Some Help from the Philosopher Fichte

Some Help from the Philosopher Fichte

I have said that I intended to write further about how one might explain or elucidate a Christian sensibility to a non-Christian. It is not easy.

Maybe a philosophic route is best. I have been reading about the views of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). He views the world as the creation of the Self or Ego. Why does the Self create a world? To know itself and experience itself, or to escape boredom perhaps! We "posit" a not-Self, other beings, in order to be conscious of ourselves, or of anything at all. What seems to oppose us, whether an enemy or competitor or just a partner in conversation, is essential to us if we are to experience or to "live." And so even if it were not there we would imagine it or create it or manifest it. 

This is very metaphysical. Did a baby "create" the parents who take care of it? I don't know if Fichte even talks about that. Metaphysically, perhaps so. It would seem, more naturally to us, that the non-incarnated entity or "soul" could "choose," by some sort of gravitation, its parents, the circumstances of its birth and early life.

It's easier to take up the situation later in life, in adolescence or adulthood. Then it is easy to see how most of the time (or all the time?) we choose our friends, our "elective courses" in school, our pastimes, our career, and so on. 

Fichte seems to say that this is all essentially a moral or ethical process. If we choose badly we go to jail, for example. If we choose well we have a set of friends we enjoy and a happy life. 

Well, it may not be that simple, because even the hard things in life, according to Fichte, are chosen by us somehow, at some subjective level, in order to give us character. One can see this in people who constantly "get into trouble" or are "troublemakers" or who perhaps join the military knowing they may sacrifice their lives. 

So at the metaphysical level of Fichte's thought, we are all positing one another. "Posit" is a good, illuminating word, it seems to me. You "posit" the circumstances and acquaintances of your life--- often, or maybe usually, without knowing it. Yet others are doing the same; you are not exactly the god of your world; we are all mutual gods and goddesses "building" a world which gives each of us exactly the experiences our individual souls have chosen for the sake of their awareness and development. 

When this gets difficult is in the case of tragedy, illness, suffering, cruelty, torture. If we say that we have brought all that on ourselves, is not that "blaming the victim"? Here is where things are hard to figure out.

To whom do many turn when victims of what seems unfair suffering? I don't know what your answer may  be, but I know that even non-Christians and anti-Christians and atheists, when facing something hard or inexplicable, exclaim "Jesus!"

That says something.

Jesus was a good man, at the least, some say a perfect man, yet he suffered gross misunderstanding, bitter opposition, and eventually persecution leading to torture and death. 

Then, according to believers, he was resurrected from death, and those who believe in him are either protected from experiencing what he suffered or helped to endure it while it lasts and then saved from it and guided into heavenly consciousness. 

Fichte in fact was a Christian, though Christians of his day did not understand what he was saying or perhaps were right in criticizing some of it. 

That is all I have to say just now, except: I have found Jesus to be a reliable friend who helps me through difficulties and tries to guide me toward a better life.

According to Christian experience and belief, he was and is the one "human" being who can save us from what could be an endless cycle of "positing" bad, sinful, painful experiences. He "took on" our suffering in some divine and miraculous manner, if we reach out to Him. The best way to do that, in my experience, is through studying the 89 chapters of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Hugh

(More later I hope.)