FICHTE AND SCHILLING: THE JENA PERIOD

Fichte and Schilling: the Jena periodDaniel BreazealeFROM KANT TO FICHTEAn observer of the German philosophical landscape of the 1790s wouldhave surveyed a complex and confusing scene, in which individuals tendedto align themselves with particular factions or “schools,” frequentlyassociated with specific universities or, in some cases, periodicals, andengaged in often bitter public controversies with their opponents. Withinthis context, Kantianism (or “the Critical philosophy,” as it was styled byboth its opponents and its exponents) was simply one party among others.Self-appointed representatives of “Enlightenment,” inspired by Englishand French examples and pledging their allegiance to the legacy ofLessing, dominated more urbane intellectual circles, such as that of MosesMendelssohn and his associates in Berlin. A more academic variety ofrationalism was defended by the many proponents of the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy, which still dominated the philosophy departments ofmost German universities. At the same time, there was a widespread voguefor what was then called “popular philosophy,” the adherents of which,though they usually shared the liberal assumptions and conclusions of theAufklärer and Wolffians, based their philosophy not upon a priorireasoning, but upon an appeal to the testimony of “healthy commonsense.” In opposition to the dominant spirit of the age, these “popularphilosophers” distrusted the systematic impulse and were suspicious of allattempts to turn philosophy into a well-grounded “science.”An even more extreme rejection of philosophy as a systematic sciencewas associated with Friedrich Jacobi and J.G.Hamann, two idiosyncraticbut influential thinkers who employed skeptical arguments in order toreveal the fragility of human reason and hence the necessity andsuperiority of “faith.” Another eccentric but influential figure wasJ.G.Herder, a philosophical naturalist who challenged the prevailingmechanistic models of the mind and of society and sought to replace themwith more organic or vitalistic ones.Herder’s ground-breaking work onthe origin of languages and the role of history in the formation of humanconsciousness eventually led him to call for a “meta-critique” ofphilosophy’s alleged neglect of the influence of language, culture, andhistory upon thought itself. Finally, there were also a few straightforwardrepresentatives of philosophical skepticism, such as G.E.Schulze and ErnstPlanner.All of these contending parties were united, however, in their oppositionto the new Kantian philosophy, which was steadily gaining in prominence.Not only were several new journals dedicated to the promulgation ofKantianism, but a university chair was established for this purpose as well(at Jena in 1787). It is noteworthy, however, that the single work whichplayed the greatest role in calling public attention to the Criticalphilosophy was not a book by Kant himself, but rather a series of popular“Letters on the Kantian Philosophy” published in 1786–7 in the widelycirculated Allgemeine Literatar-Zeitung. These “Letters” were the work ofK.L.Reinhold (1756–1823), an ex-Jesuit and enthusiastic convert to thenew Critical philosophy. The most striking feature of Reinhold’s “Letters”is their strong emphasis upon the practical or moral consequences ofKant’s thought. Consequently, it was not as a new theory of knowledge oreven as a critique of metaphysics that Kant’s philosophy first attractedwidespread attention, but instead, as an ingenious defense of freedom,morality, and religion: a doctrine of “practical belief” which wassimultaneously able to acknowledge the (limited) legitimacy of the modernscientific worldview. On the strength of his fame as author of the“Letters,” Reinhold was named as the first occupant of the new chair inCritical philosophy established at Jena in 1787.To the consternation of many of Kant’s more literal-minded followers,Reinhold proved to be a rather unorthodox adherent of the newtranscendental philosophy and immediately embarked upon an ambitiousproject of reformulating and revising Kant’s philosophy. Though Reinholdwas quite prepared to endorse all of Kant’s conclusions, he found Kant’sspecific arguments and “derivations” to be somewhat lacking in innercoherence and systematic rigor. According to Reinhold, transcendentalphilosophy could become genuinely “scientific” only by being recast in theform of a deductive system based upon a single, self-evidently certain,“absolutely first principle,” from which, in turn, everything else (e.g. thefamous distinction between “thought” and “intuition,” with which Kant’stheoretical philosophy begins) could be “derived.”Reinhold gave the name “Elementary Philosophy” (or “Philosophy ofthe Elements”) to his revised version of Kantianism, and argued that thelatter alone was able to provide Kant’s writings with the systematic formand scientific foundation which they themselves lacked. By analyzing thebare concept of “representation,” Reinhold obtained the first principle ofhis system, the “principle of consciousness,” and from this first principlehe then proposed to derive the distinction between intuition and thought,along with all of familiar Kantian faculties and categories.Reinhold’s Elementary Philosophy is historically significant for tworeasons: First of all, Reinhold’s explicit criticism of the “letter” of Kant’sown presentation of his philosophy, and especially his criticism of theduality of Kant’s starting point and the ad hoc character of some of hisarguments, promoted a general demand for a more coherent andsystematic exposition of Kant’s philosophy. Second, Reinhold’s specificprogram for accomplishing this task—viz., by deriving the entire Criticalphilosophy from a single first principle—stimulated others (above all,Fichte) to seek an even more “fundamental” first principle upon whichphilosophy in its entirety could be “grounded.”Another prominent feature of Kant’s philosophy which was subjected toearly criticism (though in this case not by Reinhold) concerned theproblematic status of “things in themselves” within the Criticalphilosophy. The most influential early critic of Kant on this point wasF.H.Jacobi (1743–1819), who was a well-known author of sentimentalnovels, as well as of several influential philosophical (or rather,antiphilosophical) works. In 1787 Jacobi devoted the Appendix to hisDavid Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism to an examination oftranscendental philosophy, and he focused his criticism upon Kant’sapparently conflicting remarks concerning the status of “things inthemselves.” Jacobi concluded that the entire doctrine was incoherent,since, as he put it, one had to assume the existence of things in themselvesin order to obtain entry in Kant’s philosophy, only to discover upon entryinto the same that such a doctrine is incompatible with the transcendentalaccount of “objectivity” made possible by that same philosophy. Forfollowers of Kant, therefore, the challenge was clear: to defendtranscendental idealism from Jacobi’s criticism without following Jacobihimself into a wholesale rejection of philosophical speculation andembrace of a fideistic celebration of “not-knowing.”Similar objections to treating the thing in itself as the transcendentground of sensations were advanced by Salomon Maimon (c. 1752–1800),a largely self-educated Polish-Russian Jew and the author of theextraordinarily original Examination of Transcendental Philosophy(1790). For Maimon, however, the lesson to be drawn from theuntenability of Kant’s doctrine of things in themselves was not the need toabandon reason for immediate feeling and faith, but rather, the desirabilityof constructing a more “skeptical” variety of Kantianism, one shorn of alltranscendent remnants and aware of its own limitations. To this end,Maimon attempted to rehabilitate the Leibnizian notion of an “infiniteunderstanding,” from the perspective of which the distinction betweensensibility and thought, content and form, would disappear.Another influential critic of the new transcendental philosophy wasG.E.Schulze, self-styled “Humean skeptic” and author of theanonymously published Aenesidemus, or concerning the Foundations ofthe Elementary Philosophy Propounded at Jena by Prof. Reinhold,Including a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critiqueof Reason (1792). In attacking the Critical philosophy, Schulze not onlyrepeated many of Jacobi’s and Maimon’s specific criticisms but addedsome new ones of his own, including an objection to the very idea of “theprimacy of practical reason.”In addition to the various internal difficulties within Kant’s writings,Kant’s first generation of readers also had to grapple with what might bethought of as the external problem of the relationship between the variousCritiques, a problem which, of course, ultimately concerns nothing lessthan the systematic unity of the Critical philosophy. How is the worldviewof the first Critique to be squared with that of the second? Despite Kant’sown attempt to address this problem, first in the Transcendental Dialecticof the Critique of Pure Reason, and then in the Introduction to theCritique of Judgment, many readers remained uncertain about how thedeterministic worldview of Kant’s theoretical philosophy could bereconciled with the account of freedom and self-determination presentedin his practical philosophy. There was also widespread confusionregarding the relationship between the various “subjects” (or “I’s”)encountered in the various Critiques. Is the pure subjective spontaneitythat accounts for the transcendental unity of apperception (i.e. “thetranscendental I”) identical with the freely acting and self-legislatingpractical agent (“the practical I”)? And how are these “I’s” related, inturn, to empirical self-consciousness and to embodied persons? Finally,many sympathetic readers expressed serious reservations concerning theoverall “architectonic” of the Critical philosophy. How, precisely, are theclaims of theoretical philosophy related to those of practical philosophy?Indeed, what is the epistemic status of philosophical claims themselves?What kind of “knowledge” does philosophy convey, and how is suchknowledge established?Such was the philosophical context within which the achievements ofFichte and Schelling must be understood and evaluated. Everyone agreedthat, for better or for worse, philosophy was in a period of extraordinarycrisis and ferment. Even as the magnitude of Kant’s accomplishment wasbecoming increasingly apparent, it was also becoming obvious—to Kant’smore perspicacious defenders as well as to his critics—that any successfuldefense of the Critical philosophy would have to be more than a mererestatement of the same. Instead, what would be required would be afurther advance down the road first opened by Reinhold’s ElementaryPhilosophy; only by abandoning the “letter” of Kantianism, or so itseemed, could its “spirit” be preserved.J.G.FICHTE’S JENA WISSENSCHAFTSLEHREJohann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), son of a Saxon ribbon weaver,university dropout, and itinerant tutor, first encountered Kant’s writings in1790, and the effect was immediately galvanizing. “I have been living in anew world ever since reading the Critique of Practical Reason,” hereported to a friend.Propositions I thought could never be overturned have beenoverturned for me. Things have been proven to me which I thoughtcould never be proven—e.g. the concept of absolute freedom, theconcept of duty, etc.—I feel all the happier for it…. Please forgive mefor saying so, but I cannot convince myself that prior to the Kantiancritique anyone able to think for himself thought any differently thanI did, and I do not recall ever having met anyone who had anyfundamental objections to make against my [previous, deterministic]system. I encountered plenty of sincere persons who had different—not thoughts (for they were not at all capable of thinking) butdifferent—feelings.(III, 1:167)1As this passage poignantly testifies, what attracted Fichte totranscendental idealism was his conviction that it alone was able toreconcile human freedom and natural necessity, moral sentiments andrational judgments, “feelings” and “thoughts.” It is no exaggeration tosay that Fichte devoted the rest of his life to the task of explaining andexpounding the philosophy which, he believed, makes such areconciliation possible. Though he soon confessed to nagging doubtsconcerning certain details of Kant’s own presentations of his philosophy,Fichte never entertained any doubts concerning the fundamental truth ofthe latter, at least insofar as its “spirit” was concerned—a spirit whichFichte was convinced was even better expressed in his own philosophy,which he succinctly characterized in 1795 as “the first system of humanfreedom” (III, 2:298).Barely two years after his first encounter with Kant’s writings, Fichtewas unexpectedly propelled to fame with the publication of his first book,Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792). Through circumstanceswhich have never been adequately explained, the book in question, issuedby Kant’s own publisher and dealing with an important topic (viz.,revelation, considered as the “appearance” of noumenal reality within thephenomenal world) raised by the Critical philosophy but not yet explicitlydealt with by Kant himself, was originally published anonymously. Notsurprisingly, it was immediately and widely hailed as the latest publicationby Kant himself. Thus, as soon as the author’s true identity becameknown, Fichte’s fame as a philosophical author was assured, since it wasnow too late to retract all of the extravagant praise the book had alreadyreceived.The young author’s notoriety was only increased by his next twopublications, A Discourse on the Reclamation of the Freedom of Thoughtfrom the Princes of Europe, who have hitherto Suppressed it and the firstinstallment of A Contribution toward Correcting the Public’s Judgment ofthe French Revolution. Though both works were published anonymously in1793 in Danzig (where Fichte was once again employed as a private tutor),the author’s identity was widely known. Thus, in addition to his growingrenown as the “third sun in the philosophical heaven,” Fichte also acquiredan early reputation as a fiery Jacobin, a reputation which guaranteed himpolitical as well as philosophical enemies during his career at Jena.When Reinhold unexpectedly resigned his chair at Jena in the spring of1794 it was immediately offered to Fichte, who at this point was living inZurich in the home of his new father-in-law and was completely engrossedin a vast project of constructing