Self-active

This is the doctrine that reason is "self-active," that it is not so much a set of structures as it is a "power" or an "actus."(21) Reason is not an a priori structure into which experience falls, but an active, "synthetic" power that shapes experience according to rules.

Yet for Fichte, the key to understanding Kant's hypothesis lies in the self-active nature of reason, or, as Fichte now says, the "I." The self-positing or self-reverting activity of the I is the Grundsatz of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre.

As noted above, Kant claims confusedly that we "know" ourselves as self-active beings, although he cannot explain in what sense we know this.

For Fichte, however, the theoretical tasks of transcendental science can be formulated adequately as tasks only in light a philosopher's pre-philosophical realization of his own status as a self-active being.

It argues effectively that the most essential facts behind the "failure" of most Black workers to join unions prior to the 1930s were those workers' criticism of trade union and white working-class racism both South and North, their self-active struggle to escape racist southern oppression for the superior material opportunities and racial milieu of the North, and the anti-union efforts and resources of employers.

Still, the reality of Black workers' mentalite and behavior during the war and the 1920s was far more complex, self-active, and sophisticated than the conventional white labor wisdom allowed.

It reflected both the core, self-active Black impulses behind the Great Migration and the influence of a race-conscious Black middle-class leadership.