"The foundation of Fichte's system is intellectual intuition, pure thinking of itself, pure selfconsciousness, Ego=Ego, I am... For the philosopher, this pure consciousness originates because he abstracts in his thinking from all the extraneous things... and holds on only to the connection of subject and object. In empirical intuition, subject and object are opposites; the philosopher apprehends the activity of intuiting, he intuits intuiting, and thus conceives it as an identity."

Here it is folks, the πρῶτον ψεῦδος of every rubbish Fichte interpretation. Hegel thinks the absolute of the 94/95 Foundation is the constructed empirical intuition when it is actually Reason as such. This is a grave mistake which spoils his entire "refutation". Note, too, that he thinks the 'object' of the subject-object is the not-I, when it is in fact the real, objective I. The not-I has no standing in Fichte's system, it is something produced in response to limitation. Hegel sees the second and third foundational principles and thinks they are acts 'emanating' from the 'pure I' when they are actually antinomies to be analyzed. Fichte does not even refer to them in his later presentations - they are merely an accident of the form of the first, published Wissenschaftslehre, in which Fichte is emulating Reinhold. Note, too, that he considers the subject-object to be an activity of thinking even though Fichte understands that thinking is not primary. The first principle is a cipher=0, as Fichte says in Part 3 - we can't even think it. And the principle of empirical consciousness is, not thinking, but the will, the real-ideal. Another serious blooper.

"Philosophy is to suspend pure consciousness as concept. When it is placed in opposition to empirical consciousness, intellectual intuition, the pure thinking of itself, appears as concept, that is to say, it appears as an abstraction from the whole manifold, from all inequality of subject and object."

Pure consciousness is not an abstraction, it is an end. I can't believe that (some, not all) scholars use this text, and others like it, to inform their reading of Fichte when it's fundamentally wrong on the most important points right from the start.

>>24518286 (OP)
I gave you a chance to catch me preconscious and my statement would have been empirical since I know you would've caught me. You've been in your natural state too long. You seem to think I know something. I would've even let you do the sequence to me. You're time in the natural state has likely granted you some blending in capacity or something. You seem to think some figment of your ego will delay the inevitable. The ancient Mahayana hunted tirthika on non-ego.

"Only in real opposition can the Absolute posit itself in the form of the subject or of the object; and only then can there be a transition of subject into object or or object into subject in their essence: the subject can become objective to itself because it is originally objective, that is, because the object itself is subject-object, or the object can become subjective because originally it is just subject-object. Both subject and object are subject-object. This is just what their true identity consists in, and so does the true opposition they are capable of. When they are not both subject-object, the opposition is merely ideal and the principle of identity is formal. Where the identity is formal and the opposition is ideal, nothing more than an incomplete synthesis is possible. Or in other words, the identity, insofar as it synthesizes the opposites, is itself just a quantum, and the difference is qualitative, in the fashion of the categories where the first, for example, reality, is posited in the third, and so is the second, but only quantitatively. On the other hand, if the opposition is real, it is merely quantitative. The principle is simultaneously ideal and real, it is the only quality; and the absolute, which reconstructs itself out of the quantitative difference, is not a quantum, but totality."

For Fichte there actually is no opposition between "the subject" or "the object" to be suspended in the first place. This is precisely the advantage of his system. From the standpoint of the transcendental philosopher there is no transition from objective to subjective or vice versa, though he explains the appearance of such a transition by the discursiveness of the mind and the form of inner intuition. Hegel is here faulting Fichte for failing to solve a problem which, for Fichte, does not exist. Still it's worth asking - given Fichte's monism, could there be a shadow system which would proceed, like Schelling's naturphilosophie, from the not-I to the I? No. Even if you posit nature as purposive and substantial, intelligence would be contingent. You could at best prove (empirically, not philosophically) that nature has the potency to produce life. Philosophically, you could only say that nature has the potency to produce organization in general, and this only because you've already assumed a formative drive on empirical grounds! Reason is the necessary element and you can't deduce the necessary from the contingent, or conjure up unity from a manifold if the unity isn't there to begin with. Hegel is attempting to eliminate any relation of priority - because priority would spoil the perfectly balanced Absolute. He's actually destroying the entire universe. Fichte's is a philosophy of dynamic tension, a philosophy of life. Schelling/Hegel's is like some disgusting hippy soup. (cont'd)

