[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Facts of Consciousness #3/65

Hence we express the above fact thus: in immediate connection with what we have recognized in all external perception as contemplating, we moreover think;and it is precisely through this thinking, and through the inseparable union of this thinking with the before mentioned contemplation into a closely-joined life-moment of the contemplating faculty, that that which before was inthat faculty becomes now something external, an object.

I. The proposition, that the object—for there is only one object, since the asserted existence of something external and independent of us, which constitutes the real character of an object, belongs to all objects in the same manner—is neither feltin sensation, nor beheldin contemplation, but altogether and solely thought, is as important as it has never yet been recognized.

We have assisted the insight into it in a very easy manner by showing that the sensation as well as the extension in space are altogether matters of self-consciousness; and that hence if the human mind proceeds beyond this self-consciousness and transcends it by a new kind of knowledge, this latter kind of knowledge is an entirely other one and worthy to be designated by another name, for which name we propose that of Thinking. For thinking is precisely the expression used for a going beyond and out of mere self-consciousness, and we particularly request every one to comprehend this distinction. But that there really is involved such a going beyond even in the mere external perception is an immediate fact, since we do really assume a Something independent of us and existing outside of us, instead of the simple perception of a limitation of our external sense, &c., which alone we perceive,—a fact which each one may verify in his own consciousness.

II. Here already it appears clearly that consciousness is not a mere dead and passive mirror of external objects, but in itself living and productive. Imagine a quiet sheet of water wherein the trees and plants of the shore mirror themselves, and give to this sheet of water even the power to behold the pictures imaged in it and to become conscious of them; and it is easy enough to understand how the water can arise to a consciousness of an image or shadow in it; but it is by no means explained how the water can ever get out of these pictures, and go beyond and externalize them to the real trees and plants on the shore whereof they are pictures. It is thus with our consciousness. To explain how we get an affection of our external sense, and a power to contemplate our faculty, belongs to the sphere of pure philosophy, or the Science of Knowledge, and hence should not be undertaken in a review of the facts of consciousness. That inner self-contemplation we here accept as an existing fact. But we are bound to explain how this self-contemplation can pretend to be a contemplation of objects existing by themselves and altogether beyond the sphere of the contemplating faculty; and in order to comprehend this as a fact, we must moreover assume an inner life of that self-contemplation which goes out of and beyond itself: Thinking.

Now what does this thinking really achieve in external perception? Simply that it furnishes the form, the form of objective existence. Hence in the object we must distinguish two chief components, arising from different sources; firstly, the objective form, which originates through thinking, and, secondly, that which the object is in itself, and which originates from the self-contemplation of the contemplating faculty;—the material quality of the object arising from a limitation of the external sense and its extension from a contemplation of our own infinite faculty. The first is the form of the object, the second its matter. It is, moreover, to be remarked in regard to the form of thinking, that thinking is a positing, and a positing in opposition to another; hence an op-positing, and that, therefore, all opposition arises immediately and purely from thinking, and is produced by thinking. So much concerning thinking in general, in so far as its nature can be made clear here.

Let us now answer the question to what particular kind the here discovered thinking may belong.

I say, it is not a thinking arising in consequence of another thinking, but an absolute and in-and-upon-itself-reposing thinking. I will not say that it is the original thinking—though it may be, but surrounded with a certain hull—but it is surely the firstthinking within the sphere of the facts of thinking; precisely as external perception generally, whereof this thinking is an inseparable component, is also the first consciousness, preceded by none other.