J. G. FICHTE’S OPTIMISTIC-ETHICAL WORLD-VIEW
Speculative philosophy and Gnosticism
THE vision of an optimistic-ethical philosophy cast in one mould
hovers in front of speculative philosophy, which hopes to discover the
meaning of the world by the most direct route. It will have nothing to
do with analysing the phenomena of the universe in order to deduce its
nature from them. It proceeds deductively, not inductively. In pure
abstract thinking it hopes to learn for itself how the real world has
evolved out of the notion of Being. It is imaginative
nature-philosophy in a logical dress.
The right to deal with the world in this fashion is derived by
speculative thought from the results of the theory of knowledge,
according to which the world as we observe it is more or less our own
representation of it. We have, somehow or other, a creative share in
its coming into existence. It follows that the logic which is the rule
with the finite ego is to be conceived as an emanation of that which
holds good with the Absolute. The individual is therefore entitled to
disclose in his own thinking the motives and the process of the
emanation of the empirical world out of the notion of Being.
Speculation, or in other words constructive logic, is the key to the
secret door into knowledge of the world.
Generically, speculative German philosophy is essentially related to
the Græco-Oriental Gnosticism, which in the first centuries of the
Christian era advances its views concerning the emergence of the
sensible world from the world of pure Being._(_43_)_ The Gnostic
systems aim at establishing a world-view [pg 126] of redemption. They
concentrate on the question how the spiritual individualities which
find themselves in the material world came there, and how they can
return from it into the world of pure Being. Speculative German
philosophy on the other hand tries to obtain such a knowledge of the
world as shall give a meaning to the activities of the spiritual
individualities in the world. Speculative thinking at the beginning of
the Christian era is dualistic and pessimistic; that at the beginning
of the nineteenth is monistic and optimistic. In both cases, however,
the method of obtaining the world-view is the same.
Among the representatives of the speculative philosophy the most
eminent are: Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831). It is only Fichte and Hegel, however, who produce
world-views with a characteristic stamp of their own. Schelling gets
no further than a nature-philosophy, and stands almost completely
aside from the struggle for an optimistic-ethical world-view with
which his age is occupied. Kept in a perpetual state of flux, his
thinking makes use of all possible starting-points one after another
and is now more concerned with natural science, now more akin to
Spinoza’s thought, and now to Christian. He never makes a definite,
conscious attempt to found an ethic.
Fichte’s speculative founding of an ethic and of optimism
Fichte begins as the antipodes of Spinoza._(_44_)_ He aims at
extracting from the universe a confession that it is a purely [pg 127]
optimistic ethical one, by thinking Kant’s thoughts out to a
conclusion.
Kant, according to him, made the mistake of not bringing his two
discoveries, viz. epistemological idealism and the ethic of the
categorical imperative into that inward connexion with one another in
which they really stand.
What is the meaning of the fact that the moral law and the sensible
world both become actual in me? That is the starting-point of Fichte’s
philosophizing.
Through the categorical imperative I experience that my particular ego
is a self-determined will to activity. Correspondingly, every “thing
in itself” which I assume to exist behind phenomena as the real on
which they are based, is similarly a self-determined will to activity.
The essential nature of infinite Being also can consist of nothing
else. The universe is, therefore, the phenomenal form of an infinite,
self-determined will to activity.
Why does the absolute Ego appear as a phenomenon in a sensible world?
Why is Being revealed as Becoming? If I understand this, I have
comprehended the meaning of the world and of my own life.
Now the absolute Ego, because it is infinite will to activity cannot
persist in being merely an Ego. It establishes a non-Ego to be a limit
to itself in order that it may again and again overcome it, and
thereby become conscious of itself as will to activity. This
proceeding takes place amid the multiplicity of finite rational
beings. In their power of intuition the sensible world becomes actual,
and in their overcoming of it they recognize a duty which makes itself
mysteriously felt within them and unites them with the world-spirit.
This is the meaning of the philosophy of the identity of Ego and
non-Ego.
It is not only, then, that the world exists merely in my mental
creation of it: it is, further, only produced in me in order that I
may have something on which my will to fulfilment of duty can exercise
itself. The phenomena of becoming and disappearing which I project out
of myself [pg 128] exist only that I may through them comprehend
myself as an ethical being. In this way epistemological idealism and
the categorical imperative, when they act together and one climbs on
the shoulders of the other, can look behind the curtain which hides
the secret of the world.
