Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Born	(1762-05-19)19 May 1762 Rammenau, Saxony, Holy Roman Empire
Died	29 January 1814(1814-01-29) (aged 51) Berlin, Brandenburg, Prussia, German Confederation
Nationality	German
Education	Schulpforta University of Jena (1780; no degree) Leipzig University (1781–1784; no degree)
Era	18th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy German idealism Post-Kantian transcendental idealism[1][2] Empirical realism[1] Foundationalism[3] Coherence theory of truth[4][5][6] Jena Romanticism Romantic nationalism[7]
Institutions	University of Jena University of Erlangen University of Berlin
Academic advisors	Immanuel Kant
Notable students	Novalis Friedrich Schlegel Friedrich Hölderlin August Ludwig Hülsen Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Main interests	Self-consciousness and self-awareness, moral philosophy, political philosophy
Notable ideas	List Das absolute Bewusstsein (the absolute consciousness)[8] Thesis–antithesis–synthesis[9] Das Nicht-Ich (the not-I) Das Streben (striving) Wissenschaftslehre (Doctrine of Science) as Real-Idealismus/Ideal-Realismus ("real-idealism/ideal-realism")[10][11] Philosophy as pragmatic history of the human spirit[12] Gegenseitig anerkennen (mutual recognition) Principle of reciprocal determination[13] Anstoss (impulse) Tathandlung (fact and/or act) Aufforderung (calling, summons) Philosophical reflection as intellectual intuition[14] The primacy of the practical (Handeln)[15][16][17] Urtrieb (original drive) "Fichte's original insight"[18] The power of productive imagination as an original power of the mind[19][20]
Influences Immanuel Kant, Salomon Maimon,[21] Karl Leonhard Reinhold,[22] Gottlob Ernst Schulze,[20] Jean-Jacques Rousseau,[23] Baruch Spinoza,[24] Ernst Platner[25]
Influenced Immanuel Hermann Fichte (his son), G. W. F. Hegel, Dieter Henrich, C. I. Lewis,[6] Johann Friedrich Herbart, Novalis, F. W. J. Schelling, August Ludwig Hülsen, Jules Lequier, Karl August von Eschenmayer,[26] Wilhelm von Humboldt,[27] Friedrich Schleiermacher, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, Giovanni Gentile, Ludwig Tieck, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger
Signature

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (/ˈfɪktə/;^[28] German: [ˈjoːhan ˈɡɔtliːp ˈfɪçtə];^[29][30][31] 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness.^[18] Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis,^[9] an idea that is often erroneously attributed to Hegel.^[32] Like Descartes and Kant before him, Fichte was motivated by the problem of subjectivity and consciousness. Fichte also wrote works of political philosophy; he has a reputation as one of the fathers of German nationalism.

Biography

Origins

Fichte was born in Rammenau, Upper Lusatia and baptized a Lutheran.^[33] The son of a ribbon weaver,^[34] he came of peasant stock which had lived in the region for many generations. The family was noted in the neighborhood for its probity and piety. Christian Fichte, Johann Gottlieb's father, married somewhat above his station. It has been suggested that a certain impatience which Fichte himself displayed throughout his life was an inheritance from his mother.^[35]

He received a rudimentary education from his father. He showed remarkable ability from an early age, and it was owing to his reputation among the villagers that he gained the opportunity for a better education than he otherwise would have received. The story runs that the Freiherr von Miltitz, a country landowner, arrived too late to hear the local pastor preach. He was, however, informed that a lad in the neighborhood would be able to repeat the sermon almost verbatim. As a result, the baron took Fichte into his protection and paid for his tuition.^[35]

Early schooling

Fichte was placed in the family of Pastor Krebel at Niederau near Meissen, and there received a thorough grounding in the classics. From this time onward, Fichte saw little of his parents. In October 1774, he attended the celebrated foundation-school at Pforta near Naumburg. Freiherr von Miltitz continued to support him, but died in 1774. The Pforta school is associated with the names of Novalis, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel and Nietzsche. The spirit of the institution was semi-monastic and, while the education was excellent, it is doubtful whether there was enough social life and contact with the world for Fichte's temperament and antecedents. Perhaps his education strengthened a tendency toward introspection and independence, characteristics which appear strongly in his doctrines and writings.^[35]

Theological studies and private tutoring

In 1780, Fichte began study at the University of Jena's Lutheran^[36] theology seminary. He was transferred a year later to study at the Leipzig University. Fichte seems to have supported himself during this period of bitter poverty and hard struggle.^[35] Without the financial support by von Miltitz, Fichte had to end his studies without completing his degree.^[37]

