FICHTE, JOHANN GOTTLIEB. – Philosopher, born on 19 May 1762 at Rammenau, a small village in Upper Lusatia, died in Berlin on 29 January 1814. Of precocious intellect, at the age of nine he won the favor of Baron Miltitz, who entrusted him to the care of the parish priest Krebel so that he might provide him with the rudiments of education. In 1774 he was sent to boarding school at Pforta, where he also began to reveal himself through his surly and rebellious character, to which there was soon added the spirit of romantic exaltation prompted by the clandestine reading of Wieland, Goethe, and Lessing. The loss of his patron left him without means, and he was consequently forced to become a tutor, wandering from one place to another.
In 1780 he attended the University of Jena as a student of theology. In Zurich he met Giovanna Raha, niece of the poet Klopetock, to whom he became engaged in 1790 and whom he married in 1793. That acquaintance marked the beginning of a new life for him, since, owing to the difficulties in which he found himself, he had fallen into a state of despair. But the year 1790 is memorable in Fichte’s life for another event as well: a student asked him to enroll in the philosophy of Kant. Fichte, who had moved to Leipzig in search of fortune, was then dominated by the ideas of Spinoza and knew nothing of Kant. While Kantian thought seemed exceedingly difficult and obscure to others, he penetrated and mastered it at a stroke, so much so that the following year, having gone to Königsberg, he was able to present Kant with the manuscript of his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, which so pleased the old philosopher that he had it published (Königsberg 1792) by his own publisher. Since it did not yet bear the author’s name, the work was believed to be Kant’s own. Kant was therefore obliged to refute the attribution and declared, in flattering terms, who the true author was. Kant’s much-anticipated philosophy of religion had not yet appeared, and Fichte’s essay seemed to anticipate II. In reality, in that work Fichte confined himself to critically analyzing the idea of supernatural revelation, distinguishing the pure element of that idea, which, in his view, was its reference to the moral law, from the empirical element, deriving from sensible representations and therefore causing an “illusion” analogous to the metaphysical illusion of Kantian transcendental dialectic. Owing to his aforementioned intellectualism (whether Spinozist or Leibnizian), Fichte had previously inclined toward deism. The theological problem, now transformed into a moralistic conception of the Kantian type, remains at the foundation of his later speculation as well (with a return, ultimately, as will be seen, to Spinozism). It should be added that the social question always exercised an equal attraction upon him, and that he was among the most ardent apologists of the French Revolution, indulging in Enlightenment dreams of a renewal of society on the basis of freedom and of a radical transformation of political institutions. Hence the propagandistic and pedagogical inspiration of Fichte’s writings, in which one senses the influence not only of Rousseau but also of Pestalozzi (who, in turn, came close to being influenced by Fichte’s ideas), whose work he had learned about during his stay in Switzerland (although they later also came to know each other personally).
In 1794, when the chair held at Jena by Reinhold became vacant, Fichte was invited by the government of Weimar, at Goethe’s suggestion, to occupy II. Thus began the most glorious period of his teaching, during which he sketched out his fundamental works: Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (Jena-Leipzig 1794) and Einige Vorlesungen über d. Bestimmung d. Gelehrten (ibid., n.d.); these works were subsequently followed by prolonged work involving various introductions, revisions, and completions, corresponding to the course of development of his thought. On the theoretical side, they must be supplemented by the Rezension V. Amesidemus (Jena 1794), in which he defended Kantian criticism against the accusations of Schulze, who, relying on Reinhold’s interpretation, accused Kantianism of skepticism; and, on the practical side, by the Grundlage des Naturrechts (Jena and Leipzig 1796) and the System d. Sittenlehre (ibid. 1798). The sensational success of his lectures (not, however, without incidents in his relations with the female students) was abruptly interrupted by the famous Atheismusstreit in 1799, which reverberated throughout Germany. In substance, Fichte was accused of atheism, and he defended himself by arguing that neither this was his intention nor was it the meaning of his doctrine. He lost his chair, and Schelling, formerly his fervent student and admirer, was appointed in his place. “One star sets, another rises,” Goethe exclaimed on that occasion.
