How Fichte’s Conception of Tathandlung  Revealed the Tatenlos in Pre-Marx Materialism

Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s (1762-1814) work was important for the development of Hegel’s thinking. He starts with the ‘I’ in his conception. The ‘ego’ is both the subject and the object. The differentiation of the subjective positing ‘I’ and the objective posited ‘I’. Self as both a positing activity and the posited product of its own activity. The first basic principle of his three principles (Die Drei Gründsatze) is that the self posits its own existence. I am. (Descartes : I think therefore Iam). I am identical to I. This thesis is the activity of the self which reaches outwards in experience in which the ‘Non I’ – as antithesis – now becomes posited against the ‘I’ (second basic principle). This counterpositing and confrontation of the antithesis is the negative of the thesis and the positing of contradiction. We now have a differentiation of the ego into the ‘I’ and its opposite, ‘Non-I’. Each only exists in its relation to the other and can only be reconciled (synthesis) within the original ‘I’ itself, within the ego. The ‘Non-I’ is the negative of the ‘I’ and the reconciliation between them is a return to a higher, more enriched form of the ‘I’ (ego) in the synthesis of the original ‘I’ and its negative.

For Fichte, the opposition between the ‘I’ and ‘Non-I’ exists within the self, within the ego itself and hence the ego is the ground within which the opposition is transcended resulting in a new higher synthesis of the self or ego. The ‘I’ and ‘Non-I’ mutually determine, limit and intermediate each other resulting in the higher synthesis. This triadic conception in Fichte’s thought is found developed in his Wissenschaftslehre (Science of Knowledge) published in 1794, the same year in which Robespierre (the personified antithesis to the ancien régime) was deposed by the reaction of Thermidor and replaced by the Directory. Fichte’s work served to influence Hegel in the elaboration of his conception of ‘self-consciousness’ in the Phenomenology of Mind and in the exposition of the ‘triads’ of categories in the Logic. Interestingly, Fichte’s conception of the structure of thinking is also echoed by Trotsky in his notebooks between 1933 and 1935. (Trotsky’s Notebooks, 1933-35. Writings on Lenin, Dialectics and Evolutionism, Columbia Univ Press, 1986, pp.99-101)


Fichte equated the materialism of his time with dogmatism in which ideas were mechanistically deduced from the ‘external world’ whereas idealism was associated with the ‘creation’ of ‘Being’ out of thought. Thought could not simply be mechanically produced or derived from ‘Being’ but required the ‘reasoning’ activity of the subject as an indispensable element in its creation and development. In this regard, the German idealists regarded dogmatism, empiricism and the materialism of the Enlightenment as being made out of the same philosophical material. Lenin’s later Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, published in 1908, was closer to the ‘stupid materialism’ which he later criticised in his Philosophical Notebooks (Volume 38 of his collected works) than it was to his relatively elevated ‘intelligent idealism’ which he asserted was ‘closer to Marx’.

The German idealists followed Kant in his epistemology. Kant, in contrast to British Empiricism and the French Materialism of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, asserted that it is the activity of the idea which determines the object and not vice versa. The source of human knowledge is not the ‘external world’ as such. This knowledge only possesses universal validity and finds its criterion of truth in ‘reason’, in the activity of mind or consciousness. For Kant, ‘reason’ is the real source of human knowledge independently of the ‘external world’ of Nature. This leads directly to Kant’s conception of the ‘Thing-in-itself’ which Hegel criticises as an internally contradictory conception.

In pre-Marx materialism, there was no philosophical ‘space’ for the freedom of the active subject because all was determined and governed by a mechanistic causality. Consciousness was viewed as a spontaneous product of Nature and governed by the laws of mechanics. Following on from Spinoza who viewed ‘chance’ or ‘accident’ as merely the points where ‘chains of necessity meet and intersect’, the ‘freedom’ implicit in the Tathandlungen (activities) of the subject was denied. On this basis, German idealism attacked the materialism of the day as ‘dogmatic’ because it stated that ‘thought’ cannot be spontaneously and mechanically deduced from matter. When a fire is lit in the hearth, it spontaneously generates heat and light. But thought is not like this. Thought requires the active subject (die Tathandlung des einzigen Ichs) in order to be re-created and developed. According to the idealists, ‘dogmatism’ could not explain the ‘free’ activity and volition of the subject.

In Fichte, the ‘I’ or ‘Self’ is identified with its own intrinsic activity whereas the materialism of the day was seen as locating the ‘I’ or ‘Self’ as merely the passive, spontaneous product and outcome of  ‘external’ conditioning. The idealists understood materialism as locating mankind as the prisoner of these external conditions. But the conception of the activity of the subject contains, implicitly, conflict with these conditions and their alteration and transformation according to the outlook and requirements of the thinking, active subject.

Fichte did not see the ‘Self’ as a fact (Tatsache) like the materialism of his day but rather as an activity (Tathandlung), as process. This ‘Self’ (thesis) is constantly confronted by its ‘Non-I’ ‘other’ (antithesis, opposition engendered) but in this opposition reaffirms itself by returning to itself (synthesis) and keeping within the bounds of the ‘Self’. The subject posits itself and returns to itself out of its negative confrontation in the other, making a journey outwards only in order to return enriched to a higher ‘Self’. Against the ‘I’, the ‘Non-I’ stands in opposition, but then sinks back with the return of a enriched, higher ‘I’. The ‘I’ transforms what is ‘alien’ into its own.  The ‘I’ is both the active, positing subject and the produced, posited object. Accordingly, for Fichte, activity is intrinsic to the nature of the self. And this activity of the subject is itself determination, negation, contradiction and the positing of synthesis manifest.

