philosophy in the period between Kant and Hegel. Initially considered
one of Kant's most talented followers, Fichte developed his own system
of transcendental philosophy, the so-called Wissenschaftslehre.
Through technical philosophical works and popular writings Fichte
exercised great influence over his contemporaries, especially during
his years at the University of Jena. His influence waned towards the
end of his life, and Hegel's subsequent dominance relegated Fichte to
the status of a transitional figure whose thought helped to explain
the development of German idealism from Kant's Critical philosophy to
Hegel's philosophy of Spirit. Today, however, Fichte is more correctly
seen as an important philosopher in his own right, as a thinker who
carried on the tradition of German idealism in a highly original form.
1. Fichte's Beginnings (1762-1794)
a. Early life
Fichte was born on May 19, 1762 to a family of ribbon makers. Early in
life he impressed everyone with his great intelligence, but his
parents were too poor to pay for his schooling. Through the patronage
of a local nobleman, he was able to attend the Pforta school, which
prepared students for a university education, and then the
universities of Jena and Leipzig. Unfortunately, little is known about
this period of Fichte's life, but we do know that he intended to
obtain a degree in theology, and that he had to break off his studies
for financial reasons around 1784, without obtaining a degree of any
sort. Several years of earning his living as an itinerant tutor
ensued, during which time he met Johanna Rahn, his future wife, while
living in Zurich.
In the summer of 1790, while living in Leipzig and once again in
financial distress, Fichte agreed to tutor a university student in the
Kantian philosophy, about which he knew very little at the time. His
immersion in Kant's writings, according to his own testimony,
revolutionized his thinking and changed his life, turning him away
from a deterministic view of the world at odds with human freedom
towards the doctrines of the Critical philosophy and its
reconciliation of freedom and determinism.
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b. Fichte's sudden rise to prominence
More wandering and frustration followed. Fichte decided to travel to
Königsberg to meet Kant himself, and on July 4, 1791 the disciple had
his first interview with the master. Unfortunately for Fichte, things
did not go well, and Kant was not especially impressed by his visitor.
In order to prove his expertise in the Critical philosophy, Fichte
quickly composed a manuscript on the relation of the Critical
philosophy to the question of divine revelation, an issue that Kant
had yet to address in print. This time, Kant was justifiably impressed
by the results and arranged for his own publisher to bring out the
work, which appeared in 1792 under the title An Attempt at a Critique
of all Revelation.
In this fledgling effort Fichte adhered to many of Kant's claims about
morality and religion by thoughtfully extending them to the concept of
revelation. In particular, he took over Kant's idea that all religious
belief must ultimately withstand critical scrutiny if it is to make a
legitimate claim on us. For Fichte, any alleged revelation of God's
activity in the world must pass a moral test: namely, no immoral
command or action, i.e., nothing that violates the moral law, can be
attributed to Him. Although Fichte himself did not explicitly
criticize Christianity by appealing to this test, such a restriction
on the content of a possible revelation, if consistently imposed,
would overturn some aspects of orthodox Christian belief, including,
for example, the doctrine of original sin, which states that everyone
is born guilty as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the
Garden of Eden. This element of Christian theology, which is said to
be grounded in the revelations contained in the Bible, is hardly
compatible with the view of justice underwritten by the moral law.
Attentive readers should have instantly gleaned Fichte's radical views
from the placid Kantian prose.
For reasons that are still mysterious, Fichte's name and preface were
omitted from the first edition of An Attempt at a Critique of all
Revelation, and thus the book, which displayed an extensive and subtle
appreciation of Kant's thought, was taken to be the work of Kant
himself. Once it became known that Fichte was the author, he instantly
became a philosophical figure of importance; no one whose work had
been mistaken for Kant's, however briefly, could be rightfully denied
fame and celebrity in the German philosophical world.
Fichte continued working as a tutor while attempting to fashion his
philosophical insights into a system of his own. He also anonymously
published two political works, "Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought
from the Princes of Europe, Who Have Oppressed It Until Now" and
Contribution to the Rectification of the Public's Judgment of the
French Revolution. It became widely known that he was their author;
consequently, from the very beginning of his public career, he was
identified with radical causes and views.