>>24518383
(cont'd)
Here again we see Hegel thinking that Fichte's Absolute is the indifference point of nature and consciousness. I already addressed that above. The qualitative opposition of the I and the not-I follows from the principle of causality, it has nothing to do with the 'ideality' of Fichte's first principle, and without causality we would not be able to act - the logical derivation is too complicated to summarize here but tl;dr without causality there would be no way to distinguish the not-I from the I. (In the 74/75, causality is of course 'reversed' as the causality of the not-I on the I because Fichte is concerned with cognition alone). If, as Hegel thinks, the Absolute is the indifference of nature and consciousness, then as he says the opposition would be merely/purely quantitative (think of a 'transcendental intuition' of a line and all its points that becomes posited in reflection as line and points), and for this very reason it would be merely ideal. See how he crows here that his Absolute has obliterated all differences without realizing that the obliteration of difference is the obliteration of life.

didn't this Fichteanon get BTFO'd in the last thread as a nihilistic pseud? like this is all just a comfy reading comprehension challenge or somethin lol

>>24518394
No, I simply pointed out that studying philosophy/speculation doesn't make you a wise person, that wisdom comes from life, not philosophy. Then I let myself get into this stupid back-and-forth with some idiot who thought that Aristotle's Sophia is, not a science of first principles (which is exactly how he defines it), but 'Wisdom' in the ordinary sense of the term. I don't care if you think I'm a pseud. I'm sure you don't know enough about idealism to judge the posts I just wrote, but write a post about philosophy worth reading and I'd be happy to read it.

"It follows from the ideality of the opposite factors (viz. the 1st and 2nd principles) that they are nothing apart from the synthetic activity; only the latter posits them and their being opposite, and the opposition is used only for the purpose of philosophical construction in order to make the synthetic faculty understandable. Productive imagination would be absolute identity itself, absolute identity represented as activity which, simply by positing the product, the boundary, posits at the same time the opposites as the bounding agents. It would only be valid to conceive the imagination as a synthetic faculty conditioned by opposites from the standpoint of reflection, which begins from the opposites and conceives intuition only as their union. But, in order to characterize this view as a subjective one pertaining to reflection, philosophical reflection would simultaneously have to establish the transcendental standpoint by recognizing that with respect to the absolute identity those absolutely opposed activities are nothing but ideal factors, thoroughly relative identities. In the absolute identity empirical consciousness is no less suspended than its antithesis, pure consciousness, which, as abstraction from the empirical, has an antithesis in it. It is only in this sense that the Ego is the transcendental center of both opposed activities and indifferent toward both. Their absolute opposition is significant only with respect to their ideality."

First, Fichte understood the circularity of the a priori and the a posteriori. You absolutely could start with the third principle and proceed to the first - this is exactly what he does in the Wissenschaftslehre Nova Methodo. Here, again, Hegel is sperging out because Fichte hasn't arrived at the profound conclusion that things can only be opposed to each other if they are in some sense the same. Of course Fichte's principles are interdependent, this holds of the principles of literally any science, including Schelling's identity system. The main difference is that Schelling arbitrary posits a balance of the subjective and objective subject-objects and then postulates an Absolute above them both. This magic Absolute, the incredibly deep and insightful thought that there must be a logical sense in which things are the same in their differentness, is supposed to be the great advantage of Schelling over Fichte. (cont'd)

>>24518473
Now as to productive imagination - this is another point where Hegel's devotion to Schelling prevents him from understanding Fichte. The imagination is not "absolute identity represented as activity", it's essentially an activity that synthesizes (or "hovers" over) a manifold. At every moment you make a decision; this decision is something you have selected (by the understanding) from a manifold of possibilities extending through space and time. The synthesis of possibilities is the original sense of imagination. Hegel thinks the imagination is part of the 'theoretical faculty' - again, he got filtered. The noumenal activity in the 'practical' portion of the Foundation is productive imagination. This production is 'checked' by the understanding, whether consciously in action, or preconsciously by the reflective drive, and then you have the reproductive imagination, the reflection on feeling and the reflection on reflection, etc. The imagination is 'productive' insofar as every determinate limitation depends on something that was already produced by the imagination in the manifold. (And here there's obviously a cicle, 'which comes first?', that's a great question, but beyond this post). The point is Hegel doesn't know what the he's talking about. He's attacking a strawman Fichte read through the light of Schelling.