From 1784 to 1788, Fichte precariously supported himself as tutor for various Saxon families.^[34] In early 1788, he returned to Leipzig in the hope of finding a better employment, but eventually he had to settle for a less promising position with the family of an innkeeper in Zurich.^[38] He lived in Zurich for the next two years (1788–1790), which was a time of great contentment for him. There he met his future wife, Johanna Rahn,^[35][39] and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He also became, in 1793, a member of the Freemasonry lodge "Modestia cum Libertate" with which Johann Wolfgang Goethe was also connected.^[40][41] In the spring of 1790, he became engaged to Johanna.^[42] Fichte began to study the works of Kant in the summer of 1790. This occurred initially because one of Fichte's students wanted to know about Kant's writings.^[43] They had a lasting effect on his life and thought. However, while Fichte was studying Kantian philosophy, the Rahn family suffered financial reverses. His impending marriage had to be postponed.^[35]

Kant

From Zurich, Fichte returned to Leipzig in May 1790.^[42] In early 1791, he obtained a tutorship in Warsaw in the house of a Polish nobleman. The situation, however, quickly proved disagreeable and he was released. He then got a chance to see Kant at Königsberg. After a disappointing interview on 4 July of the same year,^[44] he shut himself in his lodgings and threw all his energies into the composition of an essay which would attract Kant's attention and interest. This essay, completed in five weeks, was the Versuch einer Critik aller Offenbarung [sic] (Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, 1792).^[35] In this book, according to Henrich, Fichte investigated the connections between divine revelation and Kant's critical philosophy. The first edition was published without Kant's or Fichte's knowledge and without Fichte's name or signed preface. It was thus believed by the public to be a new work by Kant.^[45]

When Kant cleared the confusion and openly praised the work and author, Fichte's reputation skyrocketed. In a letter to Karl Reinhold, Jens Baggeson wrote that it was "...the most shocking and astonishing news... [since] nobody but Kant could have written this book. This amazing news of a third sun in the philosophical heavens has set me into such confusion".^[46] Kant waited seven years to make public statement about the incident; after considerable external pressure he dissociated himself from Fichte. In his statement, he inscribed, "May God protect us from our friends. From our enemies, we can try to protect ourselves."^[47]

Jena

In October 1793, Fichte was married in Zurich, where he remained the rest of the year. Stirred by the events and principles of the French Revolution , he wrote and anonymously published two pamphlets which led to him to be seen as a devoted defender of liberty of thought and action and an advocate of political changes. In December of the same year, he received an invitation to fill the position of extraordinary professor of philosophy at the University of Jena.^[48] He accepted and began his lectures in May 1794. With extraordinary zeal, he expounded his system of "transcendental idealism". His success was immediate. He excelled as a lecturer due to the earnestness and force of his personality. These lectures were later published under the title The Vocation of the Scholar (Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten). He gave himself up to intense production, and a succession of works soon appeared.^[34][35]

Atheism dispute

Main page: Philosophy:Atheism dispute

After weathering several academic storms, Fichte was finally dismissed from the University of Jena in 1799 for atheism. He had been accused of this in 1798 after publishing the essay "Ueber den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung" ("On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World-Governance"), written in response to Friedrich Karl Forberg's essay "Development of the Concept of Religion", in his Philosophical Journal. For Fichte, God should be conceived primarily in moral terms: "The living and efficaciously acting moral order is itself God. We require no other God, nor can we grasp any other" ("On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World-Governance"). Fichte's intemperate "Appeal to the Public" ("Appellation an das Publikum", 1799) provoked F. H. Jacobi to publish an open letter in which he equated philosophy in general and Fichte's transcendental philosophy in particular with nihilism.^[20]

Berlin

Since all the German states except Prussia had joined in the cry against Fichte, he was forced to go to Berlin. There he associated himself with the Schlegels, Schleiermacher, Schelling and Tieck.^[35] In April 1800, through the introduction of Hungarian writer Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, he was initiated into Freemasonry in the Lodge Pythagoras of the Blazing Star where he was elected minor warden. At first Fichte was a warm admirer of Fessler, and was disposed to aid him in his proposed Masonic reform. But later he became Fessler's bitter opponent. Their controversy attracted much attention among Freemasons.^[49] Fichte presented two lectures on the philosophy of Masonry during the same period as part of his work on the development of various higher degrees for the lodge in Berlin.^[50] Johann Karl Christian Fischer, a high official of the Grand Orient, published those lectures in 1802/03 in two volumes under the title Philosophy of Freemasonry: Letters to Konstant (Philosophie der Maurerei. Briefe an Konstant), where Konstant referred to a fictitious non-Mason.^[50]

