rametta- the speculative structures of fichte's 1807 wl-2007

© 2007. Idealistic Studies, Volume 37, Issue 2. ISSN 0046-8541. pp. 121–142

THE SPECULATIVE STRUCTURES OF FICHTE’S 1807 WISSENSCHAFTSLEHRE1

Translation and Notes, Garth Green

Gaetano Rametta

Abstract: This paper provides a synthesis and translation of Le strutture specula-tive della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 1801–1807

(Genova: Pantograf, 1995) by Gaetano Rametta. The 1807 Wissenschaftslehre

offers important insight into Fichte’s mittlere Phase (1801–1807). Fichte’s text and

Rametta’s work on it remain untranslated into English; this translation, the notes to

which offer a running commentary and defi nitions of key terms, intends to make

the former known through the latter. Rametta focuses on Fichte’s analysis of vision,

and the vision of vision. In his middle-period and later work, Fichte developed this

theme far past the early Jena-period doctrine thereof, as treated by Dieter Henrich.

Within this thematic context, Rametta also discusses the proof-structure of the

1807 WL, the distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Phänomenologie, and the

concept of Weisheit or “wisdom.” The article concludes with a treatment of the

signifi cance of Fichte’s later philosophy for the philosophy of religion.

I. ProlegomenaDuring the winter semester course he offered in Königsberg in 1807, Fichte devoted the

fi rst lecture to “prolegomena” to the Wissenschaftslehre, to the fundamental indications

that should guide students during the course and along its Gang des Denkens, the “path

of thought” that is the Doctrine of Science.2 For this reason, Fichte emphasized that such

indications, although only preliminary, should be “listened to with a complete dedication,”

unnecessary, perhaps, “in other cases.” The difference between the Wissenschaftslehre,

as a unique and authentic philosophical discourse, and “all other systems,” is already

suggested.3 The former apparently does not intend only “knowledge,” understood as a

collection of objectively valid propositions, but instead intends, as will be stated at the

end of this fi rst lecture, Weisheit, “wisdom,” which itself implies a mastery at once—“mit einem Schlag,” as Fichte writes—not only refl ective but lived (Leben).

It is clear, then, why in the Wissenschaftslehre a prolegomenon must assume a dis-

tinct and more profound signifi cance. A prolegomenon must provide for the student not

IDEALISTIC STUDIES122

only such fundamental concepts as would allow her to follow and learn passively what

an instructor proclaims ex cathedra. It must be concerned above all with the awakening

of an attitude, a disposition, which will allow the student not only to follow logically

and memorize what an instructor asserts, but to adopt (or, as Fichte better expresses it,

to “participate” in) a “new sensibility.”4 These prolegomena must not, then, be received

passively, but must be taken up by each for herself, in a way that incorporates the whole

being of the person who continues to acknowledge each moment of progress along the

course of the investigation as it is disclosed.

In what way, then, should we understand the “new sense” which Fichte invites us to

adopt? How does Fichte approach and depict its context, and content, in this Prolegomena,

and throughout, the 1807 Wissenschaftslehre? Although it is of course too early to answer

with any precision, here already in this introductory context Fichte provides a helpful in-

dication. He suggests a determination of the concept by means of its effect; Fichte invites

us to participate in a sensibility that is new insofar as it discloses “a new world.”5 Such

a “sensibility” must then indicate a fundamental position, or disposition, constructed so

as to allow this “new world” to “open” or disclose itself. This represents in fact a sort of

conversio, or Kehre, on the part of the whole person, by means of which alone the appear-

ance of a “new world” becomes possible, that investigated within the Wissenschaftslehre,

and that we both practice and indeed are, in its Gang des Denkens, or progress.

“Sense” then appears as a “receptivity,” in and through which this “new world”

will come to light. For this reason, we can defi ne this central concept as a capacity for

apprehending and acknowledging that which appears, or shows itself. Evidently, this

acknowledgment already implies a disposition by means of which such apprehension is

possible, by which the latter is conditioned. There can be no appearance of, or opening

upon, a new world or novel experience, without a preliminary disposition to its acknowl-

edgment by the subject, just as, vice versa, there can be no such disposition without the

new world apprehended in and through our investigation.

But from where, then, does any diffi culty arise? What is the problem-context of the

1807 Wissenschaftslehre? Fichte identifi es an “evident contradiction” in the fact that phi-

losophy, in order to investigate and “observe” the cognitive and conative activity of the

fi nite subject, must necessarily distantiate itself therefrom, and not only in a horizontal

sense. The distantiation produced by philosophy, that alone makes such observation pos-

sible, implies an irreducible element of verticality as well. In order to observe the fi nite

subject, the philosopher must elevate herself “above” the fi nite subject, in order to attain

to a “vision” (Ansicht) of or “insight” (Einsicht) into the focus of investigation that is

transparent and complete, a vision in this case of vision itself, as representative of both

the cognitive and conative activity of the fi nite subject.

Two consequences, which we will attempt to better understand throughout the follow-

ing essay, follow from this problem-context; (1) a thematization of the relation between

theory and practice, or philosophy and experience, and (2) a more precise differentiation

between the status and signifi cance of the theme of vision pertinent to the fi nite subject

and that of vision in stricto sensu, understood transcendentally according to its universal

formal character. This analysis will direct itself to the reunifi cation of philosophy and ex-

123FICHTE’S 1807 WISSENSCHAFTSLEHRE

perience, life, then, insofar as philosophy can be understood as a mode and type of vision,

and therefore a disposition of the soul or mode of comportment, and a form of life.

By means of this hypothesis, one could account for important terminological develop-

ments within this 1807 WL, which appears to attribute an amplifi ed semantic signifi cance

to the term “vision,” an attribution that will amplify the functional role of the concept in

the economy of the work as a whole. The denotation of “vision” in fact develops from the

Ansicht of the early, Jena period Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, in which the objective

moment of vision is explicit.6

Therein, vision was understood as the act of seeing. Ansicht there denoted that which

is seen, that which opens itself to vision. Consciousness is consciousness-of, in contem-

porary terms. This objective moment is transformed, or recontextualized, in the Einsicht of the Privatissimum and the subsequent Wissenschaftslehren. In the latter, Fichte appears

concerned to focus upon and make explicit the transcendental and genetic aspect of vision

as an activity and as the constitutive act of the Wissenschaftslehre itself, which is to expose

the originary activity of the fi nite subject that, in the WL, is investigated and observed, or

“seen.”7 In this acceptation, Einsicht, insight, would denote the transcendental “vision”

in stricto sensu, which would have its objective moment, its Ansicht, only as the derived

and derivative result, its accomplishment.8

This “new sense,” then, can be expressed alternately through the affi rmation that the

transcendental philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre is to actualize the possibility, by

means of its account of vision, of a vision of vision itself. This proposition can be used

to orient ourselves within Fichte’s later philosophy of self-consciousness as such. In fact,

just as would a self-refl exive vision, so “self ”-consciousness implies not only a “posit-

ing” or a “positing of self,” but a positing of itself “as” itself. The I does not simply posit

itself, but posits “itself ” (in a moment of self-objectifi cation), and posits itself “as” itself,

“as” an I (in and through the consciousness of that self-objectifi cation, and therefore in a

self-consciousness of all possible consciousness).

II. Vision: Natural and TranscendentalFrom this general theme of the constitutive refl exivity of vision follows a distinction

between two modalities of vision; natural and transcendental. In the former modality, the

I can without doubt “observe itself.” But how could it appear to itself in such observa-

tion? The I “would fi nd itself already predetermined.” The I would be perceived simply

as always already accomplished, given, in one or another manner, either materialiter or

formaliter.9 Such natural or factical (faktisch) vision results therefore only in the sem-

blance of a self-consciousness. At this stage, even though the I is conscious of itself, it

is an I “as” a datum among data, a fact among other facts—in Fichte’s own simile from

the Grundlage of 1794/95, it is like a “piece of lava.”10 In fact, natural vision, even when

turned upon itself, cannot capture or comprehend the genetic and transcendental move-

ment which alone makes possible its determinable and determinate existence; it cannot

grasp the series of free acts in which manifest or take form the constituent conditions of

vision itself.

Fichte for this reason, almost paradoxically, calls “blind,” hidden, or invisible what also

is or pertains to “vision.” More precisely, this “hiddenness at the root” obtains because


what is invisible to and in an act of vision is the “root” itself, its own root, the origin

(Urquell) of the act of vision. This root or point of origin, Fichte continues in the Second

Lecture, is the “incognito of the Absolute, =X.” Indeed, this will be represented by the

symbol “A,” the “image” of a supreme unity which Fichte expresses also with the concept

of “Life” (Leben).11 This point of unity cannot be comprehended in abstraction from or

independently of its particular phenomenological determinations or manifestations, the

products of its activity; but neither it is not clear how this point of unity can be understood

in relation to such manifold determinations.

