[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Sun-Clear Statement #12/41

To use the illustration used by you in the first conversation: these other parts are not related to my consciousness like this book which I hold in my hand, but like the representation of yesterday's conversation with a friend. The real factical in this operation, that wherein I immerse and lose myself, is not the existence of wheels, but my representing of them, my—not so much re-constructing, as pre-constructing them.

A. Do you, or does any rational man, claim such a representation, such an internal tracing out of a piece of machinery to be the actual working machinery of real life? And does any one say, after having, for instance, described and demonstrated to you such a watch, "Now put this watch into your pocket; it will go right; you can pull it out whenever you choose, and see by it what time it is"?

R. Not that I know, unless he be a complete fool.

A. Take care and do not say so. For this was precisely what that philosophical system says, of which I spoke in the introduction, and against which the so-called newestis chiefly directed. That system pretended its demonstration of a watch, j and moreover an incorrect demonstration, to be a real, and even a most excellent watch.

But if any one, to whom you have demonstrated a watch, should finally say: "How can this help me? I do not see that I shall thus get possession of a watch, or that your demonstration will be able to show me what time it is;" or if he should moreover accuse you of having spoiled his actual watch by your demonstration, or of having demonstrated it out of his pocket, what would you say of such a one?

R. That he was as much of a fool as the first one.

A. Take care and do not say so. For precisely this—this insisting on a real watch, when you have only promised them a demonstration of one—is the most weighty objection that has yet been raised against the newest philosophy—and has been raised, moreover, by the most respectable professors and most thorough thinkers of our time. Upon this mistaking of the actual thing for its mere demonstration are grounded, indeed, all misapprehensions to which that philosophy has been exposed. I say emphatically, are grounded all objections and misapprehensions. For why should I not, instead of continuing to presuppose what that science may be, historically state what that science really is to its originators, who undoubtedly know something about it.

1. Philosophy, therefore, dear reader—or, since this word might lead to disputes,—the science of knowledge first of all utterly abstracts from all that we have above characterized as higher degrees of consciousness, and limits itself with its assertion, which we shall directly state, to the primary and fundamental determinations of consciousness, altogether in the sense stated above.

2. In these fundamental determinations the science of knowledge makes a further distinction between that whereof each rational being asserts, that it is the same for each other rational being, or valid for all reason; and that whereof each confesses that it exists only for our race, for mankind, or perhaps only for this particular individual. The science of knowledge abstracts also altogether from this second class of determinations of consciousness, and hence only the former class constitutes the substance of its investigations.

If any reader should remain in doubt concerning the ground and the laws of this latter distinction, or if he should not be able to make it as clear to himself as the primary distinction between determinations of consciousness in general, this would not interfere with any of the results we intend to establish in this work; nor would it interfere with the obtaining of a correct conception concerning the science of knowledge. In that science itself, to which we do not propose to introduce the reader here, the distinction between those two classes arises of itself.

For those who are acquainted with philosophical terminology, we add the following: That class of fundamental determinations of consciousness, which is valid for all reason, and which alone is the object of philosophy, is what Kant calls the a priori, or primary; and the other class of determinations, valid only for the race, or for the individual, is what the same author terms the a posteriori. The science of knowledge does not need to make this distinction in advance of its system, since it is made and grounded in the system itself; in the science of knowledge those expressions, a prioriand a posteriori, have quite a different meaning.

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