Johann Gottlieb Fichte - Biography

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (b. 1762 – 1814) was the eldest son of poor and pious ribbon weavers. His extraordinary intellectual talents, even at the early age of 9, caught the attention of a local baron, who proceeded to sponsor his education, first at the Pforta School, and then at the University of Jena and Leipzig. With the death of his patron Fichte was forced to abandon his studies and earn a living as a private tutor; a profession he would return to again because of necessity, regardless of his continual detestation of it.

In 1790, after a failed literary career, Fichte again returned to tutoring, this time at the university level and on the topic of Kant’s philosophy. This assignment, however, had rather fortuitous consequences. Fichte would later state that this confrontation with Kant “occasioned a revolution in my way of thinking”. To the end of his life, despite growing differences with Kant, Fichte considered himself a devout Kantian.

Eventually Fichte made his was to Konigsberg, where he decided to demonstrate his mastery of Kantian philosophy by writing a treatise on a subject yet unaddressed by Kant himself. Fichte delivered the manuscript, entitled Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, directly to his master, who was unabashedly impressed – so much so, that Kant helped arrange the publication of the text with his own publisher in 1792. In the text, Fichte concluded that the only revelation consistent with the Critical (i.e. Kantian) philosophy was the moral law itself. The text, so true to Kant’s philosophy, was initially supposed to have come from Kant’s own hand. Later its real author was revealed, and Fichte ascended from obscurity to philosophical stardom almost overnight – that is, if one does not consider the years of arduous labor that preceded the work.

Being a man of ‘restless spirit’ and relentless drive Fichte, at the moment of his ascent was again begrudgingly employed as a tutor and working on a series of political tracts, including Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, who have Hitherto Suppressed It (1793) and Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgment of the French Revolution (1784). In these works, Fichte outlined his view of legitimate state authority, which was grounded in democracy, and more importantly, insisted on the absolute right of revolution. Interestingly - and, unfortunately in our age, oddly - it was Fichte’s idealization of democracy that would wane in his mature works, while his passion for and justification of revolution never would – there is a reversal, if you will, between which is the end and which is the means, with respect to contemporary society. Fichte, despite his devotion to rigor and Kant, acquired, and never lost, the reputation of being a philosophical, religious and political radical – this reputation, of course, was given from the position that radical is not a pejorative adjective. With Fichte, we can say that it is neither play before work, nor work before play, but work - as in, study - and then work – as in, cause.

In 1794 Fichte would assume the vacant Chair of Critical Philosophy, at the University of Jena. Over the next six years, he would, again -with relentless devotion - workout the first systematic articulations of his philosophical system, The Theory of Science. Bemused and reverent colleagues would remark, about Fichte: “His is a restless spirit; he thirsts for some opportunity to act in the world. Fichte wants to employ his philosophy to guide the spirit of his age”. A careerist academic Fichte was not. This is clear not only in his works due to both their style and content, but also can be seen in his endless public lectures, evidence even for the blind his passionate devotion to addressing the needs of his time. Upon his arrival in Jena, Fichte began a series of enormously popular public lectures, later published as Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794). Later that year, Fichte published the first outline of his philosophical project - doing so in the form of a manifesto – entitled, Concerning the Concept of Wissenschaftslehre (1794). During the 1794-5 academic year, Fichte gave the first – thus provisional – articulation of his philosophy, which was quickly collected and published for the public, under the name Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1795), this was soon supplemented by Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Faculty (1795).

Confronted by an almost universal misunderstanding of his theory, and dissatisfied with some of its features, Fichte repeated the lectures for three consecutive years, from 1796 to 1799. Over the course of these years, Fichte would work out and publish essays on the subdivisions of his theory, specifically, on politics, ethics, belief and divine governance. The last of which, On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World (1798), would bring the charge of atheism against Fichte, which eventually forced him to resign and flee to Berlin. In Berlin, Fichte again resigned to working as a private tutor in order to support himself. He was only partially dependent on this employment due to his philosophical prominence and the recent flurry of publications that helped support him and his family. From this time, Fichte’s writings increasingly aimed at a popular audience. The first, and perhaps most prominent of these was The Vocations of Man (1800), which gave a popular and yet refined presentation of the fundamental features and conclusions of his system, with a particular focus on moral and religious elements. In the same year, holding nothing back, Fichte published The Closed Commercial State – his - now prophetic - account of political economy, which blended socialist politics with protectionist economic principles.

For the remainder of his life, Fichte would hardly pass a year without a new publication, either modifying the fundamentals of his theory, or extending it to a particular subdivision. The most obvious, and perhaps important, example of this continual re-working and modification is the change from references to ‘the I’ to ‘the Absolute’, and its plethora of manifestations, that is, ‘appearances’.