Fichte’s exposition cannot yet claim to have derived transcendentally the originary

character of this Urquell in its constitutive correlation with the actuality of the external

world and of consciousness. But because such manifold determinations imply such a unity

as their source, the multiplicity of these manifold elements has constantly to be subtracted

(abziehen) from it, in a way and with a signifi cance that will be clarifi ed below.12 One is

concerned principally, as above, with the manner in which one observes what is “given”

to us. This dynamic, however, does not obtain merely at the level of empirical percep-

tion, or on the superfi ce of a “simple presence.” According to this second acceptation of

“sensibility,” and the concept of a “new sense,” I see the “other” only insofar as I see

“otherwise.” Fichte determines precisely the “alterity” of this transcendental vision, which

consists in the fact that this latter “sees the coming-to-be of the form (Gestalt).”13 In this

lies the truly essential point, and task.

“An x; the task was to comprehend it, in order to subtract it”: this proposition defi nes

the specifi city or particular character of the WL according to the “prolegomena” of 1807.

This task of “penetrating” the x, as an x, as an unknown quantity, and as a determination

of the “I,” coincides with its “subtraction” from “A,” as just described. This A indicates,

as above, the Absolute as “Life” (Leben), and presupposes the possibility of retracing the

course of transcendental philosophy back to this unique and unconditional principle. On

occasion, Fichte utilizes the term “One” (Eins) in order to indicate the directionality of

the movement ad quem made by our refl ection, in its retracing or return of fi nite determi-

nations to the principle of their origin or genesis. According to Fichte, only the doctrine

of science posits this presupposition; only the doctrine of science demonstrates that the

implication of the principle or principium is internal to each act of refl ection.14

In this way, the WL is able to posit the presupposition; but since it does so in and

through refl ection, it cannot do so except “as” (Als) that which has been presupposed; it

can posit its principle only “as” assumed, as comprehended inside the act and movement

of refl ection which posits it as such.15 This presupposition, however, is lost by refl ection,

to refl ection, once again; in refl ecting upon it, it refl ects upon it “as” posited, or as ob-

jectifi ed. The presupposition in this way eludes or escapes this effort at recovery. Precisely

insofar as one attempts to capture the presupposition by means of refl ection, determine

it “as posited,” or objectifi ed, one is trapped by a systematic and even necessary inability

to render this X “as” presupposed. In the search for the Principium, then, we can only

subtract or negate each determination “as” and insofar as posited, in order, fi nally, to reach

the presupposition in its purity.

The fact that (Dass) such a refl ection is posited, then, the actuality of our refl ective

activity, exceeds the possibilities of refl ection. Once identifi ed “as” refl ection, refl ection


itself poses the problem of the implication between position and presupposition. As Fichte

will suggest in the Eighth Lecture, “only once we’ve seen the schematism” or effect of

the faculty of knowledge “as a schematism,” as a product or result, “can we subtract it”

as being the effect of a Vermögen.16 But the fact that it posits itself as itself, as refl ection,

is not itself an act or an instance thereof that can be derived by means of refl ection.

Now, however, refl ection can indeed refl ect that fact, posit it as that fact that refl ection

has not posited and cannot posit, in order to be able to, by means of this processus, refl ect

its self-negation in the moment of its transcendental self-derivation. In this way, refl ec-

tion posits and “refl ects” precisely its own self-subtraction. The genetic demonstration

that philosophy conducts upon itself is equivalent, then, and isomorphic, to the genetic

movement through which refl ection demonstrates the necessity of a self-subtraction (as

ground for all positing), with the intent of grasping, again according to the text of 1807,

the “pure A.”17 Here, then, Fichte returns again, in beginning the Third Lecture of the

1807 WL, to the fundamental question we have indicated throughout our exegesis; to the

proper transcendental determination of the condition for the possibility of experience

as an “Urquell,” the “original source” of all appearance. The Third Lecture of the 1807

WL dwells on precisely this theme, deepening the understanding already achieved of the

way in which we may progress in our Gang des Denkens toward a genetic or originary

determination of its intrinsic character.18

III. The “As-Structure” of Vision: Position and PresuppositionAs is well-known, these general themes provide the basic structure of the doctrine of science

as such. But they are treated within the fi rst lectures of the Königsberger Wissenschaftslehre

in an apparently merely assertoric or thetic manner, either without or with only adumbrated

demonstrations. For this reason, it is important for us to pause over each proposition or

term, and consider its signifi cance in light of the thematic and argumentative context of this

work. We will also need to consider such signifi cance in light of complementary exposi-

tions that Fichte had formulated more thoroughly elsewhere during the same period, and

that appear to underlie and be presupposed by the more obscure assertions, fragments of

arguments, and polemical passages present within the manuscript of 1807. However, far

from revealing only fragments more thoroughly and satisfactorily expressed elsewhere,

this work delineates an original and organic vision of the fundamental principles of the

Wissenschaftslehre as defi ned in this mittlere Phase, the systematic structure of which we

will be able to reconstruct in spite of and by means of the fragmentary and stylistically

unfi nished character of the manuscript.19

It is evident in any case that Fichte limited himself until this point in the manuscript

to a thetic or assertoric presentation of what would require a genetic deduction in order

to attain to a proper theoretical status and legitimacy. We could say that the “evidence”

reached at this point maintains itself at the level of facticity. This factical evidence has

not yet been demonstrated as the result of a process of genesis. Only in this way could

such “evidence” be justifi ed epistemologically according to fundamental and necessary

laws, rather than merely epiphenomenal and derivative principles that presuppose rather

than produce such originary evidence.20 Although the basic structure of the principles and

conception of the WL has emerged, and although a system of thought in its general, factical


characteristics has been delineated, these elements have not yet emerged as the result of

a demonstration, and have not yet been illuminated within a construction that represents

them genetically as elements in a mutual relation to a common origin or source.

Fichte hints at this theoretical problem-context when, already in the Second Lecture,

he affi rms that with the determination of the incognito of the Absolute (=X) as life “the

pure truth, the original source (Urquell) of all the rest, although not yet as such an original source” has been found. Life has been discovered as the truth of being; however, it has not

yet tied to its originary effectivity. Its original character in relationship to the transcendental

derivation of the real determinations of the world and of consciousness has not yet been

shown. In any case, the fact of having reached the knowledge of X as life allows Fichte

to formulate the following scheme:

A

|

a-b

This schema corresponds exactly to the narrative that we have reported above, according

to which we have found the concept of “life” (Leben) as the “original source” of every-

thing that is actual (Wirklich) but not yet “as” an original source. This has not yet been

established as the theme of transcendental, and genetic, refl ection. Here, Fichte fi nds

the demonstrative and not merely assertoric character of his doctrine as an authentic

transcendental philosophy, in the dis-covery of how particular determinations can be

represented in the movement or processus or Fortgang of their genetic arising. We are

to focus our analysis, then, on the dynamic of, and dynamics within, this movement. We

are to reconstruct, within the form of its becoming, what to the natural attitude appears

only on the basis of presupposed factuality, and that “dogmatic” philosophical thought is

unable, for itself and on its own terms, to think.

In the disjunction a-b, the elements and relation between the fi nite subject (a) and the

multiplicity of its empirical objects (b) is represented. The attention of the transcendental

philosopher will turn to the genesis of this disjunction, in order to pose the question; “how,

and from what source, “does this disjunction arise?”21 Importantly, Fichte’s response to

and resolution of this problem will not appear as exhaustible or exhausted within a system.

Fichte’s analysis will result instead in the discovery and recognition that this problem-

context is irreducible to conceptual determination.

IV. Wissenschaftslehre and Wisdom (Weisheit)It seems plausible to suppose that a key to understanding this relation of an original identity

or source to these two fundamental elements of disjunction can be found in the recognition

that the two elements “I” (a) and “Being” (b) do not constitute original poles of a relation,

but simply the “conditions for the apparition (Erscheinung) of life.” Since “I” and “Being”

result from the projective nature of vision, they themselves appear as conditioning the ap-parition of life only insofar as they are more fundamentally conditions of the “visibility”

(Sichtbarkeit) of life. Hence, it results that without visibility, vision would not be given,

while without vision, the apparition of life would not be given.22


One can already see here how this exposition will imply a particularly Fichtean “cri-

tique of the concept,” of the pretension to derive by theoretical deduction the principle

and possibility thereof. This critique that distinguishes Fichte’s philosophy most funda-

mentally from that of Hegel.23 Fichte intends here the subtraction or negation and even

self-negation of the concept, a negation that obtains in and through the concept, in order

to determine conceptually that which exceeds the concept. This conceptual indication of

the projective character of conceptuality is advanced in order to attain to “a unity that

maintains itself within the disjunction, and at the same time supersedes this disjunction,

or “rises above it.”

