Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Charles Carroll Everett

III.

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      THE PROBLEMS CONSIDERED IN THEMSELVES.

      WE have thus examined the principal problems with which the philosophy of Fichte has to do, so far as they are suggested by the system of Kant. Of these problems, the first—that of the deduction of the Categories—may be regarded as affecting the form of the system; though it must be remembered that in philosophy the form is also in part identical with the material. The others concern the material of the system and, indeed, the most fundamental and important elements of the material.

      However interesting it may be to trace the growth of one system out of another, to see how the later is involved in the earlier, and how the thought of humanity develops as if it were the thought of an individual, such considerations affect chiefly the student of the history of philosophy. The interest is largely technical. A more important question, then, than that of the relation of Fichte to Kant is that of the significance of the problems considered in themselves. Indeed, the study of the history of philosophy fails of its true end when it is pursued merely as a matter of historical or curious interest. One might as well watch the changing forms in the kaleidoscope, or the shifting shadows of interlacing branches, as to study the changing forms of human thought, considered simply as changing forms. For one who feels no need of an answer to the questions with which a system of philosophy deals, that system has no significance. We have now, therefore, to ask what is the permanent human interest which is involved in the problems which Fichte undertakes to solve.

      We shall here consider these under their most general form, thereby reducing them to two, namely: The place of the a priori method in philosophy, and the nature of the Ultimate Reality. My intention is not at all to discuss these problems, but merely to make it appear as clearly as possible that we have in them problems that deserve to be discussed.

I. The A PRIORI Method in Philosophy

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       The deduction of the Categories is a part of the general scheme of philosophy which Fichte held, and which he impressed upon the minds of his immediate successors. His idea was that a philosophy should be a system deduced from a single principle. It should thus possess an organic unity, and this unity should be the result of a priori reasoning. This constructive method is that which properly receives the name Speculative. Now this whole form of procedure is totally at variance with the methods most prized at present. The reliance of the present thought of the world is placed almost wholly upon induction. The systems that have been constructed according to the deductive method seem to many, at the present day, no more substantial than air castles.

      Various grave objections are urged against the speculative method of thought. It is urged that we cannot reach, thereby, concrete realities. These must in every case be given. When the philosopher seems to have reached by his deduction anything of a nature at all concrete, let it be even the Faculties of the Mind or the Categories of Thought, these are in fact accepted by him as given. They are really the products of experience. Further, it is urged that no real unity is attained by this process, but only the semblance of unity. We have a generalization and classification; but we have just as many units as before. Still further, it is urged that the process of deduction is arbitrary. Not only are the so-called results given in advance, by experience, but the philosopher so frames and guides his reasoning as to reach these points already given; and thus, it is urged finally, the whole process is idle and delusive.

      We must admit the charges thus urged to be in some respects well grounded. At the same time we must insist that the speculative method in philosophy has great claims to a respectful consideration. We here leave out of the account all discussion of the results actually reached by this method. Fichte’s attempt we have yet to study, and that of no other concerns us. We have to look upon this method largely as if it were yet untried; or, at least, to consider its accomplishments only in the most general and abstract way.

      It must be admitted that speculative philosophy can never, by itself, reach concrete results; yet it accomplishes very much, if it have a place for these, if it show that the concrete fact represents some general principle or some moment in a process that by itself considered is purely formal. If it cannot construct in advance the content of experience, it is much if it can explain empirical results, when they are given. To take a very crude and inadequate example, the philosophy of history could not construct, in advance, the personalities, say, of Huss or Luther; it does much, if it can explain the relation of things which made a movement like that represented by Huss or Luther inevitable. A better example may be found in the applied mathematics. Take, for instance, the science of optics. As Mill insists, no reasoning can explain why any special form of undulation should produce upon us the definite sensation which in fact we find to correspond to it. This may illustrate the impotence of mathematics in general to account for the precise empirical result of any process. Yet none the less does the science of mathematics do a work of incalculable importance by giving a scheme, all the parts of which stand in a definite and necessary relation to all the rest; a scheme in which all these empirical elements have their place.

Fichte assigns precisely this work to speculative philosophy. He recognizes two classes of objects which cannot be deduced; namely, the irrational and the concrete. He says: How the accidental, the chance, or lawless, comes to pass cannot be told. Foolish people demand that we shall deduce, for them, their pens and the foolishness which they write. There is, however, no reason even for their own existence. Just as little can be deduced even that which stands under a law, that which is, in the strictest sense of the word, real. This is found only in empirical knowledge; and the science of knowledge, or philosophy, can only indicate its place—the vacancy which it fills, but by no means the content of this.^[1]

      While the work of speculative philosophy is thus somewhat similar to that of applied mathematics, it is, so far as it can be accomplished, more important than this. This greater importance arises from two of its characteristics. In the first place, philosophy is more inclusive than mathematics, having, in fact, to do with all that is. In the second place, for this very reason its results are more complete, and thus more transparent, than those of mathematics. This latter has to do with sensible elements which admit of no solution. The moments of a speculative philosophy are more closely allied with the processes of thought, and are more easily perceived to be merely the nodes in a movement of spontaneous development.

      The arbitrariness which is found in philosophy has also its counterpart in mathematics. This, also, out of many possible lines of movement, chooses that which will lead to a given point. In philosophy, often, a given course of reasoning can be with difficulty understood till we have looked forward and seen the point to which it is aiming. When we have seen this, then we can understand the turns of thought which are leading toward it. But the same is true in regard to the most solid scientific processes. “Tell me,” said Faraday to Tyndall, who was about to show him an experiment, “Tell me what I am to look for.”

It must be admitted that there are difficulties in the way of a speculative philosophy that no mathematical process has to meet. There are difficulties in finding the proper starting point. There are difficulties arising from the largeness and apparent vagueness of the elements and relations employed. There is possible an arbitrariness of treatment. The results reached bear witness to the narrowness or the prepossessions of the philosopher himself. Fichte deduces the position which woman holds in the family, according to the German notion, as confidently as he deduces any more fundamental and universal relation.^[2] A Frenchman or an American might have reached, with the same confidence, quite different results. The difficulty of an undertaking does not, however, prove its impossibility. Least of all does it prove its worthlessness. If the science of mathematics has contributed anything to our knowledge of the phenomena to which it can be applied, so that the scientist does not feel that he understands them till he has subjected them to mathematical formulas; still more must speculative philosophy, supposing it to be in any degree attainable, contribute to our thought of the