The German philosopher of ethical idealism Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) posited the spiritual activity of an "infinite ego" as the ground of self and world. He believed that human life must be guided by the practical maxims of philosophy.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born Rammenau on May 19, 1762, the son of a Saxon peasant. As a child, he impressed a visiting nobleman, Baron Miltitz, who adopted him and had him schooled at Pforta. In 1780 he became a student of theology at the University of Jena and later studied at Wittenberg and Leipzig. He soon assimilated three major ideas that became the foundations of his own philosophy: Spinoza's pantheism, Lessing's concept of striving, and Kant's concept of duty.

Zurich Years

Fichte's patron died in 1788, leaving him destitute and jobless, but Fichte was able to obtain a position as tutor in Zurich, where he met Johanna Rahn, whom he would marry in 1794. Having unsuccessfully tried to make his mark in the world of letters, he finally succeeded in 1792, when he wrote his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Critique of All Revelation), an application of Kant's ethical principle of duty to religion. Since this work was published anonymously, it was believed to be Kant's; but Kant publicly praised Fichte as the author, earning him the attention of Goethe and the other great minds at the court of Weimar.

Teaching at Jena

In 1794, through the influence of Goethe, Fichte was offered a professorship at Jena, where he proved an impassioned, dynamic teacher. He was a short, strongly built man with sharp, commanding features. His language had a cryptic ring; to Madame de Staël he once remarked, "Grasp my metaphysics, Madame; you will then understand my ethics."

Fichte displayed a strong moral concern for the lives of his students; he criticized the fraternities and gave public lectures on university life, which were published as Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794; The Vocation of the Scholar). Despite all this extracurricular activity, Fichte developed his basic system, the Wissenschaftslehre, the doctrine of knowledge and metaphysics, in two works, über de Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre and Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (both 1794). Since he was obsessively concerned with the clarity of his writings, these works were later revised and published in several different versions in his lifetime (the English translation was entitled The Science of Knowledge).

Metaphysics and Ethics

Fichte's metaphysics is called subjective idealism because it bases the reality of the self and the empirical world on the spiritual activity of an infinite ego. From the principle of the infinite ego, Fichte deduced the finite ego, or subject, and the non-ego, or object. This split, or "oppositing," between subject and object cannot be overcome through knowledge. Only through moral striving and the creation of a moral order can the self be reunited with the infinite ego. The System der Sittenlehre nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre (1798; The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge) expresses the necessity of moral striving in the formula, "If I ought I can." Even God is identified with the moral order in the essay "On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World Order" (1798). Fichte was wont to claim that in his own life "he created God every day."

Charges of Atheism

Because of his radical political ideas and his intense moral earnestness, Fichte attracted the hostility of several groups: fraternity students, monarchists, and the clergy. The last group charged Fichte with atheism, since he had stated that "there can be no doubt that the notion of God as a separate substance is impossible and contradictory." He refused to compromise with his critics, even publicly attacking their idolatry of a personal God, and was forced to leave Jena in 1799.

Berlin and Later Writings

These years of professional insecurity did not diminish Fichte's philosophical activity. He produced a popular account of his philosophy in Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800; The Vocation of Man). In Der geschlossene Handelsstaat (1800; The Closed Commercial State) he argued for state socialism, and in Grundzüge der Gegenwärtigun Zeitalters (1806; Characteristics of the Present Age) he presented his philosophy of history. Fichte's metaphysics became more theologically oriented in Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, order Religionslehre (1806; The Way towards the Blessed Life). But his most memorable accomplishment during the time of the siege of Napoleon was his Reden au die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation), given in the winter of 1807-1808. These speeches rallied the German people on the cultural and educational "leadership of humanity."

In 1810, after teaching two terms at the universities of Erlangen and Königsberg, Fichte was appointed dean of the philosophy faculty and later rector of the University of Berlin. But Napoleon's siege of Berlin was to cut short his new teaching career. Johanna, his wife, nursing the wounded, fell ill with typhus and recovered; Fichte, however, succumbed to the disease and died on Jan. 27, 1814. His philosophy was quickly superseded by the philosophies of Schelling and Hegel.

Further Reading

William Smith provided an extensive memoir of Fichte's life in his translation of The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (2 vols., 1848-1849; 4th ed. 1889). A study of an important aspect of Fichte's work is H. C. Engelbrecht, Johann Gottlieb Fichte: A Study of His Political Writings with Special Reference to His Nationalism (1933). For general accounts of Fichte's philosophy, the best sources in English are Robert Adamson, Fichte (1881; repr. 1969); Ellen Bliss Talbot, The Fundamental Principle of Fichte's Philosophy (1906); and Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 7 (1946; new ed. 1963). Recommended for the historical background of idealism are Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892; repr. 1967), and John Herman Randall, The Career of Philosophy, vol. 2 (1965).

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Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (Rammenau, Lausitz, 1762-1814, Berlin), studied theology at Jena and Leipzig universities, and in 1790 became an enthusiastic student of Kant's philosophy. He devised a system of his own, based on Kant's thought. He termed this development ‘subjective idealism’, and through it he exercised a considerable influence on the Romantic movement (see Romantik). Fichte was an eloquent patriot, and his Reden an die deutsche Nation expressed his ardent nationalism. They were delivered at Berlin University 1807-8, and printed in 1808. Their influence on Fichte's contemporaries has sometimes been overrated. Even so, Fichte is associated with those who prepared for the Wars of Liberation (see Napoleonic Wars). He died of typhoid contracted from his wife (a niece of Klopstock), who was working as a volunteer nurse in a military hospital.