his own version of transcendentalidealism, one which would heed Reinhold’s call for a system based upon“a single first principle,” but would do so in a manner which would avoidthe published criticisms of Jacobi, Maimon, and Schulze. It was duringthis period that Fichte decided that his new philosophy deserved a newname. Accordingly, since he wished to emphasize that his new, “rigorouslyscientific,” philosophy would represent something more than mere “loveof wisdom” (or “philosophy”), he baptized it “Wissenschaftslehre” (thatis, “theory of science” or “doctrine of scientific knowledge”—not “scienceof knowledge”).Fichte, who more than anything else wished for his own philosophicalefforts to make a positive contribution to the improvement of human life,could hardly afford to decline the offer from Jena, which would guaranteethe maximum amount of exposure for his new system. Accordingly, hebegan lecturing on his new philosophy in the summer of 1794, though notbefore publishing a brief and “hypothetical” introduction to the same inthe form of a meta-philosophical treatise entitled Concerning the Conceptof the Wissenschaftslehre, or of so-called “Philosophy” (1794).Even though Fichte had not yet completed the task of thinking througheven the rudiments of his new system at the time of his arrival at Jena, henevertheless immediately began lecturing on the “Foundations of theEntire Wissenschaftslehre.” These lectures, which continued through thewinter semester of 1794–5, represent Fichte’s first attempt at a full-scalepublic presentation of his philosophy. For the convenience of his students,he had the text of his lectures printed and distributed (in fascicles) over thecourse of the two semesters. However, he soon agreed to have theseprinted fascicles bound together and issued as a book, or rather, as severalbooks: Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, Parts I and II (1794)and Part III (1795), and Outline of the Distinctive Character of theWissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Power (1795)—thoughthe title page of each of these volumes still included the words “publishedas a manuscript for the use of his students.”There is considerable historical irony in the fact that this “book,” thefirst parts of which appeared in print well before the later portions hadeven been drafted, became (and to this day remains) Fichte’s best-knownand most influential philosophical work. It is intriguing to wonder whatthe “history of German Idealism” would have been like if the call to Jenahad not come in 1794 and if, instead, Fichte had been allowed the leisureto develop and to publish his philosophy at a somewhat less frantic pace.But, of course, such speculation is as idle as it is intriguing, for the fact isthat the full text of the Foundations, along with that of the Outlines, wasfatefully set before the reading public in the summer of 1795.Fichte himself was, from the first, deeply dissatisfied with theFoundations, which he wished his auditors and readers to treat as no morethan a provisional presentation of the basic principles of his system.Accordingly, when he next returned to this topic, that is, in the lectures onthe “Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) novamethodo” which he first delivered in 1796–7, he offered his students acompletely revised and very different presentation of the basic principlesand outlines of his philosophy. Apparently, he was relatively satisfied withthis new presentation (the socalled “Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo”),for he repeated these lectures twice more during his career at Jena. Indeed,he fully intended to revise them for publication and, in 1797–8, succeededin publishing two “introductions” to, as well as the first chapter of, thisnew version, under the title An Attempt at a New Presentation of theWissenschaftslehre in the Philosophisches Journal einer GesellschaftTeutscher Gelehrten, of which he was then co-editor.However, Fichte did not confine himself to refining his presentation ofthe foundations of his philosophy; he also devoted a great deal of effort tofleshing out the systematic scheme merely alluded to in his programmaticwritings. He did this in his lectures on Naturrecht (or “natural right”) andethics, subsequently published as Foundations of Natural Right accordingto the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796–7) and The System ofEthical Theory according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre(1798). Though he announced that he would lecture on a third systematicsubdivision of the Wissenschaftslehre, viz., philosophy of religion, duringthe summer semester of 1799, the lectures in question were neverdelivered.Fichte was embroiled in one controversy or another (often involving hispolitical views) from the moment of his arrival in Jena, but the final one,the so-called “atheism controversy,” proved to be his undoing. In 1798 hehad published a brief article entitled “Concerning the Basis of our Belief ina Divine Governance of the Universe,” in which he bluntly criticized allattempts by philosophers to infer the existence of God from the fact of themoral law—or from anything else. His many local enemies seized uponthis article to incite broader opposition. He was officially charged by theSaxon authorities with atheism, which provoked a very public controversybetween Fichte’s opponents and defenders. Eventually, and largely as aresult of his own tactical miscalculations, he was dismissed from hisacademic post. In the summer of 1799 he moved to Berlin.For Fichte, 1799 was a year filled with disappointment. Not only did helose his job, but he also began to lose many of his most prominentphilosophical allies, including Reinhold, who had briefly become anenthusiastic exponent of the Wissenschaftslehre. Schelling, the mostconspicuous and prolific of the young “Fichteans,” continued, despiteFichte’s disapproval, to pursue his interest in “the philosophy of nature,”while Jacobi, whom, for all their philosophical differences, Fichte greatlyadmired, published a long Open Letter to Fichte, in which hedevastatingly characterized the Wissenschaftslehre as “nihilism.” Finally,in August 1799, Kant himself issued a public “declaration” in which herepudiated Fichte’s system and disavowed any relationship between hisown philosophy and the Wissenschaftslehre. “One star sets, another onerises,” shrugged Goethe, when informed of Fichte’s departure from Jena.When Fichte arrived in Berlin (where there was, as yet, no university)he was forced to earn his living from his writings and from occasional,privately subscribed lessons and lectures. His first project was a “popular”presentation of his philosophy, one specifically designed to rebut thecharge of atheism and to reply to Jacobi’s more general criticisms oftranscendental philosophy. The resulting book, The Vocation of Man, waspublished in 1800, closely followed by a rather bold foray into politicaleconomy (The Self-Contained Commercial State). Still attempting todefend himself against what he viewed as widespread misperceptions ofhis position, Fichte then published the pathetically titled Crystal-ClearReport to the General Public concerning the Actual Essence of the NewestPhilosophy: an Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand (1801), inwhich he emphasized the philosophical differences between theWissenschaftslehre and rival systems of thought.At the same time, he continued to revise and recast his “scientific”presentation of the first principles of his system; indeed, he himselfaccurately characterized the period 1800–4 as one of “ceaseless work onthe Wissenschaftslehre.” Finally abandoning his efforts to revise forpublication his 1796–9 lectures on Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, heonce again drafted an entirely new version of the foundations of hisphilosophy, which he presented in a course of private lectures delivered inBerlin in 1801–2. Once again, however, dissatisfaction with the resultsprevented him from publishing this new version and impelled him toembark upon yet another, even more thoroughgoing systematic overhaulof his presentation. These efforts culminated in the year 1804, in thecourse of which Fichte delivered three separate sets of lectures on theWissenschaftslehre. Though he expressed complete satisfaction with thislatest version and readied it for publication, he appears finally to haveconcluded that he himself was simply incapable of producing a writtenexposition of his own philosophy which could stand on its own and avertthe sorts of misunderstanding to which his Jena writings had beensubjected. For the rest of his life he vowed “to confine himself to oralcommunication, so that misunderstanding can thereby be detected andeliminated on the spot” (III, 5:223). In 1804 he also delivered a wellreceivedseries of more popular lectures On the Characteristics of thePresent Age (subsequently published in 1806), in which he dealt, for thefirst time, with the philosophy of history.Fichte spent the summer semester of 1805 at the Prussian University atErlangen, where he prepared and lectured upon yet another presentationof the first principles of his philosophy. Upon his return to Berlin in 1806he delivered yet another set of “popular” lectures, Directions for a BlessedLife, which were published later that same year. These lectures reveal thestrong influence of the Gospel of St John on Fichte’s thinking at this pointand contain what is perhaps the most accessible presentation of the new,more religiously oriented, and “mystical” tendency of his thought duringhis final years.With the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon’s armies in 1806 and theoccupation of Berlin, Fichte took refuge in Königsberg, where he servedbriefly as a professor, producing for his lectures yet another version of theWissenschaftslehre. After the Peace of Tilsit, however, he returned toBerlin, where he delivered his celebrated Addresses to the German Nationunder the noses of the occupying forces. These lectures, in which Fichteattempted to kindle a sense of distinctively “German” patriotism andoutlined a program of national education for this purpose, were publishedin 1808 and subsequently exercised a wide influence upon thedevelopment of German nationalist sentiment.Fichte was also instrumental during this period in establishing the newUniversity of Berlin. When the university was finally opened in 1810, heserved as head of the philosophical faculty and, briefly, as rector of theuniversity. He remained a professor at the new university until his death in1814. During these years he lectured on a variety of subjects, including thefirst principles of his Wissenschaftslehre (of which he produced at leastfour more versions after 1810), political philosophy (or “doctrine of thestate”), philosophy of right, and a popular introduction to philosophyunder the title “the facts of consciousness.” None of these new lectureswere published by Fichte, though in 1810 he did publish a crypticoverview of the latest version of his system, The Wissenschaftslehre in itsGeneral Outline. Fichte died unexpectedly at the age of 51, of typhus,which he contracted from his wife, who had been infected by woundedsoldiers she was nursing.Let us now turn to a consideration of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre,limiting ourselves to the version which exercised the greatest influenceupon his contemporaries, that is, the “Jena Wissenschaftslehre” of 1794–9. In doing so, it is vital to recall that the term “Wissenschaftslehre” doesnot refer to any particular book or even any specific presentation ofFichte’s system. In its broadest sense, “Wissenschaftslehre” is simplyFichte’s proposed new name for “philosophy” itself, understood not as aform of “practical wisdom,” but rather as a rigorous, systematic“science.” Thus, in Concerning the Concept of Wissenschaftslehre, Fichteidentifies Wissenschaftslehre with “the science of science itself,” withknowledge about the very conditions, foundations, and limits ofknowledge. (To be sure, this means that philosophy, qua “science ofscience” or “knowledge of knowledge,” involves a certain, unavoidabledegree of circularity. But, as Fichte argues persuasively in Concerning theConcept, such circularity—once it has been clearly grasped—is not anobjection to philosophy, but is, instead, one of its most distinctive andunavoidable features.)Somewhat more narrowly construed, “Wissenschaftslehre” is Fichte’snew name for “transcendental idealism” or “Critical philosophy” —incontrast to the previously prevailing systems, which Fichte lumpedtogether under the name “dogmatism” and believed was best representedby Spinoza. The essential features of a Wissenschaftslehre in this narrowersense are, first of all, that it follows Kant in insisting that genuinelyphilosophical questions are those of justification or warrant (quid juris)rather than questions of “fact” (quid facti). Consequently, the actualarguments and deductions which constitute philosophy asWissenschaftslehre cannot be based upon an appeal to the so-called “factsof consciousness,” since the task of such a science is to “explain” oraccount for these very “facts.” More specifically, the particular set of factswhich a Wissenschaftslehre has to account for in the first instance arethose associated with our experience of an external world of objects. Orrather, limiting ourselves to the standpoint of consciousness, whatphilosophy has to explain is the presence within human consciousness of“representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity.” Hence thequestion posed by the Wissenschaftslehre is as follows: “What is theconnection between our representations and their objects? To what extentcan we say that something independent of our representations, somethingaltogether independent of and external to us, corresponds to ourrepresentations?” (I, 3:247). What has to be explained, in short, is “howrepresenting becomes knowing.”Second, the “explanation” of cognition provided by theWissenschaftslehre must be rigorously “transcendental” in character, inthe sense that it must begin with something it regards as certain or beyondcontroversy (e.g. in Kant’s case, the continuous self-identity of theknowing subject over time) and then enquire into the necessary conditionsfor the possibility thereof.Third, a Wissenschaftslehre takes very much to heart the Kantianinsistence upon “the primacy of practical reason.” This does not meansimply that it recognizes the integrity and autonomy of the moral or“practical” sphere and resolutely refuses to countenance any standpointthat treats our consciousness of our own freedom as illusory. Instead, theWissenschaftslehre