Kant protests against the idea that Fichte’s system is to be
considered the completion of his philosophy. As a matter of fact,
however, Fichte does with ingenious art continue the lines which were
begun in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and the _Critique of the
Practical Reason_, and think out the ideas of the philosopher of
Königsberg to a self-contained world- and life-affirming ethical
world-view. He presents them in a generally intelligible form in _The
Destiny of Man_, published in 1800. This book is one of the most
powerful documents produced by the struggle for an ethical world-view.
Fichte gives a content to the abstract, absolute duty of Kant, making
it consist in this, that man, as the instrument of the ever-active
absolute Ego, assigns to himself the destiny of working with the
latter “to bring the whole sensible world under the sovereignty of
reason.”
Since his fundamental moral principle possesses a content, Fichte is
able to deduce particular demands from it, but that content is so
general and vague that the code of duty which is drawn out from it has
but little vital force. Nothing can really be got out of this
fundamental principle beyond the demand that man shall in every
situation of life fulfil the duties which from time to time fall to
him as a result of his destiny of having to help forward the
sovereignty of reason over nature. Fichte therefore distinguishes the
general duties which man, as such, has to fulfil, and the special ones
which are incumbent on him according to his natural gifts, his social
position, and his profession. The latter are emphasized as specially
important.
By defining ethics as activity which aims at subjecting the sensible
world to reason, Fichte gives a cosmic formulation to the utilitarian
ethic of rationalism, and thus [pg 129] produces a comprehensive and
deep foundation for the ethical enthusiasm which was a discovery of
his time. In this matter also he carries through something which
hovered before the mind of Kant.
Thereby he opposes the representatives of the popular philosophy of
the Illumination, and in a polemical pamphlet he criticizes very
severely Christoph Friedrich Nicolai. At bottom, however, the only
reproach he can level at them is that they wish to go on housing
ethics and belief in progress in the naïve world-view arrived at by
the healthy human reason instead of accepting both of them from the
world-view produced by the union of epistemological idealism and the
categorical imperative. To persist in imperfect rationalism when the
perfect has been made a reality by Kant and himself is, in his
opinion, a crime against truth. To him the beginning of wisdom is
insight into the paradox that “consciousness of the world of actuality
springs from our need of action and not, _vice versâ_, our need of
action from our consciousness of the world.”
The spirit of Fichte’s world-view, then, is completely that of
rationalism, only that it believes it has found itself at home with
him in the real nature of Being, and now comes forward with still
stronger conviction and a still more burning enthusiasm. In Fichte’s
writings, men are positively driven with the lash to work for the
improvement of the world. With impressive pathos he teaches them to
obey the inner voice which urges them on to activity, and indicates to
them their definite duty whatever may be the special circumstances of
their existence, and to recognize in so doing that they are thus
fulfilling the highest, and indeed the only destiny of their lives.
It is as the result of this inner urge to activity that we long for a
better world than the one which we see around us, and belief in that
better world is the food by which we live. Fichte makes confession of
unbounded optimism. “All those outbreaks of untamed force before which
human power is annihilated, those devastating hurricanes, [pg 130]
those earthquakes, those volcanic eruptions, can be nothing else than
the last wrestlings of the wild mass of nature against the uniformly
progressive, purposive, and life-promoting course to which, in
opposition to its own tendencies, it is being compelled.” . . .
“Nature is to become to us more and more transparent and capable of
examination even to its innermost secret, and enlightened human power,
armed with its own inventions, is destined to master it without
trouble, and then to exploit peacefully its once for all made
conquest.”_(_45_)_ Here Fichte gives us the triumphant pagan of the
belief in progress which the spirit of the modern age, that lives on
the achievements of its knowledge and power, has been composing since
the Renaissance. He is as thoroughly convinced as the staunchest
rationalist that nature is the buffalo which has remained refractory
so long, but will at last be brought beneath the yoke.
That mankind will perfect itself and reach a condition of unbroken
peace, is to him as certain as the perfection that nature will one day
arrive at. At present, it is true, we are in a period of arrested
progress with temporary setbacks, but when this is past, and all
useful things which have been discovered at one end of the world, get
known to and distributed to all, then mankind, using its powers in
complete co-operation and marching forward in step, will raise itself
uninterruptedly, without arrest of progress or setback, to a culture
of which we can form no conception.
