[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The System of Ethics #10/193

“I find myself” ; this would mean that I take the finder and what is

found to be one and the same;

3 Aufgabe. This term could equally well be translated as “task” or “postulate,” in the sense in which the latter term is employed in Euclidean geometry: viz., as a summons to engage in a specific act of thinking.

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what is found is not4supposed to be something different from the finding subject itself.

(b) What does it mean to say, “I find myself”?

What is found is here posited in opposition to what is produced by us. In particular, the finder is

supposed to be engaged in an act of finding; i.e., insofar as I am engaged in this act of finding, I am

conscious of no other activity beyond that of merely apprehending[Auffassen]. What is apprehended, however, is supposed to be neither produced nor in any way modified by the act of apprehending; it is

simply supposed to be, and to be such as it is, independent of the act of apprehending. Without being apprehended, it is; and it would have remained as it had been, even if I had not apprehended it. As far as

what is apprehended is concerned, my act of apprehending is utterly contingent and does not change

anything whatsoever with respect to the essence of what is apprehended. – This is precisely how I

appear to myself in the act of finding. Here we are concerned only with providing an exposition of the

mere fact of consciousness, and we are not at all concerned with what may be the truth about this

situation, when viewed, that is, from the highest speculative standpoint. – This point has been very

expressively conveyed by saying that something is givento the perceiver. – In short, the finder is

supposed to be purely passive; and, in the case before us [that is, the case of finding oneself], something

that one recognizes as oneself is supposed to impose itself on the finder.

(c) What does it mean to say, “I find myself as willing, and I can find myself onlyas willing”?

It is here presupposed that one knows what willingmeans. This concept is not capable of a real

definition, nor does it require one. Each person has to become aware within himself of what willing

means, through intellectual intuition, and everyone will be able to do so without any

4 The “not” is missing in the original edition. It was first supplied in the version of the System of Ethicsedited by I. H. Fichte and included in volume IV of his edition of his father’s complete works: Fichtes

Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte (Berlin: Veit, 1845–1846; rpt., including the three volumes of Fichtes

nachgelassene Werke, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971) [henceforth = SW].

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difficulty [IV, 20]. The fact designated by the preceding words is this: I become aware of an act of

willing. Then, by means of thinking, I add to this act of willing [the thought of] something subsisting,

something that is present independently of my consciousness [of it], something that is supposed to be the

willing subject [ das Wollende], which engages in this act of willing, which hasthis will, and in which the will is supposed to inhere. (Here we are not concerned with howsuch a substrate might be added

through thinking, nor with what the grounds for such an addition might be; we are instead concerned

only with the fact thatit happens, and this is something of which everyone has to convince himself by

means of his own self-observation.) – I said that I become consciousof this willing, that I perceive it.

Now I also become conscious of this consciousness, of this perceiving, and I also relate it to a substance.

To me, this substance that possesses consciousness is the very same as the one that also wills; therefore,

I find myself as the willing Me [ das wollende Mich], or, I find myselfas willing.

“I find myself onlyas willing.” First of all, I do not, as it were, perceive this substance immediately.

What is substantial is no object of perception whatsoever but is simply added in thinking to something

that has been perceived. I can immediately perceive only what is supposed to be a manifestation of the

substance. But there are only two manifestations that are immediately ascribed to the substance in

question [that is, to the I]: thinking(in the widest sense of the term, i.e., representing, or consciousness as such) and willing.