If regarding this unity of identity and difference we persist with questions of the form

“what is this X,” the response will take necessarily a negative character; since X can

be determined neither as “I” (a) nor as “Being” (b), X could not defi ne itself except as

“not-conceptual” (NichtBegriff). Because one can fi nd this X only “above” the concept,

according to the form of the concept itself such a defi nition will always and only appear

through a via negationis. As soon as a concept or defi nition is advanced or added it must

be taken away or subtracted. Once it is understood that “Seyn, als Begriff, [is] tod,” the

“nonconceptual” must necessarily be advanced, in opposition thereto, as life (Leben).

In fact, within this Königsberger Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte advances an equation; “the

nonconceptual = life.”24 Fundamentally, this equation expresses the fundamental insight

of Fichte’s philosophy as such—precisely because, with and by means of the concept,

the concept itself is exploded.

This self-limitation of and in the concept pertains both with regard to the “fact” of ap-

pearance, the fact that (Dass) there is appearance, experience, life, at all, and with regard

to the manner, the “how” (Wie) appearance is produced—and thus how that which appears

(the Was of the Erscheinen) comes to form. In the attempt to clarify the question of the

Was, we come to recognize that in neither the principal case of the Dass or the Wie, can

we deduce logically the appearance of life in its concreteness. Fichte intends to express,

in both cases, the same result; that the appearance of life, or life as the root of appearance,

is not deducible theoretically, but can only be performed, enacted, and recognized in the

concreteness of “our” existing and experience.

For the WL there is of course no question of a “philosophy of life,” or even a “philoso-

phy of existence,” but, most fundamentally, of a transcendental ontology of experience

or of the phenomenon in the process of its construction in a sense that will be clarifi ed

below. One could even say that, if either the “fact that” (Dass) or the “how” (Wie) of the

phenomenon had been determined in advance, phenomenal “existence” would be purely

logical or fi ctive. In fact, the signifi cance of the “ex-” lies precisely in its expression of

an origin and as an originary development. However such an “ex-” would fi nd itself re-

presented, posited “in-front-of ” and by the subject (vor-gestellt), again, necessarily, as

the condition for the possibility of such activity. Therefore the genetic question of the

“how” would again neutralize any claim of the projective imagination to any originality

of its appearance.

That is why in the question of “how appearance is possible,” Fichte appears to recognize

and labor against an inertia, to which both natural and philosophical consciousness has

been subject and to which it has long since become habituated. Consciousness appears as


if compelled to fi nd a predetermined answer to this question, in spite of its categorically

necessary and evident impossibility, in this more than in any other case. The real in its

concreteness cannot be deduced theoretically, anticipated, or projected in advance. And

this, as we have already seen, is due to the irreducible character of its own actuality. Here,

then, is Fichte’s non-answer: “do not lose either the “the supersensible or the sensible

world, but always maintain yourself in the unity that links (bindende Einheit) both, in the

bond (Band) of both” (ibid.). In this way, we are to “look (siehe . . . in), give yourself to

the current of life.”25

It appears that neither “A” nor “x,” taken separately, can be the truth of appearance, but

rather that only together can they become the “exponents” thereof. It appears that this truth

fi nds itself “in both” elements and in their structural co-implication. This in turn appears

to imply a defi nition of the phenomenon as dependent upon an origin, as manifest from

“A.” And that in turn implies the impossibility of predetermining the phenomenon in and

by means of an anticipatory representation (vor-stellen).

If all of this obtains, then it also appears that the Wie of the absolute in its appearing,

in its actual existing in the concreteness of Erscheinen, cannot be constructed in theory,

demonstrable by way of concepts, or otherwise mastered. This irreducible remainder is

impossible without theory, since it is the theory that alone discovers it, while also being irreducible to theory. It is deduced from within and by means of the Darstellung, but as

its insuperable limit. The Fichtean concept of Weisheit, or wisdom, occupies this phe-

nomenological space. This is the locus in which the relationship between philosophy and

life comes to its maximum problematic expression, and at the same time to its decisive

resolution.

That relation, in fact, seems marked by an aporia. It is true that the WL theoretically

grasps and conceptually formalizes the implication A-x, the bindende Einheit of both. In

this lies the accomplishment of the WL. But it is also true that nothing at all could change

in us and for us (as readers of the WL) in relation to the existential concreteness of our

experience and self-expression (leben, u. erleben). This bindende Einheit could be intended

as a philosophical theory among others, and indeed this “letter” of the exposition could

reduce the effi cacy of the “spirit,” which alone contains the practical, concrete signifi cance

thereof. It is possible that the “new sense” of our Introduction could remain unaffected.

To welcome that bindende Einheit according to its pure letter would be to fail to grasp

it at all, since it would imply an affi rmation of the separation of life from philosophy, of

practical activity from its theoretical formulation.

One could not understand this unity, then, as exclusively theoretical; to do so would

be to miss and to misunderstand it. Such an interpretation of Fichte’s WL would in fact

radically negate it, and would reduce the WL to a theory alongside others, since it would

make absolute the duality of these elements in abstract opposition to their unity. To reduce

the “bond” to a theoretical concept is to move oneself inside a closed and vicious circle,

as a function perhaps under the burden of a contradiction that consciousness doesn’t and

can’t dominate. Thus, this bindende Einheit exceeds both theory and practice, and more

precisely, it shows both, in their pretentions to independence or absoluteness, to be as

such impossible. The understanding of the Band between “A” and “x” is neither merely

“thought” nor blindly “lived,” but is rather both ‘at once.’ As such, the question of the


relation between philosophy and life, or theory and practice, comes to a maximum point

of concentration with the implicative structure of the Erscheinung as A-x.

But the irreducible remainder to experience in the original link A-x also attests to a

fundamental unity between theory and practice. This unity coincides with the understanding

of phenomena as phenomena, or of the absolute in its Existenz. In knowing phenomenality

as such, consciousness discovers the radical unfoundedness of its own reality, and knows

itself as an activity originally undetermined, free, open to the infi nity of its theoretical-

practical horizon and realizations. Consciousness knows itself as the medium through

which that connection is enacted and produced. In other words; the activity of conscious-

ness institutes this bindende Einheit in all aspects of its actuality, its concreteness, and

therefore also in the spontaneity of its own being qua activity. It is not then possible to

imagine a fundamental division within this Weisheit.It is no longer possible to theorize the incompatibility and the confl ict between the

‘two’ parts of consciousness, e.g., the noumenal-rational and the phenomenal-sensible.

Otherwise put, Weisheit indicates the agreement, the unifying and vital link between the

two parts that for this reason are impossible to conceive as either “two,” or “parts.” On

the contrary, activity as such, whether theoretical or practical, is possible only through

the retention of the link A-x, without any privilege or absolutization of either, but rather

through—to use a term from the Grundlage—a “hovering” between one and the other.

Fichte’s formulization of phenomenality in fact announces the reciprocal implication of

activity and contemplation, in the above sense of a “vision-coming-to-form,” the con-

templative character of action and the eminently practical character of contemplation.

Of course, we must be willing to see the conceptuality of the WL itself as a Bild and as

phenomenal in the same sense.26

V. Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and VisibilityIn this way, the reciprocal involvement of consciousness and self-consciousness—the fact

that consciousness cannot obtain without self-consciousness, just as self-consciousness

cannot obtain without a contemporaneous institution of consciousness—Fichte expresses

in terms of the reciprocal relationship between vision and the vision of vision. As above,

this reciprocity obtains between the capacity of the subject to see, or grasp, objects of

experience in a fi rst moment, and the capacity of the subject to experience or to see that,

its own, objectual vision or activity in a second moment. This latter moment is one of

self-refl ection, in and through which vision refl ects the disjunction between conscious-

ness and object, and recuperates it. It does so in an identity with itself that is gained or

accomplished through the disjunction and its refl ection.

Vision sees itself, as above, as seeing: but in order to see itself as seeing, it must project

outside of itself something as an object that is seen. Without that object seen, of course,

no vision would obtain. But nor would the vision of vision as the self-refl ection of vision

upon that objectual vision obtain. Vision then could not refl ect itself ‘as’ seeing; it could

not see itself tout court. More precisely: vision sees itself, refl ects upon itself, and is there-

fore self-consciousness, subjectivity, the I. In other words, there is no self-consciousness

without consciousness. On the other hand, vision could not see any object if it did not

project outside of itself what it distinguishes and differentiates from itself. Only as such


can vision refl ect on itself as that original identity of itself with itself. Indeed, the object

could not be distinguished, and pro-jected as external, without the self-refl ection of vision

as seeing, as the subject of vision, without, as it were, the self-retraction of vision from its

objectual pole. In other words; no consciousness without self-consciousness.

The activity of the real I—both cognitive and conative—is constituted by the unity of

this distinction. This unity presents itself, toward its philosophical exposition, in the form

of the exchange and the reciprocal determination of consciousness and self-consciousness.

