According to Hegel of the Differenzschrift, after Kant, the problem to be solved by modern philosophy is the identity of pure and empirical consciousness. The starting point of Fichte's philosophy is the identity of the I, namely I = I. The theoretical consciousness, which Hegel calls "reflection," makes the I objective to the subjective I. Practical consciousness is, however, the precondition for making this move, for it is only by the free positing of the Anstoss that the I can experience itself as an object, even though it at the same time knows that this objective I is identical to itself. This identity is the identity of pure and empirical consciousness. However, in this ethico-theoretical mode, consciousness does not return into its starting point, namely, identity. This is because the totality of natural drives is alienated, distinguished, from the pure consciousness into which it ought to return.
To make this abstract point tangible, an example might help. I have a child and a cat. The cat attacks the child from time to time and injures the child. I perceive this as something alien to my consciousness, and in order to "make it right" (i.e. in order to identify myself with the phenomenon) I lock the cat into the cage. But then the child now goes to the cat and pokes the cat with a knife from time to time. Again, in order to "make it right," I now punish the child. However, another issue arises: did I not traumatize the cat as well as the child through such actions? Now I perceive myself as a natural drive alien to myself, and I again try to "make it right." In each case, the failure to identify myself with a particular drive also allows me to see a way in which I can identify myself with another drive - i.e. the way to achieve the identity between pure and empirical consciousness. On the other hand, the moment such an identity is achieved, it instantly sunders itself again into a new antithesis - although, the form of the antithesis remains the same as before, and only the content is new, i.e. it is merely empirically new. In this sense, the identity is not complete, it only fully comes into view as an"ought."
Fichte however fully recognizes this problem. Hegel quotes Fichte making the following remark:
"Art," Fichte says, "makes the transcendental point of view into the ordinary one. [...] From the former the world is made, from the latter it is given: from the aesthetic point of view the world is given as it is made." (152)
The key phrase here is: "from the aesthetic point of view, the world is given as it is made." The given and the made, the empirical and transcendental, are here in identity. How this is achieved is precisely what Fichte's philosophy is all about. That is to say, Fichte's philosophy accounts for how the I develops or evolves in such as way as to feel the need for the aesthetic identification of itself with its external, given world, and of the way in which it prepares the conditions for doing so.
What is the aesthetic point of view, and how does it complete the identity between the practical subject and its obstacle? Here it is helpful to return to the previous example of the I-child-cat triangle. From the ethical point of view, the I is in perpetual struggle because, as soon as it performs a particular duty, another duty lays claim on it. The limit of the ethical is the opposition between these multiple, conflicting duties, and the pure consciousness which tries to unify them and to treat them as identical with freedom. This remains an "ought" because of the nature of the conflict of the duties - each duty requires acknowledgement due to its universality, but consciousness cannot attend to them all at once. From the aesthetic point of view, the issue is not which duty to perform, but how to illustrate empirically the different duties and their interrelation. Therefore, in the example, I will perhaps write in my mind a short play with three characters: I, the cat, and the child. In an Ibsenian way, I might sketch out the tragedy of the conflict of duties, and include myself as the comical one who consciously performs a duty which he knows is bound to end in failure. In this way, although the conflict persists at the practical level, I nonetheless fully identify myself with the empirical phenomena.
Does this mean that, by writing a beautiful or amusing play about it, I can justify whatever action I perform? Not necessarily. True, in certain cases, this can be done. However, this only reveals that, what I first understood as ethically wrong was only so understood because of the artistic representation of the situation which I used to rely upon. So, for example, while the kamikaze seems to from a Christian point of view a perverted suicide mission, it is seen as the highest act of bravery when perceived from the ideological point of view of the spirits which will rest in peace in the Yasukuni shrine.
However, the reverse may just as well occur, and in fact this testifies to the strength which the aesthetic has over the ethical. Now imagine a soldier, fully immersed in the Yasukuni ideology, about to embark upon the kamikaze suicide mission. The night before the flight, however, he happens to watch a movie which represents the entire situation as laid out according to the Yasukuni ideology. Now the realization that he is playing a role in this ideology might well transform his entire ethical outlook radically: what he perceived as an act which he was about to perform for the sake of defending the honor of his own family was actually an act which served the Japanese nation, and for these ideological reasons.
