[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The System of Ethics #5/193

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Absolute activity is the one predicate that belongs to me purely and simply and immediately; the one and

only possible way of presenting such a concept [of absolute activity], and the way that is rendered

necessary by the laws of consciousness, is as causality by means of a concept. Absolute activity in this

shape is also called freedom. Freedom is the sensible representation of self-activity [Selbsttätigkeit], and

it arises through opposition to the constrained state [Gebundenheit] both of the object and of ourselves

as intelligence, insofar as we relate an object to ourselves.

I posit myself as free insofar as I explain a sensible acting, or being, as arising from my concept, which

is then called the “concept of an end.” Therefore the fact presented above – that I find myself to be acting

1 According to Fichte’s account of the I, as developed, for example, in his lectures on “Foundations of

Transcendental Philosophy ( Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo” [ = WLnm], the I possesses both “real”

and “ideal” force: the former is the power to engage in real, efficacious action; the latter is the power to

cognize its actions, its objects, and itself. See § 3 of WLnm, in J. G. Fichte – Gesamtausgabe derBayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Reinhard Lauth, Hans Gliwitzky†, and Erich Fuchs

(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964 ff.) [henceforth = GA], IV/2: 44–47 and IV/3: 359–

363. In English, see J. G. Fichte, Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova

methodo, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992)

[henceforth = FTP], pp. 139–146.

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efficaciously – is possible only under the condition that I presuppose a concept designed [ entworfenen]

by myself, which is supposed to guide my efficacious acting and in which the latter is both formally

grounded and materially determined. Thus, in addition to the various distinctive features [IV, 10] that

were shown above to be contained in the representation of our efficacy, we here obtain a new one, which

it was not necessary to note earlier and which has here been derived along with the others. It must be

noted, however, that the preceding act of designing such a concept [of an end] is merely positedand

belongs solely to the sensible aspect of our self-activity.

As has just been noted, the concept from which an objective determination is to follow, the concept of

an end, as it is called, is not itself determined in turn by something objective but is determined

absolutely by itself. Were this not the case, then I would not be absolutely active and would not be

immediately posited in this way; instead, my activity would depend on some being and would be

mediated by that being – which contradicts our presupposition. To be sure, in the course of the further

development of consciousness and in connection with this same concept, the concept of an end appears

as conditioned, though not determined, by the cognition of a being. Here, however, at the origin of all

consciousness, where we startwith activity, and where this activity is absolute, the matter is not to be

viewed in this manner. – The most important result of all this is the following: there is an absolute

independence and self-sufficiency of the mereconcept(that which is “categorical” in the so-called categorical imperative), due to a causality of what is subjective exercised upon what is objective – just

as there is supposed to be an absolutely self-posited being(of the material stuff), due to a causality of

what is objective exercised upon what is subjective. With this we have joined together the two extremes

of the entire world of reason.

(Anyone who correctly grasps at least this self-sufficiency of the concept, will view our entire system in

the most perfect light, from which will arise the most unshakable conviction concerning the truth of the

same.)

8

Something objective follows from a concept. How is this possible? What can it mean? It can mean only

that the concept itself appears to me as

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something objective. But the concept of an end [IV, 11], viewed objectively, is called an act of willing

[ ein Wollen], and the representation of a will [ eines Willens] is nothing other than this necessary aspect of the concept of an end, which is posited solely in order to make possible the consciousness of our

activity. What is spiritual in me, intuited immediately as the principle of an efficacious action, becomes

for me a will.

Now, however, Iam supposed to have an effect upon that stuff, the origin of which was described

above.