In the real I, then, such determinations appear as inseparable, and therefore always inex-

tricably linked in every activity of the I. This simultaneous co-penetration appears for and

in transcendental refl ection as a reciprocal exchange. Not only does one imply the other,

but each is included necessarily in the unity of the other and in a unity with the other.

Importantly, however, in the order of genetic derivation, as an Erscheinungslehre or

Phänomenologie, the priority of self-consciousness over consciousness, as the condition

for the possibility of the latter—the priority of the vision of vision above the activity of

simple objectual vision—is impossible to ignore. This latter, in fact, can determine itself

as such, in the disjunction a-b, or I-Being, only because that distinction has always already

been overcome and refl ected transcendentally as constitutive of vision as such. Vision must

always already possess an intuition or consciousness of itself as vision, in order to then

be refl ected in the form of the disjunction a-b, in order that experience, life, possess its

actual structure. We are now in a position to comprehend more thoroughly this question

of priority and implication.

As we have established, vision is constituted by means of an internal distinction, be-

tween a subject of vision and an object of vision, the latter obtaining as that which is seen

by means of an activity, the act of seeing. But even if subject and object, I and Being, are

established as reciprocal poles of a relation, we must still determine their status in and for

the WL. Do they represent simple facts, original conditions, underivable transcendentally,

or will they able to represent elements within a dynamic relation that can in its turn also

be determined genetically?

We have already encountered the outlines of the Fichtean response. Without both the

I and Being, as well as their interaction, no vision is possible. Without vision, understood

as the activity of consciousness, appearance itself is impossible. In other words, I and

Being (a and b), come from, in the order of transcendental derivation, that for which

they constitute the conditions of real possibility—from appearance. They do not have an

autonomous status in relationship to appearance, but are simply the factual possibility

conditions thereof. The WL does not arrest its progress at the mere facticity of this dis-

junction, however, but reconstructs its transcendental genesis from the unity (Eins) and

effectivity, the actuality, of life (Leben). In this way, the two poles of the disjunction, and

indeed the disjunction itself, lose their character as merely factical.

The disjunction a-b now appears as the product of visibility, in the sense that the latter

designates the movement with which A comes to appearance, in the process of its original

self-division into the disjunction I-being. This latter, as the product or result of the coming

to visibility of the absolute as esse in mero actu emerge at the same time as the factual

conditions, from which the WL constructs the process of genesis, transcendentally.27 The

disjunction is demonstrated transcendentally as the factual condition of the appearing


of life, and is then derived genetically in its transcendental necessity. Visibility, then, as

the coming-to-manifestation and self-appearance of A, produces, transcendentally, the

factual conditions (the x as disjunction a-b) within which it realizes itself. The disjunc-

tion is genetically derived in its transcendental necessity, and at the same time dissolved

in its character as merely factual: it passes, from original, non-genetic, condition to the

transcendental result ‘produced’ by such an appearance.

VI. The Epistemological Structure of the 1807 WLOnce it has accounted in this way for the disjunction a-b, the WL may be thought to have

completed the genetic deduction of the possibility-conditions for Erscheinung. Explaining

the disjunction as the result or effect of “visibility,” it accounts for it precisely as that fact

beyond which it is no longer possible to proceed. However, it cannot arrest its derivation

of the disjunction at such a point. On the contrary, the categorical certainty which char-

acterizes the derivation of this presupposition is confi rmed by the result of the genesis.

This result, in the disjunction, evinces the factual conditions of appearance. However,

appearance must contain within itself the further possibility of seeing itself in light of

the implication that binds it to the Principle = A. Otherwise said; appearance must refl ect

itself not only as self-consciousness, but as refl ection upon its refl ection, or as doctrine of

science. Only in this way can self-consciousness bind itself to the principium from which

it originates; only in this way can the WL come to the self-refl ection of its own construc-

tive procedures, and restore itself in unity with the principle from which it proceeded in

order to derive consciousness genetically.

From this problem-situation arises the necessity of not arresting our progress at the

disjunction. Instead, we must retrace, from the latter, back to the unity of the Principle.

Because in the disjunction a and b are derived as factual conditions of the appearance of

A, it derives consciousness as the factual condition of this latter. But the WL is to present

the movement through which consciousness links itself again, within the exposition, to

the principle that is its ground. As we have seen, objectivity is the result of the projective

structure of vision. Vision necessarily doubles or divides itself into the subject that sees

and the object that is seen, and dis-locates itself onto one side of the disjunction within

the activity of seeing, within the I.

We may take as demonstrated, then, that “each real seeing projects, looks-at [schaut hin].” But it is also the case that “if it did not see anything, it could not posit itself as

seeing.” Presuming the prior and fi rst moment of objective vision, this second moment

of self-vision implies the following; “to see itself means: to look-at an I.”28 In order to

see itself, it must see itself as an I. To see itself as an I it is necessary but not suffi cient

to posit the fi rst moment of objectivity, that projective structure through which vision,

consciousness, is real, synthetic. To see itself as an I requires also that the I is to see itself

seeing; to not be able to see itself in this way would be tantamount to its being unable

to see itself tout court. However, it cannot see itself while it sees; in seeing itself as that

which sees, it divides itself once again between the I that sees and the seen object. We have

already reconstructed this movement above, and Fichte here summarizes his progress in

the following way: “it sees itself seeing means that intuits itself as looking-at [hinsehend]

an object, a being!”29


The I has been determined as that which sees, the medium, the Durch through which

life erupts into appearance.30 In and through it, “life and seeing are fused together.”31 The

1807 WL designates the fi rst movement of the I, however, as follows; the I, in its attempt

at a self-consciousness, divides itself into two elements; seeing, or that which sees, and

that which is seen. To the degree to which the I takes itself, and absolutizes itself as, that

which sees, it projects life, as the process of genesis and the unity of these elements,

outside of itself, as that which, in its self-vision, is seen. Life becomes, for the I that sees,

merely objectual, the object of vision, and thus is no longer life, in Fichte’s acceptation,

but is a mere product or epiphenomenon thereof, always already accomplished. In order

to institute itself as that which is capable of seeing, the I again projects what, in vision, is

seen, outside of itself. But since what is seen is life, it is life itself that is separated from

and projected outside of the I. Insofar as life itself is comprehended as the opposed pole,

or opposite to, vision, it is necessarily reifi ed. Life is reduced to the multiplicity of entities

objectifi ed and in principle always objectifi able by and for the vision of the subject. Fichte

depicts this occurrence as follows; “What happens? In seeing, life vanishes from it.”32

The particular character of this reunifi cation with the principle by means of the WL

does not allow for the claim to a coincidence between the self-refl ection constitutive of

real consciousness and the self-refl ection which the WL attains in its epistemological

construction thereof. In other words, the WL closes itself, in the sense that reinstates the

Principle = A, with and from which it began. But it does so only in the sense that such a

reinstatement of the unity with A coincides with the awareness of the difference that opens

up between A and consciousness, through which A fi rst appears.

To this closure evident in this epistemological construction there corresponds a structur-

al opening that characterizes the implication A.-x. One could almost say that, to the degree

to which the exposition closes itself by restoring and confi rming the initial hypothesis, it

confi rms the impossibility of the complete adequation of the phenomenon compared to

that which, in it, becomes phenomenal. In other words, Fichte confi rms a disproportion,

internal to the phenomenon, between manifestation and what appears in it. There obtains

a relation, then, that expresses itself necessarily in terms of an excess or surplus to the

phenomenon in the phenomenon, and in its self-relation. If the transcendental deduction

of consciousness and self-consciousness yielded not such a surplus or disproportion, but

rather a full transparency, we would have concluded to the absolutization of knowledge,

the re-absorption of the Principle in the Concept. It was with precisely this equation that

Hegel was contemporaneously closing the Jena Philosophy of Spirit of 1805/06, according

to which: “the I in philosophy appears as knowledge of absolute spirit, in the concept in

itself . . . here the I knows the absolute . . . and is nothing else.”33

However, the relation A-x, that determined the phenomenality of the phenomenon,

its necessary character, now becomes concrete in relationship to the I, as a restriction

upon self-transparency. Pure self-adequation appears in the demonstration instead as a

limit-concept; as neither possible nor actual but rather as impossible, necessarily. Any

and every attempt on the part of the I to know itself with full adequacy results instead

in its interminable reclusion and systematic elusiveness. In its attempt to produce a self-

transparency, the I produces instead its own non-transparency. Through the recognition

thereof, the I is summoned to begin again its search for self-comprehension, to restore


visibility in its self-relation. This movement is interminable, an infi nite task. Thus, with

Fichte, we are able to arrive at a principle which grounds conceptualization and yet is

impossible to conceptualize, but which can be made comprehensible as that which both

makes knowledge possible, and is at the same time irreducible to knowledge.34

This also means that the I is always at the same time becoming “as” I. The I is no more

self-veiling than it is revelatory, no more hidden than it is manifest.35 Nonetheless, this

openness toward determination does not and cannot result in a complete determinacy, an

omnimoda determinatio. Such determinability is always on-the-way, parallel to its being

sought out. The I “is” only in its positing of itself and comprehension of itself as I—only

because it sees itself as the I that sees. The WL understands the self-comprehension of the

I as a vision of its own inevitable and ineliminable non-transparency, which it possesses

necessarily as an element of its self-relation. The Fichtean concept of the I includes within

it its own supererogation.

