[3] Ib., 160
It is remarkable, in face of these general views, that both Kant and Fichte follow Rousseau, for reasons which Kant explains from the political conditions of the time, in distrusting representative government. [1]
[1] Ib., 166 (the deputies are practically dependent on the Ministry). But cf. p. 193, which shows that in a true Republic the representative system might, according to Kant, be a reality, and then would be the ideal form. The whole discussion is full of reference to Rousseau.
The passage just cited is of course a reproduction of Rousseau’s view modified by interpretation very much in the sense in which we interpreted it above.
3. When we pass to Fichte (whose earlier work upon Natural Right was published actually before that of Kant), we observe the idea of contract in the act of transmuting itself, though {245} by an imperfect transition, into the idea of an organic whole. For Fichte, the State is a necessary implication of the human self; for a self involves a society of selves, and law or right is the relation between selves in a bodily world. And the “contract” on which citizenship rests, by the fact that it is general, [1] forges an indiscernible unity of the social whole. In this connection, Fichte makes the remarkable claim to be first to apply the simile of an organism to the whole civic relation. I cite an important passage:
“As far as I know, the idea of the whole of the State has so far only been established through the ideal combination of individuals, and thereby the true insight into the nature of this relation has been cut off.” [2]
[1] Fichte (Werke, iii. 203 ff.) says, “Indeterminate”; viz. I undertake to aid in protecting whoever is injured. Now, I can never know (he argues) who in particular is to be benefited by this undertaking; many are invisibly benefited by it through the suppression of the injurious will before it comes to be manifest. Therefore the relation is really organic; every part strives to conserve every part, because injury to any part may concern any part. It is the general as indeterminate, really less of a unity than Rousseau’s “moi commun”.
[2] Werke, iii. 207. The “ideal combination” = the imaginary contract.
You must, he urges, not merely have an idea of combination; you must show a bond of union beyond the idea, or making the idea necessary.
“In our account this has been achieved. In the notion of that which is to be protected, in accordance with the necessary uncertainty which individual will need the visible protection, and still further, which it will have advantaged invisibly in the case of a wrongful will suppressed by the law before its outbreak, all individuals are forced into unity.