Ich
Ich
(Ger. I, myself, me, the ego (q.v.)) In the German idealistic movement from Kant through Schopenhauer, the Ich, the final, ultimate conscious subject, plays a central and dynamic role. Kant discredited the traditional Cartesian conception of a simple, undecomposable, substantial I, intuitively known. On his view, the Ich is not a substance, but the functional, dynamic unity of consciousness — a necessary condition of all experience and the ultimate subject for which all else is object. This “transcendental unity of apperception,” bare consciousness as such, is by its very nature empty, it is neither a thing nor a concept. For the pute transcendental I, my empirical self is but one experience among others in the realm of phenomena, and one of which Kant does not seek an adequate definition. The stress on the pure I as opposed to the empirical self is carried over into his practical philosophy, where the moral agent becomes, not the concrete personality, but a pure rational will, i.e., a will seeking to act in accordance with an absolute universal law of duty, the categorical imperative (q.v.).
Fichte conceives the ultimate Ich as an absolute, unconditioned, simple ego which “posits” itself and its not-self in a series of intellectual acts. He emphasizes the dynamic, creative powers of the ego, its capacity for self-determination, the act in which the absolute subject creates the I. Self and not-self are products of the original activity of the conscious subject. Schelling conceives the I as a creation of the Absolute Idea. Hegel, however, treats the Ich as thought conceived as subject, as thinking, abstracted from all things perceived, willed or felt — in short abstracted from all experience. As such it is universal abstract freedom, an ideal unity.
From this point the notion of Ich in the German idealistic tradition passes into
voluntaristic channels, with emphasis on the dynamic will, as in Schopenhiuer, Eduard von Hartmann and Nietzsche;
the pragmatic-psychologic interpretation, typified by Lotze and other post-idealists; and
such reconstructions of the transcendental I as are to be found in the school of Husserl and related groups.
— O.F.K.