The ‘I’ and its negative (the ‘Non-I’) are opposed within the unity of the ‘I’ and thus mutually limit each other. In limiting each other, they are simultaneously self-limiting in their relation to each other. They mutually determine, affirm and annul each other and, in this relationship, self-determination, self-affirmation and self-annulment. Each is indeterminate and abstract without the opposing other. With each other they are determined, definite and concrete. In his Wissenschaftslehre (Science of Knowledge, 1794, published in the year of Thermidor) Fichte analyses the various forms of activity of the Tathandlung in which he employs the thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure to develop his thinking. The structure which influenced Hegel in his philosophical development, especially in his Logic. Echoing Kant’s two major works, he analyses the thinking activity of the self and the practical activity of the self. The ‘Science of Knowledge’ can be described as Fichte’s reckoning with Kant and his theoretical struggle to derive Kant’s categories rather than accept their formal, almost scriptural status. Philosophically, the Wissenschaftslehre becomes the immediate forerunner of Hegel’s Science of Logic published between 1812 and 1816. A study of Fichte’s major work hand-in-hand with a study of Hegel’s Logic clearly reveals the profound influence which Fichte had on Hegel in the derivation and elaboration of his categories.

In Fichte’s ethics, as part of his domain of the ‘Practical I’, we find the same emphasis on activity as mediated by Will . In the moral act, the ‘Practical I’ sets itself willfully over against the recognised world in fulfilling its moral obligations. The world is the object upon which this moral action takes place in order to alter it according to our moral ends; this activity is the unfolding realisation of these ends. The world which confronts the ‘Practical I’ therefore becomes the means at hand to realise our moral ends. In our activity, we remould it according to these ends. The ‘objective world is the sensory matter for our moral obligation’ (Fichte). And yet Marx states in the Theses that idealism ‘does not know real, sensuous activity as such’. The ‘objective world’ is the precondition for the activity of the ‘Practical I’. This ‘objective world’ Fichte refers to as ‘hindrance’ (der Anstoss). Without this ‘hindrance’, without this world against which the ‘Practical I’ can ‘push against’ or ‘give impetus to’, without this ‘Non-I’, the activity of the ‘Practical I’ is impossible. The activity of the practical Self only reveals and affirms itself in the alteration of the world which becomes subsumed under the ‘infinite I’. Ethical action by the individual requires opposition from der Anstoss. Without this conflict, there is no morality or moral purpose.

The ‘Self’, in Fichte’s philosophy, is an unending process of striving, conflict and activity (ein endliches Streben) so that the ‘I’ is identified with ‘striving’. The Self posits its end simultaneously with its means which are its ‘drive’ or ‘impulse’ (der Trieb). Der Trieb can seek to realise an ‘internal end’ within the realm of the Self or it can remould and re-form der Anstoss according to its ends; the drive for ‘representation’ (der Vorstellungstrieb) whose activity produces the object (der Produktionstrieb). Fichte calls this drive to realise the ends of the ‘Practical I’, ‘yearning’ (das Sehnen) which is also the drive for satisfaction (der Befriedigungstrieb). ‘Satisfaction’ is reached when there is a consonance between drive (Trieb) and act (Handlung) and not reached when they are antagonistic resulting in ‘dissatisfaction’. The activity of the ‘Practical I’ mediates the activity of the ‘Theoretical I’ and the ‘external world’ of the ‘Non-I’ or Nature. In Fichte, this ‘Non-I’ of Nature is simply the inert substratum which offers resistance to the activities of the ‘I’ and the realisation of its ends. Accordingly, unlike Hegel, Fichte does not elaborate a Naturphilosophie.

The pursuit of pleasure, in Fichte’s philosophy, makes the ‘I’ a slave of the ‘Non-I’, dependent on Nature. Real ‘satisfaction’ consists in the ‘I’ cultivating an ‘independence’ from Nature as a result of its activities, including labour. ‘Pleasure’ must not be the object of the Self but rather this object must be the ethical ends of the ‘I’. The ‘I’ seeks to realise the ‘moral ought’. Idleness is identified as immoral and is not part of the activity of the morally acting ‘I’. One moral act always gives rise to a succeeding one so that moral activity is part of Fichte’s endliches Streben. The ‘I’ must seek to cultivate an independence, autonomy and freedom as a result of its activities which themselves become increasingly ‘free activities’. Fichte gives ‘ideals’ of moral action and freedom in the form of specific individuals such as Christ and Buddha and advocates a ‘Church of Reason’ (die Vernunftkirche) arising out of moral philosophy and those moral obligations flowing from it. The wider social outcome of Fichte’s moral philosophy is the creation of a ‘Government of Reason’.

Fichte, of course, saw the world from the standpoint of the rising capital order (‘from the standpoint of political economy’- Marx) and, like other bourgeois thinkers of his time, offered ‘remedies’ for its real social contradictions. He was a son of this rising world. But such remedies did not, could not, address these contradictions. Rather they either, on the one hand, gave the ‘power’ of Reason an almost magical status which aprioristically could or would solve such problems given enough time or, on the other, put forward elaborate idealised systems which offered solutions to these contradictions. Fichte himself ‘advocated the utopian and self-reliant ‘closed commercial state’ (der geschlossene Handelsstaat, with its reliance on the strict principles of autarchy) as the ideal solution to the explosive constraints and contradictions of the prevailing order’ (Meszaros, Beyond Capital, p.56)

Shaun May

December  2020

mnwps@hotmail.com