Fichte and the Diabolical

In one of his last diary entries, Fichte talks about Napoleon as the ”diabolical” and ”devil”, because he was someone who corrupted the Revolution and subjected it to his Ego as the measure of all what is and what ought to be. He also very interestingly says that, seen through the prism of the WL, he had the ”form” of the Einsicht but not the ”content” – I add the following, but this is equivalent to saying that this amounts to, from within the terms of the Wissenschaftslehre, the destruction of all factical content in the transition from the end of the aletheiology to Beyng proper and then subjecting it to one’s Ego as the Absolute.

Beyng is the ”absolute I” (1804 WL) insofar as it is that which is self-constructing in, of, and through itself (it is not I *as* I qua subjectivity, but simply that which is in virtue of itself; it has no duality in order to be able to know itself *as* itself, hence why Beyng is not absolute knowing but Nothing); Napoleon, on the other hand, destroys all factical content and then sees all factical content as arising from himself as absolute Ego, without ever confirming himself as a necessary presupposition. This is because while he does, as a living personality, construct himself, he forgets the presupposition of Beyng itself.

The form of the insight, which is Fichte’s method, is always generally the absolute negation/destruction of factical content in order to show in manifestness (evidence) the absolute independence of the insight from facticity but also the preservation of content thereof in recognizing that the free self-construction of the ego presupposes another type of self-construction, that of Beyng. If one only has the form, then one is the destroyer as such. That this belongs to the form of the Insight means of course it is not Beyng as such, but it is still inherent to it. Perhaps the point here is that evil can only be overcome through itself, in a way.

Generally Fichte had a very uninterested attitude towards the issue of evil, but this diary note just before his death actually implicates that evil inheres to the essence of Beyng/essence of truth.