 To the extent that any proposed first principle of philosophy is supposed to be the first principle of all knowledge and hence of all argument, it clearly cannot be derived from any higher principle and hence cannot be established by any sort of reasoning. Furthermore, Fichte maintained that there are two and only two possible starting points for the philosophical project of “explaining” experience: namely, the concept of pure selfhood (which Fichte associated with pure freedom) and that of pure thinghood (which Fichte associated with utter necessity)—neither of which can be warranted, qua philosophical starting point, by a direct appeal to experience, and each of which can be arrived at only by a self-conscious act of philosophical abstraction from ordinary experience (within which freedom and necessity, subject and object, are invariably joined as well as distinguished).