insists that “the practical power is the innermost rootof the I” (I, 3:332); and, basing itself upon this insight, it attempts todemonstrate that “our freedom itself [is] a theoretical determiningprinciple of our world” (I, 5:77). What a transcendental idealism of thissort has to demonstrate is that only a free and practically striving I canhave any experience of a world of spatio-temporal, material objects, andthe overall deductive strategy of the Wissenschaftslehre is to demonstratethis by showing that the latter is a condition for the former. This is thesense in which “theoretical reason” is based upon “practical reason.” (Ofcourse, there is also an important sense in which the converse is true:since, according to Fichte anyway, practical striving presupposestheoretical awareness of a goal.)Finally, there is a third, even narrower sense of “Wissenschaftslehre,” inwhich the term is synonymous neither with philosophy in general nor withtranscendental idealism as such, but refers instead to Fichte’s own,distinctive version of the latter. Although Fichte himself never relinquishedhis long-standing claim that “the Wissenschaftslehre is nothing other thanthe Kantian philosophy properly understood” and consequently alwayssought to minimize the differences between his own system and Kant’s, itmust nevertheless be conceded that there are many striking differencesbetween the “letter” of his philosophy and that of Kant’s.For example, Fichte’s version of transcendental idealism followsReinhold in claiming to base everything upon a single, absolutely certain“first principle.” By proceeding in this rigorously “deductive” manner,Fichte believed, the Wissenschaftslehre would be able to produce a moreelegant and successful derivation of the a priori categories of possibleexperience—including space and time. (The deductive strategy of theWissenschaftslehre makes it possible to dispense with the Kantiandistinction between “transcendental aesthetics” and “transcendentallogic,” and thus tends to identify “forms of intuition” and “categories ofthought.”) By deriving everything from a single starting point theWissenschaftslehre could also hope to avoid the problems of systematicunity which plagued Kant’s writings. Not only would it be able to exhibitthe “common root” of intuition and thinking, but, even more significantly,it would be able to demonstrate, in a systematic manner, the intimate linkbetween theoretical and practical reason, the realm of nature and that offreedom. (This last point marks a major advance beyond Reinhold’sElementary Philosophy, which confined itself almost entirely to an accountof theoretical reason.)Or, to cite another example of the manner in which Fichte’s philosophyadvanced beyond the letter of Kant’s, there is no room within theWissenschaftslehre for any reference, however minimal or tangential, to“things in themselves.” Having absorbed the arguments of Kant’s critics,Fichte firmly rejected any appeal—within the context of a philosophicalaccount of experience, though not, of course, within the context ofeveryday life, where such appeals are not only appropriate butunavoidable—to what he characterized as the “non-thought of things inthemselves.” In contrast to philosophical “dogmatism,” which vainlyattempts to explain representations as “produced” within the mind byexternal objects, and which thus pretends to derive consciousness fromthings, a genuine transcendental idealism or Wissenschaftslehre adopts theopposite strategy; that is, it tries to show how our experience of “things”is a consequence of the character of consciousness itself. If philosophy is toremain transcendental and is not to become transcendent, then theundeniable “objectivity” of the world of ordinary experience will have tobe accounted for purely in terms of consciousness and its acts. This meansthat transcendental philosophy must demonstrate that “the representationand the object that is supposed to correspond to it are one and the samething—merely regarded from two different points of view” (I, 3:252). Itaccomplishes this by showing that consciousness must operate in certainways if selfconsciousness (which, for Fichte as for Kant, is the startingpoint of the entire deduction) is to be possible at all. It is the “necessity” ofthese modes of acting which accounts for the “feeling of necessity” whichaccompanies certain representations, and thereby accounts for theexperienced “objectivity” of the world. (The sort of idealism which merelyasserts that mind “constructs” reality but does not offer a rigorousdeduction of the necessity with which it acts in doing so is dismissed byFichte as “transcendent idealism.”)Turning now to the Jena Wissensckaftslehre, let us begin with anexamination of its first principle or starting point. Obviously, it is notsufficient that the “first principle” of all philosophy be a proposition fromwhich all of the other propositions of the system can be derived; inaddition, the principle in question must also be true. But how can the truthof this highest principle be established? Its truth cannot be derived fromsome higher principle or set of principles, for then the principle in questionwould not be “first.” Hence the first principle, if it is to be true at all, mustbe immediately true; it must express something that is self-evidentlycertain. (To be sure, that this self-evident certainty is also the “firstprinciple” of all philosophy is by no means self-evident; instead, this canbe established only by actually erecting a system upon the certainty inquestion.)What then is the first principle of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre? Thoughcasual readers of the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehresometimes assume that Fichte begins with the logical principle “A=A,” acloser reading of the famous § I of this text reveals that the first principlein question is not the abstract logical principle of identity, which isemployed purely as a preliminary “clue” for the discovery of the actualfirst principle of the system: viz., the material proposition which statesthat “the I simply posits itself.” This principle expresses what Fichtebelieves to be the supreme act of the mind, an act in which the I issimultaneously subject and object. (Such an act is “supreme” in preciselythe same, transcendental sense in which Kant considered thetranscendental unity of apperception to be “supreme.”)Though there is certainly a sense in which the Wissenschaftslehre maybe construed as a continuation of the Cartesian project of basingphilosophy as a whole upon the alleged self-evidence of the cogito, there isalso a crucial difference concerning the status of “self-consciousness.” ForFichte, self-consciousness (and hence all consciousness, since theunderlying strategy of the entire enterprise is to show that the latter is buta special instance of the former) cannot be understood as a “fact,” nomatter how privileged; nor can it be comprehended as an accident of somesubstance or a modification of some “being.” Instead, it must beunderstood as an activity, albeit of a most extraordinary, self-productivetype. To employ Fichte’s own terminology, the self-positing of the I, whichalone makes possible every act of empirical self-consciousness, and indeed,object-consciousness, is a “fact/act” or Tathandlung. It presupposes noprior “subject” which acts; it constitutes itself, qua self-consciousness, inthe very act of becoming conscious of itself.From this it follows that the “being” of the I is, so to speak, aconsequence of its self-positing. Indeed, this, according to Fichte, isprecisely what it means to be a “free being.” A similar thought has beenexpressed in our own century in the formula that, where human beings areconcerned, “existence precedes essence.”Thus, in order to “explain representations” Fichte invokes an originalact of consciousness which is not an act of mere “representing” at all, butis equally and at the same time an act of production, indeedautoproduction. Thus the starting point of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre isequally “practical” and “theoretical,” for the act described in its firstprinciple (“the I simply posits itself”) is a “doing” as well as a “knowing.”Indeed, it is precisely because Fichte’s system commences with andproceeds from “that supreme point from which the practical and thespeculative appear as one” (III, 2:395) that it can hope to succeed in itsoverall goal of reconciling freedom and necessity, morality and nature.This choice of a starting point has equally dramatic implications for thenarrower field of theoretical philosophy proper (that is, for that portion ofphilosophy which accounts for our experience of an external world ofspatio-temporal objects), for it establishes, from the very start, theessential identity of ideality (being for consciousness) and reality (being initself). An I is an I only insofar as it posits itself—i.e. is aware of itself asan I. Since the unity of being and thinking is explicitly present in ouroriginal starting point, it follows that it will be (implicitly) present ineverything derived therefrom. Everything that “is” is only insofar as it is“for the I”; i.e. “being” is not an original category within theWissenschaftslehre, but is only a subsidiary or “derived” one.The nature of this starting point is further clarified in Fichte’s secondattempt at a presentation of the outlines and first principles of his system(viz., in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo and the fragmentaryAttempt at a New Presentation). It is here, in the presentation of 1796–9,that the initial act of self-positing with which the Wissenschaftslehrebegins is described as an “intellectual intuition.” Though Fichte’s use ofthis term has produced a great deal of confusion (and though his remarkson the topic are not always as clear or as consistent as one might wish),the term “intellectual intuition” simply designates the previously described“act” (Tathandlang) of pure self-consciousness, within which the I issupposed to be immediately present to itself, thereby constituting itself asan I, at the same time that it distinguishes itself as an object ofconsciousness from itself as the subject thereof. Such an act deserves to becalled an “intuition” (in the Kantian sense) because the object ofconsciousness is in this case immediately present. But since the object inquestion (the I itself) is not “given” to consciousness in this case, but isproduced thereby, the intuition is “intellectual” rather than sensory.One should note that it is not Fichte’s claim that such an originalintellectual intuition can ever occur within empirical self-consciousness.On the contrary, he frequently reminds his readers that “this absoluteidentity of subject and object within the I can only be inferred and cannotbe immediately evinced as a ‘fact of consciousness’ ” (I, 5:21). However,philosophical reflection upon our own, necessarily divided selfconsciousnesscan lead us to the inference that such an original unity mustnecessarily underlie and condition every empirical act of consciousness(within which the reflecting subject is in fact never discovered to beidentical with the object of reflection). Only if there is an original unity ofself-consciousness can we account for our abiding sense of our ownidentity, despite the fact that within every moment of empiricalconsciousness we find our identity divided between that of the subject andthat of the object.Thus, whereas the formal presentation of the “foundations” of thesystem begins with a description of the ungrounded Tathandlung or selfpositingof the I, actual philosophizing, i.e. recapitulating for oneself theseries of deductions which constitute the Wissenschaftslehre, beginsinstead with a free act of reflective abstraction on the part of the would-bephilosopher. This act of turning one’s attentions away from all objects andtoward the operations of one’s own consciousness is not an act of“intellectual intuition” of the sort attributed to the pure I which thephilosopher is trying to study. (If Fichte sometimes uses the term“intellectual intuition” to designate the act of introspection or selfobservationengaged in by the philosopher, then one must carefullydistinguish this use of the term from its other, more fundamentalemployment to designate the I’s original act of self-positing.)The philosopher, meanwhile, after having abstracted from the “facts ofconsciousness,” then seeks (within the artificial context of theirphilosophical account) to re-establish that same realm of facts, and theyaccomplish this by showing why and how the I must posit such a realm ifit is to posit itself at all. This is how transcendental philosophy answersthe quid juris.But why should a philosopher begin with precisely this abstraction?Why should we commence with the bare thought of what Fichte callsvariously “the absolute I,” “I-hood,” “the intellect,” or simply “reason”(rather than beginning, for example, with the abstraction of a “thing initself”)? What is it that makes this mere idea of an original self-positingsubject certain? Fichte’s reply is instructive: The initial certainty of hisproposed starting point is not theoretical at all, but is, instead, practical.The autonomy of the I, which is, after all, what is asserted in the formulathat “the I simply posits itself,” is something one must confirm for oneselfwithin one’s own moral experience. To the extent that one is aware ofoneself as a free agent, to this extent one is actually aware of oneself as aself-positing I.To be sure, theoretical/philosophical doubts concerning such anawareness always remain possible. This is why skepticism cannot beavoided by purely theoretical means. Instead, what keeps us fromdoubting the proposed starting point is our sense of moral obligation todetermine our own actions, that is to say, our indefeasible awareness ofour own freedom. The reason, therefore, why the transcendental idealistcomes to a stop with the proposition “the I freely posits itself” is notbecause they are unable to entertain theoretical doubts on this point orbecause they cannot continue the process of reflective abstraction. Instead,as Fichte puts it:I cannot go beyond this standpoint because I am not permitted to doso… I ought to begin my thinking with the thought of the pure I, andI ought to think of this pure I as acting with absolute spontaneity—not as determined by things, but rather, as determining them.