– In order to appreciate
this deduction properly, one need only bear in mind the following: If, as has been claimed, the morality
of our nature is something that follows from our rationality according to necessary laws, then for
perception itself the compulsion noted above is something primary and immediate, something that
manifests itself without any help from us, and we cannot freely change this manifestation in the least.
Employing a deduction to gain insight into the grounds of this compulsion does not provide us with any
power to change anything about the compulsion, because it is our knowledge and not our power that
extends this far, and because this whole relationship is necessary; indeed, it is our unchangeable nature
itself. The deduction thus produces nothing more than theoretical cognition, and one must not expect
anything more from it. Just as one does not posit objects differently in space and time after one has
obtained insight into the grounds of this operation than one posited them before such insight, so does
morality not manifest itself any differently in human beings after its deduction than before. Even ethics
[Sittenlehre] is not a doctrineof wisdom[ Weisheitslehre] – indeed, such a doctrine is impossible as such, inasmuch as wisdom should be considered more of an art than a science; instead, like all philosophy,
ethics is Wissenschaftslehre. More specifically, ethics is the theory of ourconsciousnessof our moral nature in general and of our specific duties in particular.
2 The phrase translated here as “foundation of the entire Wissenschaftslehre” (Grundlageder gesamtenWissenschaftslehre), which also occurs elsewhere in The System ofEthics, is the title of the presentation of the first principles or “foundations” of the entire Wissenschaftslehrethat Fichte published in 1794–
1795 [henceforth = GWL] and which has been translated into English under the abbreviated title
“Science of Knowledge.” See J. G. Fichte, ScienceofKnowledgewith the First and SecondIntroductions, ed. and trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
[Henceforth = SK]. But note that Fichte refers not to “the” but rather to “a” “foundation of the entire
Wissenschaftslehre.” This is significant, because Fichte began providing a thoroughly revised
presentation of the “foundations” of his system, “according to a new method, ” in his lectures of 1796/97
and repeated this new version in 1797/98 and 1798/99. In fact, the “foundations” to which Fichte refers
in the System ofEthicswould appear to be this new version of the foundational portion of the entire system, presented according to a “new method” (i.e. WLnm= FTP).
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Enough about the meaning and end of the proposed deduction; let us now add a preliminary [IV, 16]
remark concerning how this deduction is to be properly understood, a remark that is necessary only
because unfamiliarity with the nature of transcendental philosophy is still very widespread.
The path of the deduction will be as follows: we will assign ourselves the task of thinking of ourselves
under a certain specified condition and observing howwe are required to think of ourselves under this
condition. From those properties of ourselves that we find in this way, we will then derive, as something
necessary, the moral compulsion noted earlier. At first, it may seem arbitrary that we think of ourselves
under precisely this specific condition. But anyone who surveys philosophy in its entirety, as well as the
systematic connection of the individual philosophical sciences, will see that this condition is necessary.
Everyone else may view our way of proceeding provisionally, as an attempt to propound a scientific
ethics, an attempt that may fail or succeed, until the correctness of this way of proceeding is confirmed
by its success in actually establishing the desired science. This, therefore, is the least of our concerns.
A more important concern is the following, and its solution is also more instructive: Someone might say
to us, “You will be thinkingof yourself. But, as Critical philosophers you must know, and, if not, it
could also be proven to you quite easily, that all of your thinking proceeds in accordance with certain
inner laws of thinking, and what is thought is modified by the very manner of thinking, and thus, without
your even noticing this, something becomes for you what it is for you precisely because you are thinking
it. The case before us will undoubtedly be no different: by turning your thinking toward yourself, you
yourself will become modified in and by this act of thinking. Hence you may not say, this is how I am in
and for myself, for this is something you could never know unless you had some means of cognizing
yourself other than through thinking.