The I is spurred to search for a conceptual clarity regarding this surplus progressively,

as a function of the non-transparency that arises again, serially, with every progressive

determination. Since the latter dynamic constitutes the I and its self-consciousness, the

functional concept of the I, of self-consciousness, is of one striving for, in search of, its

full self-determination, an I which is still in the process of becoming I, becoming itself.

In Fichte’s words, the I is on the way to grasping itself as itself in a “beyond” that it

never reaches and always is (5r). It is precisely what it has not-yet realized itself as be-

ing. This “beyond” is internal to the I, but is at the same time that which incites the I to

the overcoming of its present state, to search out and actualize new projections of itself,

in which can recognize itself.

VII. ConclusionsWe have seen that the Königsberg WL is characterized by the centrality of the notion of the

phenomenon (Erscheinung), and by the transcendental relation of implication that binds

the latter to the absolute. The search for conditions that allow for such an implication

coincides with the genetic derivation of the conditions that allow consciousness, intended

as the locus of disjunction between subject and object, to function as the “scheme” through

which life emerges into appearance (erscheinen u. sich äussern). In the better-known terms

of the 1804 WL, this concept of Erscheinung and its process of emergence is determined by

means of a distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Erscheinungslehre or Phänomenologie.

While the ascending series of the Wahrheitslehre occupies the fi rst fi fteen conferences of

the 1804 WL, it is the subsequent task of an Erscheinungslehre to descend again from the

truth to its phenomenal appearance.36 The simplifi ed structure of the WL of Königsberg

instead stresses the determination of the transcendental philosophy as Erscheinungslehre,

in the sense that it does not present anymore the distinction between this latter and a

Wahrheitslehre, but rather comprehends the latter in and through the former.

This methodological unifi cation of Wahrheitslehre and Erscheinungslehre, and the

transcendental implication A.-x., that occupies the center of the exposition, allow Fichte

to safeguard the full systematic signifi cance of the concept of the phenomenon, while also

retaining at the same time the excess or surplus of A compared to its each appearance as

x. In this way, despite its incompleteness, the WL 1807 contains for us a fundamental de-


velopment within the Fichtean doctrine of science in this mittlere Phase (1801–1807). On

one hand, proceeding on the basis of the implication A-x, it gathers together movements of

thought more fundamental than those uncovered within the Jena period, that fi rst express

themselves in their proper systematic confi guration in the 1801 and the 1804 WL. On

the other hand, on the basis of this same development and transformation of perspective,

Fichte is able in our text to recuperate explicitly the full range of concepts, relations, and

problems defi nitive of this later work within the determination of phenomenality. In this

point lies the signifi cance of the speculative structures of the WL 1807.37

Notes

1. [Citations of the 1807 Wissenschaftslehre (WL) are taken from the Gesaumtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (hereafter GA), ed. R. Lauth, H. Jacob, and H. Gliwitzky

(Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964–), II, 10, 103–202. For the Nebenbemerkungen,

see GA II, 10, 219–78. The principal scholarly works on the 1807 WL, and the later Wissenschaft-slehren more generally, include C. Asmuth, “Fichtes ‘Theorie des Ich’ in der Königsberger WL

1807,” Fichte-Studien, vol. 17 (2000), pp. 269–82; J. Dreschler, Fichtes Lehre von Bild (Stuttgart:

W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1955); M. Guéroult, L’évolution et la structure de la Doctrine de la Science chez Fichte, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1930); M. Ivaldo, I principi del sapere. La visione trascendentale di Fichte (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987); W. Janke, Fichte. Sein und Refl exion—Grun-dlagen der kritischen Vernunft (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970); H. Radermacher, Fichtes Begriff des Absoluten (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1970); and G. Schulte, Die Wissenschatslehre des spaeten Fichte (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1971). Unfortunately, there is neither an English-

language translation, nor scholarly treatment, of the 1807 WL, nor indeed of most of the major works

after the early Jena Period and the Atheismusstreit. The English-language reader may nonetheless

consult The Vocation of Man (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1965 [1800]); The Science of Knowing: J. G. Fichte’s 1804 Lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre, ed. and trans. Walter E. Wright (Albany:

SUNY, 2005); and The Way Towards the Blessed Life; Or, The Doctrine of Religion (1806), trans.

William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 2 vols. (Bristol: Thoemmes Press,

1999). Throughout these notes, comments in square brackets are those of the translator.]

2. [The author here refers to the dissertation of M. Brüggen, defended at the University of

Munich in 1964, Der Gang des Denkens in der Philosophie J. G. Fichtes. The reader may also

consult Brüggen’s more comprehensive account of the development of the WL in Fichtes Wissen-schaftslehre. Das System in der seit 1801–02 entstandenen Fassungen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1979).

Although Brüggen left untreated in that text the development of the Wissenschaftslehren of 1804,

1807, and 1810, important indications are provided in the concluding chapter, “Kant, Schelling,

Hegel und Jacobi im Licht der Wissenschaftslehre.”]

3. GA II, 10, 111.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. [Rametta here refers to the Wissenschaftslehre nova metodo (GA, IV, 2), in English transla-

tion as Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo, trans. and ed.

Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992). The most important and infl uential

account of the theme of the objective character of cognitive activity, or “vision” as intended by the

author, in Fichte’s earliest philosophical work remains Dieter Henrich, “Fichte’s Original Insight,”

trans. D. Lachterman, in Contemporary German Philosophy, vol. I (University Park: Pennsylvania


State University Press, 1982), originally published as Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht (Frankfurt:

V. Klostermann, 1967). Therein, Henrich introduced Fichte’s “original insight” as this had been

formulated “at the start of his career” (15), principally in the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre and the

1798 Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. Henrich intimated that “this problem furnished the clue

that guided his refl ections even before he could formulate it explicitly,” such that “he came closer

and closer to the solution as he advanced along the tortuous path of his Doctrine of Science” (16).

Henrich treated briefl y (sections IV and V, pp. 31–50) these “advances” in (principally) the 1801

WL. Henrich suggested that “the idea of a look” or a vision “that sees itself constantly fascinated

Fichte from 1801 until his death in 1814. He wanted to express it in increasingly clear terms as

the problem of philosophy and to develop its far-reaching consequences.” Henrich also suggested

the signifi cance of the Wissenschaftslehren of 1804 and thereafter for the philosophy of religion;

Fichte will “make the essence of the self precise and intelligible with the help of the concept of

God.” According to Henrich, “God and the Self are not externally linked together in this theory.

The Doctrine of Science 1804 more than any other [prior] work tries to mediate them in a docta ignorantia of God’s essence. Even a reader who is not inclined to accept this doctrine can still

marvel at its profundity and its consistency. It deserves a comprehensive interpretation.” Henrich

himself offered only a brief analysis of the Fichtean concept of manifestation, which articulated the

relation between these phenomeno-logical and theo-logical contexts. Just as Fichte can be thought

to have deepened his refl ection on this relation between 1800 and 1814, so recent European Fichte

scholarship has deepened its understanding of this theme upon Henrich’s instigation. Regarding

Fichte’s philosophy of religion in particular, the reader may see the bibliographical indications of

prominent French, German, and Italian sources in G. Moretto’s Introduction to his Italian translation

of the Anweisung (Naples: Guida, 1989), 11–67 and its exhaustive bibliography.]

7. [For the Privatissimum, see GA II, 6, 325–72. The fi rst fi fteen conferences of the WL 1804

(II) provide Fichte’s best-known exposition of “Einsicht.” The English-language reader may see the

Introduction to the English version of the 1804 WL by Walter Wright (1–21, particularly 12–21).]

8. [The re-contextualization and amplifi cation of the concept of vision can be seen in the

distinction in denotation and indeed function in the variants Fichte will employ. From “pure vision”

derives, for example, (1) Hin-sehen, which connotes the objective directionality of an “orientation-to,”

or penetration of, an objective content—in both thematic contexts of consciousness and self-con-

sciousness, and (2) Ansicht, which connotes instead a “repose in,” and grants to Fichte’s analysis

of the faculty of vision, or cognition, a moment of immediacy and self-identity as well as objective

difference or alterity. It should be noted, however, that this distinction is not only epistemological,

but also ethical, in function. Fichte hopes to inform, or reform, the Wissenschaftslehrer, in order

that we “not only see (hinsehen) in the manner in which each has habituated their spiritual eye, but

instead, to learn to see” anew (GA II, 10, 111). Thus the theme of vision, both epistemic and ethical,

necessitates a formation (Ausbildung) of the natural attitude. Thus, introducing the following section,

the author will record that “transcendental ‘vision’ intends, though not exclusively, the rendering

explicit of the implicit presupposition within any positing of an object by consciousness. In this

acceptation, the vision or thought that is the WL is to derive from that which appears as a ‘fact,’

as already accomplished that complex of conditions that render such factical objectivity possible,

evincing the latter as the product of a process of genetic derivation, and thus as an ‘act.’” This “last

task coincides with the free self-elevation to the vision of the presupposition (Voraussetzung) in

which transcendental thought consists.”]

