of Fichtes Lebenslehre see his Einleitende Bemerkungen ber die Wissenschaftslehre
von 1807, in Fichte-Studien, vol. 26, ed. Helmut Girndt and Jacinto Rivera de Rosales (2006): pp.
3442, and Le strutture speculative della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli
anni 18011807 (Genoa: Pantograf, 1995), pp. 118141.]
21. [Thus, the author will record that most basically, then, the First Lecture initiates a trajec-
tory from matter [Materie] and the determinations of the sensible world [sinnliche Welt] to the
principles for their appearance as phenomena, as found in the intelligible world [bersinnliche
Welt, Geisterwelt] of the intelligence and the will, which opens the auditor to the new world of
the vision (Einsicht) of the Wissenschaftslehre. Thus, Fichtes comment in the Fourth Lecture
that the deduction of the material world is without any doubt one of the tasks of the WL but it is
also one of the easiest and subordinate of tasks (GA II, 10, 124). But this ascending Fortgang is
more precisely that of the 1804 WL (II), which according to Rametta, in its initial process arises
from the manifold determinations of the empirical world to the unity of the principle thereof in a
Wahrheitslehre or doctrine of truth, while in a second process, we descend from this principle
of unity to the manifold in a transcendental derivation termed a doctrine of the phenomenon
(Erscheinungslehre, Phnomenologie). A more precise determination of the proof-structure of the
WL 1807, however, is as follows; the WL can now be exposed by means of a genetic derivation
that descends from unity to the manifold; this unity can now be comprehended as internal to the
phenomenon, within its manifoldness. The doctrine of truth, then, can now be placed within the
doctrine of the phenomenon, and vice versa, since the doctrine of the phenomenon can reveal its
own genetic capacity and function. In other words, after 1804 (and most clearly in Die Thatsachen
des Bewutseyns of 181011), the relation between the prologue to the system and the system itself
becomes more signifcant for Fichtes philosophy, as the Wahrheitslehre as such and its processus
from Materie to Geisterwelt is relegated to propaedeutic works and the WL itself instead, as a
Phnomenologie, contains only that descending moment from unity to multiplicity, from unity to
multiplicity, from Geisterwelt to Materie. For further treatment of the proof-structure of the 1807
WL see Rametta, Le strutture speculative, 1214, 190195.]
22. In other words, every real vision is the immediate expression of a relation. Vision indeed
creates this relation absolutely from itself. This relation obtains between the elements principium-
principiatum, which are fgured as invisible ground and visible image or object. This relation is
ineliminable, and yet incomprehensible according to the necessary character of vision, which loses
its immanent ground in each attempt to comprehend itself. Vision cannot incorporate within itself
its own intrinsic elements; we have thus demonstrated the limits of vision, Fichte concludes, in
order to arrive at the true world above schemata or the mere play of ungrounded images (GA II,
10, 139). Fichte does not of course then suggest that we determine life itself, according to the
139
principles of vision, since this would result only and evidently in a contradictio in adiecto. As soon
as vision comes to form, life is made rigid, mortifed (124).
23. [According to Rametta, the concept of Wirklichkeit provides a key for adjudicating this
important relation between Fichte and Hegel. In his article Die Gedankenentwicklung in der Wis-
senschaftslehre 1811 (in Der transzendentalphilosophische Zugang zur Wirklichkeit: Beitrge aus
der aktuellen Fichte-Forschung, ed. E. Fuchs, M. Ivaldo, and G. Moretto [Stuttgart: Frommann-
Holzboog, 2001]), Rametta writes; Fichte uses the concept of actuality (Wirklichkeit) to determine
the ontological status of the phenomenon, and consistently differentiates this concept from that of
reality (Realitt). Phenomenality obtains in the sphere of, and only upon the actualization of, the
power or capacity to generate concepts, the faculty (Vermgen). The former is conditioned by the
spontaneity of the latter. One can understand the fundamental difference between Fichte and Hegel in
this way; for Hegel, freedom follows from the understanding of history as a progressive development
of spirit, which realizes therein and thereby its own effectivity (Wirklichkeit). Real (Real) for
Hegel can only mean that which is and has become effective (wirklich). [E.g., Was vernunftig ist,
das ist wirklich, whrend was wirklich ist, das ist vernunftig, as this appears in the Grundlinien der
Philosophie des Rechts, Vorrede 17.] Instead, reality (Realitt) for Fichte surpasses that which is
merely actual (Wirklich). The phenomenon is frst of all appearance to self (Sich-Erscheinung),
in the sense what comes to light in appearance is always and only phenomenal insofar as gener-
ated, such that we may determine the faculty as the originary or frst image of the absolute, but
we can never determine the absolute as such (261). On the relation between Fichte and Hegel on
this and related points, the reader may see W. R. Beyer, Hegels ungengendes Fichte-Bild, in M.
