[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The System of Ethics #3/193

Page 11

We thereby obtain the following, important insight: knowledge and being are not separated outside of

consciousness and independent of it; instead, they are separated only within consciousness, since this

separation is a condition for the possibility of all consciousness, and it is only through this separation

that the two of them first arise. There is no being except by means of consciousness, just as there is,

outside of consciousness, no knowing, as a merely subjective reference to a being. I am required to bring

about a separation simply in order to be able to say to myself “I”; and yet it is only by saying “I” and

only insofar as I say this that such a separation occurs. The unity [ das Eine] that is divided – which thus lies at the basis of all consciousness and due to which what is subjective and what is objective in

consciousness are immediately posited as one – is absolute = X, and this can in no way appear within

consciousness as something simple.

Here we find an immediate correspondence between what is subjective and what is objective: I know

myself because I am, and I am because I know myself. It may well be that any other correspondence

between the two – whether what is objective is supposed to follow from what is subjective, [IV, 6] as in

the concept of an end, or whether what is subjective is supposed to follow from what is objective, as in

the concept of a cognition – is nothing but a particular aspect of this immediate correspondence. If this

could actually be demonstrated, then this would at the same time prove that everything that can occur in

consciousness is posited in accordance with the mere form of consciousness – inasmuch as this

immediate separation and correspondence is the form of consciousness itself, and these other separations

and correspondences exhaust the entire content of all possible consciousness. How things stand in that

regard will undoubtedly emerge in the course of our investigation.

6

I posit myself as active. With respect to the state of mind to be investigated, this certainly does not mean

that I ascribe to myself activity in general, but rather that I ascribe to myself a determinateactivity,

precisely this one and not another.

As we have just seen, what is subjective, simply by virtue of being separated from what is objective,

becomes entirely dependent and thoroughly constrained; and the ground of this material determinacy,

the determinacy of what is subjective with regard to whatit is, lies by no

Page 12

means within what is subjective, but in what is objective. What is subjective appears as a mere cognizing

of something that hovers before it; in no way and in no respect does it appear as actively producing the

representation. This is necessarily the case here at the origin of all consciousness, where the separation

of what is subjective and what is objective is complete. In the progressive development of

consciousness, however, by means of a synthesis, what is subjective also appears as free and

determining, inasmuch as it appears as engaged inabstracting. It is then able, for example, freely to describe activity in general and as such, even though it is not able to perceive the latter. At this point in

our investigation, however, we remain at the origin of all consciousness, and hence the representation to

be investigated is necessarily a perception; i.e., in this representation what is subjective appears to be

entirely and thoroughly determined, without any effort on its own part [IV, 7].

Now what does “a determinateactivity” mean, and how does an activity become determinate or determined? Merely by having some resistance posited in opposition to it – posited in opposition: that is

to say, a resistance that is thought of by means of ideal activity and imagined to be standing over against

the latter. Wherever and whenever you see activity, you necessarily see resistance as well, for otherwise

you see no activity.

First of all, one should not fail to note the following: that such a resistance appears is entirely the result

of the laws of consciousness, and the resistance can therefore rightly be considered a product of these

laws. The law itself, in accordance with which the resistance is present for us, can be derived from the

necessary separation of what is subjective from what is objective and from the absolutely posited

relation of the former to the latter, as has just been done. For this reason, my consciousness of the

resistance is an indirect or mediated consciousness, mediated by the fact that I [here] have to consider

myself purely as a cognizingsubject and, in this cognition, entirely dependent upon objectivity.