Description of the new education (cont.)
Chapter 3, part 2 of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's "Addresses to the German Nation"
I now proceed to the further reasons I promised for my claim that no knowledge can remain lifeless in the pupil of the new education, and to the system into which I mean to elevate everything I have said so far. This I shall do by means of the following propositions.
1. From what I have said it follows that there are, with respect to their education, two quite distinct and completely opposed classes of men. To begin with, every human being, and therefore both these classes also, is alike in that, underlying the manifold expressions of his life, is a drive which, in the midst of change, persists unaltered and remains identical with itself. Incidentally, it is the self-understanding of this drive, and its translation into concepts, that brings the world into being; and there is no other world save this one that creates itself thus in thought, thought that is by no means free but necessary. Now, this drive that must always be translated into consciousness – wherein once again both classes are alike – can be so translated in two ways, according to the two different kinds of consciousness, and it is in the manner of this translation and self-understanding that the two classes are distinct.
The first kind of consciousness to develop is that of obscure feeling. This feeling most commonly and as a rule comprehends [erfassen] the fundamental drive [Grundtrieb] as love of the individual for himself, and indeed presents this self at first only as one that desires life and well-being. Hence arises sensuous selfishness as the actual fundamental drive and developing power of such a life engaged in translating its original fundamental drive. For as long as man continues to understand himself thus, he must act selfishly and can do no other; and this selfishness is the one thing that is permanent, identical and predictable in the ceaseless change of his life. As a rare exception to the rule, this obscure feeling can also pass over the personal self entirely and comprehend the fundamental drive as a desire for a different, obscurely felt order of things. Hence springs forth the life we have described in sufficient detail elsewhere;1 the life which, exalted above selfishness, is driven by ideas obscure indeed, but still ideas, and in which reason governs as instinct. This comprehension of the fundamental drive by obscure feeling only is the characteristic of the first class of men, who are formed not by education but by themselves. This class in turn comprises two further subspecies, who are distinguished by a principle that is incomprehensible and beyond the art of man to discover.
The second kind of consciousness, which as a rule does not develop of itself but must be carefully nurtured in society, is clear knowledge. Were the fundamental drive of humanity to be comprehended in this element, it would yield a second class of men quite distinct from the first. Such knowledge, which comprehends the fundamental love [Grundliebe] itself, does not leave us cold and uninterested, as another kind of knowledge can; rather, its object is loved above all other things, since this object is but the interpretation and translation of our original love itself. The other kind of knowledge comprehends something alien, and this something remains alien and leaves us cold; this knowledge comprehends the knower himself and his love, and he loves it. Although it is the same original love, only appearing in a different form, that drives both classes, yet we can say, overlooking that circumstance, that there man is driven by obscure feelings, here by clear knowledge.
For such clear knowledge to become an immediate impulse in life, and capable of being counted on with confidence, depends, as I have said, on this, that it is man’s real and true love which is interpreted by this knowledge; also that it becomes immediately clear to him that this is so and, at the same time as the interpretation, the feeling of that love is stimulated in him and felt by him; that knowledge is therefore never developed in him without love being developed at the same time, because otherwise he would remain cold, nor is love ever to be developed without knowledge being developed at the same time, because otherwise his impulse would be an obscure feeling; that therefore with each step of his culture the whole unified man is formed. A man who is always treated by education as an indivisible whole will remain one for evermore, and all knowledge will necessarily become for him an impulse in life.
2. Because clear knowledge is thereby made the original point of departure and the true basis of life instead of obscure feeling, selfishness is passed over completely and cheated of its development. For only obscure feeling presents man’s self to him as something that seeks pleasure and avoids pain; but on no account does the clear concept do so. Rather, it shows the self as belonging to a moral order; and there is a love for this order, which is kindled and developed at the same time as the concept develops. This education has nothing to do with selfishness, because through clarity it chokes the very root of selfishness, obscure feeling; it no more challenges selfishness than it develops it; it knows nothing of selfishness at all. Even if there were a possibility that one day selfishness might nevertheless stir, it would find the heart already filled with a higher love that leaves it no room.
