The Status of the Wissenschaftslehre: Transcendental and Ontological Grounds in Fichte

In this paper I pursue the question whether transcendental explanation in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre should be regarded as ontologically committed. It is natural to assume that transcendental explanation in the Wissenschaftslehre should be construed non-ontologically: Schulze's criticisms of Kantian philosophy and Jacobi's objection to philosophical justification supply Fichte with motives for freeing transcendental explanation of ontological commitment. However, the situation is not, I argue, clear-cut: Fichte's explicit remarks are equivocal and exhibit tensions, and interpretations of the WL which imply its non-ontological status are open to criticism. Finally I suggest a way in which Fichte's position on the WL’s status may be regarded as coherent and defensible, and indicate how the relation of Fichte to Schelling and Hegel may be understood in its light. 1. Inverting the form of philosophical explanation A firm majority of commentators would reject the suggestion that the German idealists offer metaphysical explanations of the same order as those offered by, say, the rationalists. On the contrary, the notion that, whatever continuities there may be, there is a deep difference of status between German idealist metaphysics and traditional, pre-Kantian metaphysics, is a commonplace. Equally commonplace is the thought that the German idealists were engaged in attempting to define and employ a new form of philosophical explanation, which does not consist simply in a reapplication without alteration of the philosophical methods showcased in the first Critique. A third notion often encountered is that what the German idealists were aiming to do was not to affirm or postulate another world different from and additional to this one, but to redescribe this world: they were attempting “to articulate an alternative vision of reality − and not a vision of some alternative reality.” These claims are brought together in the idea that the German idealists, in furnishing their redescriptions of this world, invert the form of philosophical explanation employed in common sense and pre-Copernican philosophy, with the result that, from the ordinary or the pre-Kantian standpoint, the explanation they offer for this world appears to be an image of it in inverted form. The German idealists themselves employ the idea of inverting common sense. Fichte declares that he is “concerned with the complete reversal [die völlige Umkehrung]” of ordinary and preKantian ways of thinking, for which reason the Wissenschaftslehre is necessarily understood from the ordinary standpoint as saying the opposite of what it in fact 1 Bell, 2001, p. 177. Bell describes this as “the goal of a transcendental theory” in general, not only of German idealism. 2 See, e.g., Kuehn, 1987, pp. 11-12. 3 Fichte, 1797a, p. 5 [FW I, 421]. 2 says. Similarly, Schelling says that “transcendental idealism arises in general through the direct inversion [die gerade Umkehrung] of previous modes of philosophical explanation.” And the aim of world-inversion is affirmed explicitly by Schelling and Hegel in their Introduction to the Kritisches Journal: [philosophy] only is philosophy in virtue of being directly opposed to the understanding and hence even more opposed to healthy common sense, under which label we understand the limitedness in space and time of a race of men; in its relationship to common sense the world of philosophy is in and for itself an inverted world [eine verkehrte Welt]. My aim here is to examine a dimension of German idealism which is not often highlighted as such, namely the way in which German idealism breaks with the understanding of the relation between explanation and ontology found in common sense and traditional metaphysics. The question of the ontological status of the grounds adduced in philosophical explanation is, I will try to show, a central, abiding issue in the German idealists’ formulation of their positions and in the arguments between them, and the positions which the German idealists take up in their attempt to solve the deep problem which, they correctly see, surrounds this question, are part of what makes German idealist thinking difficult to grasp from, and apparently opposed to, the standpoint of common sense. Limitations of space make it impossible to discuss more than the earlier part of the story − Fichte’s wrestling with the problem of ontological status − but I will indicate at the end how the issue extends beyond Fichte to Schelling and Hegel. 2. Ontological and Non-Ontological conceptions of philosophical explanation As a framework for the discussion, I will employ a distinction between two rival conceptions of the source and form of philosophical explanation, the Ontological and the Non-Ontological, which are to be understand in the following terms. On the conception which is most natural to us, explanation is an ontological matter: to explain something is, very roughly, to link up one part of reality in the appropriate way with another part. Correspondingly, the Ontological conception of philosophical explanation holds that philosophical explanation must of necessity terminate in a claim with ontological force, and that the explanatory force of a philosophical proposition derives from the piece of reality which it discloses. On this conception, therefore, what it is to account philosophically for something is to track 4 E.g. Fichte, 1797b, p. 86 [FW I, 500-1], where Fichte says that the WL’s assertion that one cannot abstract from the I appears from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness to mean that “we never entertain any representation but that of ourselves.” See also Fichte, 1801, pp. 85-7 [FW II, 382-4], and 1806, pp. 367-8. 