In November 1800, Fichte published The Closed Commercial State: A Philosophical Sketch as an Appendix to the Doctrine of Right and an Example of a Future Politics (Der geschlossene Handelsstaat. Ein philosophischer Entwurf als Anhang zur Rechtslehre und Probe einer künftig zu liefernden Politik), a philosophical statement of his property theory, a historical analysis of European economic relations, and a political proposal for reforming them.^[51] In 1805, he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Erlangen. The Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, in which Napoleon completely crushed the Prussian army, drove him to Königsberg for a time, but he returned to Berlin in 1807 and continued his literary activity.^[34][35]

Fichte wrote On Machiavelli, as an Author, and Passages from His Writings in June 1807. ("Über Machiavell, als Schriftsteller, und Stellen aus seinen Schriften" ). Karl Clausewitz’s wrote a Letter to Fichte (1809) about his book on Machiavelli.

After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, where German southern principalities resigned as member states and became part of a French protectorship, Fichte delivered the famous Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1807-1808) which attempted to define the German Nation, and guided the uprising against Napoleon.^[52][53] He became a professor at the new University of Berlin, founded in 1810. By the votes of his colleagues Fichte was unanimously elected its rector in the succeeding year. But, once more, his impetuosity and reforming zeal led to friction, and he resigned in 1812. The campaign against Napoleon began, and the hospitals at Berlin were soon full of patients. Fichte's wife devoted herself to nursing and caught a virulent fever. Just as she was recovering, he became sick with typhus and died in 1814 at the age of 51.^[34][35]

His son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte (18 July 1796 – 8 August 1879), also made contributions to philosophy.

Philosophical work

Fichte's critics argued that his mimicry of Kant's difficult style produced works that were barely intelligible. "He made no hesitation in pluming himself on his great skill in the shadowy and obscure, by often remarking to his pupils, that 'there was only one man in the world who could fully understand his writings; and even he was often at a loss to seize upon his real meaning.'"^[54] On the other hand, Fichte acknowledged the difficulty, but argued that his works were clear and transparent to those who made the effort to think without preconceptions and prejudices.^{[citation needed]}

Fichte did not endorse Kant's argument for the existence of noumena, of "things in themselves", the supra-sensible reality beyond direct human perception. Fichte saw the rigorous and systematic separation of "things in themselves" (noumena) and things "as they appear to us" (phenomena) as an invitation to skepticism. Rather than invite skepticism, Fichte made the radical suggestion that we should throw out the notion of a noumenal world and accept that consciousness does not have a grounding in a so-called "real world". In fact, Fichte achieved fame for originating the argument that consciousness is not grounded in anything outside of itself. The phenomenal world as such, arises from consciousness; the activity of the I; and moral awareness. His student (and critic), Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote:

Fichte who, because the thing-in-itself had just been discredited, at once prepared a system without any thing-in-itself. Consequently, he rejected the assumption of anything that was not through and through merely our representation, and therefore let the knowing subject be all in all or at any rate produce everything from its own resources. For this purpose, he at once did away with the essential and most meritorious part of the Kantian doctrine, the distinction between a priori and a posteriori and thus that between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself. For he declared everything to be a priori, naturally without any evidence for such a monstrous assertion; instead of these, he gave sophisms and even crazy sham demonstrations whose absurdity was concealed under the mask of profundity and of the incomprehensibility ostensibly arising therefrom. Moreover, he appealed boldly and openly to intellectual intuition, that is, really to inspiration.

– Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, §13

Søren Kierkegaard was also a student of the writings of Fichte:

Our whole age is imbued with a formal striving. This is what led us to disregard congeniality and to emphasize symmetrical beauty, to prefer conventional rather than sincere social relations. It is this whole striving which is denoted by — to use the words of another author — Fichte's and the other philosophers' attempts to construct systems by sharpness of mind and Robespierre's attempt to do it with the help of the guillotine; it is this which meets us in the flowing butterfly verses of our poets and in Auber's music, and finally, it is this which produces the many revolutions in the political world. I agree perfectly with this whole effort to cling to form, insofar as it continues to be the medium through which we have the idea, but it should not be forgotten that it is the idea which should determine the form, not the form which determines the idea. We should keep in mind that life is not something abstract but something extremely individual. We should not forget that, for example, from a poetic genius' position of immediacy, form is nothing but the coming into existence of the idea in the world, and that the task of reflection is only to investigate whether or not the idea has gotten the properly corresponding form. Form is not the basis of life, but life is the basis of form. Imagine that a man long infatuated with the Greek mode of life had acquired the means to arrange for a building in the Greek style and a Grecian household establishment — whether or not he would be satisfied would be highly problematical, or would he soon prefer another form simply because he had not sufficiently tested himself and the system in which he lived. But just as a leap backward is wrong (something the age, on the whole, is inclined to acknowledge), so also a leap forward is wrong — both of them because a natural development does not proceed by leaps, and life's earnestness will ironize over every such experiment, even if it succeeds momentarily.

– Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, "Our Journalistic Literature", 28 November 1835.^[55]

Central theory

In Foundations of Natural Right (1797), Fichte argued that self-consciousness was a social phenomenon — an important step and perhaps the first clear step taken in this direction by modern philosophy. For Fichte, a necessary condition of every subject's self-awareness is the existence of other rational subjects. These others call or summon (fordern auf) the subject or self out of its unconsciousness and into an awareness of itself as a free individual.^[56]

Fichte proceeds from the general principle that the I (das Ich) must posit itself as an individual in order to posit (setzen) itself at all, and that in order to posit itself as an individual, it must recognize itself to a calling or summons (Aufforderung) by other free individual(s) — called to limit its own freedom out of respect for the freedom of the others. The same condition applies to the others in development. Mutual recognition (gegenseitig anerkennen) of rational individuals is a condition necessary for the individual I.^[57][58] The argument for intersubjectivity is central to the conception of selfhood developed in the Foundations of the Science of Knowledge^[59] (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, 1794/1795).

Fichte's consciousness of the self depends upon resistance or a check by something that is understood as not part of the self yet is not immediately ascribable to a particular sensory perception. In his later 1796–99 lectures (his Nova methodo), Fichte incorporated this into his revised presentation of the foundations of his system, where the summons takes its place alongside original feeling, which takes the place of the earlier Anstoss (see below) as a limit on the absolute freedom and a condition for the positing of the I.

The I posits this situation for itself. To posit does not mean to 'create' the objects of consciousness. The principle in question simply states that the essence of an I lies in the assertion of self-identity, i.e., that consciousness presupposes self-consciousness. Such immediate self-identity cannot be understood as a psychological fact, or an act or accident of some previously existing substance or being. It is an action of the I, but one that is identical with the very existence of this same I. In Fichte's technical terminology, the original unity of self-consciousness is an action and the product of the same I, as a "fact and/or act" (Thathandlung; Modern German: Tathandlung), a unity that is presupposed by and contained within every fact and every act of empirical consciousness, although it never appears as such.^{[citation needed]}

The I can posit itself only as limited. Moreover, it cannot even posit its own limitations, in the sense of producing or creating these limits. The finite I cannot be the ground of its own passivity. Instead, for Fichte, if the I is to posit itself, it must simply discover itself to be limited, a discovery that Fichte characterizes as an "impulse,"^[60] "repulse,"^[61] or "resistance"^[62] (Anstoss; Modern German: Anstoß) to the free practical activity of the I. Such an original limitation of the I is, however, a limit for the I only insofar as the I posits it out as a limit. The I does this, according to Fichte's analysis, by positing its own limitation, first, as only a feeling, then as a sensation, then as an intuition of a thing, and finally as a summons of another person.

The Anstoss thus provides the essential impetus that first posits in motion the entire complex train of activities that finally result in our conscious experience both of ourselves and others as empirical individuals and of the world around us. Although Anstoss plays a similar role as the thing in itself does in Kantian philosophy, unlike Kant, Fichte's Anstoss is not something foreign to the I. Instead, it denotes the original encounter of the I with its own finitude. Rather than claim that the not-I (das Nicht-Ich) is the cause or ground of the Anstoss, Fichte argues that not-I is posited by the I in order to explain to itself the Anstoss in order to become conscious of Anstoss. The Wissenschaftslehre demonstrates that Anstoss must occur if self-consciousness is to come about but is unable to explain the actual occurrence of Anstoss. There are limits to what can be expected from an a priori deduction of experience, and this, for Fichte, equally applies to Kant's transcendental philosophy.^{[citation needed]} According to Fichte, transcendental philosophy can explain that the world must have space, time, and causality, but it can never explain why objects have the particular sensible properties they happen to have or why I am this determinate individual rather than another. This is something that the I simply has to discover at the same time that it discovers its own freedom, and indeed, is a condition for the latter.^{[citation needed]}