3. Now, when this fundamental drive of man is translated into clear knowledge, it does not aim at an already given and existing world that can only be accepted passively, as it is, and in which a love that drives original and creative activity were unable to find its own sphere of efficacy. Rather, raised to knowledge, it aims at a world that shall be, an a priori world, one that exists in the future and remains ever in the future. The divine life underlying all appearance therefore never enters as a permanent and given being, but as something that shall be; and after it has become what it should have been, it will once again and for all eternity enter as something that shall be. That divine life therefore never enters in the death of permanent being, but remains always in the form [Form] of onward-flowing life. The immediate appearance and revelation of God is love; the interpretation of this love through knowledge first posits a being, a being that for evermore only shall be, and posits it as the only true world, insofar as a world possesses truth. Conversely, the second world, the given world that we find already in existence, is only the shadow and outline from which knowledge builds a fixed shape [Gestalt] and visible body for its interpretation of love; this second world is the means and the condition of intuiting the higher world that in itself is invisible. Even in this higher world God does not appear directly, but is mediated by the one, pure, immutable and formless love; in this love alone does He appear directly. To this love is joined the intuitive knowledge, which brings forth from itself an image wherein it clothes the invisible object of love. Yet each time it is opposed by love, and therefore impelled onwards to the creation of a new image that is opposed in its turn. Only in this way does love, which purely in itself is one, absolutely incapable of progress, of infinity, of eternity, also become, by fusing with the intuition, likewise eternal and infinite. The aforementioned image, which is produced by knowledge, taken by itself and still without application to the distinctly cognised love, is the permanent and given world, or nature. The delusion that the essence of God is somehow revealed directly in nature, and otherwise than by the interagencies I have indicated, originates in a benighted spirit and an impure will.
4. For obscure feeling, as a dissolvent of love, to be as a rule passed over entirely and clear knowledge set in its place as the usual dissolvent, can, as I have already reminded you, happen only by means of a deliberate art of educating humanity, and this has not yet happened. Since, as we have likewise just seen, this method introduces and posits as the rule a kind of man quite distinct from the kind usual until now, such an education would certainly usher in an entirely new order of things, a new creation. This new form humanity can give itself, if the present generation educates itself as the future generation, in the way that only it can: through knowledge, as that alone which can be shared and freely communicated, the true light and air of this world, uniting the world of spirit. Hitherto humanity became simply what it became and could become. This haphazard evolution is over; for where it has developed the most it has become nothing. If humanity is not to remain in this nothingness, it must henceforth make itself into everything that it is yet to become. The true vocation of the human race on earth, I said in those lectures whose sequel these addresses are, shall be this, that it fashions itself with freedom into that which it really and originally is.2 This self-fashioning, achieved deliberately and according to a rule, must now begin somewhere and somewhen in space and time, so that a second principal epoch, in which the human race develops freely and deliberately, would follow the first, when the development was not free. We are of the opinion that, with respect to time, this time is now, and that at present the race stands at the true midway point of its life on earth, between its two principal epochs. With respect to space, however, we believe that it falls first and foremost to the Germans to inaugurate the new age, as pioneers and exemplars for the rest of humanity.
5. Yet even this wholly new creation will not be an abrupt departure from what has gone before, but is, rather, the true natural continuation and consequence of the preceding age, especially among the Germans. It is evident, and I believe universally acknowledged, that all the stirring and striving of the age was directed towards banishing the obscure feelings and securing mastery for clarity and knowledge alone. This striving has been completely successful insofar as the nothingness of the past has been revealed in its entirety. On no account shall this drive to clarity be eradicated or the apathy that obscure feeling engenders be allowed to prevail again; this drive is to be developed further and introduced into higher spheres, so that when the nothing [Nichts] is disclosed the something [Etwas], the truth that affirms and really posits something, may likewise become manifest. The world that originated in obscure feeling, the world of given and self-creating being, is submerged and shall remain submerged. Conversely, the world that originated in original clarity, the world of being eternally delivered of the spirit, shall dawn and shine forth in all its radiance.