In October 1793 he married his fiancée, and shortly thereafter
unexpectedly received a call from the University of Jena to take over
the chair in philosophy that Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1758-1823), a
well-known exponent and interpreter of the Kantian philosophy, had
recently vacated. Fichte arrived in Jena in May 1794.
2. The Jena Period (1794-1799)
2a. Fichte's philosophical vocation
In his years at Jena, which lasted until 1799, Fichte published the
works that established his reputation as one of the major figures in
the German philosophical tradition. Fichte never exclusively saw
himself as an academic philosopher addressing the typical audience of
fellow philosophers, university colleagues, and students. Instead, he
considered himself a scholar with a wider role to play beyond the
confines of academia, a view eloquently expressed in "Some Lectures
Concerning the Scholar's Vocation," which were delivered to an
overflowing lecture hall shortly after his much anticipated arrival in
Jena. One of the tasks of philosophy, according to these lectures, is
to offer rational guidance towards the ends that are most appropriate
for a free and harmonious society. The particular role of the scholar
— that is, of individuals such as Fichte himself, regardless of their
particular academic discipline — is to be a teacher of mankind and a
superintendent of its never-ending progress towards perfection.
Throughout his career Fichte alternated between composing, on the one
hand, philosophical works for scholars and students of philosophy and,
on the other hand, popular works for the general public. This desire
to communicate to the wider public — to bridge the gap, so to speak,
between theory and praxis — inspired his writings from the start. In
fact, Fichte's passion for the education of society as a whole should
be seen as a necessary consequence of his philosophical system, which
continues the Kantian tradition of placing philosophy in the service
of enlightenment, i.e., the eventual liberation of mankind from its
self-imposed immaturity. To become mature, according to Kant's way of
thinking, which Fichte had adopted, is to overcome our willing refusal
to think for ourselves, and thus to accept responsibility for failing
to think and act independently of the guidance of external authority.
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b. Fichte's system, the Wissenschaftslehre
Fichte called his philosophical system the Wissenschaftslehre. The
usual English translations of this term, such as "science of
knowledge," "doctrine of science," or "theory of science," can be
misleading, since today these phrases carry connotations that can be
excessively theoretical or too reminiscent of the natural sciences.
Therefore, many English-language commentators and translators prefer
to use the German term as the untranslated proper name that designates
Fichte's system as a whole.
Another potential source of confusion is that Fichte's book from
1794/95, whose full title is Foundations of the Entire
Wissenschaftslehre, is sometimes simply referred to as the
Wissenschaftslehre. Strictly speaking, this is incorrect, since this
work, as its title indicates, was meant as the foundations of the
system as a whole; the other parts of the system were to be written
afterwards. Much of Fichte's work in the remainder of the Jena period
attempted to complete the system as it was envisioned in the 1794/95
Foundations.
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c. Background to the Wissenschaftslehre
Before moving to Jena, and while he was living in the house of his
father-in-law in Zurich, Fichte wrote two short works that presaged
much of the Wissenschaftslehre that he devoted the rest of his life to
developing. The first of these was a review of a skeptical critique of
Kantian philosophy in general and Reinhold's so-called
Elementarphilosophie ("Elementary Philosophy") in particular. The work
under review, an anonymously published polemic called Aenesidemus,
which was later discovered to have been written by Gottlob Ernst
Schulze (1761-1833), and which appeared in 1792, greatly influenced
Fichte, causing him to revise many of his views, but did not lead him
to abandon Reinhold's concept of philosophy as rigorous science, an
interpretation of the nature of philosophy that demanded that
philosophical principles be systematically derived from a single
foundational principle known with certainty.
Reinhold had argued that this first principle was what he called the
"principle of consciousness," namely, the proposition that "in
consciousness representation is distinguished through the subject from
both object and subject and is related to both." From this principle
Reinhold attempted to deduce the contents of Kant's Critical
philosophy. He claimed that the principle of consciousness was a
reflectively known fact of consciousness, and argued that it could
lend credence to various Kantian views, including the distinction
between the faculties of sensibility and understanding and the
existence of things in themselves. Schulze responded by offering
skeptical objections against the legitimacy of Kant's (and thus
Reinhold's) concept of the thing in itself (construed as the causal
origin of our representations) and by arguing that the principle of
consciousness was neither a fundamental principle (since it was
subject to the laws of logic, in that it had to be free of
contradiction) nor one known with certainty (since it originated in
merely empirical reflection on the contents of consciousness, which
reflection Schulze, following David Hume, persuasively argued could
not yield a principle grounded on indubitable evidence).
