The Riddle of Man
German Idealism's Picture of the World
GA 20
Idealism as an Awakening of the Soul: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
[ 1 ] In his addresses on The Basic Characteristics of Our Present Age and To the German Nation, Johann Gottlieb Fichte seeks to portray the spiritual forces working in the evolution of mankind. Through the thoughts he brings to expression in these addresses, he imbues himself with the feeling that the motive force of his world view streams from the innermost being of the German people (Volksart). Fichte believes he is expressing the thoughts that the soul of the German people must express if it wants to reveal itself from the core of its spirituality. The way in which Fichte struggled for his world view shows how this feeling could live in his soul. It must seem important to someone observing a thinker to investigate the roots from which the fruit of his thoughts have sprung; these roots work in the depths of his soul and are not expressed directly in his thought-worlds, yet they live as the motive forces within these thought-worlds.
[ 2 ] Fichte once expressed his conviction that the kind of world view one has depends upon the kind of person one is. He did so out of his awareness that all the life forces of his own personality had to bring forth—as its natural and obvious fruit—the conceptually strong heights of his world view. Not many people want to get to the heart of this world view because they consider what they find there to be thoughts—estranged from the world—into which only “professional” thinkers need penetrate. This feeling is understandable in someone without philosophical training who approaches Fichte's thoughts as they appear in his works. Still, for someone who has the possibility of entering into the full life of these thoughts, it is not strange to imagine that a time will come when one will be able to recast Fichte's ideas into a form comprehensible to anyone who wants, out of life itself, to think about the meaning of this life. These ideas could then be accessible even to the simplest human heart (Gemüt), however far removed from so-called “philosophical thinking.” For, these ideas have in fact received their philosophical form from the character assumed by the evolution of thought in thinking circles at the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century; but these ideas get their life from experiences that are present in the soul of every human being, To be sure, the time has not yet arrived when it is fully possible to recast Fichte's thoughts from the language of the philosophy of his time into a universally human form of expression. Such things become possible only through the gradual progress made by certain ways of picturing things in man's spiritual life. Just as Fichte himself was obliged to carry his soul experiences to the heights of what one usually calls “abstract thinking”—and finds cold and estranged from life—so today also it is only possible to a very limited degree to carry these soul experiences down from those heights.
[ 3 ] From his early youth until his sudden death while still in the prime of life, Fichte struggled for ever new forms of expression for these soul experiences. In all his struggles, one basic cognitive impulse is evident. Within man's own soul Fichte wishes to find a living element in which the human being grasps not only the basic force of his own existence, but in which there can also be known—in its essential being—what weaves and works in nature and in everything else outside him. In a drop of water, relative to the ocean, one has only a tiny sphere. But if one knows this little sphere in its character as water, then in this knowledge one also knows the whole ocean in its character as water. If something can be discovered in the being of man that can be experienced as a revelation of the innermost weaving of the world, then one may hope, through deepened self-knowledge, to advance to world knowledge.
[ 4 ] Long before Fichte's time, the development of mankind's view of the world had already taken the path that proceeds from this feeling and this hope. But Fichte was placed at a significant point in this evolution. One can read in many places how he received Ws most direct impetus from the world views of Spinoza and Kant. But the way he finally acted in understanding the world through the essential nature of his personality becomes most visible when he is contrasted with the thinker who came forth just as much from the thinking of the Romance peoples as Fichte did from the German: Descartes (1596–1650). In Descartes there already comes to light—out of the feeling and hope described above—the way a thinker seeks certainty in world knowledge by discovering a solid point in self-knowledge. Descartes takes doubt in all world knowledge as his starting point. He says to himself: The world in which I live reveals itself within my soul, and from its phenomena I form mental pictures for myself about the course of things. But what is my guarantee that these mental pictures of mine really tell me anything about the working and weaving of the world in its course? Could it not be the case that my soul does indeed receive certain impressions from the things of the world, but that these impressions are so far removed from the things themselves that in these impressions nothing of the meaning of the world is revealed to me? In the face of this possibility can I say that I know this or that about the world? One sees how, for a thinker in this ocean of doubt, all knowledge can come to seem like a subjective dream, and how only one conviction can force itself upon him: that man can know nothing. But in the case of a person for whom the motive force of thinking has become as alive as the motive force of hunger is in the body: for him the conviction that man can know nothing means for the soul what starvation means for the body. All the innermost impressions about the health of one's soul, in a higher sense, right up to feeling the salvation of one's soul (Seelenheil) are connected with this.
[ 5 ] It is within the soul itself that Descartes finds the point upon which he can base conviction: The mental pictures form for myself of the world's course are no dream; they live a life that is a part in the life of the whole world. Even though I can doubt everything, there is one thing I cannot doubt, for to express doubt in it would belie my own words. For is it not certain that when I give myself over to doubt I am thinking? I could not doubt if I did not think. Therefore I cannot possibly doubt my own experience in thinking. If I wanted, through doubt, to kill thinking: it would just rise up living again out of the doubt. My thinking lives, therefore; it does not stand in some dream world; it stands in the world of being (Sein). If I could believe that everything else, even my own body, gave me only the illusion of being, still my thinking does not deceive me. Just as true as it is that I think, it is true that I am, insofar as I think. It was from sentiments such as these that Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum) rang out into the world. And whoever has an ear for such things will also hear the power of this statement resounding in all subsequent thinkers until Kant.
[ 6 ] Only with Fichte do its reverberations cease. If one enters deeply into his thought-world, if one seeks to experience with him his struggles for a world view, then one feels how he too is seeking world knowledge in self-knowledge; but one has the feeling that Descartes' statement, “I think, therefore I am” could not be the rock upon which Fichte, in his struggles, could believe himself secure against the waves of doubt that can turn man's mental pictures into an ocean of dreams. Looking at what Fichte wrote in his book The Vocation of Man (published in 1800), one feels how his ability to doubt lives in a very different part of the soul than with Descartes: “Nowhere is there anything enduring, neither outside me nor within me; there is only unceasing change. Nowhere do I know of any being, not even my own. There is no being. I myself do not know at all and do not exist. Pictures exist: they are all that there is, and they know about themselves in the manner of pictures—pictures that float past without anything there for them float past; pictures that relate to each other through pictures of pictures; pictures without anything pictured in them, without significance and purpose. I myself am one of these pictures; no, I am not even that; I am only a confused picture of the pictures.—All reality transforms itself into a strange dream, without a life that is dreamed about, and without a spirit who is dreaming; transforms itself into a dream that is connected with a dream about itself, My perceiving is the dream; my thinking—the source of all being and all reality that I imagine to myself, the source of my being, my power, my aims—is a dream about that dream,” These thoughts do not arise in Fichte's soul as the ultimate truth about existence, He does not wish, as one might suppose, really to regard the world as a dream configuration, He wants only to show that all the usual arguments for the certainty of knowledge cannot withstand penetrating examination, and that these arguments do not give one the right to regard the ideas one forms about the world as anything other than dream configurations. And Fichte cannot allow that any kind of certainty about being is present within thinking. Why should I say, “I think, therefore I am” since, after all, if I am living in an ocean of dreams, my thinking can be nothing more than “a dream about a dream”? For Fichte, what penetrates and gives reality to my thoughts about the world must come from a completely different source than mere thinking about the world.