The imagination is 'synthetic' and 'conditioned by opposites' not in the sense that it is 'conditioned by I and not-I', but it is conditioned by the understanding, and conditions the understanding in turn. Of course this all much too 'reflective' for a Schellingian! We must say that the imagination is the understanding, and is not the understanding, and is the identity of the identity and difference. This is ofc exactly what Hegel is saying when he says 'philosophical reflection would have to establish the transcendental standpoint' etc. In fact, we already have said this impliciter because it's basic logic. Literally any synthesis exhibits Schelling's "profound" identity principle. The identityphilosophy is the worst of idealism - reified logic, pretentiously expanded into a principle of reality, and hidden in the idealist argot, such that most people who can read it are already brainwashed, and you can accuse any outsider of misunderstanding you. Fichte is not like this - his writing is rather more esoteric than Schelling or Hegel, but he's not a charlatan.

(nb: these criticisms only apply to babby Hegel, when he was a Schellingian).

>>24518473
>You absolutely could start with the third principle and proceed to the first
Not only that but even within the first principle of the 74/75 he starts with the I as concept, then the I as Tathandlung, and only then pure consciousness. Even there he proceeds a posteriori.

Hegel's criticisms of Fichte's Ethics are maybe the worst of the lot. In this text, more than any other of his published works, it is clear that there is no opposition between the I and nature, that the I and nature are one. But Hegel ignores those passages because they contradict his thesis that Fichte is some vicious autist who doesn't understand nature. He only comes close to addressing the issue head on at its weakest point, aesthetics (Fichte was too autistic to really care about art lol), and then he treats it as an aberration.

"Through [Fichte's] aesthetic faculty we acknowledge a true union of the productive activity of the intelligence with the product that appears to it as given, of the Ego that posits itself as infinite with the Ego that posits itself as finite, or rather, a union of intelligence with nature, where, precisely for the sake of this possible union, nature has another side than that of being a product of intelligence. The acknowledgment of the aesthetic union of producing and product is something quite different from the positing of the absolute ought, the absolute striving, and the infinite progress. For these latter are concepts, which, as soon as this highest union is acknowledged, announce themselves to be antitheses or only the syntheses of subordinate spheres, which are therefore in need of a higher synthesis."

1.) The "ego that posits itself as infinite" is not intelligence. Fichte discusses the finitude of the intellect and its relation to the real I at length in this very work, not to mention in the Foundation. Do I need to repeat that the 'infinite ego' is Reason as such or in general?
2.) Of course nature has "another side" than that of being a "product of intelligence" - this is the side of life, the real life that Fichte is defending. Even in On the Concept (1794) he's talking about the independence and freedom of the not-I. But this is unintelligible for someone with Hegel's preconceptions about philosophy in general and Fichte in particular.
3) The absolute ought, the striving, the infinite progress, are not 'failed syntheses' of the I and nature. This passage, and many others like it, should have led Hegel to wonder if he had been misreading Fichte all along. But of course he barrels ahead.

"The necessary viewpoint of Fichte's Ethics, far from being aesthetic, is precisely the one that reveals distorted, fear-ridden, oppressed forms, or ugliness."

Yes, telling people to do the right thing is distorted, fear-ridden, oppressed, and ugly. That's your Schellingian hippy ethos for you. Instead we should have a sort of synthesis that allows you to steal your friends wives and take opium, like Schelling did.

"When limitation by the common will is raised to the status of law and fixed as a concept, true freedom, the possibility of suspending a determinate connection, is nullified. The living connection can no longer be indeterminate, so it is no longer rational but absolutely determined and made fast by intellect. Life has given itself up to servitude. Reflection dominates it and has gained the victory over Reason. The state of indigence and necessity is asserted to be natural law. The assertion does not, of course, carry any implication that the highest goal would be the suspension of this state and the construction through Reason of an organization of life free from all bondage to the concept, an organization that takes the place of this non-rational community of the intellect."

Fucking seriously? Are you joking me right now? Fichte was as much of an idealist-communist as anyone. He writes about this in his Ethics, but Hegel ignores this (or forgets it) because it wouldn't suit his thesis. The state sketched in the Foundation of Natural Right is only meant as transitional; it's supposed to be the most perfect state we could have *in the current age*, the Age of Consummate Sinfulness. It's a state that maximizes individual liberty, the thinking being that liberty will eventually lead to communism.

>>24518349
>You seem to think I know something.
I definitely do not think that.