Dieter Henrich (1966) proposed that Fichte was able to move beyond a "reflective theory of consciousness". According to Fichte, the self must already have some prior acquaintance with itself, independent of the act of reflection ("no object comes to consciousness except under the condition that I am aware of myself, the conscious subject [jedes Object kommt zum Bewusstseyn lediglich unter der Bedingung, dass ich auch meiner selbst, des bewusstseyenden Subjects mir bewusst sey]").^[63] This idea is what Henrich called Fichte's original insight.^[18]

Nationalism

Between December 1807 and March 1808, Fichte gave a series of lectures concerning the "German nation" and its culture and language, projecting the kind of national education he hoped would raise it from the humiliation of its defeat at the hands of the French.^[64] Having been a supporter of Revolutionary France, Fichte became disenchanted by 1804 as Napoleon's armies advanced through Europe, occupying German territories, stripping them of their raw materials and subjugating them to foreign rule. He came to believe Germany would be responsible to carry the virtues of the French Revolution into the future. Furthermore, his nationalism was not aroused by Prussian military defeat and humiliation, for these had not yet occurred, but resulted from his own humanitarian philosophy. Disappointed in the French, he turned to the German nation as the instrument of fulfilling it.^[65]

These lectures, entitled the Addresses to the German Nation, coincided with a period of reform in the Prussian government, under the chancellorship of Baron vom Stein. The Addresses display Fichte's interest during that period in language and culture as vehicles of human spiritual development. Fichte built upon earlier ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder and attempted to unite them with his approach. The aim of the German nation, according to Fichte, was to "found an empire of spirit and reason, and to annihilate completely the crude physical force that rules of the world."^[66] Like Herder's German nationalism, Fichte's was cultural, and grounded in the aesthetic, literary, and moral.^[64] However, Fichte's belief in a "Closed Commercial State", a state dominated economy and society, should be noted – as should its kinship with certain 20th-century governments in Germany and elsewhere.

The nationalism propounded by Fichte in the Addresses would be used over a century later by the Nazi Party in Germany, which saw in Fichte a forerunner to its own nationalist ideology. Like Nietzsche, the association of Fichte with the Nazi regime came to colour readings of Fichte's German nationalism in the post-war period.^[67] This reading of Fichte was often bolstered through reference to an unpublished letter from 1793, Contributions to the Correction of the Public's Judgment concerning the French Revolution, wherein Fichte expressed anti-semitic sentiments, such as arguing against extending civil rights to Jews and calling them a "state within a state" that could "undermine" the German nation.^[68]

However, attached to the letter is a footnote in which Fichte provides an impassioned plea for permitting Jews to practice their religion without hindrance. Furthermore, the final act of Fichte's academic career was to resign as rector of the University of Berlin in protest when his colleagues refused to punish the harassment of Jewish students.^[69] While recent scholarship has sought to dissociate Fichte's writings on nationalism with their adoption by the Nazi Party, the association continues to blight his legacy,^[70] although Fichte, as if to exclude all ground of doubt, clearly and distinctly prohibits,  in his reworked version of The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge (see § Final period in Berlin) genocide and other crimes against humanity:

If you say that it is your conscience's command to exterminate peoples for their sins, [...] we can confidently tell you that you are wrong; for such things can never be commanded against the free and moral force.^[71]

Economics

Fichte's 1800 economic treatise The Closed Commercial State had a profound influence on the economic theories of German Romanticism. In it, Fichte argues the need for the strictest, purely guild-like regulation of industry.

The "exemplary rational state" (Vernunftstaat), Fichte argues, should not allow any of its "subjects" to engage in this or that production, failing to pass the preliminary test, not certifying government agents in their professional skills and agility.^[72] According to Vladimir Mikhailovich Shulyatikov, "this kind of demand was typical of Mittelstund, the German petty middle class, the class of artisans, hoping by creating artificial barriers to stop the victorious march of big capital and thus save themselves from inevitable death. The same demand was imposed on the state, as is evident from Fichte's treatise, by the German "factory" (Fabrike), more precisely, the manufacture of the early 19th century".^[73]

Fichte opposed free trade and unrestrained capitalist industrial growth, stating: "There is an endless war of all against all ... And this war is becoming more fierce, unjust, more dangerous in its consequences, the more the world's population grows, the more acquisitions the trading state makes, the more production and art (industry) develops and, together with thus, the number of circulating goods increases, and with them the needs become more and more diversified. What, with the simple way of life of nations, was done before without great injustices and oppression, turns, thanks to increased needs, into flagrant injustice, into a source of great evils. The buyer tries to take the goods away from the seller; therefore he demands freedom of trade, i.e. freedom for the seller to wander around the markets, freedom not to find a sale for goods and sell them significantly below their value. Therefore, he requires strong competition between manufacturers (Fabrikanten) and merchants."^[72]