Fichte, to his consternation, found himself in agreement with much of
Schulze's critique. Although he was still eager to support the Kantian
system, Fichte, as a result of reading Schulze, came to the conclusion
that the Critical philosophy needed new foundations. Yet the search
for new foundations, in Fichte's mind, was never equivalent to a
repudiation of the Kantian philosophy. As Fichte would frequently
claim, he remained true to the spirit, if not the letter, of Kant's
thought. His review of Schulze's Aenesidemus provides one especially
tantalizing hint about how he would subsequently attempt to remain
within the spirit of Kant's thought while attempting to reconstruct it
from the ground up: philosophy, he says, must begin with a first
principle, as Reinhold maintained, but not with one that expresses a
mere fact, a Tatsache; instead, Fichte countered, it must begin with a
fact/act, a Tathandlung, that is not known empirically, but rather
with self-evident certainty. The meaning and purpose of this new first
principle would not become clear to his readers until the publication
of the 1794/95 Foundations.
In addition to his review of the Schulze book, and still prior to his
arrival in Jena, Fichte sketched out the nature and methodology of the
Wissenschaftslehre in an essay entitled "Concerning the Concept of the
Wissenschaftslehre," which was intended to prepare his expectant
audience for his classes and lectures. Here Fichte sets out his
conception of philosophy as the science of science, i.e., as
Wissenschaftslehre. The Wissenschaftslehre is devoted to establishing
the foundation of individual sciences such as geometry, whose first
principle is said to be the task of limiting space in accordance with
a rule. Thus the Wissenschaftslehre seeks to justify the cognitive
task of the science of geometry, i.e., its systematic efforts at
spatial construction in the form of theorems validly deduced from
axioms known with self-evident certainty. The Wissenschaftslehre,
which itself is a science in need of a first principle, is said to be
grounded on the Tathandlung first mentioned in the Aenesidemus review.
The precise nature of this fact/act, with which the Wissenschaftslehre
is supposed to begin, is much debated, even today. Yet it is the
essential core of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre in general and the
1794/95 Foundations in particular.
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d. Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre
In the 1794/95 Foundations Fichte expresses the content of the
Tathandlung in its most general form as "the I posits itself
absolutely." Fichte is suggesting that the self, which he typically
refers to as "the I," is not a static thing with fixed properties, but
rather a self-producing process. Yet if it is a self-producing
process, then it also seems that it must be free, since in some as yet
unspecified fashion it owes its existence to nothing but itself. This
admittedly obscure starting point is subject to much scrutiny and
qualification as the Wissenschaftslehre proceeds. In more modern
language, and as a first approximation of its meaning, we can
understand the Tathandlung as expressing the concept of a rational
agent that constantly interprets itself in light of normative
standards that it imposes on itself, in both the theoretical and
practical realms, in its efforts to determine what it ought to believe
and how it ought to act. (Fichte's indebtedness to the Kantian notion
of autonomy in the form of self-imposed lawfulness should be obvious
to anyone familiar with the Critical philosophy.)
Given the difficulty of the notion, unfortunately, Fichte's
Tathandlung has perplexed his readers from its first appearance. The
principle of the self-positing I was initially interpreted along the
lines of Berkeley's idealism, and thus as claiming that the world as a
whole is somehow the product of an infinite mind. This interpretation
is surely mistaken, even though one can find passages that seem to
support it. More important, though, is the question of the epistemic
status of the principle. Is it known with the self-evident certainty
that Fichte, following Reinhold, claims must ground any attempt at
systematic knowledge? Furthermore, how does it serve as a basis for
deducing the rest of the Wissenschaftslehre?
