It also equally asserts, “Something exists beside me; there is a not-self.” If you don’t believe that this is always asserted, Fichte invites you to try it and see.[1] Well, here forthwith is a puzzle. I assert that I exist; and then I assert that something exists beside me. Now I can of course know myself, it would seem, but how can I get outside myself to see what is not myself? How come I to guess at the existence of something other than I am? Fichte’s solution is simple. I don’t guess at it; nor is it a fact forced upon me from without, in any fashion. My true self freely chooses to recognize the existence of something beside myself as a fact. To be sure, I, in my private, empirical, momentary capacity, seem not to choose, but helplessly to find this outer existence. Really, however, it is my own, my deeper self, whose choice is at each moment shown to me. But, then, observe, unless I thus chose to recognize something beyond myself, I should have nothing to do, I should have nothing to resist, to fight, to win, to love, — in short, to act upon, in any way. The deepest truth, then, is a practical truth. I need something not myself, in order to be active, that is, in order to exist. My very existence is practical; it is self-assertion. I exist, so to speak, by hurling the fact of my existence at another than myself. I limit myself thus, by a foreign somewhat, opaque, external, my own opposite; but my limitation is the free choice of my true self. By thus limiting myself I give myself something to do, and thus win my own very existence. Yet this opposition, upon which my life is based, is an opposition within my deepest nature. I have a foreign world as the theatre of my activity; I exist only to conquer and win that apparently foreign world to my-
- ↑ Cf. the noteworthy passage in the Grundlage of 1794, Fichte’s Werke, vol. i. p. 253: “Dass es ein solches Setzen gebe [namely, of the Nicht-lch] kann jeder nur durch seine eigene Erfahrung sich darthun.”