Buhr, ed., Wissen und Gewissen. Beitrge zum 200. Geburtsdag J.G. Fichte 17621814 (Berlin,
1962), 241267; K. Dsing, ber das Verhltnis Hegels zu Fichte, Philosophische Rundschau
20 (1973): 5063; S. Furlani, La critica hegeliana a Fichte nella Scienza della logica (Bologna:
EBD, 2006); K. Gloy, Der Streit um den Zugang zum Absoluten. Fichtes indirekte Hegel-Kritik,
Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung, vol. 36 (1982): pp. 2548; W. Hartkorf, Die Dialektik
Fichtes als Vorstufe zu Hegels Dialektik, Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung. vol. 21 (1967):
pp. 173207; R. Lauth, Hegel vor der Wissenschaftslehre (Stuttgart, 1987); B. Mabille, Fichte,
Hegel e la relativisation de la conscience reprsentative, in Fichte. La philosophie de la maturit;
and L. Siep, Hegels Fichtekritik und die Wissenschaftslehre von 1804 (Mnchen, 1970). See also
note 25, below.]
24. Ibid.
25. [One could almost say that Lebenas a verbum activum not neutrumis precisely that
which cannot be seen, which is, as soon as seen, no longer Leben. However, in its continuous process
of self-generation, life is depicted through the actual relation of (1) the identity of the [subject
of] vision and the [object] seen, while this relation is through its (2) identity [of this relation]
with life [Leben] (GA II, 10, 125; see also 129). The concept of life represents, according to the
author, the seeing in the seen, the ingredience of activity within the realm of synthetic experi-
ence, which continues to render itself effective eternally or perpetually in spite of the fact that
it remains aboriginally unseen. It does so by incorporating principium and principiatum within a
processual unity, a unity of identity and difference. Only because of its effectivity do we possess a
world. Although life then appears outside of itself as already manifest in a being, this appearance
can be comprehended as not according to truth but only according to the permanent form of
alienation and the schematic or projective character of vision through which appearance comes to
its determinate form. Indeed, according to or within its essence, life is an absolute syllogism, that
possesses its major premise or condition within itself (GA II, 10, 140). A new worldthe
new sense promised in our prolegomenawill produce itself in whomever comprehends this
pattern of self-generating activity. In other words, while the schema is derived from vision, vision
is derived from life. While vision carries within it an unresolved and irresolvable relation between
invisible and vision, the concept of life (Leben) indicates this dynamic becoming of activity and
production, or invisibility and visibility. Life is thus depicted as unity in multiplicity (GA, II, 10,
124), identity in distinction (GA, II, 10, 144), a unity of identity and difference, of invisibility
and visibility.]
26. [The author here refers to standard interpretations of Fichtes philosophy as a Bildlehre,
which include; J. Drechsler, Fichtes Lehre vom Bild (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1955), pp. 128136;
W. Janke, Fichte. Sein und RefexionGrundlagen der kritischen Vernunft (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1970), particularly the chapter Wahrheit, Schein, Erscheinung, pp. 400417; and G. Schulte, Die
Wissenschaftslehre des Spten Fichte (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 1971).]
27. [For Fichtes usage of the scholastic concept of esse in mero actu, the English-language
reader can see the WL 1804, XV Conference.]
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid. [For Fichtes most explicit and extended treatment within the 1807 WL of the immediate
self-relation of the mind to itself through formal or intellectual intuition, as opposed to its mediate
or discursive self-relation through concepts (immediate intuition, in opposition to thought), see
Lectures 1416 (GA II, 10, 15259). See p. 153 for the identifcation of the relation between (1)
this formula or relation (the immediacy of formal intuition as conditioning and the thought or
vision that is conditioned thereby and (2) the Kantian principle of a synthetic unity of appercep-
tion.]
