The following article is connected to the previous one, which dealt with Fichte’s analysis of a dialectic inherent to Enlightenment. This one will be followed up by Fichte’s dialectical analysis of revolutionary temporality.
Fichte is highly critical of the principles of French Revolution, French people and what he sees as critical in both of them as contributing to the problem of modernity (or the ”third age”, as he calls it), is then radicalized in Napoleon. In other words, he is the outgrowth of the problems inherent in the former. Fichte simultaneously affirms him and condemns him; in a way, Fichte’s position is simultaneously reactionary and radical. According to Fichte’s view, for the French and consequently the French revolution the formation of individuals is based on the unity of the people, rather than the unity of the people being founded on the presupposition of the (free) personality. More precisely, Fichte thinks that the problem is that the French revolution considers personality as a product of society and that society is in turn what is presupposed. For Fichte, it is personality – and freedom – which are the presupposition of society. Fichte here not only appeals to the history of the French nation but also more critically the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in particular articles I-VI. The article I is ”Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.”, while the articles III and VI respectively express the dependence of the individual upon the general will and the Nation as the only foundations of its rights and laws. The article III states: ”The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.” and VI states, more damningly for Fichte: ”The law is the expression of the general will.”.
Fichte completely rejects this, which is why his position is reactionary in the sense that he rejects some of the most fundamental and foundational principles of modernity. But he rejects them for reasons that are precisely not conservative; he believes that the French Revolution effectively betrays freedom in its essential sense because by doing this they have essentially revealed that they don’t actually know the idea of personal value, purely creative things and the essential freedom of personality. In other words, because they constrain personality by having it that which is dependent upon a presupposition (society) instead of being the presupposition itself, the French Revolution betrays what it tries to actualize in the first place. For Fichte, this means that everyone can be used for every purpose if someone is lucky enough to win the ”general opinion”, whilst a nation which lacks the condition of the development of a free personality means that internally the individualities, each with their special opinions, that are borne within the general will are arbitrary and thereby in order to protect themselves they have to find their respective parties that would present a front against other parties that would want to impose themselves upon others in order to verify their own ”truth”, that would finally become the expression of the general will. If the general will is the presupposition upon which a personality is founded upon, even if the general will may itself be a force that, as the highest and most real truth, is liberated from religious or monarchical presuppositions the personality’s freedom is only arbitrary because it does not found it in itself. The result of this is that the law, the force of the general will, actually does more to divide and destroy personality (and the ”general will”!) other than actually found it in freedom. More concretely on that later. This means that the French, for Fichte, I quote: ”…was in the struggle for the kingdom of freedom and justice, and had spilled its noblest blood in this struggle, but the French were actually incapable of freedom”. I’ll explain more why Fichte thinks this with relation his philosophy, but here is where Napoleon comes in.
Napoleon, Fichte notes, is originally not genuinely French but Corsican. That he is like this means that biographically and historically he was not raised as a child amongst the French, as a result of which the fatal characteristic, that he notes in the French revolution, was not present: which is the ”sociable concern” for the opinions of others. The problem with this type of personality and with respect to how it manifests in the French revolution is that it is not auto-poietic insofar it depends upon others and precisely because it is not this, when a particular person becomes a dominant factor within society (as in Terror) as following the expression of the general good – due to the perceived view that the personality is in itself nothing but something dependent upon something else more essential, the ”general will” – those personalities can be sacrificed for the sake of the ”greater good”. Now, Napoleon does not have this ”French” trait as Fichte notes and this is why he does something that is simultaneously something that Fichte approves of but also rejects.
