[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Sun-Clear Statement #6/41

Otherwise, you will only be listening to the narrative of another's observation, and not of your own; and, moreover, to an incomprehensiblenarrative, for that upon which all depends cannot be described in words as composed of things already known to you, but is an absolutely unknown, which can become known to you only through your own internal contemplation, and can be characterized by anything sensuously known only in the way of analogy, which characteristic, therefore, receives its full significance only through contemplation.

Remember this, once for all, when similar cases arise in the future, and try to spread it amongst our celebrated writers who do not know it, and who speak very awkwardly concerning the relation of philosophy to language. But to the point:

When you are engaged in the reading of this book, in the observation of this object, or in the conversation with your friend, do you reflect upon your reading, observing, hearing, seeing, or feeling of the object, or your speaking to your friend?

R. By no means. I think not at all upon myself. I forget myself utterly in the book, in the object, in the conversation. Hence, people use the expressions: "I am engaged in it," "immersed in it," "lost in it."

A. And this, by the bye, all the more, the more intense, full, and lively your consciousness of the object is. That half dreamy and listless consciousness, that inattention and thoughtlessness, which is a characteristic of our age, and the most unconquerable obstacle to a thorough philosophy, is precisely the condition wherein men do not utterly abandonthemselves to the object, do not bury and forget themselves in it, but always flutter and waver between the object and their own consciousness.

But how is it in the case when you place before you an object not held by you as actual in the present connection of time; for instance, yesterday's conversation with your friend? Is there also something in this case to which you abandon yourself, wherein you forget yourself?

R. Certainly. Precisely this placingthe absent object before meis that wherein I forget myself.

A. You stated a short while ago, that in the former condition it is the presenceof the object, and in the latter condition the re-presentingof the object to your mind, which constitutes the true reality of your life, and at present you state that you forget yourself in both. Here, then, we have found the looked for ground of your judgment concerning actuality and non-actuality. The self-forgetting is the characteristic of actuality; and in each condition of life, the focus wherein you throw and forget yourself, and the focus of actuality, are one and the same. That which tears you from yourself is the actually occurring, which fills up your life-moment.

R. I do not quite understand you.

A. I was forced to establish this conception so much in advance, and have in the meanwhile characterized it as clearly as possible. But if you will only keep up attentive- conversation with me, I hope it will become very clear to you in a short while. Can you also represent again the representation just now made by you of yesterday's conversation with your friend?

R. Doubtless. Nay, this is the very thing I have done during our reflection on that representation. I did not so much represent that conversation as rather the representing of that conversation.

A. Now, tell me what in this representation of the representing do you hold to be the real factical, or that which fills up the fleeting moments of your life?

R. Precisely this representing of the representing.

A. Now let us retrace our steps. In the representation of yesterday's conversation—please become thoroughly conscious of it, and look into your consciousness—how was that conversation related to your consciousness, and to the real factical which filled your consciousness?

R. The conversation, as I have already stated, was not the actual event, but merely the reconstructing of the conversation. Nevertheless, the event was not a mere reconstructing in general, but the reconstructing of a conversation, and, moreover, of this particular conversation. The reconstructing, as the chief point, was accompanied by the conversation; and the latter was not the actual, but the modification, the general determinationof the latter.

A. And in the representing of this representation?

R.