7. Seventh Lecture: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel
In this concluding lecture, we examine Fichte in context, comparing his ideas with those of Schelling and Hegel, particularly regarding freedom and the influence of the individual on moral disposition. We observe how the need for the Absolute drives a constant movement toward it—a process that Hegel conceptualized as the subject being the substance. Finally, we engage in a free discussion of all the German Romantics, and I strive to acknowledge their contributions (while, as almost always, weaving in reflections on religion and God).
Schelling adds: “That Judas became a betrayer of Christ, neither he nor any other creature could change, and nevertheless he betrayed Christ not under compulsion but willingly and with complete freedom. It is exactly the same with a good individual; namely, he is not good arbitrarily or by accident and yet is so little compelled that, rather, no compulsion, not even the gates of hell themselves, would be capable of overpowering his basic disposition ["Gesinnung"]. This sort of free act, which becomes necessary, admittedly cannot appear in consciousness to the degree that the latter is merely self-awareness and only ideal, since it precedes consciousness just as it precedes essence, indeed first producing it; but, for that reason, this is no act of which no consciousness at all remains in man, as anyone, for instance, who, in order to excuse a wrong action, says, ‘That’s just the way I am,’ demonstrates.”
On the other side, we can imagine Fichte's movement figuratively in the opposite direction — from the ground up. Through theses, antitheses, and syntheses, he saw the subject making more linear progress toward the absolute. Fichte believed that, in this way, one might eventually be able to comprehend the ultimate nature of reality. Each synthesis became a step closer to the ultimate through the constant dialectic of opposing the subject against the world. Thus, Fichte's "Subjective idealism" stresses the central role of the subject in shaping our understanding of the world. He saw the world as not independent of our consciousness, and the conditions of our mind as not limiting our understanding of the world. Our consciousness is the source of all reality. Hence, we can make progress toward the absolute with our reason.
Hegel saw both approaches simultaneously as phenomena within the thing itself. He considered the Kantian limitation of pure reason not as a barrier to the absolute but as the essence through which the absolute can appear. At the same time, he accepted the mechanics of Fichte's dialectic. He transformed the idea of linear progress, which would lead to a spurious infinity (as the subject would never be able to reach the absolute as an endpoint), into the concept of the absolute recoil of the ultimate, seeing the universal as self-determining and self-reflexive. Thus, there was no need for linear progression anymore, as the essence was already present in the subject itself — as he put it: the subject is the substance.
Therefore, Hegel's dialectical process has no linear progress through time; time is one of its properties as a logical part of the process of True infinity. The subject is always already the absolute. Hegel's "Absolute idealism" asserts that the world is not independent of our consciousness, but that the conditions of our mind do not limit our understanding of the world. He argues that the dialectical process of the mind shapes our understanding of the world. The world is constantly evolving and changing in line with the development of our consciousness, allowing us to conceptualize the absolute within the particular through our reason.