5 Schelling, 1800, p. 168 (translation modified) [SW II, 548]. 6 Hegel and Schelling, 1802, p. 283 [SW III, 521; HW II, 182]. 7 On this distinction, see Sacks, 2000, esp. chs. 6 and 9. My understanding of the issue is indebted heavily to this work and to Sacks’ earlier 1989. 3 relations obtaining between grounded (consequential, derivative, etc.) and grounding (antecedent, basic, etc.) items among or features of what exists. The opposing, Non-Ontological conception of philosophical explanation affirms the proper distinctness of philosophical explanation and ontological assertion, maintaining that the explanatory force of philosophical claims should not be identified with the matter of something’s having being. While this leaves open how in positive terms philosophical explanation should be conceived, in the post-Kantian transcendental context, the intelligibility of Non-Ontological explanation is bound up with the concept of perspective, understood in a special philosophical sense. Perspective in the transcendental sense is adduced as the ground of there being a domain of objects for a subject: perspective is what delivers and forms objects, and objects are “marked” by perspective in the sense that they refer back to it as the condition under which they are given, perspective itself being nothing more than an object-grounding, form-bestowing function, which could not be discharged if perspective were given in the same way as the objects that it grounds. The transcendental concept of perspective, on the Non-Ontological conception, differs from the ordinary concept of an individual’s subjective, first-person point of view, in so far as perspective is prised apart from the ontological facts on which ordinary consciousness regards points of view as supervening. These facts include the existence of a subject whose constitution would, on ordinary, Ontological ways of thinking, be held to provide the explanation of perspective. In this way perspective becomes autonomous: because the ontological domain is internal to perspective, perspective itself is without ontological status – no ontological hinterland lies behind our backs. What philosophy does therefore, on this conception, is to give us in discursive form the perspective within which the existing world appears: the relation between the perspective, and the world given in it, is a relation of explanation or grounding; the existing world is the explanandum, perspective the explanans; final philosophical explanation, and the articulation of perspective, are one and the same. From the standpoint of common sense, the Non-Ontological conception appears as a dizzying attempt to ground the real on the unreal, quite deserving the description of an “inversion” of reality. The commitment of a philosophical position to either an Ontological or a Non-Ontological conception of philosophical explanation, it should be noted, is distinct from its commitment to either idealism or realism, in so far as the (metaphilosophical) question of the (ontological or non-ontological) status of the grounds of philosophical explanation is different from the (metaphysical) question of the (ideal or real) status of the objects of cognition. 8 See the helpful remarks on the concept of point of view in Moore, 1997, pp. 6-14. 9 Which is not to deny the obvious affinity between Non-Ontological explanation and transcendental idealism; the Non-Ontological metaphilosophical view is furthermore one candidate for an identification of the true meaning of transcendental idealism. But whether this identification – and the converse identification of Ontological explanation with transcendental realism – goes through, depends on how things develop: on how transcendental idealism is interpreted, on whether “perspective” is understood as necessarily just the perspective of a subject, and so on. As I have drawn the distinction, the Non-Ontological conception is logically compatible with the claim that the objects of cognition are (in at least some sense of the term) transcendentally real. 4 This is not the place to consider the logic of these two positions on their own account. Yet, to anticipate some of what will emerge later, it is not hard to see what sort of dialectic results when these two conceptions of philosophical explanation confront one another in the post-Kantian context, and even how they may come to be regarded as forming a kind of antinomy. The Non-Ontological conception will meet the objection that, if perspective is adduced as the ultimate term of philosophical explanation, then some sort of ontological status must be attributed to it, if only implicitly, without which philosophical explanation will have merely subjective status and the perspective it articulates will amount to nothing more than a mere unanchored representation; while to the Ontological conception it will be objected that, to take the mere fact of the existence of anything, whatever it may be, as itself explanatory, apart from and outside a framework which allows us to understand ontological facts as explanatory and so which must itself have pre-ontological grounding status, is to collapse transcendental back into pre-transcendental explanation, and to reinstitute the skeptical gap which transcendental philosophy was meant to close, between facts of existence and our claims to knowledge of them. 3. The background to Fichte: Kant, Schulze, Jacobi The notion that Fichte, in radicalising Kant and shifting Critical philosophy onto a practical basis, frees transcendental explanation of ontological commitment, obviously