9. [For Fichte’s usage of this distinction between these two basic positions of thought with

regard to objectivity, material and formal objectivity, which Fichte treats equally as two forms of

the self-alienation of objective consciousness, see GA II, 10, 116.]


10. Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, GA I, 2, 326n. [Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge, trans. Peter Heath, in Fichte: The Science of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1982), pp. 89–286.]

11. [Although the signifi cance of Fichte’s usage of these basic symbols will only become clear

below through analysis, a basic anticipatory defi nition of each may prove helpful. With the upper-

case X Fichte intends the “incognito of the Absolute,” the “image” of which in the WL is “A” and

the Bild or symbol of which is the concept of “Life” (Leben). With the lower-case “a-b” relation

we encounter Fichte’s symbolization of the structure of consciousness and self-consciousness, or

vision, as objective; “a” indicates the subject and “b” the object of every real act of vision. The

lower-case x Fichte uses in order to indicate their hidden unity, their “Band,” as symbolized by the

hyphen. We may ascend from such factical distinctions (as Fichte does in the 1804 WL) or descend

to them, from unity into multiplicity (as Fichte does in the 1807 WL). Thus, by depicting together

“A” and a lower-case “x” as “A-x,” Fichte intends the structure of appearance, as constituted by

the relation (the “Band” or hyphen; “-”) between the intelligible (übersinnliche Welt = A) and the

sensible (sinnliche Welt = x) world. Similarly, in the formula A-(a-b), A functions as the invisible

origin or vision, the Urquell or Grund der Erscheinung from which the subject-object distinction

of a-b arises and into which it is to be resolved.]

12. [According to Rametta, “‘subtraction’ is to render visible the ‘schemata’ [Schema] through

and in which originary activity or life [Leben] comes to appearance, so as to provide genetically

for the deduction of the phenomenal [Erscheinung, Schein], as phenomenal, as appearances of and

from a ground, the absolute, understood as ‘pure’ life.” Thus the rendering visible of the schema

as a schema is propaedeutic to its “subtraction,” or retraction, in which moment the status of the

schema as always already produced, objectifi ed, can be recognized. In this way the schema can both

be brought to light as such and then “pushed aside” so as to allow for the dynamic process of their

emergence to itself come to light. See the author’s discussion in his Italian translation of the 1807

Wissenschaftslehre; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Dottrina della Scienza; Esposizione del 1807 (Milan:

Guerini, 1995), p. 177. See also note 14, below. For an explication of the dynamics of subtraction

in the WL 1804 (II), the English-language reader may consult the excellent “Translator’s Introduc-

tion” to the WL 1804 (2).]

13. GA, II, 10, 112.

14. [The immediate “fact” (Faktum) of “vision” (Sehen) obtains in the disjunction (Disjunktion)

of its constitutive elements; the principium or subject (the das Auge of the fi rst Lecture of the 1807

Wissenschaftslehre) and principiatum or object of vision. These obtain in a contradictory, exclusive,

but reciprocal relation. In so far as we are captive to this disjunction, this relation of subject and

object cannot be explicated dynamically and organically but appear only as “explicitly distinct, as

not living [Nichtleben]” but as “mortifying [Tod]” (2nd Lecture, 6th Point). Because appearance is

always an appearance-from, which contains this as-structure, appearance itself provides the “con-

ditions” or occasion for its genetic investigation, our Begründung (foundation), the retracing and

return of appearance to its Grund. This founding accomplished in the 1807 WL is named by Fichte

the “determination” (Bestimmung) of the relation between the absolute and its image or appear-

ance. In Lectures 4 and 28, Fichte opposes this concept of determination to the (indeterminate or

insuffi cient) Schellingian concept of emanation (Emanation) as set out in the latter’s Philosophie und Religion of 1804. F. W. J. Schelling, Sämtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling (Stuttgart: Cotta

Verlag, 1856–1861), 4:11–70.]

15. [Most precisely, the moment of “subtraction” (abziehen) renders visible through indication

the ground of appearance invisible to “natural vision” or objective consciousness, the natural attitude

(see note 8 above). It does so by depicting the appearance “as” (Als) a manifest content, and thus


as a product, a projection. The “as-structure” of consciousness, then, indicates this original locus

of invisibility (Finsternis) as well as the projective character of accomplished intellectual activity,

and indicates the former by means of its depiction of the latter. From this thematic beginning fol-

lows a constant engagement of the theme of the self-alienation of intentional consciousness, and a

constant use of a series of key terms in the vocabulary of Fichte’s work after the Atheismusstreit, in, for example, the WL 1801–02 (GA II, 6), the Privatissimum of 1803 (GA II, 6; see pp. 325–72)

and the WL 1804 (II) (GA II, 8, 2–411), through this WL 1807. These basic terms, which provide a

type of glossary toward the comprehension of Fichte’s later philosophy, include most prominently

for example, ex-pression (Ausdruck), ex-teriorization (Äußerung), and pro-jection (Projektion). With

the concept of the object of cognition (Objekt) is associated not only the fulfi llment of objective

cognition or synthetic judgment, and not only the intentional concepts of Disjunktion and Projektion,

but also and most signifi cantly their comprehension as a form of di-vision and self-alienation. Each

indicates, negatively, the hidden or obscure (Finsternis) ground of discursive intellectual activity.

Thus the full signifi cance of the Fichtean concept of Sichtbarkeit; visibility initiates the task of

Sichtbarmachung as a “rendering visible” of this hidden origin of our spontaneity, activity, or life

(Leben).]

16. [GA II, 10, 131–32. This accomplishment of the recognition of the schema as (Als) a

schema is termed by Fichte in the same Eighth Lecture the “schema of the schema” (135). Just as

the possibility-condition for material objects of consciousness is found in the apprehension and

determination thereof, their “vision,” so “the schema” as the representation of such material exis-

tence formaliter, in and by consciousness, “is derived necessarily from vision.” Fichte suggests that

“vision is the actualization of the faculty of vision,” in which life (Leben) renders itself effective;

but as soon as this actualization come to be, vision obtains, and its actualization remains invisible.

. . . Thus, knowledge is, in its root and its essential character, a process of schematization, and

furnishes only schema, and shadows” (136). “Nevertheless, Fichte continues, “life, precisely as the

invisible principle of vision, must be brought to awareness, or rendered visible. . . . How will this

be possible?” (139).]

17. [Just as the external, material objects of cognition are determined transcendentally as condi-

tioned by the faculty of cognition by means of which they appear as objects, so the identifi cation of

the schematism as (als) a schematism allows for its deduction as a product of a more fundamental

power or capacity. In terms of this basic power or faculty (Vermögen), schemata appear as derivative

or conditioned (GA II, 10, 132). This power “remains as ground, as the absolutely invisible root of

vision.” The “schema is derived necessarily from vision,” as it is “the actualization of the faculty of

vision,” without which schemata would be impossible. The “projective” character of vision results

only in “schema” and “shadows,” and places us with a sphere of results derivative of a principium

both effective and undeduced (GA II, 10, 117).]

18. [The author refers here to the important initial paragraphs of both the Third and the Fourth

Lectures (GA II, 10, 118, 120). Therein, Fichte discusses the way in which “natural conscious-

ness,” for the dis-junctive character of its Ur-teil or objective form of its predicative judgment,

“kills” that which it apprehends (GA II, 10, 138). For “as soon as [such vision] is confi gured,” and

determined to a fi xed objectivity, the continually regenerative process of becoming, qua activity,

is, in and by objective vision, “made rigid,” mortifi ed, or “killed.” In this actualization, or process,

“life (Leben) renders itself effective.” But “as soon as this actualization obtains, so too does vision”

and its Urteilung (GA II, 10, 135). In other words, “the actualization [itself, of life] remains invis-

ible, since vision” in its origin and process of genesis “remains invisible to itself ” (135). For this

reason, Fichte directs our attention “not to life itself,” which would result only in a contradictio in adiecto, the determination of the in- or pre-determinate, “but to its self-confi guration,” its process


of genesis, becoming. This process, and the unity of these elements therein, Fichte terms Leben or

life, experience.]