Napoleon had, as Fichte says, ”absolute will”; he was autopoietic in the sense that he did not share the sociable concern and having received his education in France after his childhood, Fichte notes that what was extremely prominent for his success is that he was able to understand the circumstances of the revolution and its inner driving forces. Fichte sees Napoleon as understanding that the French people were a highly active mass that was capable of being reined in and pushed into a certain direction because first and foremost, Napoleon’s view according to Fichte was that humanity is nothing but a instinctive mass of power and that only very rarely there do emerge great Spirits, who are separated by thousands of years that are , I quote, ”destined to give direction to this mass”. In other words, Napoleon has something in him that is simultaneously what Fichte approves of – which is that he saw himself as a free personality that is not burdened by the presupposition of the society, but rather that he, Napoleon, will become the presupposition of the society.
There is a problem with this, however, and this is where nonetheless the ”French” trait creeps in. Even though Napoleon liberates himself from the presupposition of society and thereby has the markings of a free personality, as a result of which he sees himself as, Fichte characterizes it, a ”world law”, he separates himself from the ”moral law”. Now, when Fichte says this it basically means that Napoleon abdicates from the insight to see into that the formation of free personality is something that ought to be automatically necessary in itself, and since it is universal – or the universal presupposition of the entire world – he effectively makes himself, i.e. the free personality, contingent because whilst (negatively) liberated from society, he is incapable of making his own positing of himself as his own presupposition necessary. But that can only be done if there is an insight into that freedom qua freedom is in itself the end which makes him possible as such, or in other words: to recognize that freedom qua freedom is universally and at all times necessary. This is Fichte’s view: we are not ends in themselves, but the means to achieving the end – which is always already realized, but to whom we’re also simultaneously striving towards as it consists of our activity to be simultaneously this but also, more cruically, on our way to: freedom. Instead, Napoleon does not see this: he uses freedom qua freedom as a means in order for himself, egoically reducing freedom to his freedom, but thereby actually makes freedom qua freedom something merely contingent and therefore also himself. Napoleon fails because he contradicts himself. Of course, for Fichte Freedom qua Freedom is the abyssal Beyng itself, the Absolute.
Now, let’s go more into the details.
I want to explain what Fichte precisely means by that ”the French were incapable of freedom”, since it seems unclear at first, especially given the Declaration. The essential conclusions of the Declaration is that neither in the private nor in the public sphere one should make oneself a means to others, not even one’s own moral perfection; to be for others in every respect at the same time an end in itself, especially one considers certain articles of the declaration. The fourth article is that freedom consists in being able to do everything that does not harm or infringe upon others, meaning that one’s natural right to freedom has limits that ensure that others members of the society enjoy the same right. Article 5 explicitly shows how the law forbids action that are harmful to the purpose of society as expressed, while the article 6 expresses the general will and promises that all citizens have the right to participate in its formation either personally or through its representatives. Article 11 (something touted by Habermas) promises free communication of thoughts and opinions as one of the most ”precious of human rights”, which seems cruical to freedom and to forming not only one’s own individuality and its expression, but also the socius. So aside from the theoretic point that Fichte makes, what does he actually mean?
For Fichte, the concept of freedom must be the unity of the theoretical and practical reason – but, ironically, this means the abolition of the right to ”individual self-determination”, key emphasis on ”right”. Why? To portray this, he explicitly posits that Kant’s conception of freedom and that of French revolution, especially in its legalistic dimensions, is essentially the same: which is that right is posited in the possibility of linking general coercion with everyone’s freedom (coercion that enables the possibility of mutual delimitation of persons and thereby their individual freedoms). This is further grounded in the pathological driving force, according to Fichte, that makes compulsion a necessary component in its structure; that it compels people into following it. On the other hand, free personality in Fichte’s understanding means the ability to create one’s own content autopoietically and auto-telically, especially as seen in the WL, and that the personality is its own presupposition. This means that the personality has insight into itself. Compulsion that is inherent to law’s structure and that it enforces both indirectly to maintain itself in peace, or directly to break those who transgress law is contrary to free personality’s self-construction, which freely constructs itself without any compelling (and which is both, for Fichte, a priori and a posteriori). If that is the case, Fichte says, law does not consist in as Kant and the French revolution say, in the interplay of free will and general laws. Law is simply an indirect way to ensure the morality or correctness of the insight in one’s self-determination, as in some kind of a provisional replacement. In other words, it is closely linked to education insofar as it must accompany, and be accompanied by education to maturity whilst a human being, first as a child and then growing forms themselves according to their own insights (Einsicht), and this includes introducing the right to self-determination and self-determination itself as part of the self-understanding of freedom itself. In other words, law and right are to abolish themselves when its phase has been grown out of, they’re not absolute.