(I, 4:220–1)Thus the “categorical imperative” is invoked to secure the first principlesof the entire Wissenschaftslehre (not merely of ethics), which illuminatesFichte’s striking claim that the “Wissenschaftslehre is the only kind ofphilosophical thinking that accords with duty” (I, 4:219).This also may help explain the notoriously ad horninem character ofFichte’s polemic against those (the “dogmatists”) who are unable orunwilling to accept the Wissenschaftslehre. What ultimately prevents themfrom doing so, according to Fichte, is not any deficiency of their intellector any lack of philosophical acumen. Instead, the reason some peoplepersist in attempting to understand consciousness in terms of things(rather than vice versa) is because they lack a lively sense of their ownfreedom. The defect in question is thus one which concerns their moralcharacter. As Fichte put it in a sardonic footnote: “most men could moreeasily be convinced to consider themselves a piece of lava on the moonthan an I” (I, 2:326 n.). The Wissenschaftslehre, however, is a philosophyfor those who can and do conceive of themselves as free agents, and it is inprecisely this sense that Fichte could describe it as “from first to last,nothing more than an analysis of the concept of freedom” (III, 4:182).After one has established for oneself via abstract reflection the firstprinciple of the Wissenschaftslehre and has confirmed the truth of thisstarting point by appealing directly to one’s own practical experience, oneis then in a position to discover—again, by reflection and selfobservation—all of the other acts which must necessarily occur as well ifthe postulated original act is to occur. Of course, just as we are neverdirectly aware of the original act of self-positing which constitutessubjectivity as such, so we are not usually aware of these other, “necessarybut unconscious” acts which are derived as conditions necessary for thepossibility of this first act (though, of course, the transcendentalphilosopher becomes aware of them in the course of their enquiry). TheWissenschaftslehre is therefore described by Fichte as both (a) a process ofraising to consciousness those unconscious acts by means of which the I“constitutes” the world of its experience and (b) nothing more than acomplete (and often exceedingly complex) analysis of its own firstprinciple.The results of such an analysis, however, are sometimes surprising. Forexample, one of the more striking conclusions of the “analysis” offreedom carried out in the “foundational” portion of the JenaWissenschaftslehre is that, although “the I simply posits itself,” freedom isnever “absolute” or “unlimited”; instead, Fichte unequivocallydemonstrates that freedom is conceivable only as limited. Only finitefreedom is actual, just as the only sort of consciousness which is actual isfinite, empirical, and embodied. Only “limited” subjects exist as subject.The conclusion of the Foundations and the nova methodo is the same:an I must posit itself in order to be an I at all; but it can posit itself onlyinsofar as it posits itself as limited (and hence divided against itself). Thelimitation in question is first posited as a “feeling,” then as a “sensation,”then as an “intuition” of a thing, and finally as a “concept.” All that wecan say, from a transcendental perspective, concerning the originalcharacter of the “limitation” in question is to describe it in terms of the I’spractical striving. This limitation is first described (in the 1794–5presentation) as a “check” or Anstoß to the I’s striving, a “check” whichmanifests itself within consciousness as “feeling.” Though Fichte certainlydemonstrates that such an Anstoß must in fact occur if self-consciousnessis to be actual, he never claims that such a limitation is produced by theself-positing I, though he does, of course, observe that a limitation cannotexist (as a limitation of the I) unless it is “posited” as such (i.e. taken upinto consciousness) by the I. On the other hand, Fichte steadfastly opposesall attempts to “explain” the Anstoß as an “effect” produced by the Not-I. The point is simply this: like the I itself, even the most rigorously“scientific” and a priori philosophy finally must admit that there are limitsto what can be explained. Philosophy can explain, for example, why theworld has a spatio-temporal character and a causal structure, but itcannot explain why objects have the particular sensible properties theyhappen to have. This is simply what the I discovers—albeit “within itself”and not “out there”—when it reflects upon its own original limitations.To be sure, philosophy can show that the I cannot posit its ownfreedom, i.e. cannot posit itself, unless it finds itself to be limited (andthen, in turn, posits a world of objects as the ground of its own limitedstate—thereby, as it were, “explaining” to itself its own limitation).However, that the I, in fact, finds itself to be limited—and limited in aspecific manner (=“feeling”)—is something that cannot be demonstrated apriori; instead, this is something “that everyone can prove to oneself onlythrough one’s own experience” (I, 2:390).This first account of the original limitation of the I is supplemented (inthe Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo) by an account of how thepractically striving I is originally called upon to limit itself freely inresponse to a “summons” (Aufforderung) received from what it takes tobe another free being similar to itself. To this degree, the 1796–9presentation goes well beyond the 1794–5 version in demonstrating thatself-consciousness also presupposes a recognition of and by others; for onecan be conscious of oneself only as an individual, which in turn requiresconsciousness of a realm of rational beings of which one is but a singlemember. This important argument, which demonstrates that recognitionof and by others is a condition for self-recognition, was first elaborated byFichte in his Foundations of Natural Right and was subsequentlyincorporated into his presentation of the very “foundations” of theWissenschaftslehre—though it must be admitted that the precise, relativeroles of Anstoß and Aufforderung in the constitution of self-consciousnessremain somewhat unclear.Let us now turn from a consideration of the starting point anddeductive strategy of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre to an examination of theoverall, systematic structure of the same (as explained in the concludingsection of the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo). The presentation of acomplete, transcendental system of philosophy should begin with adiscussion and demonstration of the “basic principles” or “foundations”of such a system, and this is precisely what Fichte himself attempted to do,first in the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Concerningthe Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to theTheoretical Power, and then, in a revised form, in his lectures on theWissenschaftslehre nova methodo.The “foundational” portion of the system begins by calling upon thereader to isolate for him- or herself the concept of the freely self-positing I(“think the I!”). Once this initial starting point has been established, it isfollowed by an elaborate, transcendental account of subjectivity as such,an account which includes step-by-step analysis (which Fichte calls“genetic explanation”) of the various unconscious acts of the mind whichare required for the possibility of self-positing and which are involved inthe constitution of everyday experience. This analysis includes anextended account of the creative activity of the “productive imagination,”understood by Fichte as that power of the I which mediates between freeself-positing (Tathandlung) and limited self-feeling (Anstoß). This first,“foundational” portion of the Wissenschaftslehre demonstrates how the“entire mechanism of consciousness is based upon various ways ofviewing the separation of the subjective and the objective withinconsciousness, and, in turn, the union of both” (I, 5:21): hence theexplicitly “dialectical” structure of the argument, which constantlyoscillates between moments of relative identity and moments of relativedifference.Next come what Fichte terms the various “real” philosophical scienceswhich make up the further subdivisions of the entire Wissenschaftslehre.There are three such systematic subdivisions: “theoretical philosophy,”“practical philosophy,” and “philosophy of the postulates,” within each ofwhich the mind’s general principles, laws, and modes of acting (all ofwhich.have previously been derived within the “Foundations”) are appliedand extended within a specific and limited field.A “specifically theoretical Wissenschaftslehre” or “Wissenschaftslehreof cognition” (not to be confused with the “theoretical” portion of theFoundations) concerns itself with the general features of whatconsciousness “discovers” in the course of its experience. Accordingly, thisportion of transcendental philosophy presents us with a complete “theoryof the world.” It deals with what is given to consciousness, and itexplains—to the severely limited extent that this can be explainedphilosophically—the necessary features of such a world. Hence,theoretical philosophy is limited to a consideration of cognition, that is, toan analysis of the specific type of consciousness within which theconscious subject considers itself to be “determined” by its objects.Theoretical philosophy shows what objects must be like for suchconsciousness to be possible, and in this sense it constitutes an a prioriaccount of empirical reality as a whole, or of “nature.” It thus determinesthe content of experience, but only to the extent that this content reflectsthe form of consciousness. This sort of theoretical philosophy of naturecan indeed circumscribe experience, but it is in no way intended tosupplant or to rival the empirical, natural sciences.Though clearly Fichte envisioned such a “distinctively theoreticalWissenschaftslehre” (modeled, no doubt, upon Kant’s MetaphysicalFoundations of Natural Science), he himself never completed such ascience. The closest he came was in his Concerning the DistinctiveCharacter of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the TheoreticalPower, which barely proceeds beyond the transcendental deduction ofspace, time, and causality.In contrast with the purely “theoretical” portion of the system, thespecifically “practical” Wissenschaftslehre views the object ofconsciousness as freely determined by the subject. Thus it treats objects (or“being”) not as given to consciousness, but rather, as produced, andproduced by a freely acting and conscious subject attempting toaccomplish its own goals: hence Fichte’s assertion that the practicalWissenschaftslehre views “being as a product of concepts.” The usualname for such a science is “ethics” or “ethical theory” (Sittenlehre).Ethics, or the distinctively practical portion of the overall system of theWissenschaftslehre, examines not what is, but what ought to be. The“world” with which it is concerned is the world as it ought to beconstructed by rational beings. Thus, in this portion of his system (thoughnot elsewhere) Fichte really does interpret the world purely as an arena formoral striving—for this is how the world is actually viewed by thepractically striving I (just as the theoretical or “knowing” I views it assomething given to consciousness).Fichte’s System of Ethical Theory begins with a recapitulation of certainconclusions established in the “Foundations”: e.g. (a) an awareness ofone’s own efficacy (i.e. of one’s capacity to realize one’s goal concepts) is acondition for the very possibility of self-consciousness, and (b) the I findsitself called upon (or “summoned”) to limit itself freely in relation to otherfree beings. The specific task of The System of Ethical Theory is toindicate the particular duties and practicial corollaries which follow fromthe general obligation to limit oneself freely. Accordingly, this portion ofthe system can be described as a detailed analysis of conscience as such, oras an expanded enquiry into the form and content of the “categoricalimperative.” The result is a systematic account of duty as such, that is, ofthose duties which apply to all rational beings, without taking intoaccount any of the individual differences between persons. Here again, theargument by means of which Fichte purports to establish this system ofduties is strictly transcendental in character: the various “oughts” itestablishes are presented as so many conditions for the possibility of theoriginal “ought,” i.e. as conditions for the possibility of autonomous selfdetermination.The third and in many respects most original systematic subdivision ofthe Wissenschaftslehre is called by Fichte “philosophy of the postulates.”This portion of the system is concerned with the relationship between thetheoretical and the practical realms and examines the specific demands (or“postulates”) which each realm addresses to the other. Those postulatesthat theory addresses to the practical realm are the subject of the portionof the system entitled “theory of right” (Rechtslehre) or “natural right”(Naturrecht), whereas those postulates that practical philosophyaddresses to the theoretical realm are the subject of the philosophy ofreligion.Unlike ethics, which deals with rational (i.e. free) beings as such, the“theory of right” considers these same practical agents in their individuality,that is, as individual members of a community of free individuals. Such aphilosophical science poses the question: How must the freedom of eachindividual be externally limited in order to permit every individual to pursuetheir individual goals to the fullest extent possible?The Foundations of Natural Right begins with a general deduction of“intersubjectivity,” that is, with a transcendental demonstration that a freeindividual can recognize itself as such only insofar as it recognizes thefreedom of others, while simultaneously distinguishing itself from all ofthese other freely acting individuals. The next step is to stipulate theconditions for the possibility of such “mutual recognition” among freebeings, the chief one of which is free acknowledgment of the legitimacy ofthe general rule of “right” or “justice,” namely: “limit your own freedomin accordance with the concept of the freedom of all other persons withwhom you come into contact” (I, 3:320).Since the mutual recognition in question, that is, the sway of the “ruleof right,” can be shown to be possible only within a free society, Fichte’sexamination of “natural right” quickly turns into a consideration, deeplyindebted to Rousseau, of the nature of a just social order, the sources ofpolitical legitimacy, and some of the specific features of a “just state.”Indeed, the Foundations of Natural Right could be described as asystematic effort to re-establish the Social Contract on purelytranscendental foundations. It