19. [For the author’s full depiction of this distinction, between a merely assertoric and a con-

ceptually derived presentation—which mirrors Fichte’s own distinction in the Guide to the Blessed Life or Religionslehre of 1806, between a popular and a scientifi c presentation—see the Introduction

to his Italian translation of the Wissenschaftslehre 1807, 14–16.]

20. [“Genetic” (Genetisch) here—in the author’s analysis, in Lecture Three, and throughout the

1807 WL—indicates that “vision [that] penetrates the place of its own genesis” or manifestation,

and is opposed to that factical vision that appears only as always already “accomplished,” not in its

production but as a product, “dead” rather than dynamically in movement, as Leben. Leben, life,

activity, is defi ned in Lecture 3 as “not a what [was], not a substantive [Substantivum],” but rather

as “a verbum activum, not neutrum,” in a manner to be clarifi ed in the following. For Rametta’s full

treatment of Fichte’s “Lebenslehre” see his “Einleitende Bemerkungen über die Wissenschaftslehre

von 1807,” in Fichte-Studien, vol. 26, ed. Helmut Girndt and Jacinto Rivera de Rosales (2006): pp.

34–42, and Le strutture speculative della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 1801–1807 (Genoa: Pantograf, 1995), pp. 118–141.]

21. [Thus, the author will record that “most basically, then, the First Lecture initiates a trajec-

tory from matter [Materie] and the determinations of the sensible world [sinnliche Welt] to the

principles for their appearance as phenomena, as found in the intelligible world [übersinnliche Welt, Geisterwelt] of the intelligence and the will, which opens the auditor to the “new world” of

the “vision” (Einsicht) of the Wissenschaftslehre. Thus, Fichte’s comment in the Fourth Lecture

that “the deduction of the material world is without any doubt one of the tasks of the WL but it is

also one of the easiest and subordinate” of tasks (GA II, 10, 124). But this ascending Fortgang is

more precisely that of the 1804 WL (II), which according to Rametta, “in its initial process arises

from the manifold determinations of the empirical world to the unity of the principle thereof in a

Wahrheitslehre or doctrine of truth,” while “in a second process, we descend from this principle

of unity to the manifold in a transcendental “derivation” termed a “doctrine of the phenomenon”

(Erscheinungslehre, Phänomenologie). A more precise determination of the proof-structure of the

WL 1807, however, is as follows; “the WL can now be exposed by means of a genetic derivation

that descends from unity to the manifold; this unity can now be comprehended as internal to the

phenomenon, within its manifoldness. The doctrine of truth, then, can now be placed within the

doctrine of the phenomenon, and vice versa, since the doctrine of the phenomenon can reveal its

own ‘genetic’ capacity and function.” In other words, after 1804 (and most clearly in Die Thatsachen des Bewußtseyns of 1810–11), the relation between the prologue to the system and the system itself

becomes more signifi cant for Fichte’s philosophy, as the Wahrheitslehre as such and its processus

from Materie to Geisterwelt is relegated to propaedeutic works and the WL itself instead, as a

Phänomenologie, contains only that descending moment from unity to multiplicity, from unity to

multiplicity, from Geisterwelt to Materie. For further treatment of the proof-structure of the 1807

WL see Rametta, Le strutture speculative, 12–14, 190–195.]

22. In other words, “every real vision is the immediate expression of a relation.” Vision indeed

“creates this relation absolutely from itself.” This relation obtains between the elements principium-principiatum, which are fi gured as invisible ground and visible image or object. This relation is

ineliminable, and yet incomprehensible according to the necessary character of vision, which “loses

its immanent ground” in each attempt to comprehend itself. Vision cannot incorporate within itself

its own intrinsic elements; “we have thus demonstrated the limits of vision,” Fichte concludes, “in

order to arrive at the true world above schemata” or the mere play of ungrounded images (GA II,

10, 139). Fichte does not of course then suggest that we “determine life itself,” according to the


principles of vision, since this would result only and evidently in a contradictio in adiecto. As soon

as vision “comes to form,” life is “made rigid,” mortifi ed (124).

23. [According to Rametta, the concept of Wirklichkeit provides a key for adjudicating this

important relation between Fichte and Hegel. In his article “Die Gedankenentwicklung in der Wis-

senschaftslehre 1811” (in Der transzendentalphilosophische Zugang zur Wirklichkeit: Beiträge aus der aktuellen Fichte-Forschung, ed. E. Fuchs, M. Ivaldo, and G. Moretto [Stuttgart: Frommann-

Holzboog, 2001]), Rametta writes; “Fichte uses the concept of actuality (Wirklichkeit) to determine

the ontological status of the phenomenon, and consistently differentiates this concept from that of

‘reality’ (Realität). Phenomenality obtains in the sphere of, and only upon the actualization of, the

power or capacity to generate concepts, the faculty (Vermögen). The former is conditioned by the

spontaneity of the latter. One can understand the fundamental difference between Fichte and Hegel in

this way; for Hegel, freedom follows from the understanding of history as a progressive development

of spirit, which realizes therein and thereby its own ‘effectivity’ (Wirklichkeit). ‘Real’ (Real) for

Hegel can only mean that which is and has become effective (wirklich). [E.g., “Was vernunftig ist, das ist wirklich, während was wirklich ist, das ist vernunftig,” as this appears in the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Vorrede § 17.] Instead, ‘reality’ (Realität) for Fichte surpasses that which is

merely “actual” (Wirklich). The phenomenon is fi rst of all “appearance to self ” (Sich-Erscheinung),

in the sense what comes to light in appearance is always and only phenomenal insofar as gener-

ated, such that we may determine the faculty as the ‘originary’ or fi rst ‘image’ of the absolute, but

we can never determine the absolute as such” (261). On the relation between Fichte and Hegel on

this and related points, the reader may see W. R. Beyer, “Hegels ungenügendes Fichte-Bild,” in M.

Buhr, ed., Wissen und Gewissen. Beiträge zum 200. Geburtsdag J.G. Fichte 1762–1814 (Berlin,

1962), 241–267; K. Düsing, “Über das Verhältnis Hegels zu Fichte,” Philosophische Rundschau

20 (1973): 50–63; S. Furlani, La critica hegeliana a Fichte nella Scienza della logica (Bologna:

EBD, 2006); K. Gloy, “Der Streit um den Zugang zum Absoluten. Fichtes indirekte Hegel-Kritik,”

Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, vol. 36 (1982): pp. 25–48; W. Hartkorf, “Die Dialektik

Fichtes als Vorstufe zu Hegels Dialektik,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung. vol. 21 (1967):

pp. 173–207; R. Lauth, Hegel vor der Wissenschaftslehre (Stuttgart, 1987); B. Mabille, “Fichte,

Hegel e la relativisation de la conscience représentative,” in Fichte. La philosophie de la maturité”;

and L. Siep, Hegels Fichtekritik und die Wissenschaftslehre von 1804 (München, 1970). See also

note 25, below.]

24. Ibid.

25. [One could almost say that Leben—as a “verbum activum not neutrum”—is precisely that

which cannot be seen, which is, as soon as seen, no longer Leben. However, in its continuous process

of self-generation, life is depicted through the actual relation of (1) “the identity of the [subject

of] vision and the [object] seen,” while this relation is through its “(2) identity [of this relation]

with life [Leben]” (GA II, 10, 125; see also 129). The concept of life represents, according to the

author, “the seeing in the seen,” the ingredience of activity within the realm of synthetic experi-

ence, which “continues to render itself effective eternally” or perpetually in spite of the fact that

it remains aboriginally unseen. It does so by incorporating principium and principiatum within a

processual unity, a unity of identity and difference. Only because of its effectivity do we possess a

world. Although life then “appears outside of itself ” as already manifest in a being, this appearance

can be comprehended as “not according to truth” but only “according to the permanent form of

alienation” and the schematic or projective character of vision through which appearance comes to

its determinate form. Indeed, according to or “within its essence, life is an absolute syllogism, that

possesses its major premise” or condition “within itself ” (GA II, 10, 140). A “new world”—the

“new sense” promised in our prolegomena—will “produce itself in whomever comprehends this

pattern of self-generating activity.” In other words, while the schema is derived from vision, vision


is derived from life. While vision carries within it an unresolved and irresolvable relation between

invisible and vision, the concept of life (Leben) indicates this dynamic becoming of activity and

production, or invisibility and visibility. Life is thus depicted as “unity in multiplicity” (GA, II, 10,

124), “identity in distinction” (GA, II, 10, 144), a unity of identity and difference, of invisibility

and visibility.]

26. [The author here refers to standard interpretations of Fichte’s philosophy as a Bildlehre,

which include; J. Drechsler, Fichtes Lehre vom Bild (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1955), pp. 128–136;

W. Janke, Fichte. Sein und Refl exion—Grundlagen der kritischen Vernunft (Berlin: de Gruyter,

1970), particularly the chapter “Wahrheit, Schein, Erscheinung,” pp. 400–417; and G. Schulte, Die Wissenschaftslehre des Späten Fichte (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 1971).]