[ 7 ] Fichte claims that the distinctive spirit (Art) of the German people lives in his world view. This thought makes sense when one brings before one's soul precisely his picture of that path to self-knowledge which he seeks in contradistinction to Descartes. This path is what Fichte felt to be German; and as a traveler on this path, he differs from Descartes, who takes the spiritual path of the Romance peoples. Descartes seeks a sound basis for self-knowledge; he expects to find this sound basis somewhere. In thinking he believes he has found it. Fichte expects nothing from this kind of search. For, no matter what he might find, why should it afford a greater certainty than anything already found? No, along this path of investigation there is absolutely nothing to be found. For, this path can lead only from picture to picture; and no picture one encounters can guarantee, out of itself, its being. Therefore, to begin with, one must entirely abandon the path through pictures, and return to it again only after gaining certainty from some other direction.
[ 8 ] With respect to the statement “I think, therefore I am,” one need only say something that seems quite simple if one wants to refute it. This is after all the way with so many thoughts a person incorporates into his world view: they are not dispelled by elaborate objections but rather by noting simple facts. One does not undervalue the thinking power of a personality like Descartes by confronting him with a simple fact. The fable of the egg of Columbus is true forever.1The problem was to stand an egg on end. Columbus's table companions tried to do this without breaking the egg and of course failed. Columbus was more realistic. He flattened one end of the egg. – Ed. And it is also true that the statement “I think, therefore I am” simply shatters upon the fact of human sleep. Every sleep, which interrupts thinking, shows—not, indeed, that there is no being in thinking—but that in any case “I am, even when I am not thinking.” Therefore, if only thinking is the source for being, then nothing could guarantee the being of soul states in which thinking has ceased. Although Fichte did not express this train of thought in this form, one can still definitely say: The power lying within these simple facts worked—unconsciously—in his soul and kept him from taking a path like that taken by Descartes.
[ 9 ] Fichte was led onto a completely different path by the basic character of his sense of things. His life reveals this basic character from childhood on. One need only let some pictures from his life arise before one's soul to see that this is so. One significant picture that rises up vividly from his childhood is this. Johann Gottlieb is seven years old. Until this time he was a good student. In order to reward the boy's industriousness, his father gives him a book of legends, The Horned Siegfried. The boy is completely taken with this book. He neglects his duties somewhat. He becomes aware of this about himself. One day his father sees him throwing The Horned Siegfried into the brook. The boy is attached to the book with his whole heart; but how can the heart be allowed to keep something that diverts one from one's duty? Thus the feeling is already living unconsciously in the young Fichte that the human being is in the world as an expression of a higher order, which descends into his soul not through his interest in one thing or another, but through the path by which he acknowledges duty. Here one can see the impulse behind Fichte's stance toward certainty about reality. Perceptual experiences are not what is certain for man, but rather what rises up livingly in the soul in the same way that duty reveals itself.
[ 10 ] Another picture from Fichte's life: The boy is nine years old. A landowner near his father's village comes into town one Sunday to hear the minister's sermon. He arrives too late. The sermon is over. People remember that nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb retains sermons in his soul so well that he can completely reproduce them. They fetch him. The boy, in his little farmer's smock, appears. He is awkward at first; but then presents the sermon in such a way that one can see that what lived in the sermon had utterly filled his soul; he does not merely repeat words; he speaks out of the spirit of the sermon that lives within him entirely as his own experience. This ability lived in the boy: to let light up in one's own self what approaches this self from the world. This was, after all, the ability to experience the spirit of the outer world in one's own self. This was the ability to find within the strengthened self the power to uphold a world view. A brightly-lit, evolving stream of personality leads from such boyhood experiences to a lecture by Fichte—then professor in Jena—heard and described by the gifted scientist Steffens. In the course of his lecture Fichte calls upon his listeners: “Think about the wall,” His listeners made every effort to think about the wall. After they had done this for a while, Fichte's next demand follows: “And now think about the one who thought about the wall,” What striving for a direct and living relationship between one's own soul life and that of one's listeners! What pointing toward an inner soul activity to be undertaken immediately—not merely to stimulate reflection on verbal communications, but rather to awaken a life element slumbering in the souls of his listeners so that these souls will attain a state that changes their previous relationship to the course of the world.
[ 11 ] Such actions reflect Fichte's whole way of clearing the path for a world view. Unlike Descartes, he does not seek an experience of thinking that will establish certainty. He knows that in such seeking there is no finding. In such seeking one cannot know whether one's discovery is dream or reality. Therefore do not launch forth in such seeking. Strengthen yourself instead, by waking up. What the soul experiences when it wants to press forward out of the field of ordinary reality into that of true reality must be like an awakening. Thinking does not guarantee the being of the human “I.” But within this “I” there lies the power to awaken itself to being. Every time the soul senses itself as “I”—in full consciousness of the inner power that becomes active in doing so—a process occurs that presents itself as the soul awakening itself. This self-awakening is the fundamental being (Grundwesenheit) of the soul. And in this power to awaken itself there lies the certainty of the being (Sein) of the human soul. Let the soul go through dream states and states of sleep: one grasps the power of the soul to awaken itself out of every dream and every sleep by transforming the mental picture of its awakening into the image of the soul's fundamental power. Fichte felt that the eternity of the human soul lies in its becoming aware of its power to awaken itself. From this awareness came statements like these: “The world I was just marveling at disappears before my gaze and sinks away. In all the fullness of life, order, and growth that I see in it, this world is still only the curtain—by which an infinitely more perfect world is hidden from me—and the seed from which this more perfect world is to evolve. My belief goes behind this curtain and warms and enlivens this seed. My belief does not see anything definite, but expects more than it can grasp here below or will ever be able to grasp in the realm of time.—This is how I live and this is how I am; this is how I am unchangeably—firm and complete for all eternity; for, this being is not taken on from outside; it is my own one true being and existence.” (Vocation of Man)
[ 12 ] When one looks at the whole way Fichte approaches life and at how permeated all his actions and thinking are with an attitude friendly to life and fostering of life, one will not be tempted to regard a passage like this as proof of a direction in thought hostile to life, that turns away from immediate and vigorous life on this earth. In a letter from the year 1790 there is a sentence that sheds significant light on Fichte's positive attitude toward life, precisely in relation to his thoughts about immortality: “The surest means of convincing oneself of a life after death is to lead one's present life in such a way that one can wish an afterlife:”
[ 13 ] For Fichte, within the self-awakening inner activity of the human soul there lies the power of self-knowledge. And within this activity he also finds the place in the soul where the spirit of the world reveals itself in the spirit of the soul. In Fichte's world view the world-will weaves and works in all existence; and within the willing of its own being the soul can live this world-will within itself. The grasping of life's duties—which are experienced differently in the soul than are the perceptions of the senses and of one's thoughts—is the most immediate example of how the world-will pulses through the soul. True reality must be grasped in this way; and all other reality, even that of thinking, receives its certainty through the light shed upon it by the reality of the world-will revealing itself within the soul. This world-will drives the human being to his activity and deeds. As a sense-perceptible being, man must translate into reality in a sense-perceptible way what the world-will demands of him. But how could the deeds of one's will have a real existence if they had to seek this existence in a dream world? No, the world cannot be a dream, because in this world the deeds of one's will must not merely be dreamed; they must be translated into reality.