>OP: "4chan's zoomer faggots are too stupid to understand authors like I do, and I won't deign to share my thoughts with them!"
>*treats 4chan like a blog*

>>24518636
Sometimes, someone comes along and we can have a conversation. I had an ongoing conversation with a Heidegger guy for days about Fichte. Also, a couple of weeks ago, some anon said he wanted to see my thoughts on the Differenzschrift. I will keep bumping the thread for the next few days so that at least he sees it.
>zoomer faggots too stupid to understand authors
Unfortunately, yes. Exceedingly few people here can read philosophy. One sort of side-benefit of idealism is that it's auto-filtering - pseuds are completely locked out from the conversation by the very nature of the texts. All you can do is hurl random insults and seethe and rage.
>I won't deign to share my thoughts with them!"
I just shared a bunch of thoughts with you if you want to read them.

Every time I start these threads I make all these solid effortposts and people like you want to take me down. Why? Just say something interesting, for God's sake. You're buttblasted that there's anyone on this board with more than a superficial interest in philosophy so you want to attack me and destroy me. It didn't work on Fichte and it won't work on me.

How about you type less and say more OP?

>>24518659
Air and light a priori, just think of it! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Come on, laugh along with us! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Air and light a priori: tarte à la crème, ha ha ha! Air and light a priori! Tarte à la crème, ha ha ha! Air and light a priori! Tarte à la crème! Ha ha ha!

>>24518614
>not knowing right from wrong on the moral question of whether it is worthwhile to take change from the take a penny leave a penny tray when I don't need it all I could do was test it and observe which cashiers expressed disapproval. I kept a record and now take the change from the stores where the cashiers seem indifferent, this settled the moral problem.

>my job, affluence, and education were all the result of my material conditions

>I refuted Descartes by stubbing my toe, clearly there is an external world.

>I never learned anything, all animals simply process sensory data from the environment which can only then be replicated. With a thermometer and a microwave the temperature cheese melts at is the temperature it always melts at.

>>24518716
Hegel actually has a whole bit in this book about why ordinary people “hate” speculation, maybe I’ll transcribe it later.

>>24518739
>philosophy is stupid. Real life is real. Why would you think about it more than that?
See this is better than back in the day when I’d try to talk about the Analytics. There are simply 0 pseuds who can try to get in an argument about Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel. All you get is generic trolling, anti-intellectualism, etc

>>24518910
People bitch at you because you're a pompous ass who brings your sour asshole attitude to every thread for months and months. Half the time I catch your posts it'll be bitching about arguments you had months ago, or accusing every anon of being this or that anon you argued with like a paranoid schizo, or taking innocuous shit and blowing it up into fullblown rants where you'll shove words and positions in their mouths. You're an unsociable asshole with a persecution complex, big shocker no one gives a shit about your talents.

>>24518659
>I will keep bumping the thread for the next few days so that at least he sees it.
I saw it. I also saw that you treat philosophy like a game, and I don't buy your reading of sophia, so I don't feel that motivated to post anymore.

WHERE TF IS THE ESOTERIC KANT GUY?

>>24519095
You lie, this anon came after that fight. I obviously take philosophy fairly seriously. You’re still fixated on this dispute from like six weeks ago. Philosophy is an end in itself, like gardening; it does often speak of things with real life relevance (ethics, or as in the passage above communism) but studying philosophy won’t make you a good person or reform society. Very simple and true point. Fichte says this in the Sun Clear statement. Aristotle does not say this in so many words - he saw virtue as a whole, so the ideal philosopher would be an all around mensch. Even so he thinks ethical behavior is not acquired by science. You think I’m lying, read NE. It’s unbelievable that you’re this upset over such a simple issue. “He’s a… nihilist! He thinks philosophy is a game man!” If that’s what you get from this post you are beyond help.

>>24519137
I'm literally the same guy.

>>24519137
>studying philosophy won’t make you a good person or reform society.
Bro read Fichte more. Read section 6 of Sun Clear statement

>Whenever the Science of Know ledge shall have been understood and accepted, the science of state government and all other sciences will cease to be a blind groping about and experimentalizing. That Science will become a science of fixed rules and principles; for these principles the Science of Knowledge establishes. True, it cannot infuse those who govern with the good will or the courage to carry out its principles; but it can at least take away from them the excuse that it is not their fault if human affairs are in a wretched condition. Every one who possesses that science will be able to tell them what they must do in order to improve human affairs; and if they still persist in not doing it, they will stand publicly convicted of lacking good intentions. It will therefore be possible from that moment to bring human affairs into such a condition, that it shall not only be easily possible, but almost necessary, for men to be orderly and honest citizens.