27. [For Fichte’s usage of the scholastic concept of esse in mero actu, the English-language

reader can see the WL 1804, XV Conference.]

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid. [For Fichte’s most explicit and extended treatment within the 1807 WL of the immediate

self-relation of the mind to itself through formal or intellectual intuition, as opposed to its mediate

or discursive self-relation through concepts (“immediate intuition, in opposition to thought”), see

Lectures 14–16 (GA II, 10, 152–59). See p. 153 for the identifi cation of the relation between (1)

this formula or relation (the immediacy of “formal intuition as conditioning” and the “thought” or

vision “that is conditioned thereby” and (2) the “Kantian principle of a synthetic unity of appercep-

tion.”]

30. [For an extended analysis of the “through” (Durch) as a technical term in its systematic

function in the 1804 WL, which prefi gures Fichte’s usage here in the 1807 WL, the English-language

reader may now consult the “Translator’s Introduction” to the 1804 WL by Walter Wright.]

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. G. W. F. Hegel, J.S. III (GW, 8, 286). [On this and related points in Hegel’s philosophy the

reader may consult three works of the author: (1) Il concetto del tempo; Eternità e “Darstelung” speculative nel pensiero di Hegel” (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989); (2) Filosofi a come “sistema della scienza.” Introduzione alla lettura della “Prefazione” alla “Fenomenologia dello spirito” di Hegel (Schio: Guido Tamoni Editore, 1992); and (3) “La critica hegeliana a Fichte in Fede e sapere,” in

Fede e sapere. La genesi del pensiero del giovane Hegel, ed. Rossella Bonito Oliva and Giuseppe

Cantillo (Milan: Guerini, 1998).]

34. [Nevertheless, Fichte continues, “life, precisely as the invisible principle of vision, must

be rendered articulate” as effective. Thus Fichte’s original and fundamental question; “how, then,

will this be possible?” (GA, II, 10, 139). This accomplishment is “higher than any schematism” and

“higher than any vision” just as it is “higher than any knowledge” (148). In fact, the phenomeno-

logic according to which this principle, that “point of union” and “point of separation” that is in

fact the identity of both (149) will be depicted with reference to the theo-logic of “the Christianity

of the Gospel of John” throughout Lectures 19–21 and 24–27 (149). The assertion of an interaction

between the invisible ground and the visible image possesses obvious theological resonance. Fichte

recognizes its theological horizon. Just as the self-manifestation of the faculty of vision proposes a

revelation that re-veils as it reveals, so does the self-manifestation of the divine essence according

to this Gospel. The relation between the invisible Vermögen of vision and the vision thereof and the

relation between the “divine essence” which is “hidden eternally” and the primordial realization

thereof, which “enters into a certain schematic relation,” as the visible image of the invisible God,

is not without an evident parallel or even isomorphism (167; the English-language reader may also


see, for example, the Sixth Lecture of the Anweisung zum seligen Leben or Guide [SW V, 475–491]).

But if Fichte fi nds in the history of Christian theology a vocabulary necessary for his deduction, he

does not do so as a theologian but as a philosopher; the former “cannot offer a philosophical system;

it neither demonstrates nor deduces, but rather presupposes,” and depicts a truth that is deduced

instead only within and by the WL. According to Rametta, “this recapitulation and justifi cation of

Christian revelation does not concern only the logical coherence of a demonstration, but permeates

existence and experience in its totality, and is made possible by the implication, in the name of the

absolute, of religion and philosophy, Christian “Verbum” and Fichtean “Verbum” or Wort. Since the

genuine content of the Gospel of John can be recognized only by means of the WL stricto sensu, the

exclusive implication of Christianity and WL can be determined only on the terrain, theoretically

autonomous and as self-defi ned, of the WL itself.”]

35. [Because of the co-incidence of this pattern of self-generating expression, Fichte compre-

hends “Life” (Leben) and God (Gott) together throughout the 1807 WL, and particularly in Lectures

19–21. Thus the author records that “it is clear that Fichte is intent to recover a reformulated theol-

ogy of Christian revelation, as this was already thematized in the Anweisung zum seligen Leben”

or Doctrine of Religion from the prior year. The author continues; “the question of the signifi cance

of the WL appears for this reason inseparable from that of the recovery, within the WL, of contents

proper to the Gotteslehre (Doctrine of God). This theme of the mutual implication between the WL stricto sensu and Gotteslehre . . . does not require the full conformity of this revelation to the WL.

More fundamentally, the concern is to demonstrate the exclusiveness of the relation between the

WL and Christianity, taken as the eminent expression of religion as such, to affi rm the unique and

ineliminable privilege because of which only the WL amongst all other philosophical doctrines is

capable of receiving the latter in its most profound implications and signifi cance. The WL would

itself express, in the form of philosophical self-consciousness, the very Logos that the Gospel of

John had revealed in a religious form and vocabulary, and that in the doctrine of science fi nds the

only genuine philosophical expression possible.” With reference to this Gospel, in which the Logos

as fi rst-born, as the “light,” the “life in itself ”—as well as the “truth” that, although “no one has ever

seen God,” nonetheless the Logos “has made him known” (John 1:1–18)—Fichte affi rms that “we

ourselves are this eternal light” and “life” (see, e.g., Lecture 13). The “pure I” (Ich) offers a locus

in which such dynamics “light” (Licht) is rendered “visible” (Sichtbarmachung), “forming itself

and, in its formation, generating the world of continuity,” of experience and life. Each provides the

pattern for the comprehension of the other, and both are marked by the same pattern of activity, as

“von sich (of itself), aus sich (from itself), durch sich (through itself).” See also Fichte’s lectures

from 1805, Die Principen der Gottes- Sitten- und Rechtslehre (GA II, 7, 369–489). For an extended

treatment of Fichte’s philosophy of religion, see Marco Ivaldo, “La fi losofi a della religione di Fichte,”

in Filosofi della religione, ed. C. Angelino (Genoa: Melangolo, 1999), pp. 165–197 and “Johann

Gottlieb Fichte. Gesù ‘punto fondamentale e punto di unità della storia’ (Staatslehre 1813),” in Cristo nella fi losofi a contemporanea. I. Da Kant a Nietzsche, ed. S. Zucal, (San Paolo: Cinisello Balsamo,

2000), pp. 129–158. See also Reinhard Lauth, “Il sistema di Fichte nelle sue tarde lezioni berlinesi,”

in J.G. Fichte, Dottrina della scienza, Esposizione del 1811, trans. Gaetano Rametta (Milan: Guerini

and Associati, 1999). Manzana de Marañon (“El ascenso y la “determinacion” del Absoluto-Dios,

segun Joh. Gott. Fichte, en la primera parte de la exposicion de la “Teoria de la Ciencia” de 1804,”

Scriptorum Victoriense, vol. 9 [1962]: pp. 7–68, 181–244) accentuates the theological fi gures and

signifi cance of Fichte’s 1804/II exposition.]

36. [The English-language reader may see again the “Translator’s Introduction” to the 1804

WL of Walter Wright. See particularly pp. 19–20 for a clear treatment of this Wahrheitslehre-Ers-cheinungslehre distinction.]


37. [This article was excerpted from Rametta’s Le strutture speculative della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 1801–1807 (Genoa: Pantograf, 1995). A German

translation of materials from the same work can be found as “Einleitende Bemerkungen über die

Wissenschaftslehre von 1807,” in Fichte-Studien, vol. 26, ed. Helmut Girndt and Jacinto Rivera de

Rosales (2006): pp. 33–61. In addition to Rametta’s extended Introductions to his Italian transla-

tions of Fichte’s Privatissimum 1803 (Pisa: ETS, 1993), Wissenschaftslehre 1807 (Milan: Guerini,

1995), Wissenschaftslehre 1811 (Milan: Guerini, 1999), the reader may consult Rametta’s (1)

“‘Doctrine de la science’ et ‘Doctrine de l’État.’ La dissolution de la théologie politique chez le

dernier Fichte,” in Fichte. La philosophie de la maturité, ed. J.-Ch. Goddard and M. Maesschalck

(Paris: Vrin, 2003), pp. 143–158; (2) “L’idea di fi losofi a nel tardo Fichte,” Rivista di Storia della fi losofi a, n. 3 (2002): pp. 461–468; (3) “Il problema del pratico e dell’agire nella ‘Dottrina della

scienza’ del 1807,” in Filosofi a trascendentale e destinazione etica. Indagini su Fichte, Atti del

Convegno di Napoli, 10–12 novembre 1992, ed. A. Masullo e M. Ivaldo (Milan: Guerini, 1995), pp.

81–94; and (4) “Quintuplicità e individualità. La costruzione dell’io in WL 1807,” Daimon. Revista de Filosofi a. Numero especial. Fichte: El dominio de la razon n. 9 (1994): pp. 115–134.]

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