Fichte's method is sometimes said to be phenomenological, restricting
itself to what we can discover by means of reflection. Yet Fichte does
not claim that we simply find the fully formed Tathandlung residing
somewhere within us; instead, we construct it in order to explain
ourselves to ourselves, to render intelligible to ourselves our
normative nature as finite rational beings. Thus the requisite
reflection is not empirical but transcendental, i.e., an experimental
postulate adopted for philosophical purposes. That is, the principle
is presupposed as true in order to make sense of the conditions for
the possibility of our ordinary experience.
Such a method leaves open the possibility of other explanations of our
experience. Fichte claims, however, that the alternatives can actually
take only one form. Either, he says, we can begin (as he does) with
the I as the ground of all possible experience, or we can begin with
the thing in itself outside of our experience. This dilemma involves,
as he puts it, choosing between idealism and dogmatism. The former is
transcendental philosophy; the latter, a naturalistic approach to
experience that explains it solely in causal terms. As Fichte famously
said in the first introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre from 1797,
the choice between the two depends on the kind of person one is,
because they are said to be mutually exclusive yet equally possible
approaches.
If, however, such a choice between starting points is possible, then
the principle of the self-positing I lacks the self-evident certainty
that Fichte attributed to it in his earlier essay on the concept of
the Wissenschaftslehre. There are, in fact, those who do not find it
at all self-evident, namely, the dogmatists. Fichte clearly thinks
that they are mistaken in their dogmatism, yet he offers no direct
refutation of their position, claiming only that they cannot
demonstrate what they hope to demonstrate, namely, that the ground of
all experience lies solely in objects existing independently of the I.
The dogmatist position, Fichte implies, ignores the normative aspects
of our experience, e.g., warranted and unwarranted belief, correct and
incorrect action, and thus attempts to account for our experience
entirely in terms of our causal interaction with the world around us.
Presumably, however, those who begin with a disavowal of normativity —
as the dogmatists do, because they are that kind of person — can never
be brought to agree with the idealists. There is thus an argumentative
impasse between the two camps.
Fichte's remarks about systematic form and certainty in "Concerning
the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre" give the impression that he
intends to demonstrate the entirety of the Wissenschaftslehre from the
principle of the self-positing I through a chain of logical inferences
that merely set out the implications of the initial principle in such
a way that the certainty of the first principle is transferred to the
claims inferred from it. (The method of Spinoza's Ethics comes to
mind, but this time with only a single premise from which to begin the
proofs.) Yet this hardly seems to be Fichte's actual method, since he
constantly introduces new concepts that cannot be plausibly
interpreted as the logical consequences of the previous ones. In other
words, the deductions in the Foundations of the Entire
Wissenschaftslehre are more than merely analytical explications of the
consequences of the original premise. Instead, they both articulate
and refine the initial principle of the self-positing I in accordance
with the demands made on the idealist who is attempting to clarify the
nature of the self-positing I by means of reflection.
After Fichte postulates the self-positing I as the explanatory ground
of all experience, he then begins to complicate the web of concepts
required to make sense of this initial postulate, thereby carrying out
the aforementioned construction of the self-positing I. The I posits
itself insofar as it is aware of itself, not only as an object but
also as a subject, and finds itself subject to normative constraints
in both the theoretical and practical realms, e.g., that it must be
free of contradiction and that there must be adequate reasons for what
it believes and does. Furthermore, the I posits itself as free, since
these constraints are ones that it imposes on itself. Next, by means
of further reflection, the I becomes aware of a difference between
"representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity" and
"representations accompanied by a feeling a freedom" — that is, a
difference between representations of what purports to be an objective
world existing apart from our representations of it and
representations that are merely the product of our own mental
activity. To recognize this distinction in our representations,
however, is to posit a distinction between the I and the not-I, i.e.,
the self and whatever exists independently of it. In other words, the
I comes to posit itself as limited by something other than itself,
even though it initially posits itself as free, for in the course of
reflecting on its own nature the I discovers limitations on its
activity.
Our understanding of the nature of this limitation is made
increasingly more complex through further acts of reflection. First,
the I posits a check, an Anstoß, on its theoretical and practical
activity, in that it encounters resistance whenever it thinks or acts.
