When1: 1792
When2: 1808
Who: Johann Fichte [Fichte, Johann]
What: philosopher
Where: Zurich, Switzerland/Germany
works\ Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation [1792]; Science of Knowledge or Wissenschaftslehre [1794]; Science of Rights [1797]; Science of Ethics [1798]; Closed Commercial State [1800]; Vocation of Man [1800]; Way to the Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion [1806]; Characteristic of the Present Age [1806]; Addresses to the German People [1808]
Detail: He lived 1762 to 1814 and developed a philosophy based on Kant's idealism.
Epistemology
Sense qualities come freely from outside. Consciousness is activities {tasks, Fichte} that create objects from unconscious sense qualities and unify knowledge about such objects. In this way, experience is a consciousness product. To perform its tasks, consciousness reasons using all activities in unified ways. Consciousness starts with basic task and ideas felt to be necessary and true. The first task for people is to create oneself and unify all ideas about oneself, to be self-consciousness. Whenever task tries to create and/or unify, it encounters resistance or contradiction. To overcome contradiction, task performs dialectical process, to reach higher synthesis. Consciousness knows its actions while it acts and so has both being and consciousness. The self-consciousness perceives subject, oneself, and object, one's activities. People can only know the "I" or self by distinguishing it from the not-I or object perceived by self. The "I" has evolved historically by the dialectic to know, first, objective activity, then communities governed by law, then exercise of will and science, then realization that all is spirit, and then philosophical understanding of God's will as part of God's community. Therefore, starting from the basic task, dialectical processes create task hierarchy. Dialectic processes keep all tasks working together smoothly to form unified processes. Dialectic is essence of reason. Perhaps, self-consciousness involves unified task hierarchy [Fichte, 1794].
Besides ideas that arise from dialectic, consciousness contains ideas characterized by feelings of necessity and certainty in their truth.
Sensation has no basis in preceding mental activity and so is free and unconscious. It appears to come from outside consciousness but is the way reason sets goal or object for itself.
Ethics
Consciousness creates sensation objects for action. People follow the command of duty. People have right to work to fulfill duty.
History evolves from state of instinctive reason and morality, to impulse and will, to reason {artistic reason} under common universal consciousness. Man's goal is restfully contemplating God. "I" comes from and directs toward God.
Philosophy is to organize reason or consciousness.
Metaphysics
All being comes from objective reason. There are no things-in-themselves. Reality cannot mix material world and consciousness, because they are completely separate.
Objective-reason unity, which is not subjective, causes all things to have unity, have order, and necessarily connect.
God is the free, world-creating activity or universal self. World is teleological, not causal.
Mind
All things happen within self, and there are no things-in-themselves {critical idealism}.
The "I" is activity of being aware of self {thesis, Fichte}, which is subjective being. Things outside the "I" have their own activities {antithesis, Fichte}, which is objective world. Both interact dialectically to limit each other and make relations between self and world {synthesis, Fichte}. Theoretical-reason synthesis stages achieve purer knowledge. Consciousness knows its actions while it acts and so has both being and consciousness. The self-consciousness perceives subject as oneself and object as one's activities. People can know the "I" or self only by distinguishing it from the not-I or object perceived by self.
The "I" has evolved historically by the dialectic to know, first, objective activity, then communities governed by law, then exercise of will and science, then realization that all is spirit, and then philosophical understanding of God's will as part of God's community.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224