has much to recommend it, and it corresponds to the view of a number of commentators; the contrast of Fichte with Schelling, viewed as re-ontologising that which Fichte had de-ontologised, is often drawn in these terms. In this section I want to consider how the issue of the ontological commitment of philosophical explanation came to present itself to Fichte, and how Fichte’s understanding of the post-Kantian context furnished him with motives for taking the Non-Ontological turn. 1. Kant. There are several respects in which the ontological commitment of Kant’s philosophical claims appears uncertain, both of which came to the fore in early Kant reception and impressed themselves on Fichte. (i) The first, clear locus of uncertainty is the transcendental theory of experience in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In connection with the wholly general problem concerning the thing in itself as ground of appearance, uncertainty concerning ontological commitment arises with respect to the subject adduced in transcendental explanation. There is a distinction to be drawn between (1) transcendental conditions in the logical sense, expressed by the relevant principles of possible experience, propositions asserting the necessity that objects be given and thought in certain ways (as in space, causally ordered, etc.); and (2) the intrasubjective ontological structures on which, it may be thought, these conditions supervene and which provide the source of the agency of their realisation in experience, these structures being what is spoken of in Kant’s language of faculties or underpins Kant’s faculty explanations. The much disputed exegetical question here, 10 In addition to those discussed below in section 5, see di Giovanni, 2005, pp. 27-8 and 284-5, and W. Martin, 1997, e.g., pp. 12-15. 5 of course, concerns Kant’s commitment or lack of it to transcendental psychology or, it is better to say, the Ontological or Non-Ontological interpretation thereof. And this issue is bound up with a broader issue, concerning the scope remaining to Kant for existential assertion outside the bounds of possible experience: the one view being that the Transcendental Analytic eliminates, the other that it preserves (through the unschematised form of the categories of pure understanding) the thinkability of actual existence beyond the bounds of sensibility. The root of the tension lies in the fact that, on the one hand, Kant may be held to show that what it is for something to have or be known to have being is for it to stand under transcendental conditions, entailing that knowledge of transcendental conditions cannot be knowledge of anything that has existence. On the other hand, to the extent that Kant affirms an unknowable but necessarily thought realm of existing and grounding things in themselves, transcendental conditions may be thought of as ontologically grounded, and completeness of explanation appears to demand that we do so. Now in the present context all that need be said is that it is plausible to regard Kant as intending to remain agnostic regarding the ontological underpinnings of transcendental conditions on the side of the subject, and consequently as not committing himself decisively either to an Ontological or to a Non-Ontological conception of philosophical explanation, a position which the relatively circumscribed or modest character of his philosophical project allows him to maintain: characterisation of the transcendental can remain relational and functional in Kant, its ontological status undetermined, because it is not taken as a foundation from which knowledge at the empirical level is to be derived. (ii) The second, to us less obvious but for Fichte and his contemporaries no less important, locus of ontological uncertainty in Kant surrounds his account of the “practical cognition” of God achieved through the postulates of pure practical reason. Depending on how one understands Kant’s ascription of objective reality from the practical point of view, the moral theology either reveals in pure practical reason a power of sheer cognitive insight into supersensible reality, or it collapses the very semantics of religious discourse into the terms of finite human autonomy. The profound ambiguity of this part of Kant’s system is reflected in the fact that his moral theology could both be received as a new foundation for Christian doctrine, as it was by the theologians at Tübingen of whom Schelling complained in acid terms to Hegel, and be taken, as it was by Friedrich Karl Forberg, as a general blueprint for metaphysical fictionalism (of the sort we now associate with Hans Vaihinger’s as-if philosophy). This instance of Kantian ambiguity allows itself to be explained in the same way as that which attaches to transcendental conditions: Kant’s view is, plausibly, that we do not need to know, for the purpose of orientating our reason towards religious ideas, whether their proper interpretation is Ontological or not. 11 Beiser, 2002, bk. I, ch. 9, sets out the issue clearly; see esp. pp. 174 ff. 12 This issue is well put in G. Martin, 1968, pp. 270-4, 278. (Martin suggests analogical conceptapplication, in addition to the un-/schematised distinction, as a way for Kant to account for his position.) 13 See Forberg, 1798. 