Another example of such an "aesthetic conversion of the ethical" can be seen in Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. Mr. O'Brien played by Brad Pitt obviously thinks himself to be the good father, helping his family to live a "good life" while teaching his sons to "become like men." From the ethical standpoint of Mr. O'Brien, therefore, the problem with the way the family develops is that his purpose is not realized due to contingent reasons. Perhaps the children are not hanging out with the right sort of friends. Perhaps Mr. O'Brien ought to introduce them to other classical composers. The aesthetic point of view, however, questions the role of the father itself. If Mr. O'Brien were to watch the Tree of Life, he would have had to confront the totality of his own role, i.e. he would have had to identify his pure consciousness with the empirical totality of what is expressed in the film. The issue here is no longer on how to realize that purpose. Rather, the issue is, does Mr. O'Brien want to play a part in such a struggle at all? Instead of keeping his purpose and changing merely his means for realizing it, here Mr. O'Brien would be forced to renounce the purpose altogether with all possible means for its realization.
This also explains why, while it is terrifying to have to commit evil deeds in the name of morality, it is even more terrifying when, after committing the deeds, one realizes that one's actions were part of a fully formed script written by someone else. Here, the terror is twofold: first, the terror of acting out an evil deed, and second, the terror of realizing that the whole ordeal was part of a pre-existing plan. The fact that the plan was devised by a single human individual, and that the only raison d'etre of the plan was the subjective caprice of that individual, adds insult to injury. However, if the plan is perceived as the work of God, the entire experience becomes different, including the moral status of the deeds and the aesthetic judgement of the involved agents.
Lars Von Trier's Manderlay is another good illustration of this point. At the beginning of the film, Grace believes that she will have to set free the black workers enslaved to "Mam's Laws." Grace believes that she is following this scenario of gradual liberation, where she is teaching the hitherto oppressed people the ins and outs of a democratic self-organization. However, at the end of the film, it is revealed that Mam's Laws were actually the fruit of a "democractic" decision of the black workers themselves. Grace is asked to become the new Mam. In response to this terrible news, Grace, thoroughly disarmed and not knowing what to do next, i.e. losing her ethical compass completely, now whips Timothy just as if she were the new Mam. The oppression of the workers is here not stemming from the self-interest of the ruler, but rather from the workers' refusal to conform to the very scenario which the "benevolent" ruler lays down for them. This type of resistance on the aesthetic level is much more intense and concrete, which explains why Grace, with all her conviction, suddenly is forced to act in a way unthinkable prior to the shocking revelation.
If Fichte clearly saw this power of the aesthetic ("the world is given as it is made,") then why does Hegel claim that the "necessary viewpoint of [Fichte's] Ethics, far from being aesthetic, is precisely the one that reveals distorted, fear-ridden, oppressed forms, or ugliness" (154)? This criticism does not mean that Fichte somehow overlooked the identity of pure and empirical consciousness in the aesthetic point of view. As was already mentioned, Fichte himself mentions the identity between being and making. The problem is that aesthetic judgement is either reduced to a non-activity, i.e. laziness and pure looking, or else is subordinated as one moment within an already given ethical system, i.e. as a particular, natural drive which is once more opposed to pure consciousness. In short, Fichte turns the aesthetic into the ethical.
However, the aesthetic is not reducible to the ethical, for the opposition between freedom and nature, making and being, which constitutes the latter, are illustrated and defined by the former. No ethical system is free unless it is represented in a spiritual form, whether it be art or religion or philosophy. Nonetheless, there are multiple artistic representations of the world. How do these representations arise? And how do we adjudicate between them? How are aesthetic judgements made? These are the questions which Schelling will take up in his System of Transcendental Idealism. The "indifference point" is the point of culmination at which a new aesthetic point of view, a new artistic representation of the ethical or natural world, is realized in its totality.