For Fichte, the whole idea of the legal order (more in the French and less Kant) is as a coercive order of arbitrariness to one another; there is no presupposition upon which they stand upon, since only personality can be a self-forming presupposition. The legal order may indeed be posited as the presupposition but it cannot make itself a necessary presupposition; it cannot posit itself.
If this is the case, then the legal order itself rests upon a contingency. Since it is an order of arbitrariness, everyone cannot but be compelled(!) to follow their lawful arbitrariness contrary to arbitrariness of others’ willing, which is in turn conceived as the ultimate and highest content that is derived from the idea of freedom, or from this perspective’s logic, the idea of man as an end in itself. The legal order circularly completes itself. But for Fichte this only means that freedom is taken as a pure vanity, as something purely arbitrary and thereby self-annulling. Again, for Fichte, people in the sphere of law are not an end in themselves, but the means to elevation to freedom. For Fichte, it is not we who are free and have freedom, but it is freedom which has us. Right which necessarily compels in self-determination, together with its subordination to society, fundamentally misunderstands self-determination and ironically, in its absolutizing, loses freedom.
Right contradicts the internal right and freedom to follow one’s insight because it introduces compulsion as its essential element. Therefore, the individual is compelled to follow their own understanding in such a way that it is delimited insofar as their understanding is not the right one unless it is the affirmation of the general will, upon which the understanding depends. But this is to make following one’s understanding rest upon something external to itself, and ironically, it is also unable to ever understand the law. It is unable to understand the law nor what it promises, i.e. the expression of the general will because they become transcendental, external measures which in themselves become must become impenetrable so that the relationship of dependence upon personality to the general will is maintained, and furthermore it is itself rendered impossible because the general will or the law cannot understand themselves.
Back to Napoleon. So if the above is true, Fichte asks: how will the legal order ground itself? How it will be posited in order to have some ground to stand upon, given that it cannot posit itself? We see that if the above dynamic is correct, then the legal order will eventually not only culminate in a paradoxical self-overturning by means of which it will destroy its own citizens – as the Terror did – but also try to find (ineffective) ways of trying to ground itself (the Directorate) that would try to work by ameliorating the public opinion. But if Fichte’s ontological analysis of the personality is right, then only the personality can be ground of the legal order, and not the legal order (the general will, society) itself. And so it happened: that ground was Napoleon in Fichte’s analysis.
Part 5 (THE END):
But just like the arbitrary law-order, so was its ground according to the spruce-man. In form, Napoleon ”had” the Einsicht; he was a free personality that broke through the fetters of the content of the law, making himself the, I quote Fichte, the ”overlord” and the ”absolute will”. But the form and content of the absolute will are what? Yes, it is this absolute elevation that Napoleon had done, but it is also the yielding of oneself to the presupposition: freedom qua freedom. This is perhaps the paradox inherent to Fichte’s philosophy (and what makes him different from Goethe, Hegel and Nietzsche); he rejects Napoleon because he was not radical enough in breaking through to the genuinely revolutionary presupposition, but rather subverted it by appealing to the reactionary essence of the French Revolution: arbitrary individuality. The problem is not that Napoleon willed to power; the problem is that Napoleon then did not the radical move, yielding the will to power by letting freedom qua freedom emerge as the only true personality (and therefore that necessarily personality is the ground of society), by demonstrating it both actively as he did, but also theoretically through the intellect. In this sense, Napoleon was the educator because he not only reformed and spread the legal order through France but also throughout Europe, however he did not do it with respect to the end in itself, freedom, but as a means in order to elevate his Egoity as the Spirit the leads the amorphous blind mass, humanity. Napoleon in form did everything Fichte approves of, but the content is absolutely rejected because Fichte considers that Napoleon was superfluous and effectively failed because he blindly repeated the reactionary presupposition. Because of this Napoleon actually was not revolutionary, because he did not innovate upon the presupposition he acted – the revolution actually failed to revolutionize the presupposition upon which it was premised upon and what it desired. The one who could’ve done it the most as the free personality but in fact radicalized its most reactionary trait that was inherited from history, and thereby ruined himself. Fichte’s dialectics.
