Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Charles Carroll Everett

for it. The most general statement of the principle, it is true, remains; namely, that we are saved by hope. In the one case, however, the hope is personal; in the other, it is impersonal. This shows simply that Kant was, from the first, confident that the relation between morality and religion is a necessary one.

      All this has been dwelt upon to illustrate the fact that Kant in all this matter left problems to be solved. The relation to one another of all the elements that enter into the discussion, as it is left by him, is arbitrary and superficial. The relation of God to the moral law is wholly external. God is assumed merely as the arbiter of destiny. The relation of the moral law to human nature, and thus to human freedom, is unexplained. Further, it is assumed, as a matter too obvious to require discussion, that it is impossible for any finite being to attain to perfect holiness. No ground is given for this assumption. Finally, the relation of holiness to happiness is left entirely obscure. The two stand over against one another, as elements wholly foreign, to be united only by some external power.

      All the problems here suggested are made the objects of careful study by Fichte, and a clear perception of them will be found to be a great help in the comprehension of the deeper thought of his system. From the very first, he evidently felt that much was to be done in the way of filling out the system of Kant at the points here indicated. In his earliest contribution to the Kantian philosophy, the work that was written while he was the most closely under the personal influence of Kant and which was published in a certain sense under Kant’s patronage, he attacks some of these problems. He attempts to fill out, by the delicate tracery in which he was skilled, some of the gaps left by the massive masonry of Kant. He here attempts to show some relation between morality and happiness. He shows a profound view of this relationship even by a change in the term employed. He speaks of blessedness rather than of happiness. Thus, at the very beginning of his philosophic career, he is already busied by considering the “Way to the Blessed Life.” He also endeavors to represent the various relations in which God may be supposed to stand to the moral law. All of this treatment is, when compared with Fichte’s later work, entirely superficial. It illustrates, however, the fundamental nature of his interest in philosophy, by showing the nature of the problems that first forced themselves upon him. Even while he was busied with more superficial matters, while he was working out the first presentation of his system, the short statement in regard to the Worth of Man shows that these more profound problems were those toward which his speculation was really pressing, and it is these that furnish the substance of his later thought.

IV. Unity in General.

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       We have seen that Kant, in each of the spheres of thought, leaves certain elements not incorporated into the unity of a system. The Thing-in-itself stands outside, with no apparent relation to any part of his philosophy. The Categories and all forms of intellectual activity are accepted without being made to appear to have any organic relation to one another. The elements that enter into the higher moral life stand also disconnected. Each of these spheres thus lacks unity. Still more glaring does this lack of unity become, when we attempt to combine these various spheres into any absolute relation. The moral world and the intellectual world stand over against one another as though they belong to different universes.

      The fact as last stated was obvious to Kant himself. In his introduction to the “Critique of the Faculty of Judgment,” Kant recognizes these distinct realms. One is theoretical; the other is practical. One has for its governing principle the Understanding; the other, the Reason. He recognizes the fact that here is opened an unbounded, but also an inaccessible field for knowledge. The two realms stand over against each other as if they were so many different worlds. The one is the world of the sensuous, or the natural; the other is the world of the supersensuous or the supernatural. Of these, the first can have no influence upon the second; the second, however, should have an influence upon the first. The idea of moral freedom should make the end toward which the practical reason points, actual in the world of the senses. In this case, it must be possible to regard nature in such a way that its laws are fitted to cooperate with those of moral freedom, and to work for the same end. There must, therefore, be a principle of unity by which the natural and supernatural are made one. The supersensuous principle which underlies nature, and the supersensuous principle which underlies the realm of freedom must have some common ground. This common ground cannot be reached either by the understanding or the reason, but it must make possible a passage from the one realm of thought to the other.

Fichte refers to this passage as the most significant part of this very significant book.^[8] In examining it and the principles to which it refers, he insists that in Kant’s system there are three absolutes. The first of these is the sensuous experience, which includes the whole sensuous world, so far as this is recognized by Kant. This is the realm of the understanding. The second absolute is the moral world, the world of the reason. The third is the principle which Kant recognizes as the common ground of both. Though it is the common ground, yet it cannot be seen as such; we cannot bring into a single thought the two absolutes first named as springing from it. If I am to recognize it at all, I must recognize it as a third absolute.

      Fichte states expressly that the statement of Kant which we are here considering was the historical point from which his own independent speculation started. This statement by Fichte is a very important contribution to our knowledge of the development of his system. We might have assumed the fact to be as he asserts it; but it is none the less interesting to find him consciously recognizing this definite relation to the system of Kant, pointing us to the very sentence that roused his intellectual activity to its real work. This statement of Fichte furnishes, as we shall see, the key to his system. It literally describes the problem which he set himself to solve. This problem is the reduction of the theoretic reason and the practical reason to a common principle. This result involves all the others that have been named. It involves, on the one side, the unity of the theoretical processes, and thus the deduction of the Categories and the rest; and, on the other, the recognition of the nature of the object of sensuous perception, the Thing-in-itself. It involves the introduction of a similar unity into the world of the practical reason, and finally it involves what is indeed, as we have seen, the gist of the problem, the reduction of the world of the Understanding and that of the Reason to a common principle.

      Footnotes

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      1 ↑ Kant’s Works, Rosenkranz’ Edition, II, 196.

      2 ↑ In treating of Fichte in his “History of Philosophy.”

      3 ↑ Kant’s Works, Rosenkranz’ Edition, II, 209 et 784.

      4 ↑ Sämmtliche Werke, I, 486. The term Transcendental, which must not be confounded with Transcendent, is here used to indicate the contradictory nature of the view described. The object is transcendental, because it is assumed as a necessity of thought; yet it is further assumed to be external. It cannot, Fichte would say, be both, and this is what makes the view ascribed to Kant so absurd.

      5 ↑ Hume’s Philosophical Works, I, 16.

      6 ↑ Kant’s Werke, Rosenkranz’ Edition, II, 235.

      7 ↑ Kant’s Werke, Rosenkranz’ Edition, VIII, 261.

      8 ↑ Nachgelassene Werke, II, 103.

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