FICHTE'S DEFENCE - POSSIBLY HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT

FICHTE, JOHANN GOTTLIEB.

Die Bestimmung des Menschen.

Berlin, in der Vossischen Buchhandlung, 1800. 8vo. Cont. hcalf w. signs of wear. Upper capital worn, crack to lower front hinge. Corners bumped. Old stamps to title-page and verso of t-p. Some brownspotting. VI, 338 pp.

First edition of Fichte's important "The Vocation of Man", the first (and best) work he wrote after having been dismissed from Jena.

In the beginning of the 1790'ies Fichte wrote the work "Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbahrung", which Kant approved of and found a publisher for. The work appeared without mention of author on the title-page, and the work was immediately ascribed to Kant, -a better mistake could not have happened for Fichte, and when Kant corrected it, Fichte's reputation was secured. Already at the end of 1793 he was offered a chair teaching philosophy at the University of Jena.

In Jena he published several important works, and in 1798 he published an essay "On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World". In this short essay he wished to indicate how a philosophy of religion should be developed in accordance with the principles developed in his "Wissenschaftslehre". Because of this Fichte was accused of atheism, and as a consequence he was forced t leave his position and Jena. The matter had greatly escalated and involved a great number of German writers, who wrote articles both for and against Fichte. The whole thing culminated, when Jacobi wrote his "open letter", in which he directly accused Fichte's transcendental philosophy of being nihilistic, and Fichte afterwards had to flee to Berlin in the summer of 1799.

Fichte was forced to live from giving private lectures and tutorials and also by writing more easily understandable works. The first of these more popular writings is his "Vocation of Man", in which he presents the main ideas and notions of his system, especially the moral and religious character of it. The work is considered a brilliant performance, and "perhaps Fichte's greatest achievement" (Encycl. Britt.). It was a direct response to Jacobi's misunderstood attack, which had just lost him his position.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was of one of the founding thinkers of German idealism. He is considered a very important philosopher in at least two respects: 1) as the uniter of the ideas of the two great - Kant and Hegel -, and as an important philosopher in himself, who has contributed originally to the philosophy of the self. By some he is considered the father of German nationalism.

Order-nr.: 34917