From this point onwards the course proceeds by the method already made clear. We progress by making explicit the oppositions contained in the fundamental synthesis, by uniting these opposites, analysing the new synthesis, and so on, until we reach an ultimate pair. Now, in the synthesis of the third act two principles may be distinguished:—(1) the non-ego determines the ego; (2) the ego determines the non-ego. As determined the ego is theoretical, as determining it is practical; ultimately the opposed principles must be united by showing how the ego is both determining and determined.
It is impossible to enter here on the steps by which the theoretical ego is shown to develop into the complete system of cognitive categories, or to trace the deduction of the processes (productive imagination, intuition, sensation, understanding, judgment, reason) by which the quite indefinite non-ego comes to assume the appearance of definite objects in the forms of time and space. All this evolution is the necessary consequence of the determination of the ego by the non-ego. But it is clear that the non-ego cannot really determine the ego. There is no reality beyond the ego itself. The contradiction can only be suppressed if the ego itself opposes to itself the non-ego, places it as an Anstoss or plane on which its own activity breaks and from which it is reflected. Now, this op-positing of the Anstoss is the necessary condition of the practical ego, of the will. If the ego be a striving power, then of necessity a limit must be set by which its striving is manifest. But how can the infinitely active ego posit a limit to its own activity? Here we come to the crux of Fichte’s system, which is only partly cleared up in the Rechtslehre and Sittenlehre. If the ego be pure activity, free activity, it can only become aware of itself by positing some limit. We cannot possibly have any cognition of how such an act is possible. But as it is a free act, the ego cannot be determined to it by anything beyond itself; it cannot be aware of its own freedom otherwise than as determined by other free egos. Thus in the Rechtslehre and Sittenlehre, the multiplicity of egos is deduced, and with this deduction the first form of the Wissenschaftslehre appeared to end.
(c) But in fact deeper questions remained. We have spoken of the ego as becoming aware of its own freedom, and have shown how the existence of other egos and of a world in which these egos may act are the necessary conditions of consciousness of freedom. But all this is the work of the ego. All that has been expounded follows if the ego comes to consciousness. We have therefore to consider that the absolute ego, from which spring all the individual egos, is not subject to these conditions, but freely determines itself to them. How is this absolute ego to be conceived? As early as 1797 Fichte had begun to see that the ultimate basis of his system was the absolute ego, in which is no difference of subject and object; in 1800 the Bestimmung des Menschen defined this absolute ego as the infinite moral will of the universe, God, in whom are all the individual egos, from whom they have sprung. It lay in the nature of the thing that more precise utterances should be given on this subject, and these we find in the Thatsachen des Bewusstseyns and in all the later lectures. God in them is the absolute Life, the absolute One, who becomes conscious of himself by self-diremption into the individual egos. The individual ego is only possible as opposed to a non-ego, to a world of the senses; thus God, the infinite will, manifests himself in the individual, and the individual has over against him the non-ego or thing. “The individuals do not make part of the being of the one life, but are a pure form of its absolute freedom.” “The individual is not conscious of himself, but the Life is conscious of itself in individual form and as an individual.” In order that the Life may act, though it is not necessary that it should act, individualization is necessary. “Thus,” says Fichte, “we reach a final conclusion. Knowledge is not mere knowledge of itself, but of being, and of the one being that truly is, viz. God.... This one possible object of knowledge is never known in its purity, but ever broken into the various forms of knowledge which are and can be shown to be necessary. The demonstration of the necessity of these forms is philosophy or Wissenschaftslehre” (Thats. des Bewuss. Werke, ii. 685). This ultimate view is expressed throughout the lectures (in the Nachgel. Werke) in uncouth and mystical language.
It will escape no one (1) how the idea and method of the Wissenschaftslehre prepare the way for the later Hegelian dialectic, and (2) how completely the whole philosophy of Schopenhauer is contained in the later writings of Fichte. It is not to the credit of historians that Schopenhauer’s debt should have been allowed to pass with so little notice.