When Fichte began to interest himself in Kant he was earning a pittance as a private tutor. In order to bring himself to Kant's notice, he sent him the tract Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung. It won the approval of Kant, who published it anonymously in 1792, and it was at first attributed to him. When its true authorship was revealed by Kant, Fichte's reputation was established. In 1794 he was appointed to a chair of philosophy at Jena University. There he met Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, and W. von Humboldt. During the five years of his tenure he expounded his system in a series of treatises: Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (1794); Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794-5); Grundriß des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre (1795); and Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (1796). His ethics were set forth in System der Sittenlehre nach Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (1798). Doubts about his theological orthodoxy were confirmed by Über den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung (1798), and he was deprived of his chair on grounds of atheism. After a few years in Berlin he became professor of philosophy at Erlangen University, resigned after one semester, and moved to Königsberg. In 1810 he was appointed rector of the new University of Berlin.

As Fichte developed his philosophy, he diverged in important particulars from his Kantian model. He rejected Kant's ‘thing-in-itself’ (Ding-an-sich), and saw existence solely in terms of the self. For him only the Ego exists ‘in itself’. The world around it, comprehensively classified as the Non-Ego, is a creation of the Ego. Fichte preached moral virtues, especially patriotic ones. He seems to have been prepared to transfer the Ego (Ich) to the German nation, which would represent the supreme incarnation of the moral ideal. This transformation of the German people into a race morally superior to all others was an important source of German nationalism in the 19th c. and 20th c. Fichte is the subject of a study by R. Schneider (1932).

Fichte also wrote specifically nationalistic works before he delivered the Reden of 1807-8; he published Der geschlossene Handelsstaat in 1800, Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters in 1804, and Der Patriotismus und sein Gegenteil in 1807. By 1805 a tendency towards mysticism had manifested itself in his thinking, which is perceptible in Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben (1806). The Gesamtausgabe, edited by R. Lauth and H. Jacob (26 vols.), began to appear in 1965.

Fichte, Johann Gottleib (1762-1814) German idealist. Educated in theology then philosophy at Jena, Fichte became known partly because his first book, published anonymously in Königsberg, was mistakenly attributed to Kant. This was his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (1792, trs. as the Critique of All Revelation), a celebration of the sovereignty of the moral law, on the strength of which he gained a chair at Jena. His combination of rigorous moralism, support for the French revolution, and Spinozistic downgrading of revealed religion, led to the kind of controversy that Fichte seemed to attract: he both unwisely tried to suppress the student fraternities, and by lecturing on Sundays alienated the local clergy. Fichte's belief that God is identical with the moral world order, even if this is in turn the ground of all cognition and the ‘only absolutely valid objective reality’, seemed little more than atheism, and in 1799 the Atheismusstreit or academic row over this issue involved many contemporary German thinkers, and culminated in his effectual dismissal from Jena.

Metaphysically Fichte was the first to strip the transcendental element from Kant, arguing that consciousness is the sole ground for the explanation of experience, and that all consciousness directed towards anything else has consciousness directed towards itself as its origin. This was conjoined with Kant's conception of the moral life as an infinite pursuit of an unattainable goal, so that all existence becomes the insatiable striving of the ego, which posits the external world as an obstacle to its own completion. This dynamic, active idealism, coupled with the elevation of self-consciousness, laid the groundwork for Hegel, and can be seen as an early transition from the philosophy of Kant to that of absolute idealism. Fichte's work is well seen in Bestimmung des Menschen (1800, trs. as The Vocation of Man, 1848); his Reden an die Deutsche Nation (1807-8, trs. as Addresses to the German Nation, 1922) are sometimes cited as one of the first expressions of nationalistic totalitarianism.

(yō'hän gôt'lēp fĭkh'tə) , 1762–1814, German philosopher. After studying theology at Jena and working as a tutor in Zürich and Leipzig, he became interested in Kantian philosophy. He received public recognition for his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung [critique of all revelation] (1792), which was at first attributed to Kant himself, who highly commended the work. As professor of philosophy at Jena (1793–99), Fichte produced a number of works, including the Wissenschaftslehre [science of knowledge] (1794). Charges of atheism forced him to leave Jena for Berlin where he restated his views in Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800, tr. The Vocation of Man, rev. ed. 1956). His Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808, tr., Addresses to the German People, 1923) established him as a leader of liberal nationalism. After several brief professorships, he served (1810–12) as rector of the new Univ. of Berlin. Fichte's dialectic idealism attempted unification of the theoretical and practical aspects of cognition that had been set apart by Kant. He did this by rejecting the noumenal realm of Kant and by making the active indivisible ego the source of the structure of experience. From there his dialectical logic led to the postulation of a moral will of the universe, a God or absolute ego from which all eventually derives and which therefore unites all knowing. Fichte's philosophy had considerable influence in his day, but later he was remembered more as a patriot and liberal. Although he was in political disrepute in his own day and after the reaction of 1815, he became a hero not only to the revolutionaries of 1848 but also to the conservatives of 1871. His political theory had socialistic aspects that influenced Ferdinand Lassalle. His son, Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, 1797–1879, edited Fichte's works, wrote a biography of him, and also did original philosophical work.

Bibliography

See biography by H. E. Engelbrecht (1933, repr. 1968).

Quotes:

"If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us so live as to deserve happiness."

"To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness."

"Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth."

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