Insofar as the “I” awakens itself in its experience of the world-will, it attains firm supports for certainty about its being. Fichte expressed himself on this point in his Vocation of Man: “Without any instrument weakening its expression, within a sphere completely similar in nature to itself, my will must work absolutely in and through itself: as reason it must work upon reason and as something spiritual upon something spiritual; it must work in a sphere for which my will nevertheless does not provide the laws of life, activity, and continuity; this sphere has them in itself; my will has therefore to work upon self-active reason. But self-active reason is will. The laws of the supersensible world, accordingly, would be a will ... That lofty will, accordingly, does not separated from the rest of the world of reason—take a path all its own. There is a spiritual bond between this will and all finite reasonable beings, and this will itself is the spiritual bond of the world of reason ... I hide my face before you and lay my hand on my mouth. I can never see how you are for yourself nor how you appear to yourself, just as certainly as I can never become yourself. After living through a thousand times a thousand spiritual worlds, I will still grasp you just as little as now, within this hut of the earth.—What I grasp, through my mere grasping of it, becomes something finite; and this, even through infinite intensification and enhancement, can never be transformed into something infinite. You are different from the finite not in degree but in kind. Through that intensification they make you only into a greater and ever great man; but never into God, the Infinite, Who cannot be measured.”
[ 14 ] Fichte strove for a world view that pursues all being into the very roots of what lives in the world, and that learns to know the meaning of what lives in the world: learns to know it through the human soul's living with the world-will that pulses through everything and that creates nature for the purpose, in nature, of translating into reality a spiritually moral order as though in an outer body. Such a world view seemed to Fichte to spring from the character of the German people. To him a world view seemed un-German that did not “believe in spirituality and in the freedom of this spirituality,” and that did not “want the eternal further development of this spirituality and freedom.” In his view, “Whoever believes in a standstill, a regression, or a circle dance, or even sets a dead nature at the helm of world rulership” goes not only against any more deeply penetrating knowledge, but also against the essential nature of what is truly German.
Der Idealismus als Seelenerwachen: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
[ 1 ] Johann Gottlieb Fichte sucht in seinen Reden über «Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters» und «an die deutsche Nation» eine Darstellung zu finden für die in der Menschheitsentwickelung wirksamen Geisteskräfte. Er durchdringt sich durch die Gedanken, die er in diesen Reden zum Ausdruck bringt, mit der Empfindung, daß die treibende Kraft seiner Weltanschauung aus dem innersten Wesen der deutschen Volksart fließt. Er hat die Ansicht, daß er Gedanken ausspricht, welche die deutsche Volksseele aussprechen muß, wenn sie aus dem Kern ihrer Geistigkeit heraus sich offenbaren will. Die Art, wie Fichte nach seiner Weltanschauung rang, macht verständlich, daß diese Empfindung in seiner Seele leben konnte. Für den Betrachter eines Denkers muß es bedeutsam erscheinen, die zu dessen Gedankenfrüchten gehörigen Wurzeln zu erforschen, die in seinen Seelentiefen wirken, und die nicht unmittelbar in seinen Gedankenwelten ausgesprochen sind; die jedoch als die treibenden Kräfte in diesen Gedankenwelten leben.
[ 2 ] Was für eine Weltanschauung man hat, das hängt davon ab, was für ein Mensch man ist: Fichte sprach diese Überzeugung aus dem Bewußtsein heraus, daß alle Lebenstriebe seiner eigenen Persönlichkeit als ihre naturgemäße selbstverständliche Frucht die begriffsstarken Gipfelhöhen seiner Weltanschauung hervorbringen mußten. Dieser Weltanschauung, in deren Mittelpunkt des Verständnisses sich nicht viele versetzen wollen, weil sie, was sie finden, für weltenfremde Gedanken halten, in die einzudringen nur Aufgabe des Denkers «von Beruf» sein könne. Verständlich ist diese Empfindung bei demjenigen, der ohne philosophische Vorbereitung an Fichtes Gedanken herantritt, indem er sie in dessen Werken aufsucht. Doch ist es für denjenigen, der die Möglichkeit hat, sich in das volle Leben dieser Gedanken zu versetzen, nicht absonderlich, sich vorzustellen, daß eine Zeit kommen werde, in der man Fichtes Ideen wird in eine Form gießen können, die jedem verständlich ist, der aus dem Leben heraus sich über den Sinn dieses Lebens Vorstellungen machen will. Auch für das einfachste Menschengemüt, das ferne steht dem, was man philosophisches Denken nennt, werden diese Ideen dann zugänglich sein können. Denn sie haben zwar ihre philosophische Gestalt erhalten von dem Charakter, den die Gedankenentwickelung in Denkerkreisen um die Wende des achtzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhunderts angenommen hat; ihre Lebenskraft haben sie aber aus Seelenerlebnissen, die in jedem Menschen vorhanden sind. Gewiß ist gegenwärtig die Zeit noch nicht gekommen, in der ein solches Umgießen Fichtescher Gedanken aus der Sprache seiner Zeitphilosophie in die allgemein-menschliche Ausdrucksform völlig möglich wäre. Solche Dinge werden nur mit dem allmählichen Fortschreiten gewisser Vorstellungsarten im Geistesleben möglich. So wie Fichte selbst genötigt war, seine Seelenerlebnisse in die Gipfelhöhen dessen zu tragen, was man gewöhnlich abstraktes Denken nennt und kalt und lebensfremd findet, so ist es auch gegenwärtig wohl nur in eingeschränktem Maße möglich, diese Seelenerlebnisse herunterzutragen aus jenen Höhen.
[ 3 ] Nach immer neuen Ausdrucksformen für diese Seelenerlebnisse rang Fichte von seiner frühen Jugend an bis dahin, da jäh der Tod ihn noch im Mannesalter erreichte. In allem Ringen ist ein Erkenntnisgrundtrieb bei ihm offenkundig. In der eigenen Menschenseele will er ein Lebendiges suchen, in dem der Mensch nicht nur die Grundkraft seines eigenen Daseins erfaßt, sondern in dem, seinem Wesen nach, erkannt werden kann auch dasjenige, was in der Natur und in allem anderen Außermenschlichen webt und wirkt. Im Wassertropfen hat man im Verhältnis zum Meere ein winziges Kügelchen. Erkennt man aber dieses in seinem Wassercharakter, so hat man in dieser Erkenntnis auch diejenige des Wassercharakters des ganzen Meeres. Ist im Menschenwesen etwas aufzufinden, das sich als eine Offenbarung des innersten Weltwebens erleben läßt, dann darf man hoffen, durch vertiefte Selbsterkenntnis zur Welterkenntnis fortzuschreiten.
