Topics Philosophers

Question I've read that Fichte believed we all a part of a universal mind and that our minds more than just being subjects in the world are the co-creators of nature. Does he mean that in the way a new age sort might take it to mean that we are creating reality at our own will?

Accepted:
June 28, 2012

Comments

I suppose it depends upon what you mean by the phrase "in the way" when you say "in the way a new age sort might take it to mean." If by "in the way" you mean as a mind that can be determined through our individual choices or individual wishes, then no. Fichte's "mind" is not reducible or determined by our individual thoughts, feelings, and mental acts. And if by "in the way" you mean because it's simply pleasing or inspirational to think so, then, again, no. Fichte's position was developed in large measure through the rational demands, implications, and alternatives of philosophers trying to work out the necessary conditions for the very possibility of our selves, the world, freedom, causation, and our ability to understand/know. Having said that, it's also important to understand that the mind or consciousness or "I" we experience is not our self in the truest and most universal sense, that the world and we are the expression and activity of an immaterial consciousness, and that Fichte's work is not without dimensions of inspiration and speculation, as well as the attempt to determine existential meaning for human life.