6,383 words
1. Introduction: Remind me, why Fichte?
Readers have been asking me why I am devoting multiple essays to J. G. Fichte, an exceedingly difficult and seldom-read German Idealist born in 1762. The simple answer is that these essays are a continuation of my series on Heidegger’s “history of metaphysics.” Having devoted several essays to Kant, I am continuing with Fichte, then will move on to Schelling and Hegel, and then, finally, to Nietzsche. (more…)
J. G. Fichte meets Immanuel Kant, 1791
6,194 words
1. “The circumference of my world is equivalent to the limits of my will.”
In my last essay, we established that for Fichte self-consciousness is an ultimate fact. We saw via our own experiments in introspection that the “I” — this “presence” that says, in effect “I am” — is not simply a feature of the self, it is the self. (more…)
J. G. Fichte
4,888 words
1. Fichte’s Foundationalism
J. G. Fichte holds that the human self has no intrinsic identity, aside from that which we create for it. He completely rejects the notion that our identity is in any way determined by nature. This is the modern “blank slate” theory pushed to a radical extreme. It is to Fichte that we must look if we wish to find the philosophical origins of current intellectual fashions such as “gender fluidity,” “social construction” of race and gender, and radical egalitarian claims about human perfectibility. (more…)
6,227 words
1. Martin Heidegger Reads Fichte
On June 25, 1929, Heidegger wrote to Karl Jaspers, “At the present moment I am lecturing on Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling for the first time — and once more a new world opens up before me. (more…)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
5,174 words
1. The Greatest Unread Philosopher in History
Chances are you may never even have heard of the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). If you have heard of him, you probably have the vague idea that he was a follower of Kant who went off the reservation and tried to defend the bizarre position that all of reality is the creation of something called the “Absolute Ego.” This is how he is often treated in histories of philosophy. But this characterization of Fichte is completely wrong. (more…)