[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Facts of Consciousness #5/65

That understanding can very well join something like freedom to a substance as its background, which substance, if closely examined, is however always of a material nature; but finds it very hard, nay, if it has been kept on the wrong track for a considerable time, altogether impossible to arise to a comprehension of an independent existence of freedom. To provesuch a pure being of pure freedom is a matter belonging to the Science of Knowledge; at present I only ask you to consider such a thought as a possible, problematic thinking. Nevertheless, it can be made clear even here, in immediate contemplation, that knowledge may be actually and in fact such a being and expression of freedom. For in my knowledge of the actual object outside of me, how is the object related tome as the knowing? Evidently thus: its being and qualities are not mine, and I am free from both, floating above and altogether indifferent in regard to them.

2. In every determinedknowledge, that general freedom which exists, and exists as certainly as a knowledge in general is, is limited in some particular manner. In every determined knowledge there is a duplicity melted into a oneness: freedom, which makes it a knowledge; and a certain limitationor canceling of this freedom, which makes it a determined knowledge.

3. All change and all alteration of the determinations of the one general knowledge (or of the one general freedom) must, therefore, consist in either the making loose of latent freedom, or the making latent of loose freedom.

4. But further: since this freedom is to be nothing but freedom and knowledge generally, nothing but the being of absolute freedom, such a making latent or loose of freedom can be achieved solely through, freedom itself. Freedom itself is the principle of all its possible determinations; for if we were to assume an outside ground of those determinations, freedom would not be freedom.

5. If freedom is in any respect latent or chained down, it is in the same respect not loose or free, and vice versa; and thus it becomes comprehensible, how various moments of the one universal knowledge must dirempt as altogether opposite to each other.

6. Thus we arrive at the idea of a certain limiting and freeing, or of a Fivefoldnesstogether with an Infinityin consciousness.

1. Let us now apply these principles, first of all in general, to reflection. In external perception, the altogether simple consciousness—which in no manner rises above itself, or reflects upon itself and the life whereof is therefore not in the least more developed than is necessary to constitute it consciousness—is confined to a determined imaging of its sensation. That freedom which it needs, to bear but the form of knowledge, it receives through the objectivating thinking, which lifts consciousness, though confined to a determined imaging, at least beyond its mere being and frees it therefrom. Hence, in this simple consciousness confined and liberated freedom are united. Consciousness is confined to imaging, but liberated from being, which being is for that very reason transferred to an external object; and hence our knowledge begins necessarily with the consciousness of an external object; for it could not begin lower and yet remain knowledge. In this simple consciousness there is freedom merely of being; and this is the lowest and last grade of freedom.

2. Now knowledge is to rise beyond this determined confinedness of external perception through reflection. It was confined to imaging, and hence must make itself free and indifferent in regard to this imaging, just as in external perception it was free and indifferent in regard to being.

Through the being of a determined freedom there always arises a determined knowing. Here we have freedom from imaging; hence there must arise a knowing of the image as image; whereas in external perception there occurred a knowing merely of the thing. Here it becomes quite clear, as I said before, that a determined consciousness is the being of a determined freedom. For that, in relation to which freedom is free, is always the object of this determined consciousness. Thus in external perception there was freedom solely in regard to being; and hence arose a consciousness of being, and altogether nothing more. In reflection there is freedom in regard to the imaging, and hence to the above consciousness of being there is joined now the consciousness of imaging. In external perception consciousness said simply: the thing is. But in reflection the newly-arisen consciousness says: there is also an image, a representation of the thing. Moreover, since this consciousness is the realized freedom of imaging, knowledge in respect to itself says: I can image or represent that object or not, as I choose.