From Jena Fichte went to Berlin, where he found himself in the midst of a Romantic environment, close to the two Schlegels, Schleiermacher, and Tiedek (but, once again, because of his egocentric character, personal agreement with them was always very difficult; one must also mention the rupture and the bitter controversy with Schelling during this period). Meanwhile, the Jena incident induced him to rethink his doctrine: in his lectures Die Bestimmung d. Menschen (Berlin 1800), he broadened his narrowly moralistic view of religion, justifying, in his own way, faith in God from a more universal standpoint (analogous to that adopted by Kant in the Critique of Judgment). Hence, on the theoretical side as well, the new version Darstellung d. Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen 1801) and Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben (Berlin 1806). In political matters, he moved from his earlier cosmopolitan humanitarianism to the nationalistic position represented by the writings Der geschlossene Handelsstaat (Tübingen 1800) and the celebrated Reden an die deutsche Nation (Berlin 1808). The System d. Rechtlehre and the Sittenlehre of 1812 likewise mark a revision in this new political and religious direction (one should also recall Die Grundzüge des Gegenwärtige Zeitalters, ibid. 1806).
These were years filled with momentous military events: in 1806 Prussia had placed itself at the head of the coalition against Napoleon. The German defeats and the fall of Berlin followed. Fichte wandered from place to place, writing and contributing as best he could to the recovery. When the University of Berlin was reopened in 1810, he was appointed rector (French rule was in place, but since Fichte appealed to the spiritual forces of the nation, he did not pose an excessive threat). He remained in office for only a short time (as usual, he came into conflict with the students and his colleagues). With the campaign in Russia in 1812, the Napoleonic eagle began to decline. The uprising of the nations followed. Fichte too donned a military uniform, while continuing his lectures. The hospitals of Berlin were overflowing with the wounded and the sick. His wife was at their bedsides as a nurse, and, having contracted a typhus infection, was in danger of losing her life. One day, on returning from his lecture, Fichte learned that the crisis had passed, and in his happiness he embraced the sufferer with great emotion. It is believed that he contracted the fatal germ in that embrace. On 29 January he crossed the threshold of death serenely, having learned only a few minutes earlier that the Prussian army was advancing victoriously on French soil.
F.’s philosophy marks the starting point of the transformation of Kantianism into absolute idealism: hence its great importance in the history of modern philosophy, which, moreover, had already set out along this path with Descartes (v. BORDES, CHARLES). This idealism has, therefore, from the outset, a strong vein of spiritualism and, in this respect, reconnects with an unmistakably Christian motif. What distances it from Christianity is the immanentist tendency, which was characteristically affirmed with Spinoza. Kantian criticism, on this point, was not without uncertainties: on the one hand, by restricting the activity of knowing consciousness to the world of phenomena, it left the existence of the world in itself unquestioned; on the other, in that vague concept of the “noumenon,” it did not distinguish clearly enough between the idea of the world and that of God, which it then sought to regain on the moral plane, where, however, it remained—as had already been declared before—more an ideal posited by pure reason than a reality. This is, fundamentally, the most debated problem in idealism: doctrinal formulas are subsequently added to validate the theses of individual philosophers with a rigor of demonstration that is often merely apparent (hence, also, the frequent changes in their formulations, as, for example, in F., and even more in Schelling). Doctrinally, F. set himself this program: to give a more organic unity to the Critique of Pure Reason and its relation to the Critique of Practical Reason. This, at first; then also to the Critique of Judgment. He therefore proceeds, faithful to criticism, from empirical consciousness (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 92 of vol. I of the edition of the Works prepared by his son), and asks himself about the foundations of its possibility. Here emerges the famous principle of the ego (which is the Cartesian cogito assumed within the transcendentality of the Kantian I think), which, in its initial positing, asserts itself only as I = I: the activity of self-consciousness that simply posits and affirms itself (the immediate identity of subject and object). First principle, absolute, immanent in empirical consciousness, which, nevertheless, is always consciousness of something, of something other than itself, and hence of a non-ego. This non-ego is opposed to the ego and thus constitutes the second principle, in which the form (ego) is determined by the first (ego), but not the empirical content, although this, insofar as it is mere negation, must likewise be related to the act in which the ego posits and affirms itself (hence the starting point of the dialectic of opposition, subsequently developed in more decisive and grander forms by Schelling first, but above all in Hegel’s Logic: the defect of this dialectic lies in its abstractness). But F., still adhering, if not to the spirit, at least to the letter of Kantian criticism, wishes to preserve a certain positivity of the world outside us, given through sensation, and therefore has recourse to an unconscious faculty, Kant’s transcendental imagination, which, through the forms and categories of sense and understanding, gives consistency to the world of sensibility, making it a world of genuine objects, until, when critical reflection intervenes, it is revealed for what it really is: that is, a production or creation of the ego itself, although always originally limited by the datum of sensibility, which is, in itself, irreducible (hence the clash, the obstacle: the deutros). By contrast, the logical deduction of the particular forms in which that datum is organized to constitute science (knowledge in general) was elaborated by F. at length and on several occasions, but never satisfactorily (because of the initial separation, already present in Kant, of content and form). This is the harshest and most obscure part of his doctrine, where an attempt seems to be made to reconcile Berkeley’s dogmatic thesis with the more cautious position of Kantian criticism. In any case, the question remained: why does the I create for itself, by passing into the empirical ego, this world that opposes it?