To the State Fichte assigns in his early writings a not very important
_rôle_, but in his later ones a great one. In _The Foundations of the
Law of Nature_ (_Grundlage des Naturrechts_) (1796), it is for him
only the maintainer of law and order. In his work _The Complete
Commercial State_ (_Der geschlossene Handelsstaat_), which appeared in
1800, he allows it to organize industry and to take over social
duties. In his _Addresses to the German Nation_ (_Reden an die
deutsche Nation_, 1808), he makes it a moral educator and a protector
of the virtue of humanity.
[pg 131]
The man who, with the help of epistemological idealism, has made his
way through to the higher rationalism, is safe from losing his
optimism, even though he goes through the cruellest experiences. He
has grasped the fact that the sensible world is only the limit which
the infinitely active will has created on purpose to be overcome. This
lends him inward independence in the face of all happenings. He has no
need to understand them individually. He can let a large proportion of
them be put aside as puzzling to his finite spirit. What is essential
he knows: viz. that what is real in the world is not matter, but
spirit only.
Partaking of the eternally active spirit, man is raised above the
world, and is eternal. The sufferings he meets with afflict nature
only “with which he is connected in a marvellous way,” but not
himself, the being who is exalted above the whole of nature. Of death
he has no fear. He does not die to himself, but merely to those who
survive him. . . . “All death in nature is birth. . . . Nature is
throughout nothing but life. It is not death which kills, but the
living life which, concealed behind the old one, now begins and
proceeds to develop. Death and birth are nothing but the struggle of
life with itself in an effort to reveal itself more and more clearly
and more and more like its real self.” It is in similar words that the
Chinese monist, Chwang-tse, announces that life is eternal and the
dying of an individual only means that one existence is being re-cast
to form another. .
Fichte’s mysticism of activity incapable of being carried through
Fichte’s philosophy of absolute activity is the expression of his own
strong ethical personality, which with impetuosity and self-sacrifice
takes problems in hand, and uses itself up in the strain involved. But
even he is unable to make a genuine combination of epistemological
idealism and ethical so as to produce an ethical world-view which is a
[pg 132] necessity of thought. The impossibility of the undertaking
reveals itself everywhere.
In order to conceive ethics as a part of the normal course of
world-happenings, Fichte, like all others who make the same attempt,
gives up as hopeless any differentiation between human action and
world-happenings. The world-spirit’s impulse to activity, he says,
experiences itself in man as will to ethical action. But, indeed, the
whole world is filled with this will to activity which is for ever
surging against the limitations it has set up for itself. Everything
that happens is only an expression of it. What difference, then, is
there between natural happenings and ethical? Between activity in
itself and ethical activity? Purposive activity directed with
knowledge and intention to the subjection of the sensible world to
reason is ethical, decides Fichte. But what does that mean, when
closely examined? It means that the finite spirit becomes moral by
entering into and taking seriously the play of the infinite spirit
which aims at overcoming its own self-created limitations. Looking in
this way at Fichte’s thought, we see clearly that with the world-view
which results from the combination of ethical and epistemological
idealism, ethics have no longer any meaning.
Again, what is the meaning of “bringing the whole of the sensible
world under the sovereignty of reason”? This conception of the ethical
is not only too wide, but fantastic also. To a limited extent man is
able to harness the forces of nature for his service, and with a
little stretching of language he can, with Fichte, describe such
action as not purposive merely, but also in the widest sense ethical.
Upon this terrestrial globe he has some “influence,” but upon the
world none. That he gives names to the mighty heavenly bodies and can
calculate the orbits of many of them, cannot mean that he brings them
under the sovereignty of reason. Upon deep-sea life, too, he exercises
no other influence than catching specimens of it and giving them
names.
That he may be able to assert that there is such a thing [pg 133] as
an ethical purpose in the world, Fichte falsifies the world’s birth
certificate, and gives it the categorical imperative for father and
epistemological idealism for mother. But this is of no use. The
ethical purpose thus produced cannot satisfy ethical thought.