In 1806, Fichte, after returning from lecturing at the University of Erlangen, published On the Essence of the Scholar, Characteristics of the Present Age, and Guide to the Blessed Life; all of which were based on earlier lectures. In 1806, with Napoleon’s occupation of Germany, Fichte sought exile in Konigsberg, where he held lectures on Wissenschaftslehre, and wrote a still important work on Realpolitik, which sharply differed from his youthful glorifications of liberalism and political idealism, under the title Machiavelli as Author (1807). Upon his return to Berlin, in 1808, while under the constant watch of occupying forces, Fichte nonetheless delivered his honored Address to the German Nation, which, as things, or rather, as men have it, would later be perverted much like the thought of other German philosophers, as a founding document of German nationalism.

In 1810, Fichte was made the head of the philosophy department and the rector of the Prussian university in Berlin, in virtue of his leading role in the founding and organization. Over the final years of his life, Fichte never strayed from his work, continuing to lecture and publish ever-new re-workings and extensions of his system, including Logic and Philosophy, System of the Theory of right, System of Ethical Theory, all in 1812, and The Facts of Consciousness, and Theory of the State, both in 1813. In these last years of his life, Fichte’s forays into practical philosophy painted a much darker picture of human nature, and defended a much more authoritarian view of the state.

Fichte died on January 29, 1814, having contracted an infection from his wife, who had worked as a nurse in the War of Liberation.

The sheer quantity of Fichte’s writing and lectures, as well as the complexity inherent in transcendental idealism, make it impossible to even summarize his thought in an occasion such as this, as such, we will only exhibit a few of the major strands of his philosophy, in order to place him between his predecessor, Kant, and the next moment in philosophy, Hegel.

Wissenschaftslehre, or ‘theory of science’, is not the name of any single work. Rather, it is the general name of his project as a whole. Fichte proposed to replace the term ‘philosophy’ with Wissenschaftslehre, in order to, aside other considerations, denote the distinctively ‘second order’ character of philosophical reflection. The term Wissenschaftslehre, however, never stuck, though it is acknowledged as the name of Fichte’s brand of transcendental idealism.

The primary task of Fichte’s philosophy, is undoubtedly the reconciliation of freedom and necessity, otherwise put, an account of how freely willing and morally responsible agents can simultaneously be considered embedded, or a part, of a world of causally conditioned material objects in space and time. Fichte’s strategy was to assert the ‘reality of freedom’ as a fact of reason, in the strict Kantian sense of the term. This positing of a presupposition is not in order to deflect or negate any and all objections indiscriminately and immediately, rather, the ground for such an assertion was precisely in the opposite direction, namely, the fact of the very impossibility of any theoretically satisfactory refutation of skepticism, as regards the reality of freedom.

This reality was Fichte’s first principle, as the first principle of all knowledge, hence also of all argument, it cannot be derived from any higher or more fundamental principle. Fichte asserted a clear distinction between the standpoint of natural consciousness and that of transcendental reflection. The former is philosophy’s very task to explain, while the latter, is the framework for such an explanation. Consequently, there is no irresolvable and inherent conflict between transcendental idealism and everyday realism. Rather, the very point of transcendental idealism is to demonstrate the necessity and unavoidability of everyday realism.

Fichte’s project, as he himself claimed, was irredeemably Kantian; however, this did not prevent Fichte from criticising Kant where he felt it was due. For instance, Fichte claimed that the doctrine of the ‘thing in itself’, conceptualized as the external and ungraspable source of sensations, was indefensible on the grounds of Critical philosophy itself, moreover, Kant’s denial of the possibility of ‘intellectual intuition’ was inconsistent or irreconcilable with other Kantian doctrines, most importantly, Kant’s doctrine of the subject, which asserted the subject’s presence to itself both as a cognizing subject and as a striving moral agent.

Fichte also claimed that the systematic unity of Critical philosophy, that is, the unity of theoretical and practical reason, was not sufficiently apparent in Kant. Fichte argued that the most viable solution was to provide a common foundation. Thus he resigned himself to the task of discovering a single, self-evident starting point. That is, a first principle, from which both can be derived. His solution was the underlying unity of reason itself; Fichte claimed that although Kant hints at this solution, he neither followed its logic to its end, nor – consequently – demonstrated it.

Idealism and dogmatism, presented the two possible, and rival, philosophical starting points. The former begins from the concept of free subjectivity (‘the I’, which later is progressively replaces by ‘the Absolute’), while the latter begins from pure objectivity (‘the thing in itself’). Fichte argued that only the former, namely, transcendental idealism, which begins from the principle of subjective freedom can accomplish the task of philosophy; moreover, it can derive the objective viewpoint from itself, while the objective can neither accomplish philosophy’s task, nor derive from itself its opponent. Such a stance places Fichte in a precarious position between Kant and G.W.F Hegel; simply put, while Kant did not go far enough with his own logic, from Fichte’s point of view, neither did Fichte go far enough, from Hegel’s. This second claim is evidenced by Fichte’s anticipatory temporality, and his problematical simultaneous denial of an identity between subject and substance.