30. [For an extended analysis of the through (Durch) as a technical term in its systematic
function in the 1804 WL, which prefgures Fichtes usage here in the 1807 WL, the English-language
reader may now consult the Translators Introduction to the 1804 WL by Walter Wright.]
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. G. W. F. Hegel, J.S. III (GW, 8, 286). [On this and related points in Hegels philosophy the
reader may consult three works of the author: (1) Il concetto del tempo; Eternit e Darstelung
speculative nel pensiero di Hegel (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989); (2) Filosofa come sistema della
scienza. Introduzione alla lettura della Prefazione alla Fenomenologia dello spirito di Hegel
(Schio: Guido Tamoni Editore, 1992); and (3) La critica hegeliana a Fichte in Fede e sapere, in
Fede e sapere. La genesi del pensiero del giovane Hegel, ed. Rossella Bonito Oliva and Giuseppe
Cantillo (Milan: Guerini, 1998).]
34. [Nevertheless, Fichte continues, life, precisely as the invisible principle of vision, must
be rendered articulate as effective. Thus Fichtes original and fundamental question; how, then,
will this be possible? (GA, II, 10, 139). This accomplishment is higher than any schematism and
higher than any vision just as it is higher than any knowledge (148). In fact, the phenomeno-
logic according to which this principle, that point of union and point of separation that is in
fact the identity of both (149) will be depicted with reference to the theo-logic of the Christianity
of the Gospel of John throughout Lectures 1921 and 2427 (149). The assertion of an interaction
between the invisible ground and the visible image possesses obvious theological resonance. Fichte
recognizes its theological horizon. Just as the self-manifestation of the faculty of vision proposes a
revelation that re-veils as it reveals, so does the self-manifestation of the divine essence according
to this Gospel. The relation between the invisible Vermgen of vision and the vision thereof and the
relation between the divine essence which is hidden eternally and the primordial realization
thereof, which enters into a certain schematic relation, as the visible image of the invisible God,
is not without an evident parallel or even isomorphism (167; the English-language reader may also
141
see, for example, the Sixth Lecture of the Anweisung zum seligen Leben or Guide [SW V, 475491]).
But if Fichte fnds in the history of Christian theology a vocabulary necessary for his deduction, he
does not do so as a theologian but as a philosopher; the former cannot offer a philosophical system;
it neither demonstrates nor deduces, but rather presupposes, and depicts a truth that is deduced
instead only within and by the WL. According to Rametta, this recapitulation and justifcation of
Christian revelation does not concern only the logical coherence of a demonstration, but permeates
existence and experience in its totality, and is made possible by the implication, in the name of the
absolute, of religion and philosophy, Christian Verbum and Fichtean Verbum or Wort. Since the
genuine content of the Gospel of John can be recognized only by means of the WL stricto sensu, the
exclusive implication of Christianity and WL can be determined only on the terrain, theoretically
autonomous and as self-defned, of the WL itself.]
35. [Because of the co-incidence of this pattern of self-generating expression, Fichte compre-
hends Life (Leben) and God (Gott) together throughout the 1807 WL, and particularly in Lectures
1921. Thus the author records that it is clear that Fichte is intent to recover a reformulated theol-
ogy of Christian revelation, as this was already thematized in the Anweisung zum seligen Leben
or Doctrine of Religion from the prior year. The author continues; the question of the signifcance
of the WL appears for this reason inseparable from that of the recovery, within the WL, of contents
proper to the Gotteslehre (Doctrine of God). This theme of the mutual implication between the WL
stricto sensu and Gotteslehre . . . does not require the full conformity of this revelation to the WL.