is the most important early presentation ofFichte’s political philosophy.From a purely systematic perspective, the most distinctive feature ofFichte’s Rechtslehre is his clear awareness of the distinctively “mixed”character of such a discipline. It is “theoretical,” because it speaks of a“world” (viz., the juridical or political order which is designed toconstrain the activities of freely self-positing individuals in such a way thateach can pursue their own goals); yet it is also “practical,” because such aworld is never simply “given” to us, but must be produced by free action.The just state is a human product, not something “natural”; but at thesame time it is something external, something which, unlike purely ethicalends, cannot be achieved merely by internal self-limitation—though, to besure, the “external limitations” required by the concept of “right” must befreely self-imposed (i.e. must be expressions of the “general will”).This is precisely what distinguishes the “science of right” from the“theory of ethics” (and distinguishes Fichte’s treatment of the former fromthat of Kant, for whom the “theory of right” constitutes a subdivision ofethics): whereas ethics deals with the sphere of our duties, and thus withwhat is demanded of us as free individuals, the theory of natural rightdeals with those limitations of freedom which are required by the conceptof a community of free individuals; i.e. it deals with what is permitted.Whereas ethics is concerned with the inner world of conscience, the theoryof right is concerned only with the external, public realm—though onlyinsofar as the latter can be viewed as an embodiment of freedom. Hencethe concept of right obtains its binding force, not from the ethical law, butrather from the general laws of thinking and from enlightened selfinterest.Such a force is hypothetical rather than categorical. If one is toposit one’s own freedom, then one must posit the freedom of others andlimit one’s own freedom accordingly. It follows that a just political order isa demand of reason itself, since “the concept of justice or right is acondition of self-consciousness” (I, 3:358).The other subdivision of the theory of the postulates, that is, thephilosophy of religion, is described as that philosophical science whichconcerns itself with the postulates which morality addresses to nature. Assuch, the philosophy of religion considers the manner in which the sensiblerealm of nature is supposed somehow to accommodate itself to the goal ofmorality, and thus it deals primarily with what is sometimes called theproblem of “divine providence.” Fichte himself, as we have noted, wasprevented from fully developing this portion of his system while at Jenaby, ironically enough, the outbreak of the atheism controversy.Nevertheless, one can gain some idea of his thoughts on this subject fromthe short essay, “On the Foundation of Our Belief in a Divine Governmentof the Universe,” which precipitated the controversy in question. Whatone finds in this essay is, first of all, an attempt to draw a sharp distinctionbetween religion and philosophy (corresponding to the all-importantdistinction between the “ordinary” and “transcendental” standpoints),and second, a defense of our right to postulate something like a “moralworld order.” But whereas Fichte argues that we are justified in believingthat our conscientious actions will in fact “make a difference” in the realworld, he resolutely insists (against the Kantians) that such a postulatedoes not require the postulate of a personal deity, a.k.a., “morallawgiver.” Thus the argument of the essay in question is primarilynegative. It does not deny the existence of God, but it does deny that sucha postulate is morally required or justified.Finally, a word is perhaps in order concerning the general tenor or“spirit” of Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Before finally settling upon adistinctive name for his new philosophy, Fichte considered variouspossibilities, one of which was Strebungsphilosophie, or “philosophy ofstriving” (II, 3:265). As a description of “the first system of humanfreedom” this discarded appellation is particularly apt, for the generalconclusion of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre is as follows: Freedom ispossible and actual only within the context of natural necessity, where it isnever “absolute,” but always limited and finite. Though it must posit itsfreedom “absolutely”—that is to say, “purely and simply” (schlechthin) or“for no reason”—a genuinely free agent can actually exist only as a finiteindividual striving to overcome its own limitations and to transform thenatural world in accordance with its own goal concepts. To be an “I” isthus to be involved in an endless process of self-overcoming, a processwhich necessarily takes place in reciprocal interaction with other selfovercomingagents and in the context of a spatio-temporal, materialworld. Without such limits, there can be neither freedom nor selfconsciousness.Such is the philosophical “vision” which presides over and givesdirection to the often bewildering complexities of Fichte’s Jena writings.The Wissenschaftslehre is a philosophy of projects, a “philosophy of thefuture.” The famous “absolute I” with which the system begins is a mereabstraction, just as the final unity of the I with itself toward which itaspires is a sheer ideal. Between the abstraction and the ideal lies the entirerealm of actual consciousness and experience, which, as we have seen, isnecessarily a realm of finite, constrained freedom and of real, empiricalnature, which exists only “for consciousness”—even though the specificdeterminacy of this natural world remains philosophically inexplicable.What we can grasp is that the world is not now as it ought to be and thatit is up to us to change it. Hence Fichte’s parting injunction to the studentswho flocked to his lectures during his first semester at Jena: “Act! Act!That is what we are here for” (I, 3:67).SCHELLING’S NATURPHILOSOPHIE AND SYSTEM OF IDENTITYEven in a period when observers were in the habit of keeping a weathereye on the philosophical horizon for the emergence of the newest star,Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was a phenomenon: a philosophicalWunderkind who lived a long life, marked by what at least appeared to bedramatic and frequent shifts of philosophical orientation. Accordingly, it iscustomary to divide Schelling’s philosophical career into a number of moreor less distinct phases or periods, though scholars disagree amongthemselves over the precise number of periods and the degree ofunderlying continuity in Schelling’s development. Here, in any case, we willconfine our attention to the period prior to his departure from Jena in 1803.Born near Stuttgart in 1775, Schelling was the son of a Schwabianpastor and duly attended the seminary at Tübingen, where he becameclose friends with Hölderlin and Hegel. His first philosophical publication,an essay on “the philosophy of mythology,” appeared in 1793, when itsauthor was barely 18 years old. With the publication of Fichte’s firstsystematic writings, Schelling immediately became an enthusiasticexponent of the same and devoted his next two publications, On thePossibility of a Form for All Philosophy (1794) and On the I as thePrinciple of Philosophy (1795), to expounding and defending this latestversion of transcendental idealism.After leaving Tübingen in 1795, Schelling spent three years as a tutor tothe children of a wealthy nobleman, a post which provided him ampleopportunity for travel and independent study (including an extendedperiod during which he studied physics, medicine, and mathematics at theUniversity of Leipzig). During these years he became a regular contributorto the Philosophical Journal, where he published his Philosophical Letterson Dogmatism and Criticism (1795), as well as his New Deduction ofNatural Right (1796)A growing enthusiasm for Spinoza began to become increasinglyevident in Schelling’s writings of this period, along with mountingreservations concerning the Wissenschaftslehre. Above all, Schelling wasdissatisfied with the status assigned to “nature” by Fichte’s system. Indeed,one could characterize Schelling’s philosophical project at this point as anattempt to replace Fichte’s “lifeless” conception of nature with a moreadequate one modeled on Spinoza’s notion of natura naturans, but to doso without overstepping the bounds of transcendental idealism (e.g. byassimilating Spinoza’s “infinite substance” or God to the idealists’“transcendental I”).Stimulated both by his enthusiasm for Spinoza and by his own scientificstudies, Schelling gradually became preoccupied by efforts to construct asystematic Naturphilosophie or “philosophy of nature.” To be sure, hewas not alone. Others, for example Goethe, were also vocal in theirdissatisfaction with what they regarded as the unnecessarily mechanisticand reductive character of the Newtonian worldview. Nevertheless,Schelling gave a distinctive twist to this project, inasmuch as he attemptedto develop a more holistic view of nature which would at the same time beat least compatible with (if not actually a systematic subdivision of) thenew transcendental philosophy of Kant and Fichte. Of his manypublications on this topic, the more important include Ideas for aPhilosophy of Nature (1797) and On the World-Soul (1798), as well asthe Journal of Speculative Physics (1800–3).In 1798 Schelling received an academic appointment at Jena, where heremained until 1803. Though he had frequent contact with Fichte duringhis first year in Jena, he was even more intimately associated with ayounger and more artistically inclined circle, which included the Schlegelbrothers, Tieck, and Novalis. Indeed, his philosophy of this periodexercised a seminal influence upon the birth of “German romanticism,”just as the latter, in turn, deeply influenced the subsequent development ofSchelling’s own thinking.Even as he was exploring “speculative physics” and attempting tosupplement transcendental idealism with Naturphilosophie, Schelling wasalso engaged in an attempt to construct a revised and improvedpresentation of transcendental idealism itself. His lectures on this subjectresulted, in 1800, in the publication of what is perhaps, from both aliterary and a philosophical point of view, his most successful singlepublication, The System of Transcendental Idealism.Because of the quite privileged status assigned to an at the conclusion ofthe latter work, this phase of Schelling’s thought is sometimescharacterized as “aesthetic idealism.” But Schelling’s interest in an was nota merely passing phase, nor was it purely theoretical in character. Just ashe had previously supplemented his efforts to construct aNaturphilosophie by studying the empirical sciences, so too, under thetutelage of Friedrich Schlegel, he attempted to cultivate himselfaesthetically by making a systematic, empirical study of the history of an.The fruits of this intensive effort are apparent in the richly detailedlectures on the philosophy of art he delivered first at Jena (1801–3) andthen at Würzburg (1803–4).Schelling’s Jena philosophy culminates in his efforts, in the yearsimmediately following the publication of his System of TranscendentalIdealism, to make explicit the implicit harmony between the philosophy ofnature and transcendental idealism. In order to accomplish this goal, heincorporated both of these “sciences” within a larger, more encompassingsystem, which he dubbed the “System of Identity” or “Absolute Idealism”and expounded in a series of publications, including the Presentation ofmy System of Philosophy (1801), Bruno, or On the Natural and theDivine Principle of Things (1802), and what is unquestionably the mostaccessible and “popular” presentation of this phase of his thought, OnUniversity Studies.This was also the period of close and regular collaboration betweenScheliing and Hegel, who arrived in Jena in 1801. For the next two yearsthe two were allied in a collaborative effort to explicate and to defend thenew System of Identity. In pursuit of this goal, they founded and co-wrotethe entire contents of a short-lived new Critical Journal of Philosophy.During this same period the rift between Schelling and Fichte—a riftwhich originally arose over Fichte’s misgivings at Schelling’s efforts to“supplement” transcendental philosophy with Naturphilosophie and thenturned into a more general disagreement concerning the nature and limitsof philosophy itself—became permanent and public.In 1803 Schelling, accompanied by his new wife Caroline (ex-wife ofA.W.Schlegel), left Jena for a chair at the University of Würzburg, whichhad only recently come under the protection of the Bavarian Crown. In1806 Schelling moved to Munich, where he served as general secretary ofthe Academy of Fine Art and delivered occasional public lectures as amember of the Bavarian Academy of Science. Later, following theestablishment of the University of Munich, Schelling was appointed to aprofessorship. As a Protestant in a Catholic state increasingly dominatedby ultramontane forces, Schelling found himself under growing pressure,but he nevertheless remained in Munich until his move to Berlin in 1841(except for the period from 1820 to 1827, which he spent as a professor atthe Protestant University of Erlangen).For the next several years Schelling continued to develop and to defendhis System of Identity (see e.g. his System of Philosophy as a Whole and ofthe Philosophy of Nature in Particular, 1804), while continuing tocultivate his interests in the philosophy of art (see e.g. Concerning theRelationship of the Plastic Arts to Nature, 1807) and Naturphilosophie(establishing yet another new journal, the Yearbook for Medicine asScience, 1805–8). However, the most distinctive feature of Schelling’sthought during this period was a growing concern with religious issuesand a particular fascination with the Gnostic tradition, as embodied, forexample, in the theosophical writing of Jakob Boehme. This new interestis reflected in all of Schelling’s post-Jena writings, and is especiallyprominent in his well-known Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature ofHuman Freedom (1809).Eventually, Schelling’s public forays into religious issues embroiled himin a bitter public controversy with Jacobi. At roughly the same time healso broke with his erstwhile ally Hegel, who, without mentioningSchelling by name, had mercilessly lampooned the System of Identity inthe Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit. Following the death ofCaroline in 1809, Schelling’s activity as a philosophical author virtuallyceased. He began to associate more and more