(11) .
While we feel that we have options and can make different choices, our eventual actions are predetermined so that we have no true freedom, only a perception of freedom. Freedom in this world is a causal condition; while you believe that you have options you in reality have none because per the natural force your decision has already been made. Essential what you have done is explained away your own existence. You have no way to act as an independent agent in the world because all that you do is going to happen in the same way as was predetermined. .
Fichte himself comes to reject this argument of existence. He believes that this feeling of free will and the actions taken in its name have to have a purpose. He is not just a being going through the motions in the world but an agent that can create his own events and outcomes in others. If he is just a part of the natural order then there is no reason for his being other than that of just existing, and then what is the point of living? There must be an explanation, so he continues his search and rejects deterministic realism and its lack of free will.
In book two, Fichte has a lengthy conversation with what he calls Spirit. The Spirit acts as a guide or mediator for Fichtes thoughts. Together they pose questions to one another and attempt to determine just what mans vocation is. This portion of the text is the exploration of theoretical idealism through three mediums, sensation, intuition, and thought. .
Within sensation Spirit and Fichte have a conversation about objects outside the body and whether they truly exist there. Spirit poses the question, "You assume, don't you, that these objects here and those over there really are there outside of you?" Fichte, "Yes, of course." Spirit inquires as to how one knows this is true, and the reply comes that one knows this because one can sense, i.e. see, feel, and hear, the object.(27-28) This is troublesome for Spirit because if that is the only means of knowing the objects then how do you know that you truly see, feel and hear? To this Fichte has no valid reply and the conclusion drawn is that "in all perception you only perceive your own condition.