This check is then developed into more refined forms of limitation:
sensations, intuitions, and concepts, all united in the experience of
the things of the natural world, i.e., the spatio-temporal realm ruled
by causal laws. Moreover, this world is found to contain other finite
rational beings. They too are free yet limited, and the recognition of
their freedom places further constraints on our activity. In this way
the I posits the moral law and restricts its treatment of others to
actions that are consistent with respect for their freedom. Thus, by
the end of Fichte's deductions, the I posits itself as free yet
limited by natural necessity and the moral law: its freedom becomes an
infinite task in which it seeks to make the world conform to its
normative standards, but only by doing so in an appropriately moral
fashion that allows other free beings to do the same for themselves.
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e. Working out the Wissenschaftslehre and the end of the Jena period
Fichte's writings during the rest of the Jena period attempt to fill
out and refine the entire system. The Foundations of Natural Right
Based on the Wissenschaftslehre (1796/97) and The System of Ethical
Theory Based on the Wissenschaftslehre (1798) concern themselves with
political philosophy and moral philosophy, respectively. The task of
the former work is to characterize the legitimate constraints that can
be placed on individual freedom in order to produce a community of
maximally free individuals who simultaneously respect the freedom of
others. The task of the latter work is to characterize the specific
duties of rational agents who freely produce objects and actions in
the pursuit of their goals. These duties follow from our general
obligation to determine ourselves freely, i.e., from the categorical
imperative.
Besides filling out projected portions of the system, Fichte also
began to revise the foundations themselves. Since he considered the
mode of presentation of the Foundations of the Entire
Wissenschaftslehre unsatisfactory, he began drawing up a new version
in his lectures, which were given three times between 1796 and 1799,
but which he never managed to publish. These lectures, which in some
respects are superior to the Foundations of the Entire
Wissenschaftslehre, were published posthumously and are now known as
the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo.
Prior to publishing any systematic presentation of his philosophy of
religion, Fichte became embroiled in what is now known as the
Atheismusstreit, the atheism controversy. In an essay from 1798
entitled "On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the
World" Fichte argued that religious belief could be legitimate only
insofar as it arose from properly moral considerations — a view
clearly indebted to his book on revelation from 1792. Furthermore, he
claimed that God has no existence apart from the moral world order.
Because neither view was orthodox at the time, Fichte was accused of
atheism and ultimately forced to leave Jena.
Two open letters, both from 1799 and written by philosophers whom
Fichte fervently admired, compounded his troubles. First, Kant
disavowed the Wissenschaftslehre for mistakenly having tried to infer
substantive philosophical knowledge from logic alone. Such an
inference, he claimed, was impossible, since logic abstracted from the
content of knowledge and thus could not produce a new object of
knowledge. Second, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi accused the
Wissenschaftslehre of nihilism: that is, of producing reality out of
mere mental representations, and thus in effect from nothingness.
Whether or not these criticisms were just (and Fichte certainly denied
that they were), they further damaged Fichte's philosophical
reputation.
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3. The Berlin Period (1800-1814)
a. The eclipse of Fichte's career
In 1800 Fichte settled in Berlin and continued to philosophize. He was
no longer a professor, because there was no university in Berlin at
the time of his arrival. To earn a living, he published new works and
gave private lectures. The Berlin years, while productive, represent a
decline in Fichte's fortunes, since he never regained the degree of
influence among philosophers that he had enjoyed during the Jena
years, although he remained a popular author among non-philosophers.
His first major Berlin publication was a popular presentation of the
Wissenschaftslehre designed to answer his critics on the question of
atheism. Known as The Vocation of Man, it appeared in 1800 and is
probably Fichte's greatest literary production. (It seems, although
this is never explicitly stated anywhere in the book, that much of it
was inspired by the personally stinging critique of Jacobi's open
letter.)
Fichte continued to revise the Wissenschaftslehre, yet he published
very little of the material developed in these renewed efforts to
perfect his system, mostly because he feared being misunderstood as he
had been during the Jena years. His reluctance to publish gave his
contemporaries the false impression that he was more or less finished
as an original philosopher. Except for a cryptic outline that appeared
in 1810, his Berlin lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre, of which there
are numerous versions, only appeared posthumously. In these
manuscripts Fichte typically speaks of the absolute and its
appearances, i.e., a philosophically suitable stand-in for a more
traditional notion of God and the community of finite rational beings
whose existence is grounded in the absolute. As a result, Fichte is
sometimes said to have taken a religious turn in the Berlin period.