The prophecy of a new life in such forms might seem strange to our age, and it might scarcely have the courage to appropriate this promise, if it looked only to the tremendous gulf separating the prevailing opinions on the subjects we have just discussed from the principles of the new age as I have expressed them. I do not mean to speak here of that education which, as a privilege not extended to all, was previously and as a rule received only by the higher ranks, an education that kept completely silent about a supersensuous world and strove merely to impart a little slickness in the affairs of the sensuous world; for this was obviously inferior. Rather, I wish to attend only to what was popular education, and in a certain, very limited sense could also be called national education, and which did not observe absolute silence about a supersensuous world. What were the tenets of this education? If we establish, as the very first premise of the new education, that there is at the root of man a pure pleasure in the good, and that this pleasure can be developed to the extent that it becomes impossible for him to refrain from doing what he has recognised as good and instead do what he has recognised as bad; then, conversely, education has until now not only assumed but also taught its pupils from early childhood that, first, there inheres in man a natural aversion to God’s commandments, and, secondly, it is simply impossible for him to obey them.3 What else can be expected of such instruction, if it is taken seriously and believed, save that each individual yields to his unalterable nature, does not even attempt to accomplish what has once been presented to him as impossible, nor desires to be better than he and the rest of humanity can be; indeed, that he even accepts the baseness attributed to him, so that he recognises himself in his radical sinfulness and wickedness, while this baseness before God is presented to him as the only means of coming to terms with Him: and that, should a claim such as ours strike his ears, he cannot but think we mean to play a bad joke on him, because deep down he has the ever-present feeling, and grasps with his own hands, that this is not true, but rather that the opposite alone is true? If we assume a knowledge that is quite independent of all given being and even legislates for this being itself; and if from the outset we immerse every human child in this knowledge and keep that child constantly in its domain; and if, conversely, we consider the qualities of things that can only be learned historically as a trivial matter of secondary importance that follows of itself; then the ripest fruits of the previous education confront us, reminding us that, notoriously, there is no a priori knowledge, and saying they would like to learn how one can know other than through experience. And so that this supersensuous and a priori world does not betray itself even in the place where it seemed unavoidable – in the possibility of a knowledge of God – and so that even in God there should arise no self-activity of the spirit, and passive submission remained all in all, the previous education has discovered, as a safeguard against this danger, the bold solution of making the existence of God a historical fact whose truth is ascertained by the examination of witnesses.
That is how matters stand; yet the age should not despair of itself. For these and all other similar phenomena are not themselves self-sufficient, but merely the flowers and fruits of the wild root of the past. If only the age would submit to the grafting of a new, nobler and stronger root, then the old will choke, and its flowers and fruits, starved of further nourishment, will of themselves wither and drop off. For now the age is not yet able to believe our words, which perforce must seem to it a mere fairy-tale. Nor do we desire this belief; we want only the room to create and to act. Then the age will see, and it will believe what it sees with its own eyes.
Thus anyone, for example, who is familiar with the productions of recent times will already have noticed that here we are giving voice once again to the same propositions and views that, ever since its birth, modern German philosophy has preached, and preached again, because it was unable to do anything but preach. That these sermons have echoed and faded away in the empty air to no avail is now clear enough; so too is the reason why they were bound to fade away thus. A living thing acts only on other living things; in the actual life of the age, however, there is no affinity for this philosophy, because it goes about its business in a sphere that is not yet open to the age and demands sense organs that are as yet unequal to it. Philosophy is not at home in this age, but a harbinger of the time to come; it is the vital element [Lebens-Element], ready in advance, of a race that in it will first awaken to the light. Philosophy must give up on the present race; but in order that it remain not idle until then, it shall now take on the task of forming the race to which it belongs. Only when its immediate business becomes clear to it will it be able to live in peace and harmony with a race that otherwise does not please it. The education that we have described is at once an education for this philosophy. Again, only it can be, in a certain sense, the schoolmistress of this education; and so it was obliged to rush ahead before it could be understood or accepted. But the time will come when it will be understood and accepted with joy; and for that reason the age should not despair of itself.
Let this age hear the vision of an old prophet that was intended for a no less lamentable situation. Thus speaks the prophet by the river of Chebar, the consoler of those held captive not in their own country but in a foreign land: ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’4 Let the parts of our higher spiritual life be just as dried out, and for this very reason also the bonds of our national unity be just as broken, and lie scattered roundabout in wild disorder, like the prophet’s bones of the slain; let these be bleached and dried by the storms and rains and searing sunshine of several centuries; – the quickening breath of the spiritual world has not yet ceased to blow. It will seize too the dead bones of our nation, and join them together, so that they stand there gloriously in a new and transfigured life.
Education, Serialized, a section of EduThirdSpace: The Newsletter, features retellings of how education has been viewed over the course of history from books, reports, letters, and so forth. The posts in this section are the words of the authors and not editorialized by me, Samantha, or anyone else. However, interpretation or commentary on the texts may be published in other sections of EduThirdSpace.
CPA, Lecture 1.
Cf. CPA: ‘Thus, the whole progress which, upon this view, Humanity makes here below, is only a retrogression to the point on which it stood at first, and nothing in view save that return to its original condition. But Humanity must make this journey on its own feet; by its own strength it must bring itself back to that state in which it was once before without its own co-operation’ (Lecture I, p. 10).
Particularly the religious education of the Reformed Church. See e.g. the fifth response in the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563: ‘I am by nature prone to hate God and my neighbour.’
Ezekiel 37: 1–10.