[ 4 ] Auf dem Wege, der sich aus dieser Empfindung ergibt, wandelte die Weltanschauungsentwickelung lange vor Fichtes Zeitalter. Er aber ward mit seinem Leben auf einen bedeutungsvollen Punkt dieser Entwickelung gestellt. Wie er seine nächsten Anstöße von den Weltanschauungen Spinozas und Kants her erhielt, das ist an vielen Orten zu lesen. Die Art, wie er sich durch das Wesen seiner Persönlichkeit zuletzt in Weltanschauungsfragen verhielt, wird aber am anschaulichsten, wenn man ihm den Denker gegenüberstellt, der ebenso aus romanischem Denken hervorgegangen ist wie Fichte aus deutschem: Descartes (Cartesius. 1596-1650). In Descartes tritt deutlich zutage, wie aus der angedeuteten Empfindung heraus der Denker eine Sicherheit in der Welterkenntnis durch das Gewinnen eines festen Punktes in der Selbsterkenntnis sucht. Vom Zweifel an aller Welterkenntnis nimmt Descartes seinen Ausgangspunkt. Er sagt sich: die Welt, in der ich lebe, offenbart sich in meiner Seele, und ich bilde mir aus ihren Offenbarungen Vorstellungen über den Lauf der Dinge. Was aber verbürgt mir, daß diese meine Vorstellungen mir wirklich etwas über das Wirken und Weben im Weltlauf sagen? Könnte es nicht so sein, daß meine Seele zwar von den Dingen gewisse Eindrücke empfängt; diese Eindrücke aber den Dingen selbst so ferne ständen, daß mir in ihnen sich nichts von dem Sinn der Welt enthüllte? Darf ich angesichts dieser Möglichkeit sagen: ich weiß dies oder jenes von der Welt? Man sieht, in diesem Meer des Zweifels kann dem Denker alle Erkenntnis zu einem Traum der Seele werden, und ihm nur die eine Überzeugung sich aufdrängen: daß der Mensch nichts wissen könne. Für einen Menschen aber, dem die Triebkraft des Denkens in der Seele so lebendig geworden ist, wie im Körper die Triebkraft des Hungers lebendig ist: für den bedeutet seelisch die Überzeugung, daß der Mensch nichts wissen könne, das gleiche, was für den Körper das Verhungern bedeutet. Alle innersten Stimmungen von Seelengesundheit im höhern Sinne bis zum Erfühlen des «Seelenheiles» hängen damit zusammen.
[ 5 ] In der Seele selbst findet Descartes den Punkt, auf den er die Überzeugung stützen kann: die Vorstellungen, die ich mir von dem Weltenlauf bilde, sind kein Traum; sie leben ein Leben, das im Leben der ganzen Welt ein Glied ist. Wenn ich auch an allem zweifeln kann, an einem kann ich es nicht, denn ich strafte mich mit solchem Zweifel selbst Lügen. Ist es denn nicht gewiß, daß ich, indem ich mich dem Zweifel hingebe, denke? Ich könnte nicht zweifeln, wenn ich nicht dächte. Unmöglich also kann ich mein eigenes Erleben im Denken bezweifeln. Wollte ich durch den Zweifel das Denken töten: es stünde aus dem Zweifel lebendig wieder auf. Mein Denken lebt also; es steht somit in keiner Welt des Traumes; es steht in der Welt des Seins. Könnte ich glauben, daß alles andere, auch mein eigener Leib, mir ein Sein nur vortäusche; mein Denken täuscht mich nicht. So wahr ich denke, so wahr bin ich, indem ich denke. Aus solchen Empfindungen heraus erklang Descartes': «Ich denke, also bin ich» (Cogito ergo sum). Und wer ein Ohr für solche Dinge hat, wird die Kraft dieses Wortes auch bei den auf Descartes folgenden Denkern bis zu Kant fortklingen hören.
[ 6 ] Erst bei Fichte hört dieser Klang auf. Vertieft man sich in seine Gedankenwelt, sucht man sein Ringen nach einer Weltanschauung mitzuerleben, so fühlt man, wie auch er in der Selbsterkenntnis Welterkenntnis sucht: aber man hat die Empfindung, das «Ich denke, also bin ich» könnte seinem Ringen nicht der Fels sein, auf dem er sich sicher glaubte in den Wogen des Zweifels, die ihm die menschlichen Vorstellungen zu einem Meere von Träumen zu machen vermöchten. Man empfindet, wie bei Fichte die Fähigkeit zu zweifeln gewissermaßen in einer ganz andern Kammer der Seele sitzt als bei Descartes, wenn man sich die Sätze vorhält, die er in seiner (1800 erschienenen) «Bestimmung des Menschen» geschrieben hat: «Es gibt überall kein Dauerndes, weder außer mir, noch in mir, sondern nur einen unaufhörlichen Wechsel. Ich weiß überall von keinem Sein, und auch nicht von meinem eigenen. Es ist kein Sein. - Ich selbst weiß überhaupt nicht, und bin nicht. Bilder sind: sie sind das einzige, was da ist, und sie wissen von sich, nach Weise der Bilder: - Bilder, die vorüberschweben, ohne daß etwas sei, dem sie vorüberschweben; die durch Bilder von den Bildern zusammenhängen, Bilder, ohne etwas in ihnen Abgebildetes, ohne Bedeutung und Zweck. Ich selbst bin eins dieser Bilder; ja, ich bin selbst dies nicht, sondern nur ein verworrenes Bild von den Bildern. - Alle Realität verwandelt sich in einen wunderbaren Traum, ohne ein Leben, von welchem geträumt wird, und ohne einen Geist, der da träumt; in einen Traum, der in einem Traum von sich selbst zusammenhängt. Das Anschauen ist der Traum; das Denken - die Quelle alles Seins und aller Realität, die ich mir einbilde, meines Seins, meiner Kraft, meiner Zwecke - ist der Traum von jenem Traume.» Diese Gedanken drängen sich Fichte nicht in die Seele wie eine letzte Wahrheit vom Dasein. Er will nicht etwa wirklich die Welt als Traumgebilde ansehen. Er will nur zeigen, daß all die Gründe, welche der Mensch gewöhnlich für die Gewißheit einer Erkenntnis aufbringt, vor einem durchdringenden Blick nicht bestehen können, daß man mit diesen Gründen nicht das Recht habe, die Ideen, die man sich über die Welt macht, als etwas anderes denn als Traumgebilde anzusehen. Und nicht gelten lassen kann Fichte, daß im Denken selbst irgendeine Gewißheit über das Sein stecke. Warum sollte ich sagen: «Ich denke, also bin ich», da doch, wenn ich in einem Meere von Träumen lebe, mein Denken nichts weiter sein kann als «der Traum vom Traume»? Der Einschlag, der in die Gedanken über die Welt die Wirklichkeit trägt, muß für Fichte von ganz anderer Seite kommen als vom bloßen Denken über die Welt.
[ 7 ] Wenn Fichte davon spricht, daß die Art des deutschen Volkstums in seiner Weltanschauung lebt, so wird dieser Gedanke verständlich, wenn man gerade das Bild des Weges zur Selbsterkenntnis, den er im Gegensatze zu Descartes sucht, sich vor die Seele rückt. Dieser Weg kann als das angesehen werden, was Fichte als «deutsch» empfindet; und man kann ihn als Wanderer auf diesem Weg dem auf romanischen Geistesbahnen schreitenden Descartes gegenüberstellen. Descartes sucht einen festen Punkt für die Selbsterkenntnis; er erwartet, daß ihm irgendwo dieser feste Punkt gegenübertreten werde. Im Denken glaubt er ihn gefunden zu haben. Fichte erwartet von solcher Art des Suchens gar nichts. Denn, was er auch finden könnte: warum sollte es denn eine höhere Gewißheit geben als vorher Gefundenes? Nein, auf diesem Wege des Suchens ist überhaupt nichts zu finden. Denn er kann nur von Bild zu Bild führen; und kein Bild, auf das man stößt, kann von sich aus sein Sein verbürgen. Also muß man zunächst den Weg durch die Bilder ganz verlassen und ihn erst wieder betreten, wenn man von anderer Seite her Gewißheit geholt hat.
