



FICHTE, JOHANN GOTTLIER. 



KICINO, MARSILIO. 



Feuerbacu WM a man of polite acquirement* u well u of pro- 

 frttional cuiinen.-e. The elegant diction of hii production* lias 

 powerfully coutributed to improTe the style of recent German writer* 

 on Uw. In thi* respect his 'Exposition of remarkable Criminal 

 Cast*, founded upon document*,' mtriU particular mention. Pro- 

 viouily to Feuerbach's time all similar essays were heavy and unin- 

 teresting, in consequence of all tha document* being accumulated 

 in their original uncouth form, without order or regard to the really 

 intereating feature* of the cass, namely, the development of psycho- 

 logical oonaideraiiou. It wai he who first united to professional 

 soundness of exposition 'elegant and convincing diction. This work, 

 which U written with true poetical talent, is a remarkable specimen 

 of investigation into tha human heart, rendered still more striking by 

 the most delicate and humane estimation of actions ; it may be con- 

 sidered at once a model of exhaustive inquiry and a book of morals. 

 In bold and vif id language he has promulgated the doctrine that it 

 is impossible perfectly to harmonise the inflexible universality of law 

 with individual culpability, and that it therefore is an unavoidable 

 nsrsnitj. in particular cases, to modifiy and soften the sentence of 

 the Uw by the prerogative of the sovereign. 



FICHTE, JOHAXX GOTTLIEB, was born in Upper Lusatia in 

 After receiving a school education, he studied at the univer- 

 sities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wiirtemberg. He afterwards became 

 acquainted with Kant and Pestaloczi; and in 1792 attracted general 

 attention by his ' Versuch einer Critik aller Offenbarung ' (' Attempt at 

 a Critique of all Revelation '), on account of which he was made pro- 

 fessor of philosophy at Jena. Here he began to promulgate the 

 system of philosophy which is known under the name of ' Wisseu- 

 sehaftalehre ' (' Doctrine of Science '). A treatise on Faith and Provi- 

 dence which he wrote at Jena having brought upcta him the suspicion 

 of irreligion, he retired to Prussia, and after living for some time at 

 Berlin, removed to Erlangen, where he was appointed professor of 

 philosophy, with leave to visit Prussia in the winter time. 



The character of Fichte has always been held in high esteem. His 

 ' Discourses to the German People' during the French invasion are 

 justly valued, and he U said to have died, as he always lived, for a good 

 cause. During his residence at Berlin in the year 18 14, he urged his 

 wife to visit the i-ick in the military hospital of that city ; in conse- 

 quence of which she caught a fever, from which she recovered, but 

 communicated it to her husband. Fichte died at Berlin in 1314, 

 Iraving a con, Immanuel Hermann, who became a professor at Bonn, 

 and acquired considerable distinction as a writer and teacher of 

 philosophy. 



Fichte's ' Wissenschsfulehre' grew out of the philosophy of Kant, 

 of whom he at first considered himself a mere disciple. Kant had 

 dogmatically assumed the school logic as the foundation of his system ; 

 the forms of propositions, as affirmative, negative, &c., had supplied 

 him with his table of categories, and he never thought that any one 

 would a-k for the origin of these forms themselves. According to the 

 system of Kant, time and space have no existence exterior to the 

 mind, but are merely the forms in which it discerns objects, and 

 which only abide in itself. An intuition (or immediate contemplation) 

 was divided into matter or form : thus in a red surface, the mere 

 colour red was called the matter of the Intuition, and tha extension 

 its form. The first was held to be a manifestation of something 

 external to ourselves ; the latter as merely dwelling in our own minds. 

 This was Kant's theory of sensation (' Transcendentale ^Esthetik') and 

 it is followed by an investigation of the laws of the understanding. 

 These laws be worked out from the table of categories, which, as 

 before said, was constructed from the logical form of propositions. 

 Thus, propositions are divided into universal, particular, and singular. 

 Hence the objects of propositions considered in thi* light, are ' all,' 

 'many,' or 'one,' or may be said to come under the categories of 

 4 totality,' ' multiplicity,' and ' unity.' In the same manner, from the 

 divisions of propositions into affirmative, negative, and infinite, Kant 

 got the categoric* of ' reality,' ' negation, 1 and ' limitation,' and from 

 the division into otegorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, the cate- 

 gories of 'substance and accident' 'cause and effect ' 'action and 

 reaction.' A fourth series of categories obtained from the modal divi- 

 sion are ' necessity,' 'actuality,' 'possibility;' and at we cannot think 

 of objects at all except under the forms expressed by these proposi- 

 tion, U follows that all objects of thought must come under the 

 categories. From this Kant concludes, that as time and space are the 

 forms of our intuition, so are ' cause and effect,' Ac., the forms of our 

 thought, having likewi-e no exUtenoa without our own minds ; and that 

 when we say the Uw of cause and effect is a Uw of nature, no more is 

 oumryed than that the Uw of cause and effect U that under which we 

 are compelled to observe nature, having nothing to do with external 

 things themselves. Kant compares his own system to that of Coper- 

 ions, observing that the Utter mokes the planets move round the sun, 

 aad that he in th* same manner puts the mind in the centre, and makes 

 the objeoU adapt themselves to the forms of the mind, instead of the 

 mio.l f jll.,win th* Uws of the objects. Hence, according to his view, 

 we an altngtther without knowledge of things in themselves, the ex- 

 tended form in which they appear being merely in our own mind, and 

 likewise the Uws by which we suppose they ars regulated. We merely 

 contemplate various phenomena, which are the exponents of things 

 we cannot know anything about, and to which those very phenomena 



do not bear tha slightest resemblance. This is not intended as a 

 complete view of the system of Kant, but only a sketch of so much 

 of it as will serve to render the account of Fichte intelligible. 



