Fichte. Robert Adamson
of his affairs; indicated, as apparently the one course left to him, a return to his home, where he might study in private, and perhaps obtain some humble post as village pastor; and entreated that Kant would furnish him with the necessary loan for carrying out this resolve. As we learn from Fichte’s journal, Kant declined to accede to this request, but in such a manner as in no way lessened Fichte’s feelings of esteem and admiration for him. He recommended, through Borowski, the “Essay” to his own publisher, Hartung, and did his utmost to promote Fichte’s welfare. Hartung, however, was then absent from Königsberg; another publisher, when applied to, declined to purchase the MS.; and Fichte was compelled to accept what he had resolved against, a post as private tutor. Kant’s friend, Schulz, obtained for him an appointment in the family of the Count von Krockow, near Danzig, by whom he was received, as a protégé of Kant’s, with the most distinguished kindness. It was during the period in which he was here settled, amid more genial surroundings than he had ever before known, that the surprising fate of his adventurous essay opened to him a new path in life.
The problem which Fichte had selected for treatment according to Kantian principles, was one upon which as yet the author of the Critical Philosophy had made no public utterance. Doubtless the question of religion had appeared in all the three ‘Critiques,’ but the utterances in each of these, differing slightly from one another, had not been drawn together, and their application was limited to what we may call Natural Religion. But, that a certain form of belief in a revelation or supernaturally given religion actually existed, was a fact, and a fact requiring to be explained after the Critical Method. In all the previous essays of this method, the plan of procedure had been identical Thus, in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason,’ the fact of cognition being assumed, the conditions under which this fact was possible were the subject of investigation. In the ‘Critique of Practical Reason,’ the fact of morality being assumed, the conditions under which it was possible were considered; and in the ‘Critique of Judgment’ the same query was answered with respect to the correspondence of natural elements, either to our faculty of cognition, as in aesthetic judgments, or to the idea of the whole of which they are parts, as in the teleological judgment. And, so far as religion was concerned, the following results had been attained. The theological aspect of religion—i.e., the speculative determination of the existence, properties, and modes of action of a supernatural Being—had been shown to be without theoretical foundation. In the forms of cognition, no theology was possible. But the necessary consequences of those conditions under which Morality or Reason as practical was possible, involved the practical acceptance of those very theological principles of which no theoretical demonstration could be given. The practical postulates of the being of an Intelligent and Moral Ruler of the world, and of the continued existence of the rational element in human nature, had appeared as necessary for any intelligence conscious of itself as Practical or Moral. Through these practical postulates a new interpretation was given of the world of sense, which no longer appeared as mere material for cognitive experience, but as the possible sphere within which the moral end of a Practical Reason might be realised. The possibility, then, of a Natural or Rational Religion, if we employ terms which have unquestionably a certain ambiguity, had been sufficiently shown, and the place determined which such a religion holds in the series of philosophical notions. But, so far, no result had appeared bearing upon the possibility of a Revealed Religion; and those fundamental features of human nature which historically have always been connected with the belief in a revelation, the consciousness of imperfection, of sin, of dependence upon Supreme powers, apparently found no place in the Kantian scheme. Here, then, was an opportunity for the application of the critical principles. The possibility of a revelation might be investigated in the same fashion as the possibility of cognition at all; the form and content of any revelation might be determined by an analysis of the conditions of its possibility, just as the form and content of knowledge had been determined by an analysis of its conditions. A lacuna in the Kantian system would thus be filled up. This problem Fichte proposed to himself, and his essay in solution of it was sent to the author of the Critical Philosophy, not originally for purpose of publication, but as proof of ability to handle and apply the critical method. Only with the approval and by the advice of Kant himself was publication resolved upon, and the work revised and prepared for the public under the title, ‘An Essay towards a Critique of all Revelation’ (‘Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung ‘).
In form and substance the ‘Critique of Revelation’ is purely Kantian, with here and there an admixture of those additional subtleties of distinction in which Kantian scholars like Reinhold were already beginning to revel. Starting with a somewhat dry and abstract treatment of the conditions of moral or practical reason, an analysis of the will in its twofold aspect as sensuous impulse and impulse determined by reverence for moral law, the Essay summarises briefly the main principles of the Kantian practical theology, laying stress upon the fact that the acceptance of these theological postulates is not equivalent to religion—that in so far as reverence for the moral law pure and simple is the guiding rule of conduct, no room is left for recognition of any binding force attaching to such law as the expression of the divine moral order. If, however, there should be given in human nature a condition of the practical motives such that the force of reverence for moral law is weakened, then it might be possible that additional strength should be given by some indication, otherwise furnished, that the moral law is veritably the utterance of the divine will In such a case, the human agent would be constrained by reverence for the divine character of the moral law, and such constraint is religion as opposed to theology. In this condition of human nature is found the substratum of fact, in relation to which a revelation is conceivable.
How, then, could the human agent be made aware that the moral law is of divine origin? Not, answers Fichte, through the practical reason itself, for the laws of this practical reason are self-explanatory—but only through some evidence supplied by the world of sense-cognition. Such evidence is not to be looked for in the general view of the sense-world as the sphere within which the moral end is to be realised, for this follows simply from the existence of the moral law in us, but in some fact, which manifests its supernatural origin, and so necessitates the conclusion that it is the direct result of the divine activity. A religion basing itself upon a supernatural fact manifested in nature is a Revealed Religion, and the conditions of the possibility of such a supernatural manifestation are the conditions of a Revealed Religion.
Such a manifestation must needs be an a posteriori fact; but in so far as it is simply an a posteriori fact—i.e., so far as the form of the manifestation is concerned—it cannot necessitate the conclusion that its origin is divine. As regards matter or content, the manifestation must be a supernatural revelation of the moral law in nature—a revelation possible for an intelligent agent in whom sensuous impulses have overbalanced the reverence for moral law. By such a revelation moral feeling might be, as it were, awakened or implanted in the heart; for were such feeling absent, no force of reason, no play of sense-impulse, could create it. A revelation, then, is possible, if the human agent under such circumstances can regard certain facts in the world of sense as the spontaneous effects of the divine will, and as manifesting the moral purpose of the divine will This interpretation of the manifested fact, which is neither reason nor sense, but, as it were, midway between them, is the work of Imagination. The individual believes, and may believe, that the revealed fact is not explicable by natural laws; but it is impossible for him to prove that it is inexplicable by these laws. It is equally impossible that scientific proofs should be advanced that what happens according to natural laws is altogether explicable by them. The laws of the manifestation in itself are matters of indifference; for the revelation is only relative—relative to the disturbed ro chaotic moral condition of the individual human agent. The possibility of a revelation thus rests upon the possibility of a particular condition of the moral nature; and as this condition is not in itself necessary, a revealed religion cannot be regarded as necessary in the same sense in which the forms of thought or the postulates of practical reason are necessary. If there is a revelation at all, its contents must coincide with the contents of the moral law, and we can judge of any professed revelation according as it does or does not satisfy the criteria deducible from these two conditions. It must be made to those who are in the morally imperfect state just described: it must hold out no offers which are not in themselves consistent with pure morality: it must not effect its entrance into our thought by means which contain anything