[ 8 ] Man muß gegenüber dem «Ich denke, also bin ich» etwas scheinbar recht Einfältiges sagen, wenn man es entkräften will. Doch geht es so mit vielen Gedanken, die der Mensch in seine Weltanschauung aufnimmt: sie lösen sich nicht durch weitausholende Einwände auf, sondern durch das Bemerken einfach liegender Tatbestände. Man unterschätzt nicht die Denkerkraft einer Persönlichkeit von der Art des Descartes, wenn man ihm einen solch einfachen Tatbestand entgegenhält. Das Gleichnis vom Ei des Kolumbus bleibt ja doch ewig wahr. Und so ist es auch wahr, daß das «Ich denke, also bin ich» einfach zerschellt an dem Tatbestand des Schlafes. Jeder Schlaf des Menschen, der das Denken unterbricht, zeigt zwar nicht, daß im Denken nicht ein Sein liege, aber doch jedenfalls, daß «Ich bin, auch wenn ich nicht denke». Müßte man also das Sein aus dem Denken herausholen, so wäre es keinesfalls verbürgt für die Zustände der Seele, in denen das Denken aufhört. Wenn Fichte diese Wendung des Gedankens in dieser Form auch nicht ausgesprochen hat, so darf wohl doch gesagt werden: die Kraft, die in diesem einfachen Tatbestand liegt, wirkte - unbewußt - in seiner Seele und hinderte ihn, einen Weg zu nehmen, wie ihn Descartes genommen hat.
[ 9 ] Durch den Grundcharakter seines Empfindens wurde Fichte auf einen ganz anderen Weg geführt. Sein Leben von Kindheit an offenbart diesen Grundcharakter. Man braucht nur einzelne Bilder aus diesem Leben vor der Seele auftreten zu lassen, um das zu durchschauen. Aus der Kindheit wird ein bedeutsames Bild lebendig. Siebenjährig ist Johann Gottlieb. Er war bisher ein gut lernender Knabe. Der Vater schenkt ihm, um seinen Fleiß anzuerkennen, das Volksbuch vom «Gehörnten Siegfried». Der Knabe wird von dem Buche ganz eingenommen. Er vernachlässigt in etwas seine Pflichten. Er wird an sich selbst dieses gewahr. Der Vater trifft ihn, wie er eines Tages den «Gehörnten Siegfried» in den Bach wirft. Das ganze Herz des Knaben hängt an dem Buch; aber wie dürfte das Herz behalten etwas, das von der Pflicht abbringt! So lebt in dem Knaben Fichte schon unbewußt das Gefühl: der Mensch ist in der Welt als Ausdruck einer höheren Ordnung, die sich in die Seele senkt nicht durch das Interesse an diesem oder jenem, sondern durch die Wege, durch die er die Pflicht erkennt. Man sieht hier den Trieb zu Fichtes Stellungnahme gegenüber der Gewißheit von der Wirklichkeit. Gewiß für den Menschen ist nicht, was wahrnehmend erlebt wird, sondern was in der Seele so auflebt, wie die Pflicht sich offenbart.
[ 10 ] Ein anderes Bild: Der Knabe ist neunjährig. Der Gutsnachbar seines Vaterdorfes kommt eines Sonntags in dieses, um sich die Predigt des Pfarrers anzuhören. Er trifft zu spät ein. Die Predigt ist vorbei. Die Leute erinnern sich, der neunjährige Johann Gottlieb bewahre die Predigten in seiner Seele so, daß er sie voll wiedergeben kann. Man holt ihn. Der Knabe im Bauernkittelchen tritt auf. Linkisch zunächst; dann aber die Predigt so von sich gebend, daß man merkt, was in dieser Predigt lebte, hat seine Seele ganz erfüllt; er gibt nicht bloß die gemerkten Worte wieder; er gibt sie aus dem Geiste der Predigt heraus, der in ihm lebt als vollkommenes Selbsterlebnis. Solche Fähigkeit, im eigenen Selbst aufleuchten zu lassen, was von der Welt an dieses Selbst herantrat, lebte in dem Knaben. Das ist doch die Anlage zu einem Erleben des Geistes der Außenwelt im eigenen Selbst. Das ist die Anlage dazu, in dem erkrafteten Selbst die tragende Macht einer Weltanschauung zu finden. Eine hell beleuchtete Entwickelungsströmung der Persönlichkeit führt von solchen Knabenerlebnissen zu einem Vortrag, den der geistvolle Naturforscher Steffens von Fichte, der damals Professor in Jena war, gehört hat, und den er beschreibt. Fichte fordert im Verlauf dieses Vortrages seine Zuhörer auf: «Denken Sie an die Wand!» Die Zuhörer bemühten sich, an die Wand zu denken. Nachdem sie das eine Zeitlang getan, folgt Fichtes nächste Aufforderung: «Und nun denken Sie an den, der an die Wand gedacht hat!» Welches Streben nach unmittelbarem Zusammenleben des eigenen Seelenlebens mit dem Seelenleben der Zuhörer! Der Hinweis auf eine unmittelbar vorzunehmende innere Seelenbetätigung, der nicht bloß anstrebt, daß ein mitzuteilendes Wort nachgedacht werde, sondern der ein in den Seelen der Zuhörer schlummerndes Lebendiges wecken will, auf daß diese Seelen in einen Zustand kommen, der ihr bisheriges Verhältnis zu dem Weltenlauf ändere.
