Fichte, Ethics, and the Pleasures of Self-Destruction

Abstract

Pleasure has always been a dangerous notion for ethics. From Kant's own wariness of it to the accusations of Epicureanism that assailed Mill, pleasure's association with the causal-like mechanism of sensual nature seems to put it at odds with freedom. Of course pleasure, re-admitted in a more sanitized form - for instance, as a higher pleasure in the case of Mill or Kant's acknowledgement of an aesthetic pleasure or the pleasure of moral feeling - would somehow allow pleasure at least a minimal role in its accord with die ideals of moral freedom. Thus, for instance, there would seem to be little issue with the kind of moral feeling and pleasure produced in acts of moral improvement. But what if self-destructive acts were also to generate the same kinds of pleasure as moral feeUng? I argue that not only is Fichte forced to confront such issues in his own account of ethics, but that his ultimate inabiUty to navigate such a problem successfully in his articulation of the drive threatens to unravel his very system of ethics. The argument of this essay develops as follows. In the first section, I articulate the problem of the relation of moral pleasure to moral freedom through an overview of Fichte's account of the human body as a site Uterally embodying the tension of the Kant's Third Antinomy. Next, I argue that Fichte's notion of the drive, so central to his ethics, operates as a kind of reflective judgment that further works to clarify various Kantian antinomies, Uke that between freedom and nature, by offering an aesthetic sense of wholeness. In the third section, through an overview of the various kinds of fulfillment of the drive in the ascension toward consciousness, I intimate that there is pleasure not only in self-preservation, but in self-destruction. Finally, through a close textual reading of Fichte's own interpretation of the work of Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, I show that Fichte worked feverishly - though unsuccessfully, I argue - to contain this dangerous connection between pleasure and selfdestruction which ultimately threatens to undermine his ethical system. Pleasure and the Kantian Context Fichte thinks nature as an organic whole and then seeks to geneticaUy account for our own place within that whole. Fichte's task, like much of the post-Kantian ideaust tradition, seeks to unify the legacy of Kant's three critiques. From the perspective of ethics this macroscopic concern attempts to think the place of freedom within the larger whole of the necessity of organic nature. What Fichte needs to explain is how what he calls the drive makes possible the transition from nature to freedom. In other words, he needs to show how his explanation of the drive helps resolves the Third Antinomy. As we will see, this resolution is primarily an aesthetic one that that estabUshes the intersection of the pleasures of the beautiful with the moral good - with the human body as its nexus. It is difficult to gain one's bearings in The System of Ethics without recognizing Fichte's profound and on going dialogue with Kant. One central conflict is referred to as the Third Antinomy, the conflict between freedom and necessity, or freedom and nature. This conflict is most clear in the following simple question: How is freedom or freewill possible in a causally determined world? As I have suggested elsewhere, Fichte takes-up Kant's own lead and attempts resolve the Third Antinomy through the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment.1 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that the world is not mere mechanism alone but rather there exists a regulative ideal of reason that allows us to unify die multitude of causal chains into a unified end or ends and thereby attribute a purposiveness to nature as a whole. As a reflective, subjective judgment, teleological judgment invokes reason's determinate concept of purpose, but applies it only subjectively. We cannot with any justification claim that we have knowledge of the purposiveness of nature; rather we can only embrace such purposiveness as a regulative ideal. …