The only means that could save the modern world, which would destroy evil at the root, is, according to Fichte, to split the "world state" (the global market) into separate self-sufficient bodies. Each such body, each "closed trading state" will be able to regulate its internal economic relations. It will be able to both extract and process everything that is needed to meet the needs of its citizens. It will carry out the ideal organization of production.^[73] Fichte argued for government regulation of industrial growth, writing "Only by limitation does a certain industry become the property of the class that deals with it".^[72]

Vladimir Mikhailovich Shulyatikov considers the economics of German idealists and Romantics as representing the compromise of the German bourgeoisie of the early 19th century with the monarchical State:

The French physiocrats proclaimed the principle: "Laissez faire!" On the other hand, the German capitalists of the 1800s, whose ideologists were the objective idealists, professed a belief in the saving effect of government tutelage.^[73]

Women

Fichte believed that "active citizenship, civic freedom and even property rights should be withheld from women, whose calling was to subject themselves utterly to the authority of their fathers and husbands."^[74]

Final period in Berlin

Tombs of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his wife Johanna Marie, Dorotheenstaedtischer Friedhof (cemetery), Berlin

Fichte gave a wide range of public and private lectures in Berlin from the last decade of his life. These form some of his best known work, and are the basis of a revived German-speaking scholarly interest in his work.^[20]

The lectures include two works from 1806. In The Characteristics of the Present Age (Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters), Fichte outlines his theory of different historical and cultural epochs. His mystic work The Way Towards the Blessed Life (Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre) gave his fullest thoughts on religion. In 1807-1808 he gave a series of speeches in French-occupied Berlin, Addresses to the German Nation.^[75]

In 1810, the new University of Berlin was established, designed along ideas put forward by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Fichte was made its rector and also the first Chair of Philosophy. This was in part because of educational themes in the Addresses, and in part because of his earlier work at Jena University.

Fichte lectured on further versions of his Wissenschaftslehre. Of these, he only published a brief work from 1810, The Science of Knowledge in its General Outline (Die Wissenschaftslehre, in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse dargestellt; also translated as Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge). His son published some of these thirty years after his death.^{[citation needed]} Most only became public in the last decades of the twentieth century, in his collected works.^[76] This included reworked versions of the Doctrine of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 1810–1813), The Science of Rights (Das System der Rechtslehre, 1812), and The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge (Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre, 1812; 1st ed. 1798).

Bibliography

Selected works in German

Wissenschaftslehre

• Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie (1794)
• Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/1795)
• Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (1796–1799: "Halle Nachschrift," 1796/1797 and "Krause Nachschrift," 1798/1799)
• Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797/1798)
• Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1801)
• Die Wissenschaftslehre (1804, 1812, 1813)
• Die Wissenschaftslehre, in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse dargestellt (1810)

Other works in German

• Versuch einer Critik aller Offenbarung (1792)
• Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (1793)
• Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794)
• Grundlage des Naturrechts (1796)
• Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre (1798)
• "Ueber den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung" (1798)
• "Appellation an das Publikum über die durch Churf. Sächs. Confiscationsrescript ihm beigemessenen atheistischen Aeußerungen. Eine Schrift, die man zu lesen bittet, ehe man sie confsicirt" (1799)
• Der geschlossene Handelsstaat. Ein philosophischer Entwurf als Anhang zur Rechtslehre und Probe einer künftig zu liefernden Politik (1800)
• Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800)
• Friedrich Nicolais Leben und sonderbare Meinungen^[77] (1801)
• Philosophie der Maurerei. Briefe an Konstant (1802/03)
• Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters (1806)
• Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre (1806)
• Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807/1808)
• Das System der Rechtslehre (1812)

Correspondence

• Jacobi an Fichte, German Text (1799/1816), with Introduction and Critical Apparatus by Marco Ivaldo and Ariberto Acerbi (Introduction, German Text, Italian Translation, 3 Appendices with Jacobi's and Fichte's complementary Texts, Philological Notes, Commentary, Bibliography, Index): Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici Press, Naples 2011, ISBN:978-88-905957-5-2.

Collected works in German

The new standard edition of Fichte's works in German, which supersedes all previous editions, is the Gesamtausgabe ("Collected Works" or "Complete Edition", commonly abbreviated as GA), prepared by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 42 volumes, edited by Reinhard Lauth (de), Hans Gliwitzky, Erich Fuchs and Peter Schneider, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1962–2012.