Hence the third principle, which seeks to provide the key to the mystery and, at the same time, the true meaning of the doctrine in its initial formulation: the ego is activity, absolute freedom; if opposition is created within the ego, it is only in order to overcome II. It is not the knowing ego, but the practical ego, that reveals to us the true reason for our existence in the world. Knowing exists for action, and in action what matters is the effort to realize, progressively, in the inexhaustible process of the finite, the infinity of the spirit. Thus, here, form, unlike Kant’s moral law, determines not only the intention but also the content of the act (v. Grundlage, cited above, part 2, and Sittenlehre, cited edition, vol. IV, p. 66 ff). There is, in this way, an oscillation between what is commonly called “ethical idealism” and a mere “transcendental pragmatism” (of action in general): the ego, which here is God, remains, in this first phase, a mere ideal, so that the finite, in the process of personalizing the world (from the natural world to the social and historical world), can never succeed in actualizing infinity through its action. In the second phase of his thought, however, under the impetus of the religious movement led by Schleiermacher (and, in part, also by Jacobi), F. wished to give reality to that ideal, but by germinating it within the traditional Being, understood as universal life and activity that extends beyond, therefore, even the world of human morality and the Kantian cosmic order. Man now creates, through faith and love, the world of religiosity and, identifying himself with God, ultimately finds his beatitude in an act that is at once absolute freedom and absolute awareness of himself (Anweisung zum seligen Leben, cited edition, vol. V, p. 518). We are, one might say, halfway between the Spinozian amor intellectualis Dei and the Hegelian notion that, at the end of the dialectical process, arrives at absolute self-consciousness.
The practical part follows, as has been indicated, the course of theoretical reflection, and it is this that has made, and still makes, the appeal and popularity of this philosophy, which undeniably has the merit of having introduced a spiritual breath into questions of law, morality, the State, and human history. For F., the learned man is not the merely instructed man, but he who, experiencing within himself more deeply the sense of spiritual value, makes it his mission to educate others—his people, his Nation—and, through this people (famously, F.’s attribution of primacy to the German people for this task), humanity as a whole.
BIBLI: Fichtes sämtliche Werke, edited by his son I. H. Fichte, 8 vols., Berlin 1894–96, plus 3 vols. of Nachgelassene Werke: reprinted in 1924. A considerably abridged and very convenient edition is that edited by Fr. Medicus, J. G. F. Werke: Auswahl, in 6 vols., preceded by a life of F. by Medicus himself (published by Meiner of Leipzig, 1908–12, 2nd ed. there 1922). Of the 1st and 2nd Doctrine of Science there is an Italian translation edited by A. Tilgher (Bari 1910, Padua 1939). Various Italian translations of the Mission of the Scholar (or Europe of the Scholar); of the Vocation of Man; of the Addresses to the German Nation, etc. On F. v.: X. Léon, La philosophie de F., Paris 1902; K. Fischer, F. Leben Werk u. Lehre, 4th ed., Heidelberg 1914; G. Maggiore, F., Città di Castello 1921; X. Léon, F. et son temps, Paris 1922 ff.; H. Heimsoeth, F., Munich 1922; M. Wundt, F., Stuttgart 1927, 2nd ed. 1937; W. Ziegenfuss, s. V. in Philosophen-Lexikon, I, Berlin 1949, pp. 329–44 (extensive bibliography); L. Pareyson, F., Turin 1930. Armando Carlini