Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/451

SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 429 principle of unity, without which the doctrine of knowledge would lack the systematic form essential to science, while Beck had interpreted the spirit of the Kantian philosophy in an idealistic sense, and Jacobi had demanded the elimina- tion of the thing in itself, all these desires combined are fulfilled in Fichte's doctrine, and at the same time the results of the Critique of Reason are given that evidence which ^nesidemus-Schulze had missed in them. As an answer to the question, " How is knowledge brought about?" (as well the knowledge of common sense as that given in the particular sciences), ** how is experience possi- ble?", and as a construction of common consciousness as this manifests itself in life and in the particular sciences, Fichteanism adopts the name Science of Knowledge, being distinguished from the particular sciences by the fact that they discuss the voluntary, and it the necessary, representa- tions or actions of the spirit. (The representation of a triangle or a circle is a free one, it may be omitted ; the representation of space in general is a necessary one, from which it is impossible for us to abstract.) How does intelligence come to have sensations, to intuit space and time, and to form just such categories (thing and property, cause and effect, and not others quite different)? While Kant correctly described these functions of the intuit- ing and thinking spirit, and showed them actual, they must further be proven, be shown necessary or deduced. Deduced whence? From the "deed-acts" (That/land- lungen)o{ the ego which lie at the basis of all consciousness, and the highest of which are formulated in three principles, (b) The Three Principles. — At the portal of the Science of Knowledge we are met not by an assertion, but by a sum- mons — a summons to self-contemplation. Think anything whatever and observ e what thou dost , and of necessity must do, in thinking. Thou wilt discover that thou dost never think an object without thinking thyself therewith, that it is absolutely impossible for thee to abstract from thine ego. And second, consider what thou dost when thou dost think thine " ego." This means to affirm or posit one's self, to be a subject-object. The nature of self-consciousness is the identity of the representing [subject] and the represented