“When one rational being affects another rational being as mere matter, then the lower sense of that being is also affected, it is true, and is so affected necessarily and altogether independently of the freedom of that being, (as the lower sense is indeed always affected;) but it is not to be assumed that this affection was in the intention of the person who produced it. His intention was merely to attain his purpose, to express his conception in matter, and he never took into consideration whether that matter would feel it or not. Hence, the reciprocal influence of rational beings upon each other, as such, always occurs by means of the higher sense; for only the higher sense is one which cannot be affected without having been presupposed. Our criterion of this reciprocal influence remains, therefore, correct.”

— Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Source: The Science of Rights 1796, P. 108

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When one rational being affects another rational being as mere matter, then the lower sense of that being is also affec…" by Johann Gottlieb Fichte?

Johann Gottlieb Fichte 102

German philosopher 1762–1814

Related quotes

“Without being too clinical, let’s say his brain was affected.”

Harry Harrison (1925–2012) American science fiction author

Source: Plague from Space (1965), Chapter 6 (p. 50)

“It is only by poets that the life of any epoch can be synthesized. Encyclopaedias and guides to knowledge cannot do it, for the good reason that they affect only the intellectual surface of a man’s life. The lower layers, the core of his being, they leave untouched.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 4

“That which can affect our senses in any manner whatever, is termed matter.”

Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840) French mathematician, mechanician and physicist

Introductory sentence of [Siméon-Denis Poisson, translated by Henry Hickman Harte, A Treatise of Mechanics, Longman and co, 1842, 1]

“A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings — where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation — but in his personality.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

“But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Friendship
Essays (1625)

“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Age and Death
Afterthoughts (1931)

“Sincerity becomes apparent. From being apparent, it becomes manifest. From being manifest, it becomes brilliant. Brilliant, it affects others. Affecting others, they are changed by it. Changed by it, they are transformed. It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can transform.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

“His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

“If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Statement during his trial for "exciting disaffection toward His Majesty's Government as established by law in India" (18 March 1922)
1920s

“The writer does not get from his work as he writes and reads it the same aesthetic shock that the reader does; and since the writer is so accustomed to reading other stories, and having them produce a decided effect upon him, he is disquieted at not being equally affected by his own.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Ten Books," The Southern Review (Autumn 1935) [p. 8]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Johann Gottlieb Fichte 102

Related quotes

Related topics