In this sense, the French and Napoleon show that law is only empirical and a posteriori, despite their pretenses otherwise. This is what Fichte wants to demonstrate; that there is a world-plan but which is also simultaneously shown retroactively through empirical movement. Instead, Napoleon and the French revolution become something only arbitrary, and Rousseau is also blamed here because his notion of the general will is also only something empirical for Fichte. Because of this no actual new world is introduced by the Revolution, despite its far reaching effects.
We should clarify that yes, Napoleon and the French Revolution do introduce a new epoch (a new world, in a sense) but this epoch is not that of freedom, as they promised, but that of liberation from external authority. That is what Fichte calls the third age. Because of this, personality becomes arbitrarily free and it may manifest in infinitely many ”new” forms as it is seemingly liberated from the constraits of traditional society – through bourgeois society, capitalism, individualism, etc. – that insisted upon the measure of transcendent authority. But in itself it never actually revolutionizes its own presupposition, which is freedom. Instead it cruically inherits from the past the form of this presupposition they only changed with respect to its content which meant, among other things, maintaining the subordination of personality to society (the new transcendent authority) and rendering it as merely a posteriori (product of transcendent authority, which is its presupposition), whereas it ought to be simultaneously a priori and a posteriori (its own presupposition). In doing so it concretely manifests its faults in different ways, being unable to realize the contents of freedom, Beyng itself, and knowledge. Because of this, while Fichte’s form of argumentation seems reactionary his accusation is that the French Revolution was not radical enough.
One could also say that Napoleon does succeed for Fichte, but he does so whilst introducing, for the first time, an Epoch which is completely ground-less as Fichte notes; and, he adds, that which is opposed to every past and future epochs which makes it unique. The age Napoleon introduces is unique precisely because it culminates as indifference and liberation from truth and reason; all measures and hitherto values are abandoned, but the third age merely rests in this negative void through the emergence and demise of arbitrary freedom of opinions and personalities. In other words, Napoleon expands the achievements of the French revolution but also more cruically its underlying structure: arbitrariness. Hence modernity is characterized by the arbitrary freedom of infinite multiplicity of perspectives and personalities which ultimately abandon the intelligible and only seek any measure in one own’s sensible existence and experience. It is the age of, as Fichte called it, the ”death of ideas”. The way to overcome it, in Fichte’s mind, is precisely by revolutionizing the presupposition of the third age through itself.
Napoleon’s parallel in Fichte’s work is Alexander the Great. Alexander, like Napoleon, sets out forth because he is enflamed by an Idea (like Napoleon was), is a free personality precisely because of this and sets out to expand the world-view that Right is the essence of the world, just like Napoleon did the same. The reason why Fichte considers that Alexander was more successful in bringing out a new, a more self-coherent Age than Napoleon is paradoxically because Alexander died before he could ruin it. Not because Fichte rejects Alexander’s expansionism and his will-to-power – no, he affirms it as part of the Insight – but rather because Alexander effectively carried out the yielding, an (involuntary) self-sacrifice to the emergence of a new world to the Greeks, by achieving their Idea, that would show itself by itself. For Fichte, that’s Freedom; Alexander, like Christ for Fichte are as personalities ever-more affirmed because they did this great step and are therefore necessary (because they let the New, which transcends the I, emerge) whereas Napoleon is not.
History & Stuff 