with conservative social andreligious elements, defended the reactionary alliance of “throne and altar”represented by the Karlsbad decrees, and proudly identified himself as anopponent of “old-Jacobin views and of shallow Enlightenment.”From 1811 to 1813 Schelling worked on an ambitious speculativeinterpretation of human history, The Ages of the World. He went so far asto have text set in type, but withdrew it from publication at the lastmoment. He also began to lecture on the history of philosophy, and hislectures on this subject reveal an extraordinary animus against hiserstwhile philosophical allies and a special resentment toward the growingsuccess of Hegel’s dialectical idealism. More and more, however, hislectures and writings focused upon the same three subjects: art,mythology, and religion.In 1841 Schelling relocated to Berlin, where he was appointed PrivyCouncilor to the court as well as Professor of Philosophy, charged with thetask of stamping out the “dragon’s seed of Hegelianism.” To thedisappointment of the civil authorities, as well as that of his auditors(whose ranks included Kierkegaard, Bakunin, and Engels), Schellingbarely touched upon political and social philosophy in his lectures atBerlin. Instead, he devoted them almost entirely to the development of hisnew philosophy of revelation and methodology. By this point he hadbegun to characterize his new standpoint as “positive philosophy,” incontradistinction to the purely “negative” philosophy of Kant, Fichte, andHegel—as well as of his own Jena period. Increasingly isolated from hisstudents and contemporaries, Schelling finally died in 1854 in Bad Ragazin Switzerland, where he had gone to recover from a cold.It is difficult to comment briefly upon the thought of a philosopherwhose intellectual development went through as many apparent “shifts”and phases as Schelling’s. Nevertheless, some brief description ofSchelling’s philosophical itinerary prior to 1804 is called for, beginningwith his first, self-consciously “Fichtean” phase. First of all, there is somequestion concerning the extent to which Schelling was ever an orthodoxfollower of Fichte, since important differences between his views andFichte’s are apparent even in his earlier writings. In hindsight, anyway,most scholars would agree with Schelling’s own judgment of 1807, that“there was certainly a time when I sought to find something higher anddeeper in [Fichte’s] philosophy than I could in fact find there” (7:23).2Still, the differences are hardly overwhelming, and it is hard to blame theyoung Schelling’s contemporaries for initially classifying him as little morethan “the town-crier of the I.”In retrospect, of course, one can detect the seeds of future developmentin Schelling’s reluctance to endorse Fichte’s view of the I as a pure activityand in his insistence, already apparent in On the I, on talking about the“being” of the I, and the various “spiritual properties” of the same. As hasalready been mentioned, however, the most striking difference betweenSchelling and Fichte at this point concerned the status of “nature”—bothwithin transcendental philosophy itself and as an object of a specialphilosophical science.The growing differences between Schelling and Fichte are even moreapparent in the former’s Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism andCriticism, in which the system of Spinoza (“dogmatism”) is compared tothat of Fichte (“criticism”), ostensibly to the advantage of the latter. Evenhere, however, it is apparent that Schelling’s deeper interest is not so muchto demonstrate the incommensurability of these rival systems as it is tofind some way of combining Spinoza’s superior grasp of objective realitywith Fichte’s transcendental analysis of subjective freedom.Another significant difference between Schelling and Fichte, even at thisearly date, is hinted at in the former’s casual reference to an “intellectualintuition of the world” (I:285). Whereas for Fichte, “intellectual intuition”designated the abstractly conceived “self-positing” of the I, Schelling wasprepared to employ this same term in a much broader sense to designatean allegedly “higher,” non-sensible type of “direct perception” of objectivereality, so that one could speak of an intellectual intuition of the Not-I aswell as of the I. Understood in this manner, “intellectual intuition” wastransformed into a special “faculty of truth” possessed by at least someindividual human beings. It is this sense of “intellectual intuition” whichattracted the attention of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel and finally ledSchelling himself to assert that “art is the organ of philosophy.”Schelling’s dissatisfaction with the purely formal or “negative” conceptof nature defended by Fichte, together with his admiration for Spinoza’sinterpretation of nature as a self-developing whole (natura naturans) soonled Schelling to make his first truly independent contributions tophilosophy. Initially, this took the form of an effort to supplementtranscendental idealism, which attempts to derive our knowledge ofobjects from an initial act of self-positing, with a “philosophy of nature”or Naturphilosophie that attempts just the opposite: i.e. the derivation ofconsciousness from objects. Naturphilosophie begins with nature as “pureobjectivity” and then shows how nature undergoes a process ofunconscious self-development, culminating in the production of theconditions for its own self-representation, that is, in the, emergence ofmind of spirit. Naturphilosophie thus shows how subjectivity emergesfrom pure objectivity. As precedents for this way of viewing nature,Schelling could refer, not only to Spinoza and Goethe, but also to Kant.Not only are features of Schelling’s view of nature anticipated in Kant’sdiscussion (in the Critique of Judgment) of natural teleology, but Kant hadalso attempted (in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) todevelop a “metaphysico-dynamical” theory of matter as an equilibrium ofopposed forces. Indeed, Schelling called explicit attention to the parallelsbetween Kant’s theory of matter and his own, though he noted that the“positive elements” in Kant’s theory “remained too subordinate” (5:332).Rather than viewing nature merely as the “other” of consciousness,Schelling’s Naturphilosophie seeks to interpret it as an analogon of thesame: to treat nature as “visible spirit” and spirit as “invisible nature”(2:56). So viewed, nature no longer appears to be the mechanicallyordered, lifeless realm of the Not-I; instead, it becomes a living, selforganizingsystem in its own right, one not of mechanical relationsbetween material “things,” but of dynamic relations between forces, aself-developing, organic whole, containing within itself its own end orpurpose: viz., the production of ever higher natural forms, culminating inmind itself.In contrast with the approach of the experimental sciences, the methodof Naturphilosophie is fundamentally a priori. It begins with the conceptof the unity of nature (natura naturans) and then deals with the diversityof the same (natura naturata) by interpreting nature as a system ofopposed forces or “polarities.” The task of Naturpbilosophie or“speculative physics” is to describe this system, from its highest, selforganizingprinciple (“the world soul”) to the various specific oppositionsor “polarities” (e.g. attraction and repulsion, positive and negative forces,light and darkness), which manifest themselves in ever more complexlevels of organization, referred to by Schelling as “powers” or “potencies”(Potenzen). At the first level or “power,” nature appears as a system ofindependent physical bodies; at the second, it is a realm of dynamicprocesses; whereas at the third and highest level it appears as a completelyorganic realm, indeed, as a single “organism.” This hierarchical schemereflects the teleological character of nature itself, inasmuch as the lowerlevels of organization can be adequately “explained” only in terms of thehigher.Whereas Schelling, in the first edition of his Ideas for a Philosophy ofNature, still sought to provide something resembling a ‘transcendentaldeduction” of the “idea of nature,” he dispensed entirely with such aderivation in the second edition (1803). In the new System of Identity theduality between nature and spirit proceeds directly from the point of“absolute indifference” with which the system begins; and thus therequisite concept of nature is immediately available for philosophicalanalysis.In fact, the very idea of a Naturphilosophie was based from the startupon the idea of the “Absolute” (not to be confused with the “absolute I”of transcendental philosophy), an idea which can be warranted neither onempirical nor on transcendental grounds. Instead, as in Spinoza and inSchelling’s own System of Identity, the idea of the Absolute must simply beasserted as the philosophical starting point. Hence, by 1801 at the latest,Schelling had come to the clear recognition that the philosophy of natureis not an autonomous, self-grounded science, but “can proceed fromnothing but a system of identity” (5:116).As has been emphasized, Schellmg never considered his interest in thephilosophy of nature to be in any way incompatible with his commitmentto transcendental idealism. Instead, he viewed the two as complementary,as two sides of the same coin and two branches of a single, morecomprehensive system, which he eventually names the “System ofIdentity.” Before commenting upon the latter, however, let us consider afew of the more distinctive features of Schelling’s own essay intotranscendental philosophy in his System of Transcendental Idealism.Whereas Naturphilosophie traverses the path from sheer objectivity tosubjectivity, transcendental idealism proceeds in the diametrically opposeddirection: pure subjectivity (self-consciousness) to objectivity (thenecessary positing of the Not-I, or nature). This latter path, of course, wasalready blazed by the Wissenschaftslehre, and Schelling’s description of itresembles Fichte’s in many of its details. Adapting Fichte’s characterizationof transcendental philosophy as a “pragmatic history” of the human mind,Schelling’s presentation of transcendental idealism takes the form of ananalysis of successive “epochs” of consciousness; hence it moves from“sensation” to “sensible intuition,” from “intuition” to “reflection,” andfrom “reflection” to “willing.” At the same time, Schelling also attemptsto indicate how each of these stages in the transcendental “history” of selfconsciousnessis correlated with a specific Potenz of nature itself.After having derived “willing,” Schelling turns to what is (at least incomparison with Fichte’s treatments of these topics) a rather perfunctoryaccount of the “practical” portion of transcendental idealism, that is, to adeduction of intersubjectivity, the categorical imperative, the system ofmoral duties, and finally, the system of rights or laws. An innovation inSchelling’s account of “natural right” and the just state is his explicitattention to the temporal, that is to say, historical, evolution of a justsocial order. Thus the System of Transcendental Idealism presents us,almost in passing, with an interpretation of human history as a process ofendless progress toward the full realization of freedom, and thus as a“continual and gradual self-revelation of the absolute” (3:603). Schelling’sremarkable suggestion that history bears the same relation to practicalphilosophy that nature bears to theoretical philosophy implies that Fichteoverlooked one of the “real sciences” which should constitute a separatesubdivision of any complete transcendental system, viz., philosophy ofhistory.By far the most innovative and influential portion of Schelling’s Systemof Transcendental Idealism, however, is its concluding section, “Deductionof the Universal Organ of Philosophy, or, Essentials of the Philosophy ofArt according to Transcendental Idealism.” Here Schelling treats art, notmerely as capable of providing us with an “as if” glimpse of noumenalreality (Kant), nor as capable of assisting in the transition from theordinary to the transcendental standpoint (Fichte), but rather asaccomplishing—albeit in a concrete rather than in an abstract form—thevery task of transcendental idealism. It is precisely within aestheticexperience, according to Schelling, that the identity between the subjectiveand the objective, what is conscious (freedom) and what is unconscious(nature), becomes an object to the experiencing I itself. This unity ispresent in the art product, the “beauty” of which is explicable only as afinite display of the infinite. The art product, in turn, can achieve thissynthesis only because of the distinctive character of the activity whichproduces it. Artistic production, unlike all other human activities, issimultaneously free and unfree, conscious and unconscious.Rather than attempting to explicate further the distinctive character ofartistic production, Schelling simply invokes at this point “the obscureconcept of ‘genius’,” (3:616). Thus he was led by the force of his ownargument to the conclusion that it is here and only here—in the productiveactivity of the artistic genius, in the “art product” which results from thisactivity, and finally, in the secondary type of “genius” required for genuineaesthetic appreciation—that the fundamental insight of transcendentalidealism (viz., the identity of the ideal and the real) becomes apparentwithin empirical consciousness. This, therefore, is the meaning of the oftquotedclaim that art is “the only true and eternal organ and document ofphilosophy” (3:627), for it is within aesthetic experience—and therealone—that the philosopher encounters in an objective form that intuitionwhich allegedly grounds their entire transcendental system. By appealingto (objective) aesthetic intuition, the transcendental philosopher candefend him- or herself from the charge that the “intellectual intuition”with which they begin is nothing but a subjective illusion.With this typically bold move, Schelling elevated the philosophy of artor aesthetics into a central position within his overall system. In fact, itcould be argued that the “philosophy of art” outlined by Schelling duringthis period (1800–4) should really be viewed as constituting a third, coequalbranch of his overall System of Identity, one which should take itsrightful place alongside Naturphilosophie and transcendental idealism. If,as Schelling maintains, art is “a necessary appearance which flows directlyfrom the Absolute” (5:345), then art, nature, and spirit are merely threedifferent expressions or manifestations of the underlying reality.In the years following the publication