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b. Popular writings from the Berlin period
In 1806 Fichte published two lecture series that were well-received by
his contemporaries. The first, The Characteristics of the Present Age,
employs the Wissenschaftslehre for the purposes of the philosophy of
history. According to Fichte, there are five stages of history in
which the human race progresses from the rule of instinct to the rule
of reason. The present age, he says, is the third age, an epoch of
liberation from instinct and external authority, out of which humanity
will ultimately progress until it makes itself and the world it
inhabits into a fully self-conscious representative of the life of
reason. The second, The Way Towards the Blessed Life, which is
sometimes said to be a mystical work, treats of morality and religion
in a popular format.
Another famous series of lectures, Addresses to the German Nation,
given in 1808 during the French occupation, was intended as a
continuation of The Characteristics of the Present Age, but
exclusively for a German audience. Here Fichte envisions a new form of
national education that would enable the German nation, not yet in
existence, to reach the fifth and final age outlined in the earlier
lecture series. Once again, Fichte demonstrated his interest in larger
matters, and in a manner perfectly consistent with his earlier
insistence from the Jena period that the scholar has a cultural role
to play.
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c. Fichte's return to the university and his final years
When the newly founded Prussian university in Berlin opened in 1810,
Fichte was made the head of the philosophy faculty; in 1811 he was
elected the first rector of the university. He continued his
philosophical work until the very end of his life, lecturing on the
Wissenschaftslehre and writing on political philosophy and other
subjects. When the War of Liberation broke out in 1813, Fichte
canceled his lectures and joined the militia. His wife Johanna, who
was serving as a volunteer nurse in a military hospital, contracted a
life-threatening fever. She recovered, but Fichte fell ill with the
same ailment. He died on January 29, 1814.
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4. Conclusion
Although Fichte's importance for the history of German philosophy is
undisputed, the nature of his legacy is still very much debated. He
has sometimes been seen as a mere transitional figure between Kant and
Hegel, as little more than a philosophical stepping stone along
Spirit's path to absolute knowledge. This understanding of Fichte was
encouraged by Hegel himself, and no doubt for self-serving reasons.
Nowadays, however, Fichte is studied more and more for his own sake,
in particular for his theory of subjectivity, i.e., the theory of the
self-positing I, which is rightly seen as a sophisticated elaboration
of Kant's claim that finite rational beings are to be interpreted in
theoretical and practical terms. The level of detail that Fichte
provides on these matters exceeds that found in Kant's writings. This
fact alone would make Fichte's work worthy of our attention. Yet
perhaps the most persuasive testament to Fichte's greatness as a
philosopher is to be found in his relentless willingness to begin
again, to start the Wissenschaftslehre anew, and never to rest content
with any prior formulation of his thought. Although this leaves his
readers perpetually dissatisfied and desirous of a definitive
statement of his views, Fichte, true to his publically declared
vocation, makes them into better philosophers through his own example
of restless striving for the truth.
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5. Suggestions for Further Reading
Fichte's Writings in German
Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Ed. R.
Lauth, H. Jacobs, and H. Gliwitzky. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann,
1964ff.
Fichtes Werke, 11 vols. Ed. Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter & Co., 1971. (Reprint of the 19th century edition of Fichte's
writings.)
Fichte's Writings in English Translation
(Publication dates during Fichte's lifetime are given in brackets.)
Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings [1790-1799]. Trans. and ed.
Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. (Includes
"Review of Aenesidemus," "Concerning the Concept of the
Wissenschaftslehre," and "Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar's
Vocation.")
Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation [17921, 17932]. Trans. Garrett
Green. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
"Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, Who
Have Oppressed It Until Now" [1793]. Trans. Thomas E. Wartenberg. In
What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and
Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1996.
"On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy" [1794]. Trans. Elizabeth
Rubenstein. In German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, ed. David Simpson. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge [1794/95]. In The
Science of Knowledge, trans. and ed. Peter Heath and John Lachs.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. (Also includes the two
introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre from 1797.)