By conceiving the infinite spirit, in which the finite spirit has a
share, as will to activity, Fichte tries to make possible a world-view
of ethical world- and life-affirmation. In reality, however, this
takes him no further than a more emphatic world- and life-affirmation,
into which, with the help of speculative thought, he smuggles the idea
of duty, thereupon proclaiming it to be ethical. It fares with him
just as with the Chinese philosophers, who similarly exert themselves
in vain to produce an ethic out of world- and life-affirmation.
Absorption in the Absolute by means of action is, as Fichte thinks,
something prodigious, but, just like its counterpart, absorption in
the Absolute which is effected by an act of thought, it is not ethical
but supra-ethical. The element which is needed by the mysticism of
absorption in the Absolute to make it ethical cannot be secured either
by enhancing or by depreciating the will to activity.
Fichte’s mysticism of activity in which man lets loose his energy in
the world is related to the ethic of deed, just as Spinoza’s mysticism
of knowledge in which man is absorbed in the world is related to that
of self-perfecting, but it is only very incompletely that either can
develop itself into a real ethic.
The absorption in the Absolute which comes into actuality in an act of
thought lies nearer to nature-philosophy than that which completes
itself in an active deed. The Brahmans, the Buddha, Lao-tse,
Chwang-tse, Spinoza, and the mystics of every age, have experienced
the becoming one with the Absolute as a coming-to-rest in it. Fichte’s
mysticism of activity lies more in the path of dualistic thinking than
in that of real nature-philosophy. It is something which has been
extorted by enthusiasm, but Fichte [pg 134] is devoted to it, and
rightly, because he has a feeling that the interests of an active
ethic are better guarded by it than by the other. Since, however, he
thus once and for all decides for a nature-philosophy, he comes,
dominated though he is by the ideal of an active ethic, more and more
to the natural quietist consequences of a nature-philosophy. He goes
through a process of evolution which brings him nearer to Spinoza’s
world-view. In his _Instruction Concerning the Blessed Life_, which
appeared in 1806, six years later than _The Destiny of Man_, it is to
him no longer the ethical which in itself is the highest, but the
religious. The ultimate meaning of life, as he now recognizes, is not
to act in God, but to be merged in Him. “Self-annihilation is the
gateway into the higher life.”
He believes, indeed, that he is thereby merely deepening his
world-view without diminishing its ethical energy, and he remains
himself, right to the end, the fiery spirit which consumes itself in
activity for promoting the progress of the world. But his thought has
bent under the weight of nature-philosophy. Without clearly admitting
it to himself, he recognizes that out of nature-philosophy there can
be drawn only an intellectual, not an ethical meaning for the world
and life. Spinoza observes with a smile how he retires upon the
thought beyond which a nature philosophy cannot advance.
Fichte is the first philosopher to declare plainly that no world-view
is ethical which does not enable man to explain that an enthusiastic
active devotion to the universe is something grounded in the nature of
the world and of life. But the road he takes in order to develop this
thought leads him astray. Instead of going more deeply into the
question how ethical happenings, though coming from the world-spirit,
and directed upon the world, are nevertheless different from normal
world-happenings, and investigating the nature of this difference, he
employs the trick, which had been made possible by Kant, of declaring,
with the help of epistemological idealism, that the ethical world-view
is a necessity of thought. Many of his contemporaries [pg 135] believe
with him that it has thereby really reached a position of supremacy,
and even those who cannot go with him the whole length of the
philosophy of the Ego and Non-Ego, are gripped by the force of the
ethical personality which speaks from Fichte’s writings.
The direct effect, then, of Fichte’s philosophy is that the
optimistic, ethical spirit of rationalism maintains its position and
becomes stronger and deeper. His philosophy is a source of inspiration
which produces a mighty impulse to ethics and civilization. But the
vessel in which, with a magnificent wind behind him, he starts with
his companions on a voyage over the sea of knowledge is a leaky one. A
catastrophe is only a question of time.
Fichte’s belief that he has obtained from the nature of the universe
the living compulsion to ethical duty and ethical work which he feels
within himself, is an illusion. The manner, however, in which he
conceives the problem of the optimistic-ethical world-view, and
perceives that for its solution the ordinary processes of life afford
no help, so that more or less violent ones must be allowed to take
their turn, reveals him as a great thinker.
[pg 136]