of the System of TranscendentalIdealism the philosophy of art sketched at the conclusion of that work waselaborated by Schelling along Platonic (or Neo-platonic) lines. Thus, in hisBruno, as in his lectures on The Philosophy of Art, he interprets individualworks of art as participating in or reflecting the various divine “Ideas.”No aspect of Schelling’s philosophy exercised a greater influence upon hiscontemporaries than his remarks on art, which fell on fertile ground andwere further developed into what amounted to a religion of art by theearly German romantics. Schelling himself, however, was never guilty oftrying to supplant philosophy with art (even though he may have comeperilously close to this at the conclusion of his System of TranscendentalIdealism, where he calls for a “new mythology” which will represent thetriumphant return of science to poetry and the synthesis of both). Instead,he insisted that art and philosophy should be viewed as correlative: art asthe real and philosophy as the ideal reflection of one and the sameabsolute reality. What is present to the philosopher as a “subjectivereflection” is present to the artist as an “objective reality”; but for thisvery reason the artist, who is inspired by a “genius” he himself does notclearly comprehend, remains unconscious of the true and “absolute”nature of his or her object, whereas the philosopher can acquire genuine“knowledge” of the identity in question. “This is why philosophy, despiteits inner identity with art, remains always and necessarily science—i.e.ideal—and art remains always and necessarily art—i.e. real” (5:349).If transcendental idealism traces the path from “the ideal” to “the real”and Naturphilosophie the path from “the real” to “the ideal,” and if it isalso true that the basic presupposition underlying all true science is “theessential unity of the unconditionally real and the unconditionally ideal,”a unity which is identical to “the idea of the Absolute” (5:216), then surelyit behooves the systematic philosopher to make this underlying unity asexplicit as possible. This is precisely the task of Schelling’s “System ofIdentity”: to give philosophical substance to his frequently repeatedassurance that transcendental idealism and Naturphilosophie are mutuallycomplementary. Since this new system recognizes the totalinterpenetration of the real and the ideal at every level, Schelling called it“objective” or “absolute idealism” (5:112). Since it asserts the underlyingidentity of mind and nature, as well as of all other experienced differences(including the philosophical differences between the systems of Spinozaand Fichte), he also called it the “System of Identity.”The most distinctive feature of this new system is that it begins with abald assertion of the unity of thought and being, that is, with the idea ofthe “Absolute” or “reason.” As Schelling explains, “this is the idea of theAbsolute: viz., that in relation to the absolute, the idea is also being, andthus the absolute is also the first presupposition of knowing and is itselfthe first knowledge” (5:216). Consequently, it is futile to demand any sortof philosophical deduction of or justification for the idea of AbsoluteIdentity. Instead, the unity expressed by this idea must simply bepresupposed.The System of Identity commences not with the transcendental idealist’sprinciple of self-identity, but with the still broader principle of identity assuch, an identity which transcends and comprises every conceivabledifference (hence Schelling’s description of his own starting point as the“point of indifference”). To express this bare logical idea of an identityunderlying every difference, Schelling utilized the abstract formula “A=A,”which he consequently characterized as expressing “the supreme law ofreason.” From this undifferentiated or “indifferent” starting point, he thenproceeded to a description (albeit a remarkably abstract one) of reality asa whole, considered as a differentiated system within which unity ismaintained by various synthetic relationships, such as substance andattribute, cause and effect, attraction and repulsion, etc. As in hisphilosophy of nature, Schelling’s System of Identity utilizes the notion ofvarious hierarchically related Potenzen as its basic organizing principle.For since, as Schelling notes, there is only one absolute and identicalreality, it follows that “diversity among things is possible only to theextent that the undivided whole is posited under various determinations[or ‘powers’]” (5:366).It must be confessed that, for all of Schelling’s dialectical ingenuity, thedetails of his exposition of this system remain extraordinarily obscure.Though this is especially true of his attempts at a systematic presentationmodeled on Spinoza’s Ethics (e.g. in the Presentation of my System ofPhilosophy), it is also true of the “conversational” presentation containedin the dialogue Bruno, as well as of the informal exposition contained inthe first of his lectures On University Studies. However, few critics ofSchelling’s System of Identity even bother to examine the details of hisexposition and most limit themselves to pointing out the alleged emptinessor incoherence of the first principle of the same. Generations of studentsand scholars have been content to echo Hegel’s famous characterization ofSchelling’s Absolute as “the night in which all cows are black.”However, even if one overlooks the difficulty of grasping its abstractstarting point, the System of Identity still suffers from an even moreserious problem, viz., its inability to give an adequate explanation of thewhy and the how of the initial movement from the point of indifference oridentity to a (real) system of differentiated elements. The difficulty inquestion concerns the relationship between the “indifferent absolute” andeverything else (and indeed, the very intelligibility of positing anything“else” beyond or outside of the “Absolute”). How, precisely, is one tounderstand the transition, demanded by this philosophy, from unity todifference, from the one to the many, from the eternal to the temporal,from the infinite to the finite, from the abstract to the concrete, from formto content, etc.? Schelling himself was clearly dissatisfied with his ownsolution to these questions, though not with the questions themselves;indeed, they may be said to have set the agenda for his entire subsequentphilosophical development.The more one reflects upon the problem of the transition from theAbsolute to its finite manifestations, the easier it is to see why, in theperiod immediately after his departure from Jena, Schelling wasincreasingly attracted to various forms of Platonism and Neo-platonismand was particularly fascinated by the works of Bruno and Boehme; for allof these preceding philosophies explicitly address the question of how thefinite can be said to “proceed from” the infinite. Furthermore, all of themtend to interpret the former merely as an “appearance of” or “way oflooking at” the latter—albeit a necessary one.Ultimately, Schelling seems to have acknowledged the intractability ofthis problem, at least within the framework of his earlier philosophy.Indeed, beginning with his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature ofHuman Freedom, all of his later works may be seen as attempts to resolvethis very problem, and to do so by moving from a purely abstract orformal philosophy of logical relations—a “negative” philosophy incapableof addressing questions of “existence”—to a “positive” philosophy, betterable to open itself to the mystery of existence.If Fichte’s philosophy may be called a “philosophy of striving,”Schelling’s may be characterized as a philosophy of speculative salvation,inspired, above all, by a deep longing to restore a presumably lost unity orharmony. This longing is expressed in the profoundly “metaphysical”character of all of Schelling’s writings, including his earliest ones. As earlyas 1795, he characterized philosophy’s task as “solving the problem of theexistence of the world” (I:314), a formulation which certainly betrays aradically different spirit from that expressed in Fichte’s description ofphilosophy’s task as “explaining the origin of representationsaccompanied by a feeling of necessity,” though not inconsistent with it.It is quite in keeping with this difference that Schelling should havesoon discarded the strictly transcendental approach to philosophy andshould have transformed his system into a doctrine of the Absolute, foronly such a doctrine is capable of addressing the “riddle of existence.” Agenuinely Critical or transcendental philosophy, in contrast, while notdenying the presence of such a “riddle” within human life, alsoacknowledges philosophy’s utter inability to solve it.But the differences between Schelling and Fichte extend beyond theirdisagreement concerning the limits of philosophy, and include—if indeedthey are not based upon—a disagreement concerning the very aim ofhuman life. In Fichte’s view, consciousness is necessarily divided againstitself and the world; freedom is expressed through practical striving; andharmonious self-identity remains an unobtainable ideal. For Schelling, onthe other hand, unity is always present, however obscured by appearances;all that prevents us from acknowledging this, and thereby obtaining a kindof salvation, is our lack of knowledge.Moreover, according to Schelling, philosophy itself—that is, amisguided philosophy of “mere reflection”—is largely responsible for ourpresent, torn condition, our separation from nature and from our owntrue selves. We suffer from a “spiritual sickness”; we long for restorationof a “lost unity.” But the way to recover our health and restore this unityis not to reject philosophy, but to replace a shallow and false philosophywith a profound and true one: “to abolish the split at a higher power bymeans of speculation” (5:121).In the end, there is no better way to characterize the “presiding spirit”of Schelling’s thought than to contrast it with that of Fichte’s, and thiscontrast is nowhere better expressed than by Schelling himself, in hisfirst lecture On University Studies, where he wrote, in a transparentallusion to Fichte: “‘Action! Action!’ is the call that resounds from manyquarters, most loudly however from those who do not wish to proceedwith knowledge” (5:452) Though Schelling undoubtedly includedhimself among the ranks of the latter, he never considered knowledge tobe an end in itself, but only a means: a means for overcoming ourdivided selves, a means toward salvation. It is no accident that, whereasFichte’s most original philosophical contributions were to ethics andsocial philosophy, Schelling’s were to the philosophy of art andphilosophy of religion.THE LATER PHILOSOPHIES OF FICHTE AND SCHELLINGEven the most casual reader must be struck by the obvious superficialdifferences between the many versions of the Wissenschaftslehre Fichtewrote after 1800 and the two presentations of the “foundations” of thesame he produced while in Jena. Experts continue to differ amongthemselves, however, concerning the depth and significance of thedifferences in question, with some arguing for a radical break in Fichte’sintellectual development after the move to Berlin and others emphasizingthe continuity of his writings and the similarities between the systems ofhis Jena and Berlin periods. (Fichte himself never renounced his earlierwritings nor did he emphasize the differences between the various versionsof the Wissenschaftslehre; on the contrary, he tended to describe themsimply as so many different expressions or presentations of one and thesame “spirit.”)So too in the case of Schelling, though here the differences are, ifanything, even more striking (and of course Schelling himself calledexplicit attention to the differences between his earlier, “negative”philosophy and the “positive” philosophy of his Berlin years).Nevertheless, there are distinguished scholars who attempt to emphasizethe continuity of Schelling’s intellectual development and scorn thetraditional division of his works into a series of separate “periods.” Still,no reader of the Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of HumanFreedom or the posthumously published Berlin lectures on Philosophy ofMythology and Philosophy of Revelations can fail to note the tremen-dousdifference between these works and the writings of Schelling’s Jena period.Moreover, even those scholars who acknowledge the fundamentaldifferences between Fichte’s earlier and later works, or between Schelling’searlier and later writings, disagree concerning the causes or reasons forthese differences. Whereas some emphasize the role of “external” factors(such as, in the case of Fichte, the atheism controversy, the dispute withJacobi, and the French occupation of Prussia, or, in the case of Schelling,the influence of figures such as Franz von Baader, Schelling’s resentment atthe successes of his contemporaries, and the general reactionary moodwhich engulfed Europe in the wake of the Congress of Vienna), otherspoint to internal, philosophical reasons for the specific changes theypurport to find in Fichte’s and Schelling’s post-Jena writings.It has been said of Fichte that whereas his earlier thought and writingsbelong to the history of philosophy, his later work—with the exception ofsuch “popular” efforts as The Way toward the Blessed Life and theAddresses to the German Nation—are of purely biographical interest, andthe same could be said of the works of Schelling’s final period. The pointof such observations, presumably, is to call attention to the greaterinfluence the early writings of each man had upon the subsequent historyof “German Idealism.” This, of course, is hardly surprising, given the factthat the most important theoretical writings of both Fichte’s andSchelling’s later years were not published until years after their deaths.However, this fact alone should not be allowed to suggest that the laterwritings of either are somehow lacking in intrinsic, philosophical merit.On the contrary, it is precisely the later, posthumously published writingsof both Fichte and Schelling which have received the most concentratedattention from recent and contemporary scholars.Large claims have been made on behalf of the later versions of Fichte’sphilosophy, and especially concerning the 1804 Wissenschaftslehre (whichreplaces the first principle of the Jena versions—viz., “the I simply positsitself”—with the lapidary proposition, “there is truth”). So too, far moreattention has been paid in recent decades to Schelling’s post-1803 writingsthan to his earlier works. In particular, his 1809 Philosophical Inquiriesinto the Nature of Human Freedom has