[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Facts of Consciousness #4/65

Hence it is not proper to say, in the ordinary sense of the word, “I” (signifying an individual, which ordinary use of language we here do not wish to deviate from, remaining, as we do, within the region of facts), that it is I who think in this thinking, since it will be shown hereafter that it is only through a reflection concerning this thinking that the “I” arrives at a consciousness of itself; but we must say, the thinking, itself, as an independent life, thinks from out and through itself and is this objectivating thinking.

And now let us gather together the whole external perception, whereof we have examined the component parts. It is, in general, a consciousness which is not made through any free principle with considerateness and in accordance with any beforehand determined conception, but which is made through itself: a peculiar and independently upon-itself-reposing life of consciousness.

I say an independent and upon-itself-reposing life; for the being and life of consciousness are altogether lost in the described determinations and do not extend further, although it is quite possible that the same life may in a future reflection go beyond the before described determinations, may extend its life and add new determinations of it. But this thus-in-itself lost consciousness, which forms a completely closed spiritual life-moment by itself, is not simple, as we have already stated, but rather composed of two chief ingredients, thinking and self-contemplation; whereof the latter again separates into two utterly distinct components. And these two—or, if you choose, three—components are melted together so inseparably and into one, that the one cannot occur without the other, and that consciousness is formed only through the synthetical union of the three. The contemplating faculty cannot contemplate its infinite faculty without feeling at the same time its external sense limited in a certain manner; and immediately with this consciousness of its own condition there connects a thinking, intimately united with that consciousness to one life-moment; whereby that which before was in us for our contemplation now becomes a body externally existing and endowed with a certain sensible quality. Again, on the other hand: objective thinking cannot occur unless there is a contemplation, since all thinking is a going beyond, an externalizing, which, of course, presupposes an internal from which to go beyond, or to externalize.

Chapter 2

Concerning Internal Perception or Reflection

All our internal perception presupposes, firstly, an activity of the mind whereby it can free itself from its condition of external perception, and hence posit itself both as a knowing of itself as knowledge (that is, of a limitedness of itself through external perception), and as a knowing of itself as a creative principle (that is, of a power in itself to free itself from that limitedness), which activity of the mind is called intellectual contemplation; and, secondly, an activity of the mind whereby it objectivates this its own power and posits it as an independently existing thing, which activity is called intellectual thinking.

Having thus analyzed the facts of consciousness in externalperception, it seems that we might now, without further preliminaries, proceed to an analysis of internalperception, or reflection, as our second chapter.

But since, as it partly is known already and partly is evident at the first glance, this reflection or internal perception is a condition altogether different from—nay, in part, utterly opposed to—that of external perception, it may seem curious to many how such opposite determinations are possible in one and the same consciousness; and hence, before going further, we first ought to answer this question: how is it possible for the life of consciousness to proceed from one of its conditions to its opposite; or, how is it possible for us at all to proceed from our first to a second chapter?

To solve this question, let us consider together, and let me beg you to find in your own minds true the following:

1. I assert that knowledge in its inner form and essence is the being of freedom. What freedom is, I assume to be known to you. Now, of this freedom I assert that it exists absolutely; not, as some one might suppose at the first view, as a quality of some other in-itself-existing substance and inherent in the same, but as an altogether independent being or existence, and that this independent and peculiar being of freedom is knowledge. I assert that this independent being of freedom places itself before itself as knowledge; and that whoever wants to comprehend knowledge in its essence, must think it as such a being of freedom.

Explanatory.—Here already we get a glimpse of an altogether other, higher, and more spiritual being than common materialistic understanding is capable of thinking.