Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
FICHTE, JOHANN GOTTLIEB (1762–1814), was a German Idealist philosopher and religious thinker. Usually remembered mainly for his part in the development of German Idealism from Kant to Hegel and for his contribution to the rise of German national consciousness, Fichte is also an important figure in European religious thought at the end of the Enlightenment. Born in Rammenau (Lausitz), he enrolled in the University of Jena as a student of theology when he was eighteen. During his studies and a subsequent period as a private tutor in Zurich, he was apparently unacquainted with Kant's philosophy and seems to have been a determinist who admired Spinoza. Returning to Leipzig in 1790, he began a study of Kant that led to his conversion to Kantian practical philosophy. His fragmentary "Aphorismen über Religion und Deismus," written at this time, reveals his concern with the tension between simple Christian piety and philosophical speculation.
A fateful turn in Fichte's life and career came in 1791, when he traveled to Königsberg to meet Kant. Hoping to attract the master's attention, Fichte set out to write his own letter of introduction in the form of a Kantian-style "critique of revelation." When financial hardship cut short his stay in Königsberg, Fichte asked Kant for a loan to finance his return to Leipzig but got instead an offer to arrange publication of Fichte's manuscript with Kant's own publisher. Delayed for a time by the Prussian state censor, Fichte's Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation made its debut at the Leipzig Easter Fair in 1792 under puzzling circumstances. The publisher, perhaps deliberately, omitted both the author's name and his signed preface. The book was widely assumed to be Kant's long-awaited work on religion and received laudatory reviews in the leading journals. When Kant announced the true authorship, Fichte became an important philosopher virtually overnight. The book appeared in a revised second edition the following year, with Fichte's name on the title page, and in 1794 he was appointed to a chair of philosophy in Jena.
Like Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (published a year later), Fichte's Critique of All Revelation argues that a valid revelation must conform to the moral law, which is purely an internal concern of reason. Fichte maintains that a revelation in external nature is nevertheless possible because some people are so enmeshed in the sensuous that God can advance the moral law only by presenting it in sensuous terms. When Fichte published his own Idealist system in 1794, titled Wissenschaftslehre (Science of knowledge), he abandoned his explicit dependence on Kant's philosophy while claiming to remain loyal to its fundamental aims. By giving up the Kantian "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich), Fichte overcomes the duality of theoretical and practical, deriving all knowing from the activity of the transcendental ego (das Ich). He thereby inaugurates the transformation of Kant's critical philosophy, which culminates in the absolute Idealism of Schelling and Hegel. Fichte's essay on the divine governance of the world, published in 1798, led to the famous Atheism Controversy, which resulted in the loss of his position in Jena and his move to Berlin. Fichte's religious position at this time could be more accurately described as ethical pantheism than as atheism, for he equated the human inner sense of the moral law with God's governance of the world. Convicted of teaching "atheism," he was dismissed from the University of Jena in 1799.
During the last period of his life in Berlin, Fichte developed his political and economic views in the Speeches to the German Nation, while continuing to revise and develop his Wissenschaftslehre in lectures and in print. Ironically, the man who lost his position for being an atheist moved in an increasingly mystical and theosophical direction in his later years.
Fichte died in 1814 of a fever caught from his wife, who was nursing victims of an epidemic. His writings exerted a continuing influence not only on philosophers but also on theologians, including Friedrich Schleiermacher. Fichte stands as a Janus figure between the religious rationalism of the Enlightenment, which he embraced in his youth, and the new currents of Idealist and Romantic thought, to which he contributed original impulses.
Bibliography
Works by Fichte
The standard and most accessible edition of Fichte's works is Johann Gottlieb Fichte's sämmtliche Werke, 8 vols., edited by J. H. Fichte (1845–1846; reprint, Berlin 1971); the writings on religion make up volume 5. A critical edition is being published as the J. G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, edited by Reinhard Lauth and Hans Jacob (Stuttgart, 1964–). I have translated Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, 2d ed. (Königsberg, 1793), as Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (Cambridge, 1978), with an introduction and a bibliography of primary and secondary works.
Works About Fichte
An insightful discussion of Fichte's importance for Christian thought is contained in volume 4 of Emanuel Hirsch's Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, 5 vols. (Gütersloh, 1949). Wolfgang Ritzel traces the development of Fichte's religious thought through his entire career in Fichtes Religionsphilosophie, "Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte," vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1956).
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