[Literature] Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The System of Ethics #4/193

Next, one has to develop the distinctive features [ Merkmale] of this representation of resistance and do

so merely from the manner in which it originates. This resistance is represented as the opposite of

activity, hence as something that merely endures, lying there quietly and dead, something that merely is

and in no way acts, something that strives only to continue to exist and thus resists the influence of

freedom upon its territory only with that degree of force that is required to remain what it is but is never

able to attack the latter on its own territory. In short,

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resistance is represented as mereobjectivity. The proper name for something of this sort is stuff. –

Furthermore, all consciousness is conditioned by consciousness of myself, which in turn is conditioned

by the perception of my activity, which is itself conditioned by the positing of some resistance as such.

Resistance of the sort just indicated thus extends necessarily throughout the entire sphere of my

consciousness. It continuously accompanies my consciousness [IV, 8], and freedom can never be posited

as able to do anything whatsoever about this situation, since otherwise freedom itself, along with all

consciousness and all being, would fall away. – The representation of some stuff that simply cannot be

changed by my efficacy, something we earlier found to be contained in the perception of our own

efficacy, is thus derived from the laws of consciousness.

One of the two main questions raised above has now been answered, namely: how we come to assume

something subjective, a concept, that is supposed to follow from something objective, some being, and

that is supposed to be determined thereby. As we have seen, this is the necessary consequence of the fact

that we separate something subjective and something objective within us in consciousness and yet

regard them as one. However, the particular determinate relationship, in which what is subjective is

supposed to be determined by what is objective, and not vice versa, arises from the absolutely posited

relation of what is subjective as such to what is objective as such. The principle and the problem of all

theoretical philosophy has thereby been derived.

7

I posit myself as active. We have said enough about what is subjective and what is objective in this

positing, about their separation, their unification, and their original relation to each other. However, we

have not yet investigated the predicate that is to be ascribed to the unified [ dem Einen] and indivisible I.

What does it mean to be active, and what do I really posit when I ascribe activity to myself?

It is here presupposed that the reader possesses some image of activity in general, of some agility,

mobility or however one may want to express it in words, for this is something that cannot be

demonstrated to anyone who does not discover it in the intuition of himself. As we have just seen, this

inner agility absolutely cannot be ascribed to something objective as such. What is objective simply

endures; it simply is and remains as it is. Agility

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pertains only to what is subjective, to intelligence as such, with respect to the form of its acting. I say,

“with respect to its form,” because, as we saw above, the material of the determination is supposed to be

determined in a different respect by what is objective. With respect to its form, the act of representing is

intuited as a supremely free [IV, 9] inner movement. Now I, the unified and indivisible I, am supposed to

be active; and that which acts upon the object is without any doubt what is objective in me, the real

force.1 Taking all of this into consideration, my activity can be posited only in such a way that I start

with what is subjective, as determining what is objective, in short, with the causality of a mere concept

exercised on what is objective, and to this extent the concept in question is not in turn determined by

something else objective but is determined absolutely in and through itself.

With this, the second of the two main questions raised earlier has now been answered, namely: how I

come to assume that something objective follows from something subjective, a being from a concept;

and the principle of all practical philosophy is thereby derived. This assumption arises because I have to

posit myself absolutely as active, and, since I have distinguished something subjective and something

objective within myself, I cannot describe this activity otherwise than as the causality of a concept.