6 The two loci of uncertainty are connected. The question of whether or not philosophical explanation must have an ontological terminus was precisely what Kant took to be at issue in his pre-Critical The Only Possible Basis for a Proof of the Existence of God (Beweisgrund), where he does affirm that sheer possibility must have an ontological ground − a conclusion which is reversed in the first Critique at the point where Kant declares that the Ideal of Pure Reason, the idea of a highest being that provides for the “sum-total of all possibilities,” can be taken by us only as an idea. Thus, if one thinks that genuine ontologically significant cognition is achieved through the practical postulates, then Kant’s Critical system may be viewed as having finally in its practical part rejoined the ontological order, of things in themselves, which transcendental explanation initially cut itself loose from. If, on the other hand, the practical cognition spoken of in connection with the practical postulates is not taken realistically, then this is not the result, and Kant’s system continues to allow itself to be read as ontologically agnostic. 2. Schulze. Gottlob Ernst Schulze, as one of the many early critics of Kantianism, is of especial importance in relation to Fichte, whose review of Schulze’s Aenesidemus shows how seriously he took Schulze’s criticisms, and who declared that grasping the questions that Schulze had posed is a condition for understanding the WL. Schulze put pressure on Kant at precisely the two points just mentioned, where Kant’s stand on the ontological commitment of the Critical system is uncertain, and he did so on one and the same basis. First, Schulze argues that Critical philosophy − more conspicuously in Reinhold, who has magnified certain feature of Kant, but also in Kant himself − makes appeal in its explication of objective experience to ontological items (things in themselves in general, and in particular the elements that compose what is called in Reinhold “the Faculty of Representation”), in violation of what he takes to be the defining Critical tenet, that there is no valid inference from necessities of representation to real existences. Second, Schulze argues that Kant’s attempt to supply belief in God with a moral warrant is abortive, because the practical act of taking on this belief can be performed only if its conditions of possible success are known to be met: that is, according to Schulze, only if theoretical reason has already established that the belief has a really existing object; so Kant, in running from the practical necessity of thought to a real existence, is once again violating the ground-rule of Critical method. Fichte’s response to Schulze appears to consist in at the very least a scaling down, perhaps a relinquishing altogether, of ontological commitment. Schulze’s objections, Fichte observes, reflect his assumption that the ego must have validity “in 14 A577-83/B605-611. 15 Fichte GA II, 3: 389, Z. 1-4. 16 Schulze, 1792, p. 132 (Eng. trans., p. 113): “For the Critique claims that the original determinations of the human mind are the real ground or source of the necessary synthetic judgements found in our knowledge; but it does this by inferring, from the fact that we can only think of the faculty of representation as the ground of these judgements, that the mind must be their ground in actual fact too.” 17 Schulze, 1792, Fünfter Brief, pp. 318-36. 7 itself,” whereas in fact its principles should hold only “for the ego itself:” what we should say is that “[t]he faculty of representation exists for the faculty of representation and through the faculty of representation“, a statement which allows itself to be read as an epistemologisation of the faculty, removing it from the province of ontological commitment. Regarding the moral theology, Schulze’s claim is that the “ought” in “I ought to believe in God” is valid only if I have theoretical knowledge that it is possible for me to so believe. But, Fichte supposes, this forgets, or misunderstands, the primacy of the practical which is also part of Kant’s Copernican revolution, and which makes “ought” the determinant of “can,” subordinating questions of ontology. When it is appreciated, Fichte argues, that the command to believe is the direct expression of a striving which in turn derives from the self-positing of the I, we see that belief in God just is a certain way of representing the object of our striving. The logic of Schulze’s criticisms, Fichte appears to affirm, is that transcendental philosophy must lose its ontological sub-structure. These moves are made, of course, not for the sake of saving Kant’s system in its original lettering, but with a more ambitious Kantianism, shaped by Reinhold, in view, and it is not hard to see why, given this new aim, Fichte should be expected to address and resolve the matter concerning ontology and philosophical explanation that Kant had left undecided: Fichte’s “absolutisation” of the transcendental, its assumption of a strongly foundational role, together with his aim of achieving a total unification of reason, make it unfeasible to persevere in Kantian agnosticism. With Fichte’s appreciation of Schulze’s skeptical objections factored in, Fichte is provided with very strong motivation for resolving Kant’s ambiguity in a Non-Ontological direction. 3. Jacobi. One further stimulus to Fichte bearing on the issue of ontological commitment comes from Jacobi, whose philosophical concerns, as much as those of Schulze, were internalised by Fichte. What might be expected, given Jacobi’s thesis of the primitive, unanalysable and foundational role of existential awareness, and his complaint of the ontological nihilism of Kant’s transcendental idealism, is an impetus to correct the alleged ontological deficit in Critical philosophy. I suggest that in a sense this does happen in Fichte, but in an indirect and complicated way, that reflects Fichte’s appreciation of another strand in Jacobi’s critique of philosophy. In addition to attacking philosophy for failing to supply valid proofs justifying our ordinary beliefs, and for trading in mere empty thought-forms, Jacobi argues that the very attempt at philosophical justification of ordinary consciousness is selfstultifying. The justification that philosophy aims to provide for beliefs belonging to ordinary consciousness must be unavailable, in some sense, to ordinary consciousness, else no philosophical justification would be needed. However, whatever it is, if anything, that philosophy can provide a justification of, cannot be 18 Fichte, 1794a, p. 71 [FW I, 16]. 