Therefore, the concept of "self" has actually become uncertain since Fichte's inception. And it is precisely on the path from certainty to uncertainty that human thinking has entered the era of dialectics.
If dialectics had already begun to form from Heraclitus to Aristotle, those things were just some very simple prototypes of dialectics. The true beginning of dialectics began with classical German philosophy. We have mentioned before that thinkers in 18th century France, including thinkers like Rousseau and Diderot, also had some dialectical ideas about the development and change of things.
However, as we mentioned last time, at least Rousseau himself did not openly acknowledge himself as dialectics, which is the first. The second statement we gave to him about dialectics is simply our understanding of him, attached to his philosophy, rather than a thought provided by his philosophy itself.
So, last time I specifically emphasized this point, when I talked about Rousseau's dialectics, I was not talking about the dialectical ideas proposed by Rousseau himself to us, but about how we understand Rousseau in a dialectical way, including his views on freedom, the origin of human inequality, and his understanding of human civilization. These things are actually our later dialectical understanding of him.
It is not Rousseau himself who explicitly regards it as a dialectics, which is different. However, the true human consciousness of dialectics and the viewing of the movement and development of human thought, especially concepts, as a dialectical process began with Fichte.
So, as I just said, why is Fichte's historical status important?
In the past, we didn't attach much importance to Fichte. To be honest, in German classical philosophy, when we talk about Kant and Hegel, we basically skip Fichte and Schelling. Just as we briefly mentioned the Enlightenment movement in France when discussing the entire history of Western philosophy.
Today, I want to emphasize that there are three historical periods, or three types of philosophers, in the history of Western philosophy that we need to pay special attention to. When we study the history of philosophy, we must never forget them, and we must write them in great detail. What are the three types or periods of history?
The first medieval philosophy was to be written extensively.
In today's history, we need to re-examine the Middle Ages and break all the misunderstandings we had about the Middle Ages.
The so-called erroneous understanding is to regard the Middle Ages as a dark period, to regard medieval philosophy as worthless, and to regard medieval philosophy as a philosophy serving theology. We must completely break this concept and restore the important significance of medieval philosophy in the entire history of Western philosophy.
The second historical period that caught our attention was the Enlightenment movement in the 18th century.
This was also rarely discussed in our country in the past. Even when it comes to it, it is only seen as a part of the development history of materialism. Therefore, in the early days after the reform and opening up, there was a famous scholar in China named Greene, a professor at the Central Party School who had passed away many years ago. He was one of the earliest researchers in China to study the French Enlightenment movement. However, his research on the Enlightenment movement mainly focused on grasping it in the historical development clues of materialism, and rarely regarded or emphasized its important significance and role in its rational enlightenment.
The third era is Fichte and Schelling between Kant and Hegel.
Because the importance of the ideas of other philosophers has been established in the history of philosophy and is generally accepted by everyone, there is nothing that does not need to be emphasized.
However, as I emphasized earlier, the ideas of these three historical stages should indeed be of greater concern to us, because in the history of philosophy, it has never been said that only a great philosopher can create the history of philosophy. On the contrary, we believe that every philosopher in the history of philosophy is able to leave its mark precisely because he has provided us with irreplaceable viewpoints for later philosophy.
Whether it is Fichte's epistemology or Schelling's transcendental philosophy, they may sound like products of their time on the surface, but on the surface they are just passing clouds, because today no one insists on the epistemology system, and no one regards Schelling's transcendental philosophy system as an important philosophy.
However, it does not affect our ability to truly explore the ideas of Fichte and Schelling, which have had a profound impact on the development of later philosophy. We no longer consider Hegelian philosophy or Hegelian philosophical system as the most important philosophy today. However, we still cannot deny the influence of Hegelian philosophy, especially Hegelian dialectics, on later philosophical generations.
The driving force behind Fichte's dialectical thinking is to solve problems in Kantian philosophy and to better promote the process of the movement of concepts themselves. So, in this sense, Fichte is able to start with self setting, which is the first principle, and then enter into the self and also set the non self. Finally, by jointly defining the self and the non self, a separate understanding of the self and the non self is formed.
So, here we can read out the development of his ideas, which indeed demonstrates a dialectical, or rather a dialectical process of conceptual movement.
However, understanding Hegel, if you do not understand Fichte or Schelling, it is difficult for us to grasp Hegelian philosophy, and this is particularly important to be clear. So, we repeatedly emphasize that the history of German classical philosophy is not only Kant's history, nor Hegel's history, but actually the history from Kant to Hegel.
The process of this direction, of course, refers to Fichte and Schelling. For Fichte, if we use this conceptual approach to discuss the development of self movement, starting from self setting, a starting point for the movement of a concept is formed. That is to say, the concept is not only seen as a simple process of self-improvement, but also as an opposition set, and this opposition is not only the self itself, that is, to view the self as an opposition and the non self as an opposition. This makes Fichte's philosophy move from self to non self, but actually from the absolute stillness of the concept to a process of relative movement.
So, Fichte's philosophy is actually the beginning of conceptual dialectics. We must understand Fichte from this standpoint, so that we can understand why philosophers like him are so important in the history of philosophy. In the West, it can be said that the study of Fichte goes beyond the study of Hegel.
The total number of works and articles on Fichte every year also exceeds the research on Hegel, because people have basically formed a concept, a framework, or some conclusions about Hegel's philosophy. However, for Fichte, people's research is far from enough, so the study of Fichte has always been hot internationally.
Through the process of self setting and self setting not being self, as we just mentioned, self setting is actually a self setting of the opposite of itself. Although he is not neither self nor self, he does add another I after I, and another A after A. If there is no second A or I, of course he is himself. However, adding one implies that it has added content to something.
The added content itself is completely equivalent to his first 'I' and 'A'. So, in this sense, it becomes an absolute unconditional principle of self setting.
But when it comes to the second point, it becomes "A is not equal to non-A" ("A ≠ - A"). When it comes to this principle, it becomes another principle called self setting not self. Because non-A is obviously the opposite of A, which is an absolute opposite. When A=A, A can also understand it as the opposite of A, because it is after all two A's? Although you said it's either two A's or one A, it's indeed one A.
However, because you wrote it twice, it does appear to be two in form, so you cannot deny this, but because this second one looks very similar to the first one. The second one is the first one, but you cloned it using the clone method and said it was the second one. However, there is no essential difference between its two values, so it is absolutely unconditional.
Formally, it is unconditional, A=A is identical, and in terms of content, it is unconditional because the two can only be one thing. So, this is an absolute unconditional principle.
But in the second one, it's not like that anymore, and the second one is not absolutely unconditional. Formally speaking, it is unconditional because there is an inequality and a non-A ("A ≠ - A"). Formally speaking, this sentence is equivalent to the previous sentence (A=A), without a doubt. As long as we know the relationship between knowing equals and not equals in general arithmetic, we know that the second sentence is completely equivalent to the first sentence.
So, formally speaking, it is absolute and unconditional in itself. However, its content is conditional because it adds a new thing, which is the opposite of A, and this new thing makes the first A not simply achievable through self setting. It also needs another thing, which is set through its opposite.