Various contemporaries had found it strange that two regions so 

 heterogeneous as those of mind and things in themselves (' dinge an 

 sich') should at th* same time be so admirably adapted to each other, 

 that the Utter should accommodate themselves to all the forms of the 

 former; and at the same time, the taking of a common book of logic, 

 assuming all its dicta as self-evident axioms, seemed rather a su . rucUl 

 proceeding. The sceptical adversaries challenged the KantUts to prove 

 that there was a necessary connection between the/orm and the 

 of knowledge. 



Aroused by these attacks, Fichte, as a disciple of Kant, began to 

 inquire what was the absolute form of knowledge, and at the s imo 

 time what lay at the foundation of logic, the mere assumption of which, 

 as a self-evident science, did not satisfy him. He taw that all logic 

 depended on the propositions of identity and contradiction. ' A ii A,' 

 and ' Nou-.V is not A.' He then asked himself what is meant by ' A 

 is A ;' does it imply that A exists ? No, because the proposition ' A 

 centaur is a centaur' is a true one, though the centaur does not exist 

 at all. 'AlsA'means no more than 'If A is given, it is A ;' and A 

 is not A, provided it U not given (' gezetzt,' posited). ' Given ' implies 

 ' given to some conscious being ; ' and hence we find that the truth even 

 of an identical proposition depends on the being of an I or Ego (' das 

 Ich '). The proposition 'All A' is converted into ' Ego is Ego ;' and 

 this is found to depend on no condition, as Ego gives itself, and its 

 very essence consists in its giving itself. From this proposition is 

 obtained the category of reality : reality is that which is given to the 

 K,-o. In like manner 'Non-A is not A' is converted into Non ' 

 not Ego ;' and from this proposition is obtained the category of nega- 

 tion. Then a question arises, ' How can Ego posit Non-Ego ( ' It is 

 assumed as an axiom that everything in Ego is posited by itself; how 

 then can it posit a Non-Ego, which seems au act of self-destruction ? 

 It then turns out Ego posits itself, as determined by Non- Ego. An 

 undetermined being is nothing ; determination implies limitation, and 

 hence Ego, by positing itself as a determined being, at the same time 

 posits Non-Ejo. The Ego is conceived at first as an unimpeded 

 activity ; it meets with a shock (' onstosa'), which causes it to perform 

 an act of reflection, and from this moment it begins to construct a 

 world without itself. It feels itself confined by certain sensations, and 

 hence imagines there must be a being external to itself supporting 

 these sensations. At the same time the very consciousness of confine- 

 ment implies a consciousness of the capability of freedom ; for no 

 being can be aware of a curb that is not striving against it. Freedom 

 manifests itself in the power of directing the attention to some objects 

 to the exclusion of others, or in the imagination of such as are absent. 

 Thus a child who sees its first object cannot divert its attention from 

 that object and think of another ; it is completely curbed by the pre- 

 sent ; while a person who has seen a variety can at pleasure call forth 

 a distant object, and close his mind's eye upon those immediately before 

 him. This is a state of comparative freedom. It is impossible, in this 

 limited space, to follow the ' Wisaenschaftslehre' through all its rami- 

 fications ; but what is given above will serve to convey an idea of tho 

 principle. Fichte's adversaries accused him of Nihilism and Atheism, 

 and seem to have imagined that he thought he had constructed the 

 whole universe. These objections are answered by his son, in an excel- 

 1 nt little book, entitled ' Beytnige zur Characteriatik der ncucrn 

 Philosophic,' iu which he shows that the very being of tho Ego prove* 

 its own unity, and that consequently his father's doctrine necessarily 

 leads to the assumption of the ' absolute,' or God, a being that u 

 infinite. In a tract called ' Die Wiesenschaftslehrt) in ihrem allge- 

 meinen Cmrisse dargestellt' (Berlin, 1810), the elder Fichte says plainly 

 that God is the only true being, and thus banishes oil suspicion of 

 Atheism. His moral doctrines involve a contempt for nature, which 

 he regards as a mere curb over which freedom should triumph ; and 

 hence he is averse to all speculative physics, considering nature as the 

 absolutely 'given' of which there can be no knowledge, and making 

 all reality proceed from the ' knower,' he denies reality to the former. 

 These opinions have led the philosophers of nature (' Natur-Philoao- 

 phen') to accuse him of one-sidcdncss. His son attributes tbis ten- 

 dency to tho influence of the doctrines of Kant, which always treated 

 nature as a mere appearance (' Erscheiuuug'), and from which Fichte 

 never became absolutely free. 



It is hardly to be expected that the ' Wisseuschaftelehro ' will be 

 rendered perfectly intelligible by the above short notice, when the 

 reader might turn over tho whole works of Fichte, and still tind the 

 subject intensely difficult and obscure. The design of this article has 

 been to give a hint of the principle, and no more. 



FICI'NU, MARSILIO, bora at Florence in 1433, was the son of 

 Ficino, the physiciau of Cosmo de Medici, who perceiving tho happy 

 dispositions of the youth, generously provided for his education. 

 Ficino studied Greek, and applied himself especially to the works of 

 Plato, which lie translated into Latin. He afterwards tran-lated 

 I'lotinun, Jamblichua. Proclus, and 1'orphyrius, and became a great 

 admirer of the late PUtonicians of the Alexandrian school. He was 

 one of the preceptors of young Lorenzo, Cosmo's grandson. Cosmo 

 appointed him president of the literary society which ho assembled 

 at his house, and which was called Academia Platoaica, having for its 