Bibliography.—Fichte’s complete works were published by his son J.H. Fichte, Sämmtliche Werke (8 vols., Berlin, 1845-1846), with Nachgelassene Werke (3 vols., Bonn, 1834-1835); also Leben und Briefwechsel (2 vols., 1830, ed. 1862). Among translations are those of William Smith, Popular Writings of Fichte, with Memoir (2 vols., London, 1848-1849, 4th ed. 1889); A.E. Kroeger, portions of the Wissenschaftslehre (Science of Knowledge, Philadelphia, 1868; ed. London, 1889), the Naturrecht (Science of Rights, 1870; ed. London, 1889); of the Vorlesungen ü. d. Bestimmung d. Gelehrten (The Vocation of the Scholar, by W. Smith, 1847); Destination of Man, by Mrs P. Sinnett; Discours à la nation allemande, French by Léon Philippe (1895), with preface by F. Picavet, and a biographical memoir.
The number of critical works is very large. Besides the histories of post-Kantian philosophy by Erdmann, Fortlage (whose account is remarkably good), Michelet, Biedermann and others, see Wm. Busse, Fichte und seine Beziehung zur Gegenwart des deutschen Volkes (Halle, 1848-1849); J.H. Löwe, Die Philosophic Fichtes (Stuttgart, 1862); Kuno Fischer, Geschichte d. neueren Philosophie (1869, 1884, 1890); Ludwig Noack, Fichte nach seinem Leben, Lehren und Wirken (Leipzig, 1862); R. Adamson, Fichte (1881, in Knight’s “Philosophical Classics”); Oscar Benzow, Zu Fichtes Lekre von Nicht-Ich (Bern, 1898); E.O. Burmann, Die Transcendentalphilosophie Fichtes und Schellings (Upsala, 1890-1892); M. Carrière, Fichtes Geistesentwickelung in die Reden über d. Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1894); C.C. Everett, Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (Chicago, 1884); O. Pfleiderer, J.G. Fichtes Lebensbild eines deutschen Denkers und Patrioten (Stuttgart, 1877); T. Wotschke, Fichte und Erigena (1896); W. Kabitz, Studien zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Fichtehen Wissenschaftslehre aus der Kantischen Philosophie (1902); E. Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte (1902); X. Léon, La Philos. de Fichte (1902); M. Wiener, J.G. Fichtes Lehre vom Wesen und Inhalt der Geschichte (1906).
On Fichte’s social philosophy see, e.g., F. Schmidt-Warneck, Die Sociologie Fichtes (Berlin, 1884); W. Windelband, Fichtes Idee des deutschen Staates (1890); M. Weber, Fichtes Sozialismus und sein Verhältnis zur Marx’schen Doctrin (1900); S.H. Gutman, J.G. Fichtes Sozialpädogogik (1907); H. Lindau, Johann G. Fichte und der neuere Socialismus (1900).
(R. Ad.; X.)
FICHTELGEBIRGE, a mountain group of Bavaria, forming the centre from which various mountain ranges proceed,—the Elstergebirge, linking it to the Erzgebirge, in a N.E., the Frankenwald in a N.W., and the Böhmerwald in a S.E. direction. The streams to which it gives rise flow towards the four cardinal points,—e.g. the Eger eastward and the Saale northward, both to the Elbe; the Weisser Main westward to the Rhine, and the Naab southward to the Danube. The chief points of the mass are the Schneeberg and the Ochsenkopf, the former having a height of 3448, and the latter of 3356 ft. The whole district is pretty thickly populated, and there is great abundance of wood, as well as of iron, vitriol, sulphur, copper, lead and many kinds of marble. The inhabitants are employed chiefly in the iron mines, at forges and blast furnaces, and in charcoal burning and the manufacture of blacking from firewood. Although surrounded by railways and crossed by the lines Nuremberg-Eger and Regensburg-Oberkotzau, the Fichtelgebirge, owing principally to its raw climate and bleakness, is not much visited by strangers, the only important points of interest being Alexandersbad (a delightfully situated watering-place) and the granite labyrinth of Luisenburg.