>>24518286 (OP)
Not-I is already contained within the I in Hegel's system, that's the point of some of the most famous parts of Phenomenology of Spirit. I hope you somehow didn't know about the Lord/Bondsman dialectic because otherwise you're just retarded.

>>24519143
You don’t “buy” my account of Sophia? It isn’t “my” account, it’s Aristotle’s. Please read NE book 6, especially section 7. He actively denies that Sophia is prudence, virtue (except insofar as it is itself a speculative “excellence” ofc), political skill, or anything like that. He says exactly what I’ve been saying, which you take to be my personal “take”. “Wisdom must plainly be the most finished of the forms of knowledge” - episteme, a technical term. Theoretical science. “Wisdom must be comprehension” (noesis, by which we grasp the immediate premises) “combined with knowledge of the highest objects” (the separated substances, more broadly metaphysics in general). “The state of mind concerned with man’s own interests” (prudence etc) “is not to be called Sophia, or there will be many wisdoms”. Etc. Read it right now please. So you see why I call you guys pseuds, it’s because most of you simply are pseuds. You have opinion but no knowledge, then when I tell you something true, you just refuse to believe me because you don’t like it.

>>24519165
Right, he wants the ministers to know his system. Nearby in that same section he explains what knowing his system will actually do - it strengthens the mind by training you in abstraction; it’s an antidote to skepticism about morality; etc. I don’t deny that. In the sun clear statement he also goes on a long rant about how his system does not teach practical wisdom, that it’s only a reflection on life, and that philosophers who think philosophy is a sort of self help are charlatans. I’m not at a desktop and I can’t get it but it’s there.

>>24519179
I buy the bifurcated tension in NE, that's an entry-tier tension. I do not buy that there is no way of reunifying, or at least reconciling, the two. And I definitely do not buy the way you tried to spin sophia as mere art in Metaphysics Alpha. That does grave violence to the text. Nor do I buy the idea that phronesis and sophia are fundamentally different (practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom are just fine to me, IMO). And the idea that sophia isn't a virtue is just crazy to me. Aristotle holds sophia-contemplation (tied with phronesis-politics) as the highest pursuit that man can strive for (because it is the province of the gods).

>>24519137
You completely misunderstand Fichte. The whole point of Fichte is to become a super saiyan of the mind: to develop a science of mental advancement beyond normie comprehension--a science of artifical mental evolution beyond the natural limits--in order to advance the race of man into a new order of being.

>>24519186
Das zeigt wieder mal, dass du keine Ahnung hast.

>>24519137
A philosophy that fails to make you a better person or help you live a better life is a defective philosophy. The Good and the True are Being as know in different aspects. The idea that one can divorce the practical from the theoretical is a grave error. It assumes that the nous can become unclouded with no change in the orientation of the will. Yet theoria is the fruit of praxis. One will fail in attaining knowledge, gnosis, unless one's appetites and passions are properly oriented by and to logos. If we desire other things more than Goodness and Truth themselves then we will subvert our attempts to reach those whenever doing so satisfies those corrupted loves. Only the attainment of blessed dispassion, the orientation and formation of the concupiscible and irascible appetites, allows one the unity to engage in theoria and the attainment of gnosis.

As Origen says, "Good is one; many are
the base. Truth is one; many are the false. True righteousness is one; many are the states that act it as a part. God’s wisdom is one; many are the wisdoms of this age and of the rulers of this age which come to nought. The word of God is one, but many are the words alien to God."

Ultimately, the love of wisdom must be drawn on by the love of Beauty then, hence, the Philokalia. As Saint Paul says:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

>>24518910
Fichte can take issue with all of those statements. The first statement is one he can perform an active intelligence refutation on. The second is one he might only be inclined to respond to if he has already made the switch. The third was the easiest refutation for Fichte to perform and can also demonstrate the not I from the other party. The last statement offers Fichte options, he can perform his own external causality refutation, he can perform a preconscious response, or he can make an active intelligence refutation.

>It doesn't sound like you have been in your natural state for too long.

Post movement agreements seem to indicate that a Fichtean that has been in it for too long has simply become too isolated and can be brought back to the community or can choose alternatives with no loss to Fichte's core system.

>>24518890
What makes you think I care what Hegel thinks? Do you have some kind of prior knowledge?