"On the Linguistic Capacity and the Origin of Language" [1795]. In
Language and German Idealism: Fichte's Linguistic Philosophy, trans.
and ed. Jere Paul Surber. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,
1996.
Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova
methodo (1796/99). Trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1992. (Posthumously published lectures given between
1796 and 1799.)
Foundations of Natural Right [1796/97]. Trans. Michael Baur, ed.
Frederick Neuhouser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings
[1797-1800]. Trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1994. (Includes the two introductions to the
Wissenschaftslehre from 1797 as well as "On the Basis of Our Belief in
a Divine Governance of the World" from 1798.)
The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge [1798].
Trans. A E. Kroeger. London: Kegan Paul, 1897. (German title would be
better translated as The System of Ethical Theory Based on the
Wissenschaftslehre. An unreliable translation.)
The Vocation of Man [1800]. Trans. Peter Preuss. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1987.
"A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual
Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to
Understand" [1801]. Trans. John Botterman and William Rasch. In
Philosophy of German Idealism, ed. Ernst Behler. New York: Continuum,
1987.
The Characteristics of the Present Age and The Way Towards the Blessed
Life [1806]. In The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 2 vols.,
trans. and ed. William Smith. London: Chapman, 1848/49. Reprint ó
London: Thoemmes Press, 1999.
Addresses to the German Nation [1808]. Trans. R. F. Jones and G. H.
Turnbull. Chicago: Open Court, 1922. Reprint ó Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, Inc., 1979.
"The Science of Knowledge in its General Outline" [1810]. Trans.
Walter E. Wright. Idealistic Studies 6 (1976): 106-117.
Other Philosophers' Writings in English Translation
Di Giovanni, George and H. S. Harris, eds. Between Kant and Hegel:
Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1985. Revised edition ó Indianapolis,
Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2000. (Includes excerpts
from Reinhold's The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge and
Schulze's Aenesidemus.)
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich. The Main Philosophical Writings and the
Novel Allwill. Trans. and ed. George di Giovanni. Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994. (Includes Jacobi to Fichte.)
Suggested Secondary Literature in English, French, and German
Baumanns, Peter. J. G. Fichte: Kritische Gesamtdarstellung seiner
Philosophie. Freiburg/M¸nchen: Verlag Karl Alber, 1990.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: The Struggle Against
Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 2002. (Part II interprets the Wissenschaftslehre from the point
of view of Fichte's critique of subjectivism.)
Bowman, Curtis. "Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Foundations of the Entire
Science of Knowledge." In Central Works of Philosophy (Volume 3: The
Nineteenth Century), ed. John Shand. Chesham: Acumen Publishing
Limited, 2005. (An interpretation of Fichte's best known book,
suitable for first-time readers.)
Breazeale, Daniel. "Fichte and Schelling: The Jena Period." In The Age
of German Idealism (Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VI), ed.
Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins. London: Routledge, 1993.
_____. "Fichte, Johann Gottlieb." In Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, vol. 3. London: Routledge, 1998.
Breazeale, Daniel and Tom Rockmore, eds. Fichte: Historical
Contexts/Contemporary Controversies. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1994.
_____. New Essays in Fichte's Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of
Scientific Knowledge. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2001.
_____. New Essays on Fichte's Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Evanston,
Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2002.
_____. New Perspectives on Fichte. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996.
Henrich, Dieter. "Fichte's Original Insight." Trans. David Lachterman.
Contemporary German Philosophy 1 (1982): 15-53.
Jacobs, Wilhelm G. Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Reinbek bei Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1984. (A brief illustrated biography.)
La Vopa, Anthony J. Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy,
1762-1799. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. (Intellectual
biography of Fichte's early life and the Jena period.)
Martin, Wayne. Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte's Jena
Project. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Neuhouser, Frederick. Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Philonenko, Alexis. L'oevre de Fichte. Paris: Libraire Philosophique
J. Vrin, 1984.
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. (Chapter 5 is devoted to
Fichte.)
Rohs, Peter. Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1991.
Seidel, George. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre of 1794: A Commentary on
Part I. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993.
Zöller, Günter. Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original
Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
# Internationale Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte-Gesellschaft
# North American Fichte Society
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