[ 11 ] In solchem Vorgehen spiegelt sich Fichtes ganze Art, einen Weg zu einer Weltanschauung zu bahnen. Er sucht nicht wie Descartes nach dem Denkerlebnis, das Gewißheit bringen soll. Er weiß, solchem Suchen winkt kein Finden. Man kann bei solchem Suchen nicht wissen, ob man im Traume oder in Wirklichkeit gefunden hat. Also nicht sich ergehen in einem Suchen. Sich erkraften aber in einem Aufwachen. Einem Aufwachen ähnlich muß sein, was die Seele erlebt, wenn sie aus dem Felde der gewöhnlichen in das der wahren Wirklichkeit dringen will. Das Denken verbürgt dem menschlichen Ich nicht das Sein. Aber in diesem Ich liegt die Kraft, sich selbst zum Sein zu erwecken. Jedesmal, wenn die Seele im Vollbewußtsein der inneren Kraft, die dabei lebendig wird, sich als «Ich»empfindet, tritt ein Vorgang ein, der sich darstellt als ein Sich-Erwecken der Seele. Dieses Sich-selbst-Erwecken ist die Grundwesenheit der Seele. Und in dieser sich selbst erweckenden Kraft liegt die Gewißheit des Seins der Menschenseele. Möge die Seele durch Traumes- und durch Schlafzustände hindurchgehen: man erfaßt die Kraft ihrer Selbsterweckung aus jedem Traum und jedem Schlaf, indem man die Vorstellung des Erwachens zum Bilde ihrer Grundkraft macht. In dem Gewahrwerden der selbsterweckenden Macht erfühlt Fichte die Ewigkeit der Menschenseele. Aus diesem Gewahrwerden flossen ihm Worte wie diese: «Es verschwindet vor meinem Blicke und versinkt die Welt, die ich noch soeben bewunderte. In aller Fülle des Lebens, der Ordnung und des Gedeihens, welche ich in ihr schaue, ist sie doch nur der Vorhang, durch den eine unendlich vollkommenere mir verdeckt wird, und der Keim, aus dem diese sich entwickeln soll. Mein Glaube tritt hinter diesen Vorhang und erwärmt und belebt diesen Keim. Er sieht nichts Bestimmtes, aber erwartet mehr, als er hienieden fassen kann, und je in der Zeit wird fassen können. - So lebe, und so bin ich, und so bin ich unveränderlich, fest und vollendet für alle Ewigkeit; denn dieses Sein ist kein von außen angenommenes, es ist mein eignes, einiges wahres Sein und Wesen.» (Bestimmung des Menschen.)
[ 12 ] Man wird nicht versucht sein, eine solche Anschauung bei Fichte als den Beweis für eine dem unmittelbaren kraftvollen Erdenleben abgewandte, lebenfeindliche Gedankenrichtung anzusehen, wenn man seine ganze Art, sich zu diesem Leben zu stellen, und die lebenfreundliche, lebenfördernde Gesinnung, die all sein Wirken und Denken durchdringt, ins Auge faßt. In einem Briefe aus dem Jahre 1790 steht ein Satz, der gerade mit Bezug auf seinen Unsterblichkeitsgedanken auf diese Gesinnung bedeutungsvolles Licht wirft: «Das sicherste Mittel, sich von einem Leben nach dem Tode zu überzeugen, ist das, sein gegenwärtiges so zu führen, daß man es wünschen darf.»
[ 13 ] In der sich selbst erweckenden inneren Tätigkeit der Menschenseele liegt für Fichte die Kraft der Selbsterkenntnis. Und innerhalb dieser Tätigkeit findet er in der Seele auch die Stelle, wo Weltengeist im Seelengeist sich offenbart. Es webt und wirkt durch alles Sein für diese Weltanschauung der Weltenwille; und im Wollen des eigenen Wesens kann die Seele in sich diesen Weltenwillen darlegen. Das Ergreifen der Lebenspflichten, die in der Seele anders erlebt werden als die Wahrnehmungen der Sinne und der Gedanken, sind das nächste Beispiel dafür, wie der Weltenwille durch die Seele hindurchpulsiert. So muß ergriffen werden die wahre Wirklichkeit; und alle andere Wirklichkeit, auch die des Denkens, erhält ihre Gewißheit durch das Licht, das auf sie von der Wirklichkeit des in der Seele sich offenbarenden Weltwillens fällt. Dieser Weltenwille treibt den Menschen zur Tätigkeit, zum Handeln. Als Sinneswesen muß der Mensch das, was der Weltenwille von ihm verlangt, in einer sinnlichen Weise verwirklichen. Wie aber könnten die Taten des Willens ein wirkliches Dasein haben, wenn sie dieses Dasein in einer Traumwelt suchen müßten. Nein, die Welt kann kein Traum sein, weil in ihr die Taten des Willens nicht bloß geträumt, sondern verwirklicht sein müssen. - Indem das Ich sich im Erleben des Weltwillens erweckt, erlangt es die feste Stütze der Gewißheit seines Seins. Fichte spricht sich darüber in seiner «Bestimmung des Menschen» aus: «Mein Wille soll schlechthin durch sich selbst, ohne alles seinen Ausdruck schwächende Werkzeug, in einer ihm völlig gleichartigen Sphäre, als Vernunft auf Vernunft, als Geistiges auf Geistiges wirken; - in einer Sphäre, der er jedoch das Gesetz des Lebens, der Tätigkeit, des Fortlaufens nicht gebe, sondern die es in sich selbst habe; also auf selbsttätige Vernunft. Aber selbsttätige Vernunft ist Wille. Das Gesetz der übersinnlichen Welt wäre sonach ein Wille... Jener erhabene Wille geht sonach nicht abgesondert von der übrigen Vernunftwelt seinen Weg für sich. Es ist zwischen ihm und allen endlichen vernünftigen Wesen ein geistiges Band, und er selbst ist dieses geistige Band der Vernunftwelt... Ich verhülle vor dir mein Angesicht und lege die Hand auf den Mund. Wie du für dich selbst bist und dir selbst erscheinest, kann ich nie einsehen, so gewiß ich nie du selbst werden kann. Nach tausendmal tausend durchlebten Geisterwelten werde ich dich noch ebensowenig begreifen als jetzt, in dieser Hütte von Erde. - Was ich begreife, wird durch mein bloßes Begreifen zum Endlichen; und dieses läßt auch durch unendliche Steigerung und Erhöhung sich nie ins Unendliche umwandeln. Du bist vom Endlichen nicht dem Grade, sondern der Art nach verschieden. Sie machen dich durch jene Steigerung nur zu einem größern Menschen, und immer zu einem größern; nie aber zum Gotte, zum Unendlichen, der keines Maßes fähig ist.»
[ 14 ] Eine Weltanschauung erstrebte Fichte, die alles Sein bis zur Wurzel des Lebendigen verfolgt, und die in dem Lebendigen dessen Sinn erkennt durch das Zusammenleben der Menschenseele mit dem alles durchpulsenden Weltwillen, der die Natur schafft, um in ihr eine geistig moralische Ordnung wie in einem äußeren Leibe zu verwirklichen. Eine solche Weltanschauung war ihm die aus dem Charakter des deutschen Volkes entspringende. Ihm war eine Weltanschauung undeutsch, die nicht «an Geistigkeit und Freiheit dieser Geistigkeit glaubt», und die nicht «die ewige Fortbildung dieser Geistigkeit und Freiheit will». «Was an Stillstand, Rückgang und Zirkeltanz glaubt oder gar eine tote Natur an das Ruder der Weltregierung setzt», widerstrebt für seine Anschauung nicht nur einer tiefer dringenden Erkenntnis, sondern auch der wahrhaft deutschen Wesensart.
Idealism as an awakening of the soul: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
[ 1 ] In his speeches on "Fundamental Features of the Present Age" and "To the German Nation", Johann Gottlieb Fichte seeks to find an account of the spiritual forces at work in the development of humanity. Through the thoughts he expresses in these speeches, he imbues himself with the feeling that the driving force of his world view flows from the innermost nature of the German people. He has the view that he expresses thoughts which the German national soul must express if it is to reveal itself from the core of its spirituality. The way in which Fichte struggled for his world view makes it understandable that this feeling could live in his soul. For the observer of a thinker, it must appear significant to explore the roots belonging to the fruits of his thoughts, which work in the depths of his soul and which are not directly expressed in his thought worlds, but which live as the driving forces in these thought worlds.
