Points out that at first glance, it looks like an immediate self-consciousness. I appear to myself as free. yet, upon reflection it appears as if freedom is impossible, and that any freedom must be subordinate to nature, and must be explained by nature. We know this in an object when we know all its properties. Scientific revolution has presented a naturalistic, deterministic view of the world. If one could slice the universe and see every event in a single moment of time, then one could know the entire past and the entire future -> mechanic, causal. The pieces of the mechanism are moved by a force of nature. Fichte wonders whether there may also be a thinking force, and whether he as an individual is one manifestation/determination of this thinking force. In this case, thought and consciousness would arise from nature. An unfortunate consequence is that morality then becomes an obsolete concept.