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Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Charles Carroll Everett
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isbn 4064066436254
Автор произведения Charles Carroll Everett
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In what has been said, it will be seen that I have not been discussing the problem suggested. I have merely wished to make it clear that it is a real problem. In special, I have wished to lead the reader to the point where he will fully understand the problem with which Fichte at first busied himself. In order to follow the reasoning of Fichte with any sort of sympathy, or even with any degree of real comprehension, it is necessary to realize that all that is directly given us, is a single moment in consciousness with whatever is actually contained in it. If one cannot fully accept this position, one must at least have it distinctly in mind, and must be able to understand how another might naturally and not unreasonably hold this position. It must be assumed, then, that this single moment of consciousness is the only fact that we hold in direct possession. We are like one who seems to himself to be sitting in a lofty and pillared hall, looking from it out upon the landscape that stretches beyond. Of the pillars that seem to rise near him, some he has been able to discover to be frescoed imitations upon a plain surface. Those more distant he cannot reach to determine whether they also are fictitious. Of the windows that seem to look out upon the world, some he has discovered to consist merely of painted screens. The others have been, thus far, inaccessible, so that he cannot test their real nature. Thus does the self sit in the centre of its world. It is surrounded by the semblance of reality. A part of this presentation it has found to be the product of its own imagination. The rest, so far as it is accepted at all, must be accepted on trust. I repeat that a single moment of consciousness is all that is directly given. We speak of the past. We do this in the confidence that our memory really represents what has actually occurred. This age professes to take nothing without verification. All verification depends upon the validity of memory. I do not mean merely on the accuracy of memory, so far as details are concerned, but on the validity of memory as representing a real past in the most general sense of the word. Who can verify this assumption? Who has ever gone back to see whether there be or be not a past?
I am not questioning the fact; I merely wish to make it clear that memory itself is purely of the mind, and that its testimony is accepted wholly on trust. I wish to make it clear that, so far as we are concerned, the effect would be the same if there were no past, if only there remained the mental condition that we regard as representing the past. We can understand this in matters of detail. People often are sure that they remember something that never occurred. Their mental condition is precisely what it would be if the event had occurred. Make for a moment the supposition that of all that, we seem to remember, nothing ever occurred; and our mental state would be as unaffected by the change as the mental state of any individual is unaffected by the falsity of his special memory in regard to special details. The same is true in regard to the outward world. If that should be destroyed, or if it had never existed, our mental state remaining the same, we should not know the difference; just as in dreams, our consciousness is precisely what it would be if the dreams represented a real world.
All this, I know, has to do with the very rudiments of philosophy. We have, in fact, escaped from the limitation of a purely subjective existence. We are like the Jin that, had escaped from the casket. He was at large, and there was no power on earth that could shut him up in it again. So we have escaped from this subjective imprisonment, and are free of the universe. By no effort of the imagination can we realize the limitation of which I have spoken. There is needed, however, a philosophy that shall deal with the rudiments, that shall start with an analysis of the consciousness itself. If we are at large, we need to know by what right, and especially under what conditions. If it should appear that we are disregarding the conditions under which we are made free of the world, that we are misinterpreting the tenure of our possession, it may be helpful that we should know it.
Footnotes
1 ↑ Nachgelassene Werke, II, 318.
2 ↑ Rechtslehre: Sämmtliche Werke, III, 325.
3 ↑ In my judgment, the question which philosophy has to answer is the following: What relation is there between our notions and their objects? How far can it be said that anything outside of us … answers to them?—Sämmtliche Werke, II, 435 and 410.
4 ↑ Discussions (London), 86.
5 ↑ Spencer’s Psychology, I, 207.
6 ↑ Spencer’s First Principles, 503.
7 ↑ Bestimmung des Menschen, Sämmtliche Werke, II, 207–211.
8 ↑ Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, I. Chapter XII.
9 ↑ Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. I. 125.
10 ↑ Spencer’s Psychology. II, 452.
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