[ 2 ] What kind of worldview one has depends on what kind of person one is: Fichte spoke this conviction out of the awareness that all the life instincts of his own personality had to produce the conceptually strong peaks of his worldview as their natural, self-evident fruit. This world view, in whose center of understanding not many want to place themselves, because they consider what they find to be unworldly thoughts, into which it can only be the task of the thinker "by profession" to penetrate. This feeling is understandable for those who approach Fichte's thoughts without philosophical preparation by seeking them out in his works. But it is not strange for those who have the possibility of placing themselves in the full life of these thoughts to imagine that a time will come when it will be possible to cast Fichte's ideas in a form that is comprehensible to anyone who wants to form ideas about the meaning of this life from life. These ideas will then be accessible even to the simplest human mind, which is far removed from what is called philosophical thinking. For they have indeed received their philosophical form from the character which the development of thought assumed in intellectual circles at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but they have their vitality from experiences of the soul which are present in every human being. Certainly, the time has not yet come when such a transfer of Fichte's thoughts from the language of his contemporary philosophy into the general human form of expression would be completely possible. Such things only become possible with the gradual progress of certain types of conception in intellectual life. Just as Fichte himself was compelled to carry his soul experiences to the heights of what is usually called abstract thinking and found cold and alien to life, so it is probably only possible to a limited extent at present to carry these soul experiences down from those heights.
[ 3 ] Fichte struggled for ever new forms of expression for these experiences of the soul from his early youth until death suddenly reached him while he was still a man. In all his struggles, a basic cognitive drive is evident in him. In his own human soul, he wanted to find a living being in which man could not only grasp the basic force of his own existence, but in which, according to its essence, he could also recognize that which weaves and works in nature and in all other extra-human things. The drop of water is a tiny sphere in relation to the sea. But if one recognizes this in its water character, then one also has in this knowledge that of the water character of the whole sea. If something can be found in the human being that can be experienced as a revelation of the innermost weaving of the world, then one can hope to progress to knowledge of the world through deeper self-knowledge.
[ 4 ] On the path that results from this feeling, the development of the worldview took place long before Fichte's time. His life, however, placed him at a significant point in this development. How he received his next impulses from the world views of Spinoza and Kant can be read in many places. However, the way in which he ultimately behaved through the nature of his personality in matters of worldview becomes most vivid when one contrasts him with the thinker who emerged from Roman thought just as much as Fichte emerged from German thought: Descartes (Cartesius. 1596-1650). In Descartes, it becomes clear how the thinker seeks certainty in his knowledge of the world by gaining a firm foothold in self-knowledge. Descartes takes his starting point from doubt about all knowledge of the world. He says to himself: the world in which I live reveals itself in my soul, and I form ideas about the course of things from its revelations. But what guarantees that these ideas of mine really tell me something about the working and weaving of the world? Could it not be that my soul receives certain impressions from things, but that these impressions are so far removed from the things themselves that nothing of the meaning of the world is revealed to me in them? In view of this possibility, may I say: I know this or that about the world? You see, in this sea of doubt, all knowledge can become a dream of the soul for the thinker, and only the one conviction imposes itself on him: that man can know nothing. But for a person for whom the driving force of thinking has become as alive in the soul as the driving force of hunger is alive in the body: for him the conviction that man can know nothing means in the soul what starvation means for the body. All the innermost moods, from the health of the soul in the higher sense to the feeling of "soul salvation", are connected with this.
[ 5 ] In the soul itself, Descartes finds the point on which he can base his conviction: the ideas I form about the course of the world are not a dream; they live a life that is a link in the life of the whole world. Even if I can doubt everything, I cannot doubt one thing, for I would be giving myself the lie to such doubt. Is it not certain that by giving myself over to doubt, I am thinking? I could not doubt if I did not think. It is therefore impossible for me to doubt my own experience in thinking. If I wanted to kill thinking through doubt, it would rise again alive from doubt. My thinking is therefore alive; it is not in a world of dreams; it is in the world of being. If I could believe that everything else, even my own body, only pretends to be being; my thinking does not deceive me. As true as I think, so true am I by thinking. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito ergo sum) resounded from such sentiments. And anyone with an ear for such things will hear the power of this word echoing through the thinkers who followed Descartes right up to Kant.
[ 6 ] It is only with Fichte that this sound stops. If one immerses oneself in his world of thought, if one tries to experience his struggle for a world view, one feels how he also seeks world knowledge in self-knowledge: but one has the feeling that the "I think, therefore I am" could not be the rock on which he believed himself safe in the waves of doubt, which could turn human ideas into a sea of dreams. One senses how Fichte's ability to doubt sits, as it were, in a completely different chamber of the soul than Descartes' when one considers the sentences he wrote in his "The Destiny of Man" (published in 1800): "There is no permanent thing anywhere, neither outside of me nor within me, but only an incessant change. I know of no being anywhere, nor of my own. There is no being. - I myself do not know at all, and am not. Images are: they are the only thing that is there, and they know of themselves in the way of images: - Images that float over without there being anything they float over; that are connected by images of the images, images without anything depicted in them, without meaning and purpose. I myself am one of these images; yes, I myself am not this, but only a confused image of the images. - All reality is transformed into a marvelous dream, without a life that is dreamed of and without a spirit that dreams; into a dream that hangs together in a dream of itself. The looking is the dream; the thinking - the source of all being and all reality that I imagine, my being, my power, my purposes - is the dream of that dream." These thoughts do not force themselves into Fichte's soul like an ultimate truth of existence. He does not really want to see the world as a dream. He only wants to show that all the reasons which man usually gives for the certainty of knowledge cannot stand up before a penetrating gaze, that with these reasons one has no right to regard the ideas which one forms about the world as anything other than dream-formations. And Fichte cannot accept that there is any certainty about being in thinking itself. Why should I say: "I think, therefore I am", since, if I live in a sea of dreams, my thinking can be nothing more than "the dream of the dream"? For Fichte, the impact that brings reality into thoughts about the world must come from a completely different source than mere thinking about the world.
[ 7 ] When Fichte speaks of the fact that the nature of the German people lives in his worldview, this thought becomes understandable if one visualizes the path to self-knowledge that he seeks in contrast to Descartes. This path can be seen as that which Fichte perceives as "German"; and one can contrast him as a wanderer on this path with Descartes, who walks along Romanesque intellectual paths. Descartes seeks a fixed point for self-knowledge; he expects that this fixed point will confront him somewhere. He believes he has found it in thinking. Fichte expects nothing at all from this kind of searching. For, whatever he might find, why should there be a higher certainty than what has already been found? No, there is nothing at all to be found in this way of searching. For it can only lead from image to image; and no image that one encounters can of itself guarantee its existence. Therefore, one must first leave the path through the images completely and only enter it again when one has gained certainty from another side.
[ 8 ] In order to refute the "I think, therefore I am", one must say something seemingly quite simple-minded. However, this is the case with many thoughts that people incorporate into their world view: they are not resolved by far-reaching objections, but by noticing simple facts. One does not underestimate the thinking power of a personality of Descartes' type when one holds up such a simple fact against him. The parable of Columbus' egg remains eternally true. And so it is also true that the "I think, therefore I am" is simply shattered by the fact of sleep. Every human sleep that interrupts thinking does not show that there is no being in thinking, but it does show that "I am, even when I am not thinking". If, therefore, being had to be extracted from thinking, it would in no way vouch for the states of the soul in which thinking ceases. Even if Fichte did not express this turn of thought in this form, it can still be said that the power that lies in this simple fact worked - unconsciously - in his soul and prevented him from taking the path taken by Descartes.