It is organized into four parts:

• Part I: Published Works
• Part II: Unpublished Writings
• Part III: Correspondence
• Part IV: Lecture Transcripts

Fichte's works are quoted and cited from GA, followed by a combination of Roman and Arabic numbers, indicating the series and volume, respectively, and the page number(s). Another edition is Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke (abbrev. SW), ed. I. H. Fichte. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971.

Selected works in English

• Concerning the Conception of the Science of Knowledge Generally (Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie, 1794), translated by Adolph Ernst Kroeger. In The Science of Knowledge, pp. 331–336. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1868. Rpt., London: Trübner & Co., 1889.
• Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation. Trans. Garrett Green. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. (Translation of Versuch einer Critik aller Offenbarung, 1st ed. 1792, 2nd ed. 1793.)
• Early Philosophical Writings. Trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. (Contains Selections from Fichte's Writings and Correspondence from the Jena period, 1794–1799).
• Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge. Translation of: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95, 2nd ed. 1802), Fichte's first major exposition of the Wissenschaftlehre. In: Heath, Peter; Lachs, John, eds (1982). The Science of Knowledge. With the First and Second Introductions (reissued; first published by Meredith Corporation 1970). Texts in German Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27050-2. 
• Foundations of Natural Right. Trans. Michael Baur. Ed. Frederick Neuhouser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (Translation of Grundlage des Naturrechts, 1796/97.)
• Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) Nova Methodo [FTP]. Trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. (Translation of Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, 1796–1799.)
• The System of Ethics according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (translation of Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre, 1798). Ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale and Günter Zöller. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings. Trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale. Indianapolis, and Cambridge: Hackett, 1994. (Contains mostly writings from the late Jena period, 1797–1799.)
• The Vocation of Man, 1848. Trans. Peter Preuss. Indianapolis. (Translation of Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800.)
• The Vocation of the Scholar, 1847. (Translation of Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, 1794.)
• The Closed Commercial State: J G Fichte (with an interpretive essay by the translator, and with a German-English glossary). SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-4384-4021-7. 
• A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand. Trans. John Botterman and William Rash. In: Philosophy of German Idealism, pp. 39–115. (Translation of Sonnenklarer Bericht an das grössere Publikum über das Wesen der neuesten Philosophie, 1801.)
• The Science of Knowing: J.G. Fichte's 1804 Lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre (with an introduction by the translator and a German-English glossary). SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-7914-6449-6. 
• Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge, 1810 (Translation of Die Wissenschaftslehre, in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse dargestellt published in From The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Trubner and Co., 1889; trans. William Smith.)
• On the Nature of the Scholar, 1845 (Translation of Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten, 1806.)
• Characteristics of the Present Age (Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, 1806). In: The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 2 vols., trans. and ed. William Smith. London: Chapman, 1848/49. Reprint, London: Thoemmes Press, 1999.
• Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation, 1808), ed. and trans. Gregory Moore. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• The Philosophical Rupture Between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802). Trans. and eds. Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012. Includes the following texts by Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Correspondence with F.W.J. Schelling (1800–1802); "Announcement" (1800); extract from "New Version of the Wissenschaftslehre" (1800); "Commentaries on Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism and Presentation of My System of Philosophy" (1800–1801).

Works online in English

• J.G. Fichte. "The Wissenschaftslehre is Mathematics" ("Announcement", 1800/1801). * [1]
• Addresses to the German Nation (1922). (Trs. R. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull.) IA (UToronto)
• The Destination of Man (1846). Alternative translation of The Vocation of Man. (Tr. Mrs. Percy Sinnett.) IA (UToronto)
• Doctrine de la science (Paris, 1843). French translation of Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge. Google (Harvard) Google (Oxford) Google (UMich) (in French)
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Popular Works (1873). (Tr. William Smith.) IA (UToronto)
• New Exposition of the Science of Knowledge (1869). Translation of Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre. (Tr. A. E. Kroeger.) Google (Harvard) Google (NYPL) IA (UToronto)
• On the Nature of the Scholar (1845). Alternative translation of The Vocation of the Scholar. (Tr. William Smith.) IA (UToronto)
• The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1848–49). (Tr. William Smith.)
  • Volume 1, 1848. Google (Oxford) IA (UToronto) 4th ed., 1889. IA (UIllinois) IA (UToronto)
  • Volume 2, 1849. IA (UToronto) 4th ed., 1889. Google (Stanford) IA (UIllinois) IA (UToronto)
• The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge (1897). (Tr. A. E. Kroeger.) Google (UMich) IA (UToronto)
• The Science of Knowledge (1889). Alternative translation of Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge. (Tr. A. E. Kroeger.) IA (UToronto)
• The Science of Rights (1889). (Tr. A. E. Kroeger.) IA (UCal)
• (German) Versuch einer Critik aller Offenbarung (Königsberg, 1792; 2nd ed. 1793). Gallica Google (Oxford) Google (Oxford)
• The Vocation of Man (1848). (Tr. William Smith.) Google (Oxford) 1910. Google (UCal)
• The Vocation of the Scholar (1847). (Tr. William Smith.) IA (UCal)
• The Way Towards the Blessed Life (1849). (Tr. William Smith.) Google (Oxford)
• "On the Foundation of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe"; alternative translation of "On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World-Governance" (trans. anon. n.d.).

