What, then, is the animal? First of all, a system of plant-souls. The unity of those plant-souls, which unity nature itself produces, is the soul of … - Johann Gottlieb Fichte

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What, then, is the animal? First of all, a system of plant-souls. The unity of those plant-souls, which unity nature itself produces, is the soul of the animal. Its world is therefore partly that of the plants — its nourishment, for instance, it receives partly through synthesis from vegetable, and through analysis from animal nature — and partly that of the animals, whereof we shall speak directly. Each product of nature is an organically in-itself completed totality in space, like the plant. Hence, the unknown x which we are looking for must also be such a whole or totality, and in so far it must also have a principle of organization, a sphere and central point of this organization ; in short, the same which we have called the soul of the plant, which thus remains common to both. … The animal is a system of plant-souls, and the plant is a separated, isolated part of an animal. Both reciprocally affect each other.

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About Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (19 May 1762 – 27 January 1814) was a German philosopher, who was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Johann Fichte

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Additional quotes by Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The "I" who speaks in this book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this "I": that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually converse with himself, deliberate back and forth, deduce conclusions, make decisions like his representative in the book, and through his own work and reflection, purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.

An ancient philosopher maintained that the animals had arisen from the earth; “as happens,” he added, “even to the present day in miniature, since every spring, particularly after a warm rain, we may observe frogs, for example, in whom some particular part, perhaps the fore-feet, may be quite perfectly developed, while the other members still remain a rude and undeveloped clod of earth.” The half-animals of this philosopher, although they scarcely afford sufficient evidence of what they were designed to prove, yet present a very striking illustration of the spiritual Life of ordinary, men. The outward members of this Life are in themselves perfectly formed, and warm blood flows through in the extremities; but when we look to the heart, and the other nobler organs of life, which, in themselves: according to the law, are indeed there, and must necessarily be there, since otherwise even the outward members themselves could not have been, –in these organs, I say, they are found to be still unsentient clods—frozen rocks.

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All law relations are determined by this principle: each one must restrict his freedom by the possibility of the freedom of the other. … My freedom is limited by the freedom of the other only on condition that he limits his freedom by the conception of mine. Otherwise he is lawless. Hence, if a law-relation is to result from my cognition of the other, the cognition and the consequent limitation of freedom must have been mutual. All law-relation between persons is, therefore, conditioned by their mutual cognition of each other, and is, at the same time, completely determined thereby.

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