The author of the Wissenschaftslehre was the son of a poor ribbon maker, and was born at Rammenau in Lusatia in 1762. The talents of the boy induced the Freiherr von Miltiz to give him the advantage of a good education. Fichte attended school in Meissen and in Pforta, and was a student of theology at the universities of Jena and Leipsic. While a tutor in Zurich he made the acquaintance of Lavater and Pestalozzi, as well as of his future wife, Johanna Rahn, a niece of Klopstock. Returning to Leipsic, his whole mode of thought was revolutionized by the Kantian philosophy, in which it was his duty to instruct a pupil. This gives to the mind, as his letters confess, an inconceivable elevation above all earthly things. "I have adopted a nobler morality, and, instead of occupying myself with things without me, have been occupied more with myself." "I now believe with all my heart in human freedom, and am convinced that only on this supposition duty and virtue of any kind are possible." "I live in a new world since I have read the Critique of Practical Reason. Things which I believed never could be proved to me, e.g., the idea of an absolute freedom and duty, have been proved, and I feel the happier for it. It is inconceivable what reverence for humanity, what power this philosophy gives us, what a blessing it is for an age in which the citadels of morality had been destroyed, and the idea of duty blotted out from all the dictionaries!" A journey to Warsaw, whither he had been attracted by the expectation of securing a position as a private tutor, soon afforded him the opportunity of visiting at Königsberg the author of the system which had effected so radical a transformation in his convictions. His rapidly written treatise, Essay toward a Critique of All Revelation, attained the end to which its inception was due by gaining for its author a favorable reception from the honored master. Kant secured for Fichte a tutor's position in Dantzic, and a publisher for his maiden work. When this appeared, at Easter, 1792, the name of its author was by oversight omitted from the title page, together with the preface, which had been furnished after the rest of the book; and as the anonymous work was universally ascribed to Kant (whose religious philosophy was at this time eagerly looked for), the young writer became famous at a stroke as soon as the error was explained. A second edition was issued as early as the following year.
After his marriage in Zurich, where he had completed several political treatises (the address, Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from the Princes of Europe, who have hitherto suppressed it, Heliopolis in the Last Year of the Old Darkness, and the two Hefte, Contributions toward the Correction of the Public Judgment on the French Revolution, 1793), Fichte accepted, in 1794, a call to Jena, in place of Reinhold, who had gone to Kiel, and whose popularity was soon exceeded by his own. The same year saw the birth of the Wissenschaftslehre. His stay in Jena was embittered by conflicts with the clergy, who took offense at his ethical lectures (On the Vocation of the Scholar) held on Sunday mornings (though not at an hour which interfered with church service), and with the students, who, after they had been untrue to their decision—which they had formed as a result of these lectures—to dissolve their societies or orders, gave vent to their spite by repeatedly smashing the windows of Fichte's residence. Accordingly he took leave of absence, and spent the summer of 1795 in Osmannstädt. The years 1796-98, in which, besides the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, the Natural Right and the Science of Ethics (one of the most all important works in German philosophical literature) appeared, mark the culmination of Fichte's famous labors. The so-called atheistic controversy[1] resulted in Fichte's departure from Jena. The Philosophisches Journal, which since 1797 had been edited by Fichte in association with Niethammer, had published an article by Magister Forberg, rector at Saalfeld, entitled "The Development of the Concept of Religion," and as a conciliating introduction to this a short essay by Fichte, "On the Ground of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World."[2] For this it was confiscated by the Dresden government on the charge of containing atheistical matter, while other courts were summoned to take like action. In Weimar hopes were entertained of an amicable adjustment of the matter. But when Fichte, after publishing two vindications[3] couched in vehement language, had in a private letter uttered the threat that he would answer with his resignation any censure proceeding from the University Senate, not only was censure for indiscretion actually imposed, but his (threatened) resignation accepted.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Karl August Hase, Jenaisches Fichtebüchlein, 1856.]