[ 9 ] The basic character of Fichte's feelings led him down a completely different path. His life from childhood onwards reveals this basic character. You only need to allow individual images from this life to appear before your soul to see through it. A significant image from his childhood comes to life. Johann Gottlieb is seven years old. So far, he has been a good learner. In recognition of his diligence, his father gives him the folk book "The Horned Siegfried". The boy is completely absorbed by the book. He somewhat neglects his duties. He becomes aware of this in himself. His father meets him one day as he throws the "Horned Siegfried" into the stream. The boy's whole heart is attached to the book; but how could the heart keep something that distracts him from his duty! Thus the feeling already lives unconsciously in the boy Fichte: man is in the world as an expression of a higher order, which sinks into the soul not through interest in this or that, but through the ways in which he recognizes duty. Here we can see the impulse behind Fichte's attitude towards the certainty of reality. What is certain for man is not what is perceptually experienced, but what comes to life in the soul as duty reveals itself.
[ 10 ] Another image: The boy is nine years old. The neighbor of his father's village comes to the village one Sunday to listen to the priest's sermon. He arrives too late. The sermon is over. The people remember that the nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb keeps the sermons in his soul so that he can reproduce them in full. They fetch him. The boy in the farmer's smock appears. At first he is awkward, but then he delivers the sermon in such a way that one realizes that what lived in this sermon has completely filled his soul; he does not merely reproduce the memorized words; he gives them out of the spirit of the sermon, which lives in him as a complete self-experience. Such an ability to let light up in his own self what came from the world to this self lived in the boy. This is the disposition to experience the spirit of the outside world in one's own self. This is the disposition to find the sustaining power of a world view in the enlightened self. A brightly illuminated developmental current of the personality leads from such boyish experiences to a lecture which the spiritual naturalist Steffens heard from Fichte, who was a professor in Jena at the time, and which he describes. In the course of this lecture, Fichte asks his listeners: "Think of the wall!" The listeners tried to think about the wall. After they have done this for a while, Fichte's next challenge follows: "And now think of the one who thought of the wall!" What a striving for a direct coexistence of one's own soul life with the soul life of the listener! The reference to an inner soul activity to be undertaken directly, which does not merely strive for a word to be communicated to be thought about, but which wants to awaken a living thing slumbering in the souls of the listeners, so that these souls come into a state that changes their previous relationship to the course of the world.
[ 11 ] This approach reflects Fichte's entire way of paving the way to a worldview. Like Descartes, he does not seek the experience of thought that is supposed to bring certainty. He knows that such searching does not lead to finding. In such a search one cannot know whether one has found in a dream or in reality. So do not indulge in a search. But to strengthen oneself in an awakening. Waking up must be similar to what the soul experiences when it wants to penetrate from the field of ordinary into that of true reality. Thinking does not guarantee being for the human ego. But in this I lies the power to awaken itself to being. Every time the soul perceives itself as "I" in the full consciousness of the inner power that becomes alive in the process, a process occurs that presents itself as a self-awakening of the soul. This self-awakening is the basic essence of the soul. And in this self-awakening power lies the certainty of the being of the human soul. May the soul pass through dream states and sleep states: one grasps the power of its self-awakening from every dream and every sleep by making the idea of awakening the image of its basic power. In becoming aware of the self-awakening power, Fichte senses the eternity of the human soul. From this realization flowed words like these: "The world that I had just admired disappears before my eyes and sinks away. In all the fullness of life, order and prosperity that I see in it, it is still only the curtain through which an infinitely more perfect one is concealed from me, and the seed from which it is to develop. My faith steps behind this curtain and warms and enlivens this seed. It sees nothing definite, but expects more than it can grasp here and will ever be able to grasp in time. - Thus I live, and thus I am, and thus I am unchangeable, firm and perfect for all eternity; for this being is not one assumed from without, it is my own, certain true being and essence." (Destiny of man.)
[ 12 ] One will not be tempted to regard such a view in Fichte as proof of a direction of thought hostile to life, turned away from the immediate, powerful life on earth, if one considers his whole way of relating to this life and the life-friendly, life-promoting attitude that permeates all his work and thought. In a letter from 1790, there is a sentence that sheds significant light on this attitude, especially with regard to his idea of immortality: "The surest way to convince yourself of a life after death is to lead your present life in such a way that you may wish for it."
[ 13 ] For Fichte, the power of self-knowledge lies in the self-awakening inner activity of the human soul. And within this activity he also finds the place in the soul where the spirit of the world reveals itself in the spirit of the soul. The will of the world weaves and works through all being for this worldview; and in the volition of its own being, the soul can express this will of the world within itself. The seizing of the duties of life, which are experienced in the soul differently from the perceptions of the senses and thoughts, are the next example of how the will of the world pulsates through the soul. Thus true reality must be grasped; and all other reality, including that of thought, receives its certainty through the light that falls upon it from the reality of the world-will revealing itself in the soul. This will of the world drives man to activity, to action. As a sensual being, man must realize in a sensual way what the will of the world demands of him. But how could the deeds of the will have a real existence if they had to seek this existence in a dream world? No, the world cannot be a dream, because in it the acts of the will must not merely be dreamed, but realized. - By awakening itself in the experience of the will of the world, the ego attains the firm support of the certainty of its being. Fichte speaks about this in his "Determination of Man": "My will should work absolutely through itself, without any tool weakening its expression, in a sphere completely similar to itself, as reason on reason, as the spiritual on the spiritual; - in a sphere, however, to which it does not give the law of life, of activity, of continuity, but which has it in itself; thus to self-acting reason. But self-acting reason is will. The law of the supersensible world would therefore be a will... This sublime will therefore does not go its own way separately from the rest of the rational world. There is a spiritual bond between it and all finite rational beings, and it itself is this spiritual bond of the world of reason... I cover my face before you and put my hand over my mouth. How you are to yourself and appear to yourself I can never understand, just as I can never become yourself. After having lived through a thousand times a thousand spirit worlds, I will understand you just as little as I do now, in this hut of earth. - What I comprehend becomes finite through my mere comprehension; and this can never be transformed into the infinite even through infinite increase and elevation. You are not different from the finite in degree, but in kind. Through this increase they make you only a greater man, and always a greater one; but never the God, the Infinite, who is incapable of any measure."
[ 14 ] Fichte aspired to a worldview that traces all being to the root of the living, and that recognizes its meaning in the living through the coexistence of the human soul with the all-pulsating world will, which creates nature in order to realize a spiritual and moral order in it as in an external body. Such a world view was for him the one that arose from the character of the German people. For him, a worldview that did not "believe in the spirituality and freedom of this spirituality" and that did not "want the eternal development of this spirituality and freedom" was un-German. "What believes in stagnation, decline and circular dance or even puts a dead nature at the helm of world government" is, in his view, not only contrary to a more profoundly urgent insight, but also to the truly German way of being.