See also

• Butterfly effect

Notes

References

• Daniel Breazeale. "Fichte's Aenesidemus Review and the Transformation of German Idealism" The Review of Metaphysics, 34 (1980–81): 545–68.
• Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (eds.). Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Controversies. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1994.
• Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (eds.), Fichte, German Idealism, and Early Romanticism, Rodopi, 2010.
• Daniel Breazeale. Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte's Early Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Ezequiel L. Posesorski. Between Reinhold and Fichte: August Ludwig Hülsen's Contribution to the Emergence of German Idealism. Karlsruhe: Karlsruher Institut Für Technologie, 2012.
• Sally Sedgwick. The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Violetta L. Waibel, Daniel Breazeale, Tom Rockmore (eds.), Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
• Günter Zöller. Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Further reading

• Karl Ameriks, Dieter Sturma (eds.), The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
• Arash Abizadeh. "Was Fichte an Ethnic Nationalist?", History of Political Thought 26.2 (2005): 334–359.
• Gunnar Beck. Fichte and Kant on Freedom, Rights and Law, Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield), 2008.
• Franks, Paul. All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Andrea Gentile, Bewusstsein, Anschauung und das Unendliche bei Fichte, Schelling und Hegel. Über den unbedingten Grundsatz der Erkenntnis, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg, München 2018, ISBN:978-3-495-48911-6
• T. P. Hohler. Imagination and Reflection: Intersubjectivity. Fichte's 'Grundlage' of 1794. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.
• Wayne Martin. Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte's Jena Project. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
• Harald Muenster. Fichte trifft Darwin, Luhmann und Derrida. 'Die Bestimmung des Menschen' in differenztheoretischer Rekonstruktion und im Kontext der 'Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo' [Fichte Meets Darwin, Luhmann and Derrida. "The Vocation of Man" As Reconstructed by Theories of Difference and in the Context of the "Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo"]. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011 (Fichte-Studien-Supplementa, volume 28).
• Isaac Nakhimovsky, The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011.
• Frederick Neuhouser. Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Tom Rockmore. Fichte, Marx, and the German Philosophical Tradition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980.
• Rainer Schäfer. Johann Gottlieb Fichtes Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre von 1794. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006.
• Ulrich Schwabe. Individuelles und Transindividuelles Ich. Die Selbstindividuation reiner Subjektivität und Fichtes "Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo". Paderborn 2007.
• Peter Suber. "A Case Study in Ad Hominem Arguments: Fichte's Science of Knowledge," Philosophy and Rhetoric, 23, 1 (1990): 12–42.
• Xavier Tilliette, Fichte. La science de la liberté, pref. by Reinhard Lauth (de), Vrin, Paris, 2003.
• Robert R. Williams. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
• David W. Wood. 'Mathesis of the Mind': A Study of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and Geometry. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2012 (Fichte-Studien-Supplementa, volume 29).
• Tommaso Valentini, I fondamenti della libertà in J.G. Fichte. Studi sul primato del pratico, Presentazione di Armando Rigobello, Editori Riuniti University Press, Roma 2012.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

• Works by Johann Gottlieb Fichte at Project Gutenberg
• Error in Template:Internet Archive author: Johann Gottlieb Fichte doesn't exist.
• Works by Johann Gottlieb Fichte at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Outlines of the Doctrine of Knowledge
• Zalta, Edward N., ed. "Johann Gottlieb Fichte". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/johann-fichte/. 
• The North American Fichte Society: "Fichte's Works in English Translation"
• Works by Fichte, original German texts
• Internationale Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte-Gesellschaft
• KULTUR & KONGRESSWERK-fichte – Event-location in Magdeburg, named after Johann-Gottlieb Fichte
• A Case Study in Ad Hominem Arguments: Fichte's Science of Knowledge

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