More fundamentally, the concern is to demonstrate the exclusiveness of the relation between the
WL and Christianity, taken as the eminent expression of religion as such, to affrm the unique and
ineliminable privilege because of which only the WL amongst all other philosophical doctrines is
capable of receiving the latter in its most profound implications and signifcance. The WL would
itself express, in the form of philosophical self-consciousness, the very Logos that the Gospel of
John had revealed in a religious form and vocabulary, and that in the doctrine of science fnds the
only genuine philosophical expression possible. With reference to this Gospel, in which the Logos
as frst-born, as the light, the life in itself as well as the truth that, although no one has ever
seen God, nonetheless the Logos has made him known (John 1:118)Fichte affrms that we
ourselves are this eternal light and life (see, e.g., Lecture 13). The pure I (Ich) offers a locus
in which such dynamics light (Licht) is rendered visible (Sichtbarmachung), forming itself
and, in its formation, generating the world of continuity, of experience and life. Each provides the
pattern for the comprehension of the other, and both are marked by the same pattern of activity, as
von sich (of itself), aus sich (from itself), durch sich (through itself). See also Fichtes lectures
from 1805, Die Principen der Gottes- Sitten- und Rechtslehre (GA II, 7, 369489). For an extended
treatment of Fichtes philosophy of religion, see Marco Ivaldo, La flosofa della religione di Fichte,
in Filosof della religione, ed. C. Angelino (Genoa: Melangolo, 1999), pp. 165197 and Johann
Gottlieb Fichte. Ges punto fondamentale e punto di unit della storia (Staatslehre 1813), in Cristo
nella flosofa contemporanea. I. Da Kant a Nietzsche, ed. S. Zucal, (San Paolo: Cinisello Balsamo,
2000), pp. 129158. See also Reinhard Lauth, Il sistema di Fichte nelle sue tarde lezioni berlinesi,
in J.G. Fichte, Dottrina della scienza, Esposizione del 1811, trans. Gaetano Rametta (Milan: Guerini
and Associati, 1999). Manzana de Maraon (El ascenso y la determinacion del Absoluto-Dios,
segun Joh. Gott. Fichte, en la primera parte de la exposicion de la Teoria de la Ciencia de 1804,
Scriptorum Victoriense, vol. 9 [1962]: pp. 768, 181244) accentuates the theological fgures and
signifcance of Fichtes 1804/II exposition.]
36. [The English-language reader may see again the Translators Introduction to the 1804
WL of Walter Wright. See particularly pp. 1920 for a clear treatment of this Wahrheitslehre-Ers-
cheinungslehre distinction.]
37. [This article was excerpted from Ramettas Le strutture speculative della dottrina della
scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 18011807 (Genoa: Pantograf, 1995). A German
translation of materials from the same work can be found as Einleitende Bemerkungen ber die
Wissenschaftslehre von 1807, in Fichte-Studien, vol. 26, ed. Helmut Girndt and Jacinto Rivera de
Rosales (2006): pp. 3361. In addition to Ramettas extended Introductions to his Italian transla-
tions of Fichtes Privatissimum 1803 (Pisa: ETS, 1993), Wissenschaftslehre 1807 (Milan: Guerini,
1995), Wissenschaftslehre 1811 (Milan: Guerini, 1999), the reader may consult Ramettas (1)
Doctrine de la science et Doctrine de ltat. La dissolution de la thologie politique chez le
dernier Fichte, in Fichte. La philosophie de la maturit, ed. J.-Ch. Goddard and M. Maesschalck
(Paris: Vrin, 2003), pp. 143158; (2) Lidea di flosofa nel tardo Fichte, Rivista di Storia della
flosofa, n. 3 (2002): pp. 461468; (3) Il problema del pratico e dellagire nella Dottrina della
scienza del 1807, in Filosofa trascendentale e destinazione etica. Indagini su Fichte, Atti del
Convegno di Napoli, 1012 novembre 1992, ed. A. Masullo e M. Ivaldo (Milan: Guerini, 1995), pp.
8194; and (4) Quintuplicit e individualit. La costruzione dellio in WL 1807, Daimon. Revista
de Filosofa. Numero especial. Fichte: El dominio de la razon n. 9 (1994): pp. 115134.]

Rametta - The Speculative Structures of Fichte's 1807 WL-2007

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rametta - The Speculative Structures of Fichte's 1807 WL-2007

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2007. Idealistic Studies, Volume 37, Issue 2. ISSN 0046-8541. pp.

You might also like