• Fichte's philosophy was a speculative de velopment of certain aspects of Kant's doctrines. It can best be understood when considered an audacious attempt to simplify the 'Critique of Pure Reason' in the light of the (Critique of Practical Reason.' Fichte's genius was ethical, as we have already pointed out, and he instinc tively took the active ego of the. second Critique as his point of departure. For a proper ap preciation of the importance of this remodeling and speculative interpretation of Kantianism, a brief analysis of the structure of the latter philosophy is necessary. Kant began his con structive thinking in an attempt to meet Hume's atomistic sensationalism. His problem was to determine how an assumed manifold of sense could be organized into the world of law and order with which science is acquainted. Only, Kant argued by the agency of a synthetic ego working through a priori forms such as space, time, substance, causality, etc., which are contributed by the mind. These forms were painstakingly enumerated and grouped together by him, but he was unable to deduce them from the ego or relate them to it in a satisfactory way. Moreover, he granted the existence of things-in-themselves, outside of experience and unknown, yet productive of the manifold of sense which the mind had to weave into an ordered phenomenal realm. Fichte believed that Kant had not been critical enough of his as sumptions and had consequently failed to pro duce the harmonious system which a deeper insight could yield. His double clue was to re ject the thing-in-itself and so to interpret the active ego as to make it the source of the struc ture of experience. The result of this double reform was the speculative type of ethical ideal ism which appears in the
ego posits a limited ego in opposition to a limited non-ego. These three principles are fundamental for Fichte and constitute together an example of his antithetical method.
In order to bring out the speculative, or ap rioristic, tone of his thinking, it may be well to give an example of that deduction of the forms of the mind which he put in the place of Kant's scholastic enumeration. The form of time arises when the different acts of the ego occur in such a manner as to be dependent on each other in a definite order. As Wading points out, Fichte did not have a rich enough psychology at his disposal and he was tempted into arbitrary applications of his principles and method.
Two questions of extreme significance for the interpretation of Fichte's philosophy re main: What is the relation of the limited em pirical ego to the infinite ego? Why does the ego posit a non-ego? In answer to the first question it is best to admit that Fichte assumes an infinite ego which works within us and which is more than we are. Had he a right to call this something an ego? It seems that, in his later years, mysticism more and more triumphed and he drifted toward Spinoza, the inspirer of his earliest thinking. The answer to the second question brings the ethical bias of his system into relief. The ego limits itself by the non-ego in order that it may have a field of opposition against which it may struggle and so develop itself. We may connect with this idea the ethical law which he formulates some what as follows: Every particular action must form a part of a series which leads me to com plete spiritual freedom.
Fichte's ethics may be characterized as a vitalizing of the rather formal teaching of Kant. Duty is grounded upon the capacity for self-reliant freedom which man possesses; it is never rightly that which is urged upon the in dividual by authority and so from the outside. True freedom is an achievement which creates or realizes itself. Fichte succeeds in giving this outlook a social setting which looks to the co operation of personalities as the goal. In this connection, it is of interest to note that his book geschlossene Handelsstaat' (The Exclu sive Industrial State') is one of the first in which what is now state socialism was advocated. No international trade is to be per mitted in order that the internal growth of each nation may take a natural course. The aim of the state should be to assign to every individual the means to culture and genuine freedom.
Werke, ) edited by his son J. H. Fichte (8 vols., Berlin 1845 46) • also Werke (3 vols., Bonn 1834-35); Fichte's (Popular Works' (tr. by W. Smith, 4th ed., London 1889) ; Kroeger, A. F., The Science of Knowledge' (transla tions of the (Grundlage der gesammten \Nis senschaftslehre ; des Eigenthum lichen der Wissenschaftslehre,' etc., London 1889) ; The Science of Rights' (id. 1889). The following are important critical works: Adam son, 'Fichte (London 1:4:1) • Everett, C. C., Science of Knowledge' (Chicago 1884) ; Weber, M., (Fichtes Sozialismus and sein Verhaltnis zur Marx'schen Doctrin' (1900). Consult also HOffding, of Modern Philosophy.'