What you should say instead is simply, ‘ this is how I necessarily
have to think of myself.’
“Now if you remain always conscious of this, the true meaning of your conclusion, and if you limit
yourself to this meaning, then there is nothing to object to in your manner of proceeding, and you may
see for yourself what you have gained thereby [IV, 17]. However, it seems that you by no means limit
yourself to this way of understanding the
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meaning of your conclusion. You want to use the result [of your deduction] to explain that compulsion
that manifests itself in all of us, and hence to derive something actual from thoughts. You want to go
beyond the region of thinking into the entirely different region of actual being.”
We reply to this as follows: This is not at all what we are doing; we remain within the region of
thinking. Indeed, this is precisely what constitutes that misunderstanding of transcendental philosophy
which continues to persist everywhere: still to consider such a transition [from thinking to being] to be
possible, still to demand such a transition, and still to find it possible to think of a being in itself. That
compulsion within us, what else is this but a kind of thinking that forces itself upon us, a necessary
consciousness? Or can we here somehow escape from a consciousness of mere consciousness and reach
the object itself? Do we know anything more about this demand [ Anforderung] than this: that we necessarily have to think that such a demand is directed at us? – What we derive from our inferences in
the deduction is itself an act of thinking; and that which is within us, independent of all inferences, as
something primary and immediate: this too is an act of thinking. The only difference is that we are not
conscious of the grounds of the latter, immediate, kind of thinking, and thus this thinking imposes itself
upon us with immediate necessity and therebyreceives the predicate of “reality,” of “perceptibility.” In
contrast, the former, inferential, kind of thinking occurs within a series of conscious grounds or reasons.
Precisely this is the intention of all philosophy: to uncover that within the operation of our reason which
remains unknown to us from the viewpoint of ordinary consciousness. Here there is no talk whatsoever
of any being, as being in itself; nor can there ever be any such talk, for reason cannot get outside of
itself. Except for some necessary consciousness, there is no being for an intellect, and hence no being at
all, since there is being only for an intellect. When one occupies the ordinary viewpoint, this necessity of
consciousness imposes itself immediately [IV, 18]. From the transcendental viewpoint, one can
investigate the grounds of this necessity. The following deduction, as well as the entire system of morals
that we intend to erect thereupon, sets forth nothing but a part of this [system of] necessary
consciousness, and anyone who would regard the former or the latter as anything else would be
regarding it quite incorrectly.
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§1
Problem3
TO THINK ONESELF, MERELY AS ONESELF, I.E., SEPARATED FROM EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT
OURSELVES.
Solution
(1) Theorem. I FIND MYSELF AS MYSELF ONLY AS WILLING.
Explanation
(a) What does it mean to say “I find myself”?
The easiest way to guide someone toward learning to think and to understand the concept I in a
determinate manner is as follows: think for yourself of some object, e.g., the wall in front of you, your
desk, or something similar. In doing this you undoubtedly assume a thinker or a thinking subject [ ein
Denkendes], and this thinker is you yourself. In this act of thinking you are immediately aware of your
thinking. But the object that is being thought is not supposed to be the thinker itself; it is not identical
with the thinking subject but is supposed to be something posited over against or in opposition to the
latter; and in this act of thinking you are also immediately conscious of this counterpositing. – Now
think of yourself. As certainly as you do this, you do not posit the thinker and what is thought of in this
act of thinking in opposition to each other, as you did previously. They are not supposed to be two, but
one and the same, and you are immediately conscious of this. The concept of the I is therefore thought
when, in an act of thinking, the thinker and what is thought are taken to be the same [IV, 19]; and, vice
versa, what arises in such an act of thinking is the concept of the I.
Let us apply this to our present case.