[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Facts of Consciousness #10/65

For, as I assert (and you doubtless have convinced yourselves of the correctness of my assertion by your own observation and contemplation), the Ego—as we for the present call it, and as the ordinary use of language calls it, apart from the Science of Knowledge—posits neither the external object nor itself; but both the external object and itself are posited through the universal and absolute thinking, and this thinking gives to the Ego not only the object but also itself. The free productions of its imagination, the Ego, perhaps, may posit itself. Nevertheless the science of Knowledge has hitherto been generally understood as asserting the very reverse of what I have just now stated. Now it is certainly true that the Science of Knowledge has said, and will ever say, and says to yon now, that the Ego posits absolutely itself as well as in itself the object. But in saying this it does not speak at all of the empirical Ego, but of an Ego which is altogether concealed to ordinary eyes, cannot be found at all within the sphere of facts, and can be recognized only by a rising to the fundamental ground. But this only the Science of Knowledge can justify.

1. This is the proper place to state more definitely the peculiar nature of thinking. I have said before that thinking adds no new ingredient whatever to contemplation, but merely gives it another form; elevating it above its flowing, phenomenal nature, and changing it into an independent being. It is thus in the immediate act of original thinking; and the result thereof is, therefore, also independent and permanent, since that thinking is a development and progression of independent life. Now let us suppose that this result of thinking—i.e. the objective being which thinking adds to the object of contemplation—is analyzed just as it is found after that original act of thinking, and we shall find in it a twofoldness, i.e. firstly, a being which has or carries certain qualities, and, secondly, those qualities themselves. And now I would ask anyone to tell me what that being, substance, or bearer of the qualities (accidences) is in-and-for-itself, or whether he has a single word wherewith to characterize it as such being, or whether, if he casts aside this merely formal being, he retains anything else than the qualities. Hence that being or substance (the thing per se) is nothing at all in itself, but is merely the accidences in the form of thinking. That bearer is nothing but the eternal being-born by the eternal and universal thinking of the accidences. Now let us suppose further, that I start with my thinking from the substance, and characterize it (as I cannot well do otherwise) through its qualities: how, then, do I name it in relation to that which, considered as a mere quality, I name simply blue, round, &c. I suppose I name it a blue thing, a round thing, &c., and cannot well name it otherwise. Let us now apply this to the just considered case, wherein knowledge is changed through thinking in reflection into a knowing one. “To know” is a general flowing quality, and expresses an accidental characteristic precisely like blue, round, &c. Now thinking takes hold of this accidentality and raises it into the form of independent being. How, then, must we name that which is discovered in analytical consciousness as the result of such a thinking, and how will it be named by the natural use of language if left to itself? Evidently not a knowledge, but a knowing one, since through thinking there has arisen a substance, and a permanent, firm bearer of all knowledge.

2. It is to be observed, moreover, that we have now discovered two utterly distinct acts of thinking as facts of consciousness. For, we either retain the qualities, simply forming them through thinking, and this is a thinking according to the form of substantiality, wherein we have a substance with its accidences; or we proceed altogether beyond the accidences and do not retain them at all, in which case we think a principle, or ground, or the relation of causality. Through the first mentioned manner of thinking we have now obtained two substances; firstly, the object of external perception, and, secondly, the Ego as a knowing substance. The second manner of thinking occurs only in an absolute synthesis of thinking, as we have seen, in which synthesis that thinking, or the Ego, is changed through the first link of thinking into a substance, and through the second link into a principle.