Fichte's Foundation for Ethics

My favourite youtuber! keep teaching us the wonderfull world of philosophy!

0:01 I/Me and other people. 0:47 Imagining, Willing, Achieving. 1:11 Other people are Conscious Beings like me. 1:39 I'm even further limited by other people who have the same status as I. 1:51 An I and Thou Relationship. 2:17 Now we are on an even-playing field of Self-Consciousness Second-Person Recognition provides the Basis for Ethical Living I and Thou 2:50 Second-Person Recognition provides the Basis for Ethical Living Stop Hurting Me 3:31 "Stop It!" "Don't Do That!" 3:57 "Don't Hit Me!" 4:08 That kid is a kid just like me. 4:15 I can make demands on him. 4:25 I place ethical demands on myself while making similar ethical demands of other people. 4:50 That is how Fichte gets to Kant's Categorical Imperative. Limit Your Freedom 5:03 The I recognizes it's own Freedom. 5:17 "Limit your freedom in accordance with the concept of freedom of all other persons with whom you come into contact." 5:27 Foundation for Kantian Ethic through Self-Conscious Self-Reflection. Teaching Ethics is not the same as Being Ethical 5:50 Ethics Professors aren't necessarily more ethical than anyone else. 6:02 "It's one thing to teach someone ethics. It's another to get that person to be ethical." 6:11 Feeling is required. Conscious is required. Consciousness is fundamentally a practical activity. Self-Aware of Obligations 6:44 We need an intuitive Feeling of our own obligations. 6:56 Autonomy & Universality. Aware of Freedom and Limitations. Ethics is a System of Mutual Demands, backed up with Feeling, Intuition, Consciousness 7:28 Ethics is a System of These Mutual Demands, backed up with Feeling, Intuition, and Consciousness. 8:03 "I recognize the other as A Thou." "Just like me." 8:29 Deep Reflection of The Nature of The Conscious Mind. 9:05 Martin Boober's I Thou Relationship. 9:13 Jean Paul Sarte, Existentialism. 9:33 Ethics, something resting on a 2nd Person Recognition.

Oh my goodness this was so helpful. I've been really struggling to understand the links to Kant and the relevance of the 'I' positing itself as self-positing; this helped smooth out all the wrinkles.

I see the Real Book back there. Nice!

It justifies it precisely through the logic of second person recognition. Additional logic supplied by Lockean social contract theory.

Am I wrong for saying this sounds like a German version of lockes social contract theory and inalienable rights and not infringing on others rights?

would you classify Gurdjieff and Eckhart tolle as philosophers? they talk a lot about consciousness and how most people sort of sleepwalk through life. I tend to agree. Sometimes I get to see grown, educated people defend insane ideas with such conviction, I have to cry or something. I guess mostly it has to do with the Upton Sinclair thing. If you're paid to not understand a thing, you will not understand it.... paraphrasing....

Mmmmm yummy ethics

Second person recognition...isn't that sentience? Recognizing the feeling of pain in other "things"? Not just the recognition of intelligence, of the recognition of the similarity of the ground of beings (who feel freedom). This sentience can be overcome by solipsistic logic - narcissism. Your pain is there for my enjoyment. My freedom. For I am not free if I only allow that making you feel pain makes me feel bad. In order to be free I must also allow that making you feel pain makes me feel good. Otherwise I am not free. Only the freedom of enjoyment reveals and "should" constrain the I, to the narcissist. Sentience, itself, puts no such restraint on the narcissist. The narcissist is not just a sadist he "must" also be a masochist. His freedom dictates it. He comes to enjoy his own pain. To merit pain. If morality is anything it is a rejection of solipsism. A repudiation of narcissism. Therefore it must also be a constraint on freedom. But how does it "justify" this constraint? Not through just sentience.

You CAN bench press 300 pounds!