Within us, we have imaginations (Vorstellungen) of two kinds: those of freedom (Freiheit) and those of necessity (Notwendigkeit), or those that are conscious and those that are unconscious. Imaginations of freedom have a known origin in our will; they would be different if we so wished.
The interesting question is: what determines those of necessity? Answering this question is the job of philosophy. To avoid controversy over this specific use of the term philosophy, Fichte names his work Wissenschaftslehre. He also uses the term experience (Erfahrung) to refer to the set of imaginations of necessity.
It only makes sense to explain something that is contingent, meaning that it could be otherwise, and that isn’t determined through freedom. To explain is to provide a thing whose properties imply that the explained thing has the determinations it does. The explication and the explained must be different.
Philosophy wants to explain experience, so “its object necessarily lies outside all experience” (85).
A philosopher cannot go beyond experience. Our method, then, must be to abstract: to separate the thing (das Ding) from the intellect (die Intelligenz); the external world from the knower. In experience they are connected; but the philosopher can go beyond experience by ignoring one or the other. Abstracting by ignoring the thing is idealism; abstracting by ignoring the intellect is dogmatism. These are the only systems possible. Idealism explains experience as a product of presupposed intellect; dogmatism explains it as product of a presupposed thing-in-itself.
Fichte calls the presupposed element of a philosophy the object of that philosophy. Objects of consciousness can either seem to have been created by the intellect or independently of it; and if they are independent, they may seem to be determined by their nature, or to exist without predetermination. Only one thing exists independently without predetermination: the I-in-itself (Ich an sich).
Fichte’s explanation is the following: When I imagine myself to myself, I choose to do so in a particular way. This decision does not lie in the image (of myself), but in me. In other words, the nature of the image of myself is not fixed, but the existence of this image must be presupposed. This I-in-itself is the object of idealism.
The I-in-itself is not a thing – if it were, idealism would become dogmatism. This is because it is not an object of experience, because it is not determined until I determine it, and does not exist until I do so. It is something “that is raised above all experience” (87).
Fichte follows idealism rather than dogmatism because its object is more independent from its system. The object of dogmatism is a hypothetical thing-in-itself. Demonstrating its existence demands demonstrating that experience cannot be understood without it. Idealism is not hampered by this, since the I-in-itself can be demonstrated in consciousness, independent of its role in idealism.
The two systems have nothing in common, and therefore can neither refute each other nor be joined. Either the I or the thing is independent, but they can’t both be. This problem cannot be solved by reason, since the problem’s answer establishes the basis of reason. It can only be solved by caprice (Willkür).
The dogmatists are materialist, and think they depend on their things to exist. In other words, truly believing in yourself, independently of your philosophical system, implies idealism, since it means you take your existence, independent of things, for granted.
What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it. A person indolent by nature or dulled and distorted by mental servitude, learned luxury, and vanity will never raise themself to the level of idealism. (93)
Fichte does not think his materialist peers will convert, but rather seeks to convince future enlightened thinkers.
Fichte believes idealism is superior because it is more coherent with reality. When I imagine something, I imagine its features, or, in the case of real things, these are partially provided for me. Fichte believes these features exist for the intellect that created them, not for the thing itself. In contrast, the intellect appears to be independent of other things.
Fichte argues against other defenses of dogmatism. He criticizes arguments that claim that anything can arise from things only; harmony, he says, can exist but in the mind of the listener. He thinks that assuming a soul in objects blurs the line between imaginations and mechanical actions, which makes no sense as objects cannot cause imaginations, and dogmatism fails to explain how this leap may happen. Incidentally, here Fichte targets Berkeley’s god argument as an example of a dogmatic system. He concludes that “dogmatism, even from the speculative viewpoint, is no philosophy at all” (96). Philosophers are not rigorous nowadays, he decries.
The intellect is an act; not a being, not a substance, nothing. How can we deduce specific imaginations out of the indeterminate intellect? Fichte adjusts the object of idealism to include certain laws of the action of the intellect. This also explains why some imaginations feel necessary; they are the intellect’s limits. This adjusted object gives birth to critical (or transcendental) idealism. Critical idealism exists in contrast to transcendent idealism, which would deduce determinate presentations from the “free and totally lawless action of the intellect” (98).
The assumed laws of the intellect’s operation imply that the intellect gives itself laws as it operates, which ocurrs through a “higher necessary action, or presentation” (99).
Critical idealism then can focus on deducing the fundamental laws, and therefore fundamental imaginations of the intellect; or abstract them from experience of objects. The latter can never truly confirm the laws. This means those critical idealists turn to logical omissions. “Such an idealism is, therefore, unproved and unprovable” (101).
Fichte presents his own flavor of idealism. He differentiates between “the required mode of thinking” (102) and the way it is reached. This path is not dependent on the will, but rather part of the intellect; it necessarily follows from its existence.
The path is the deduction that the I-in-itself can only happen when something else happens, which in turn depends on something else, and so on, until all these consequences are “fully intelligble” (102). Fichte claims that all experience emerges from this process, as “the totality of the conditions of the original premise” (103). Fichte notes that idealism does not have in mind the end goal at which it must arrive; rather, it starts from a coherent set of rules, ignorant of where it will arrive at. In short, a complete idealism reconciles the a priori with the a posteriori, but through philosophy, not through manipulation.
Since dogmatism does not work, idealism must be perfected; but that is Fichte’s work in progress.
The chemist synthesizes a body, say a certain metal, from its elements. The ordinary man sees the metal familiar to him; the chemist, the union of these specific elements. Do they then see different things? I should think not! They see the same thing, though in different ways. What the chemist sees is the a priori, for they see the individual elements: what the common man sees is the a posteriori, for he sees the whole. — But there is this difference here: the chemist
must first analyze the whole before they can compound it, since they are dealing with an object whose rule of composition they cannot know prior to the analysis; but the philosopher can synthesize without prior analysis, because they already know the rule that governs their object, reason. (105)