In Thinking and Being, Irad Kimhi defines a distinction between syncategorematic and categorematic expressions, and says that "The categorematic/syncategorematic difference will emerge as the major concern of this work" (Kimhi 42). What does he mean by these terms? The following is an attempt to cut through the density of Kimhi's prose and offer a simple, straightforward answer to this question.

I want to start with a claim that departs from Kimhi's formulations, but tries to capture the larger stakes that these technical terms involve:

Fichte concludes section §4.D of his 1794 Foundation (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) with a "Note" ("Anmerkung"), in which he discusses the methodology of his text. Like the introductory section to §4, which outlined the method of analysis and synthesis that the Theoretical Part will follow, this Note outlines a similar, though distinct, process which we can call the method of "intermediaries" (Mittelglieder). Fichte tells us that this method is intended to show us "from another side, the business of the Science of Knowledge" ("Diese Bemerkung zeigt uns von einer neuen Seite das Geschäft der Wissenschaftslehre"). Understanding the method Fichte outlines here is crucial to understanding Fichte's argumentation in §4.E. Fichte's explanation of the method of intermediaries helps to explain several aspects of his argument that do not appear to be explained by his method of analysis and synthesis, including why he doesn't synthesize the concepts of causality and substance, and why, at the conclusion of the synthesis of substance he seems to entirely change course in his method, shifting from a method of synthesis to his "pragmatic history of the human mind" that we see in the "Deduction of Representation". At the same time, Fichte doesn't completely follow through on his described method of intermediaries. Nor, as we will see below, is Fichte's method of intermediaries entirely consonant with his method of analysis and synthesis.¹ The actual exposition in §4.E is a composite image of both of these methodologies that offers Fichte a framework for developing his argument in which he moves freely between the methodological structures he defines, sometimes following them, sometimes following them in a trivial way, and sometimes departing from them in significant ways.

The language of Fichte's 1794 Foundation (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) is highly idiosyncractic, and there is a strong tendency in the secondary literature to adopt Fichte's terms without further clarification. In this blog post, I want to explain why this is problematic and offer a solution.

The problem with adopting Fichte's language is that his terms, almost without exception, have a strong physical resonance. For example, Fichte describes an "activity of the Self" that "goes out into the infinite", that is "checked", and thereby "reflected backwards". He also describes an "interaction" between the Self and the Not-Self that is governed by the concept of causality, and another type of "interaction" which views the Self as a "substance". This terminology understandably invites one to think that Fichte is indeed talking about the physical concept of causality, where the Self and the Not-Self are billiard balls banging against one another, and the physical concept of substance, where the Self is, say, some amorphous physical substrate. Indeed, Fichte even refers mulitple times to "the entire mechanism of the human mind." The problem with such a physical understanding of these terms is that Fichte's philosophy is, at its very core, directed against a mechanistic, or physical understanding of the human mind. The mind is not a mechanism, but rather a being that trades in concepts. That is a central tenet of Fichte's philosophy.

Fichte's concept of the "Anstoss", or "check", that occurs on the "infinite activity" (unendliche Tätigkeit) of the Self, is best understood as negation. The concept of the "check", as Fichte presents it in his 1794 Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre), outlines a remarkable fact about negation, which is that negation is a feature of judgment, a feature of thought and the propositions that thought brings forth, but not a feature of being. My proposal is that we think of Fichte's account of the "check" as an account of negation that brings to the fore the uniqueness of thinking as being plus negation.

In this blog post, I offer a line-by-line interpretation of Fichte's synthesis of substantial exchange, §4.E.III.2.b.β of the 1794 Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, hereafter: Foundation). This section is one of the most important passages in the entire Theoretical Part, i.e. Part II of the Foundation, and my characterization of this synthesis as offered in my previous blog post does not adhere close enough to Fichte's argument as it ought to.

The purpose of this blog post is to get into the nuts and bolts of Fichte's argument in his 1794 Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge (hereafter Foundation). I want to do this for two reasons. First, it will allow us to bring the high level argument from the previous blog post regarding negation closer to Fichte's text. In the previous blog post, we tried to stay out of the weeds of Fichte's formulations, choosing instead to describe largely in our own terms, how the Theoretical Part of the Foundation moves from a theory of qualitative negation to quantitative negation, and finally to Fichtean negation. Now we want to look at the specific terms Fichte introduces to complete this argument and thereby make it easier for the reader to follow this argument in Fichte's text. Second, the Theoretical Part of the Foundation is a very systematic text that follows a very specific architecture. Strangely enough, there is no account in the secondary literature that does justice to Fichte's architecture, that displays it in its proper clarity.¹

The purpose of this blog post is to describe in broad strokes Fichte's aims in the theoretical philosophy he put forth in his 1794 Foundation of the entire Science of Knowledge (hereafter: Foundation).¹ I'm going to argue that Fichte's salient point concerns the way in which negation structures human experience as something we can call imaginative openness. According to Fichte, every judgment that we have is also, by virtue of being a judgment, connected to an opposing, or negating judgment. Fichte wants to show that the way in which judgment hangs together with its negation explains two seemingly contradictory features of human judgment, namely the objective force of judgment, which is to say, that way in which a judgment makes a claim to being correct, to determining what is the case, as well as this judgment's inherent fallability. I take it that my car is parked outside, but I may, in fact, despite whatever degree of certainty I may have, be in error. The only way in which these two features of judgment can coexist, according to Fichte, is through the activity of the imagination, which allows for a judgment to carry its own negation with it. The Theoretical Part of the 1794 Foundation unfolds this line of thought gradually but deliberately. It begins with the apparent firmless of our empirical, or we could be generally say: objective judgments, seeks to demonstrate their fallability, and from this, unfolds a surprising claim about the centrality of imagination to all objective judgment and thus also, even more surprisingly, about our search for the infinite (das Unendliche) within the realm of objective experience. The exhilarating feature of this line of thought is that it takes a seemingly dry, or inconspicuous feature of human thought, namely negation, and shows how negation contains within its structure the dynamic of imaginative openness. That is to say that once we understand how objective judgments and their negation hang together, we can understand the force with which imagination undergirds human experience.