19 Fichte, 1794a, p. 67 [FW I, 11]. 20 Fichte, 1794a, pp. 74-6 [FW I, 21-4]. 8 beliefs as held by ordinary consciousness, for these are held without the justification supplied by philosophy. Philosophical justification, if it comes at all, therefore comes too late: at most it bears on reflections, analogues or mere images of the beliefs present in natural consciousness. Jacobi accordingly embraces “the concept of an immediate certainty, which not only needs no proof, but excludes all proofs absolutely, and is simply and solely the representing itself agreeing with the thing being represented.” This concept of belief-immanent justification renders philosophical justification otiose, but without it ordinary consciousness can only be regarded in a skeptical light, as lacking all justification. Fichte would appear to take to heart Jacobi’s worry about the corrosive impact of philosophy on natural consciousness. His response may be put like this: While Jacobi has identified correctly the problem facing traditional attempts at justification of ordinary consciousness, Jacobi has too narrow a view of the range of options, for reasons which are directly related to his failure to appreciate what is distinctive of transcendental philosophy − namely, its insistence on the heterogeneity of transcendental and pre-transcendental forms of explanation. It is possible for philosophical grounds of ordinary beliefs to avoid undermining those beliefs as-held in ordinary consciousness, so long as they are situated at a level that is properly transcendental. And one way of establishing the discreteness of the transcendental level is to construe transcendental grounds Non-Ontologically. The ordinary standpoint conceives explanation ontologically, and to the extent that philosophical grounds are ontological grounds, ones that are missing from the purview of common sense, philosophical justification faces Jacobi’s objection. If, however, philosophical grounds are non-ontological, then to cite them is not to bring into the picture anything that is missing − by its own lights − from ordinary consciousness. And so philosophical grounds, when non-ontological, can fulfil their intended justificatory function. A sharp division of spheres, whereby ontological matters become exclusively the prerogative of ordinary, pre-philosophical consciousness, allows transcendental philosophy to claim that, precisely by not involving itself in ontological commitment, by offering only Non-Ontological grounds, it underwrites the ontological outlook of ordinary consciousness. It also addresses Jacobi’s complaint that Kantian philosophy leaves being out of the picture. If ontological claims are categorially inappropriate to transcendental explanation, then transcendental philosophy cannot be criticised as ontologically deficient − on the contrary, it can be claimed to keep being in the picture, precisely by locating it exclusively at the level of ordinary consciousness. In addition, the Non-Ontological turn gives Fichte the basis for answering Jacobi’s charge that philosophical systematicity leads inevitably to Spinozism: Fichte can grant this entailment in the specific case of any “dogmatic” philosophy that, like Spinoza’s, starts from being and confines itself to ontological explanation, but deny 21 Jacobi, 1785, p. 162 (Eng. trans., p. 230). 22 E.g. in 1797b, p. 93 [FW I, 508], Fichte endorses Jacobi’s view of what it means to prove something (specifically, here: appeal to immediate certainty is involved in the concept of proof). See also Fichte, 1801, p. 42 [FW II, 327] and pp. 45 ff. [FW II, 331 ff.], comparing the impact of earlier philosophy on common understanding with that of the WL. 9 that it is a necessary corollary of philosophical systematicity as such; a transcendental, Non-Ontological philosophical system may be anti-Spinozistic. The intention of relating the philosophical standpoint to the ordinary standpoint in such a way as to remove philosophical grounds from the categorial orbit of ordinary consciousness, is undoubtedly present in Fichte, and it is very plausible to think that it, in combination with the need to answer Schulze, led Fichte to appreciate what stood to be gained by construing transcendental explanation Non-Ontologically. The WL could accordingly be held to provide grounding explanations of ordinary consciousness without referring to any hidden reality with respect to which ordinary consciousness could be convicted of ignorance, and without carrying metaphysical implications that subvert ordinary belief. Whether, however, this is the whole story, or merely one of several, possibly competing considerations influencing Fichte, is what will be considered next. 4. Fichte on the status of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre In the course of his many attempts to clarify the status of the WL, Fichte shows himself to be engaged intensively with the question of its Ontological/NonOntological status. In this section I will discuss the principal themes bearing on the issue in writings of the Jena period and passages where Fichte addresses the issue directly. In section 5 the evidence of post-Jena writings will be added.