been the subject of studies by sucheminent thinkers as Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich, and Martin Heidegger, all ofwhom agree in interpreting this text as a harbinger of twentieth-centuryexistentialism. Other scholars have pointed to the lectures Schellingdelivered during his final Berlin years as representing, not merely thelogical conclusion of his own protracted philosophical development, butthe culmination of German Idealism as a whole. Consequently, no well174informed contemporary student of either Fichte or Schelling would belikely to dismiss the later writings of either as lacking in interest or value.Nevertheless, from the standpoint of a “history of German Idealism” itremains true that the Jena writings of Fichte and Schelling are the onesthat matter most. They are the ones upon which their contemporaryreputations were largely based, just as they are the writings which mostinfluenced the immediately subsequent history of philosophy (unlike thelater works, which exercised a negligible influence upon the “history ofGerman Idealism”). To take a particular case in point, Hegel’s philosophy,at least in the form in which we are familiar with it, is quite inconceivableapart from Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre and Schelling’sNaturphilosophie and System of Identity.Hence there is some justification in the present context for ignoring thelater published and unpublished writings of Fichte and Schelling. This,however, should not be taken as an implicit judgment upon the relativephilosophical worth of the earlier and later writings of either Fichte orSchelling, nor is it meant as an endorsement of Hegel’s self-servinginterpretation of the philosophical merits of Fichte and Schelling, whomhe tended to treat as little more than stepping stones toward his ownversion of speculative idealism. On the contrary, one must strenuouslyguard against such an interpretation, even if limited to the Jena writings ofFichte and Schelling. To interpret these solely in the light of their receptionand critique by Hegel and others is to distort and to misunderstand them,a misunderstanding not unlike the one which would be involved if onewere to read Plato merely as forerunner of Aristotle, or Descartes simplyas a step along the path to Spinoza.Quite apart from its historical influence, Fichte’s JenaWissenschaftslehre stands on its own as a unique and enduring, albeitwidely misunderstood, contribution to philosophy, and the same can besaid of Schilling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, as well as of hisvarious attempts to construct a “philosophy of nature” and to articulatehis “System of Identity.” Nobody today interprets Kant’s Critiquesmerely as an “influence” upon the development of Hegelianism, eventhough they manifestly were such. So too, it is high time that the earlywritings of Fichte and Schelling be accorded the same intellectualcourtesy—that is, the courtesy of being allowed to stand or to fall ontheir own merits.NOTES1 Fichte’s writings and letters are cited, by series, volume, and page number,according to the text of the (still incomplete) new critical edition: J.G.Fichte:Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 24 vols (todate) ed. R.Lauth et al. (Stuggart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1964–. AllEnglish translations are by the author (though Fichte’s italics have not alwaysbeen retained).2 Schelling’s writings are cited, by volume and page number, according to thefirst collected edition, edited by his son, F.K.A.Schelling: Friedrich WilhelmJoseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856–61).Translations are by the author.SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYFichteOriginal language editions5.1 J.G.Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,24 vols (to date), ed. R.Lauth, H.Jacobs, and H.Gliwitzky, Stuttgartand Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1964–.5.2 Johann Gottlieb Fichtes nachgelassene Werke, 3 vols, ed. I.H.Fichte, Bonn:Adolph-Marcus, 1834–5.5.3 Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke, 8 vols, ed. I.H.Fichte, Berlin:Veit, 1845–6.English translations5.4 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792, 1793), trans. G.Green, NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1978.5.5 Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. D.Breazeale, Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1988.5.6 Fichte: Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre),trans. P.Heath andJ.Lachs, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970; 2nd edn,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.5.7 Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) novamethodo (1796–9), trans. and ed. D.Breazeale, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1992.5.8 “On the Foundation of our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe”(1798), trans. P.Edwards, in P.L.Gardiner (ed.) Nineteenth CenturyPhilosophy, New York: Free Press, 1969.5.9 The Vocation of Man (1800), trans. P.Preuss, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.5.10 “A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning theActual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force theReader to Understand” (1801), trans. J.Botterman and W.Rash, inE.Behler (ed.) Philosophy of German Idealism, New York:Continuum, 1987.5.11 The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, trans. W.Smith, 2 vols,London: Chapman, 1848–9; 4th edn, 1889.5.12 Addresses to the German Nation (1808), trans. R.F.Jones and G.H.Turnbull,ed. G.A.Kelly, New York: Harper & Row, 1968.5.13 “The Science of Knowledge in its General Outline” (1810), trans.W.E.Wright, Idealistic Studies, 6 (1976): 106–17.Bibliography5.14 Baumgartner, H.M. and Jacobs, W.G. J.G.Fichte: Bibliographie, Stuttgartand Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1968.5.15 Breazeale, D. “Fichte in English: A Complete Bibliography,” in D.Breazealeand T.Rockmore (eds) Fichte: Historical Context and ContemporaryControversies, Atlantic City: Humanities Press, 1993.5.16 Doré, S. et al. “J.G.Fichte—Bibliographie (1968–1991),” Fichte-Studien, 4(1992).Influences and development5.17 Baumanns, P. Fichtes ursprüngliches System. Sein Standort zwischen Kantund Hegel, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1972.5.18 Gueroult, M. L’Evolution et la structure de la doctrine de la science chezFichte, 2 vols, Paris: Société de l’édition, 1930.5.19 Wundt, M. Fichte-Forschungen, Stuttgart: Frommann, 1929.General surveys5.20 Adamson, R. Fichte, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1881.5.21 Baumanns, P. Fichte, Freiburg: Alber, 1990.5.22 Jacobs, W.G. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984.5.23 Léon, X. Fichte et son temps, 3 vols, Paris: Armand Colin, 1922–7.5.24 Philonenko, A. L’Oeuvre de Fichte, Paris: Vrin, 1984.5.25 Rohs, P. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Munich: Beck, 1991.5.26 Widmann, J. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982.Interpretations of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre5.27 Everett, C.C. Fichte’s Science of Knowledge: A Critical Exposition, Chicago:Griggs, 1884.5.28 Hohler, T.P. Imagination and Reflection: Intersubjectivity. Fichte’s Grundlageof 1794, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.5.29 Pareyson, L. Fichte: Il sistema della libertà, 2nd edn, Milan: Mursia, 1976.5.30 Philonenko, A. La Liberté humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte, 2nd edn,Paris: Vrin, 1980.5.31 Talbot, E.B. The Fundamental Principle of Fichte’s Philosophy, New York:Macmillan, 1906.Studies of the post-Jena Wissenschaftslehre5.32 Brüggen, M. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre. Das System in den seit 1801/02enstandenen Fassungen,Hamburg: Meiner, 1979.5.33 Widmann, J. Der Grundstrukture des transzendentalen Wissens nachJ.G.Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre 18042, Hamburg: Meiner, 1977.Specific topics5.34 Engelbrecht, H.C. Johann Gottlieb Fichte: A Study of his Political Writings,with Special Reference to his Nationalism, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1933.5.35 Henrich, D. Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht, Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann,1967; trans. D. Lachterman, “Fichte’s Original Insight,”Contemporary German Philosophy, 1 (1982): 15–52.5.36 Lauth, R. Die transzendentale Naturlehre Fichtes nach den Prinztpien derWissenschaftslehre, Hamburg: Meiner, 1984.5.37 Neuhouser, F. Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990.5.38 Renaut, A. Le Système du droit: Philosophie et droit dans la pensée deFichte, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986.5.39 Rockmore, T. Fichte, Marx, and the German Philosophical Tradition,Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980.5.40 Stolzenberg, J. Fichtes Begriff der intellektuellen Anschauung, Stuttgart:KlettCotta, 1986.5.41 Williams, R.R. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1992.Recent collections and special issues of journals5.42 Breazeale, D., and Rockmore, T. (eds) Fichte: Historical Context andContemporary Controversies, Atlantic City: Humanities Press, 1993.5.43 Hammacher, K. (ed.) Der transcendentale Gedanke. Die gegenwärtigeDarstellung der Philosophie Fichtes: Hamburg, Meiner, 1981.5.44 Idealistic Studies, 6, 2 (1979).5.45 Philosophical Forum, 19, 2 and 3 (1988).SchellingOriginal language editions5.46 Schellings Werke, 12 vols, ed. M.Schröter, Munich: Beck/Oldenbourg,1927–54.5.47 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols, ed.F.K.A.Schelling, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856–61.English translations5.48 The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794–1796),trans. F.Marti, Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press, 1980.5.49 Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797), trans. E.E.Harris and P.Heath,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.5.50 System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. P.Heath, Charlottesville:University Press of Virginia, 1978.5.51 Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things (1802), trans.and ed. M.G.Vater, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.5.52 On University Studies (1803), trans. E.S.Morgan and N.Guterman, Athens:Ohio University Press, 1966.5.53 “Of the Relationship of the Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy in General”(1802), trans. and ed. G.di Giovanni and H.S.Harris, in Between Kantand Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism,Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.5.54 The Philosophy of Art (1801, 1804), trans. and ed. D.W.Stott, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1989.5.55 “Concerning the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature” (1807), trans.M.Bullock, in H.Read The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in EnglishRomantic Poetry, New York: Pantheon, 1953.5.56`Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809), trans.J.Gutmann, Chicago: Open Court, 1936.5.57 Ages of the World (1813), trans. F.D.Bolmon, New York: AMS Press, 1942.5.58 Schellings Treatise on the Deities of Samothrace (1815), trans. R.F.Brown,Missoula, Mont.: Scholars’ Press, 1976.5.59 “On the Source of Eternal Truths” (1850), trans. E.A.Beach, Owl ofMinerva, 22 (1990): 55–67.Bibliographies5.60 Sandkühler, H.J. Friedrich Joseph Schelling, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970.5.61 Schneeberger, G. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Eine Bibliographie,Bern: Francke, 1954.Influences and development5.62 Benz, E. Schelling: Werden und Wirken seines Denken, Zurich: Rein, 1955.5.63 Frank, M., and Kurz, G. (eds) Materialen zu Schellings philosophischenAnfangen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975.5.64 Görland, I. Die Entwicklung der Frühphilosophie Schellings in derAuseinandersetzung mit Fichte, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1973.5.65 Lauth, R. Die Entstehung von Schellings Identitätsphilosophie in derAuseinandersetzung mit Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre, 1795–1801,Freiburg: Alber,General surveys5.66 Jaspers, K. Schelling: Grösse und Verängnis, Munich: Piper, 1955.5.67 Marquet, J.-F. Liberté et existence: étude sur la formation de la philosophiede Schelling, Paris: Gallimard, 1973.5.68 Tielette, X. Schelling: Une philosophie en deviner, 2 vols, Paris: Vrin, 1970.5.69 White, A. Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Human Freedom, NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1983.5.70 Zeltner, H. Schelling, Stuttgart: Frommann, 1954.Schelling’s earlier philosophy (1794–1808)5.71 Esposito, J.L. Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature, Lewisburg, Pa:Bucknell University Press, 1977.5.72 Meier, F. Die Idee der Transzendentalphliosophie beim jungen Schelling,Winterthur: Keller, 1961.5.73 Watson, J. Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism: A Critical Exposition,Chicago: Griggs, 1882.Schelling’s later philosophy (1809–54)5.74 Brown, R.F. The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Boehmeon the Works of 1809–1815, Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell UniversityPress, 1977.5.75 Fuhrmans, H. Schellings letzte Philosophie: Die negative und positivePhilosophie im Einsatz des Spätidealismus, Berlin: Junker undDünnhaupt, 1940.5.76 Heidegger, M. Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Han Freedom, transJ.Stambaugh, Athens: Ohio Univesity Press, 1985.5.77 Holz, H. Spekulation und Faktizität. Zum Freiheitsbegriff des mittleren undspäten Schelling, Bonn: Bouvier, 1970.5.78 Schulz, W. Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der SpätphilosophieSchellings, 2nd edn, Pfullingen: Neske, 1975.Specific topics5.79 Gibelin, J. L’Esthetique de Schelling, Paris: Vrin, 1934.5.80 Haynes, P.C. Reason and Existence: Schelling’s Philosophy of History,Leiden: Brill, 1967.5.81 Knittermeyer, H. Schelling und die romantische Schule, Munich: Reinhardt,1929.5.82 Tillich, P. The Construction of the History of Religion in Schelling’s PositivePhilosophy: Its Presuppositions and Principles, trans. V.Nuovo,Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press, 1974.Recent collections and special issues of journals5.83 Archives de philosophie, 38, 3 (1975).5.84 Baumgartner, H.M. (ed.) Schelling: Einführung in seine Philosophie,Freiburg: Alber, 1975.5.85 Les Etudes philosophiques, 2 (1974).5.86 Idealistic Studies, 19, 3 (1989).5.87 Koktanek, A.M. (ed.) Schelling-Studien, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1965.5.88 Studia Philosophica, 14 (1954).