[Footnote 2: It is a mistake, Fichte writes here, referring to the conclusion of Forberg's article ("Is there a God? It is and remains uncertain," etc.), to say that it is doubtful whether there is a God or not. That there is a moral order of the world, which assigns to each rational individual his determined place and counts on his work, is most certain, nay, it is the ground of all other certitude. The living and operative moral order (ordo ordinans) is itself God; we need no other God, and can conceive no other. There is no ground in reason for going beyond this world order to postulate a particular being as its cause. Whoever ascribes personality and consciousness to this particular being makes it finite; consciousness belongs only to the individual, limited ego. And it is allowable to state this frankly and to beat down the prattle of the schools, in order that the true religion of joyous well-doing may lift up its head.]
[Footnote 3: Appeal to the Public, and Formal Defense against the Charge of Atheism, 1799. The first of these maintains that Fichte's standpoint and that of his opponents are related as duty and advantage, sensible and suprasensible, and that the substantial God of his accusers, to be derived from the sensibility, is, as personified fate, as the distributer of all happiness and unhappiness to finite beings, a miserable fetich.]
Going to Berlin, Fichte found a friendly government, a numerous public for his lectures, and a stimulating circle of friends in the romanticists, the brothers Schlegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, etc. In the first years of his Berlin residence there appeared The Vocation of Man. The Exclusive Commercial State, 1800; The Sun-clear Report to the Larger Public on the Essential Nature of the New Philosophy, and the Answer to Reinhold, 1801. Three works, which were the outcome of his lectures and were published in the year 1806 (Characteristics of the Present Age, The Nature of the Scholar, Way to the Blessed Life or Doctrine of Religion), form a connected whole. In the summer of 1805 Fichte filled a professorship at Erlangen, and later, after the outbreak of the war, he occupied for a short time a chair at Königsberg, finding a permanent university position at the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810. His glowing Addresses to the German Nation, 1808, which essentially aided in arousing the national spirit, have caused his name to live as one of the greatest of orators and most ardent of patriots in circles of the German people where his philosophical importance cannot be understood. His death in 1814 was also a result of unselfish labor in the service of the Fatherland. He succumbed to a nervous fever contracted from his wife, who, with self-sacrifice equal to his own, had shared in the care of the wounded, and who had brought the contagion back with her from the hospital. On his monument is inscribed the beautiful text, "The teachers shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars that shine forever and ever." Forberg in his journal records this estimate: The leading trait in Fichte's character is his absolute integrity. All his words are weighty and important. His principles are stern and little modified by affability. The spirit of his philosophy is proud and courageous, one which does not so much lead as possess us and carry us along. His philosophemes are inquiries in which we see the truth arise before our eyes, and which just for this reason lay the foundations of science and conviction.
The philosopher's son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte (his own name was Johann Gottlieb), wrote a biography of his father (1830; 2d ed., 1862), and supervised the publication of both the Posthumous Works (1834-35, 3 vols.) and the Collected Works (1845-46, 8 vols.). The simple and luminous Facts of Consciousness of 1811, or 1817 (not the lecture of 1813 with the same title), is especially valuable as an introduction to the system. Among the many redactions of the Wissenschaftslehre, the epoch-making Foundation of the whole Science of Knowledge, 1794, with the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, 1797, takes the first rank, while of the practical works the most important are the Foundation of Natural Right according to the Principles of the Science of Knowledge, 1796, and the System of the Science of Ethics according to the Principles of the Science of Knowledge, 1798, and next to these the Lectures on the Theory of the State, 1820 (delivered in 1813).[1]
[Footnote 1: At the same time as J.H. Löwe's book Die Philosophie Fichtes, 1862, there appeared in celebration of the centenary of Fichte's birthyear, or birthday, a large number of minor essays and addresses by Friedrich Harms, A.L. Kym, Trendelenburg, Franz Hoffman, Karl Heyder, F.C. Lott, Karl Köstlin, J.B. Meyer, and others (cf. Reichlin-Meldegg in vol. xlii. of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie). Lasson has written, 1863, on Fichte's relation to Church and state, Zeller on Fichte as a political thinker (Vorträge und Abhandlungen, 1865), and F. Zimmer on his philosophy of religion. Among foreign works we may note Adamson's Fichte, 1881, and the English translations of several of Fichte's works by Kroeger [Science of Knowledge, 1868; Science of Rights, 1869—both also, 1889] and William Smith [Popular Writings, 4th ed., 1889; also Everett's Fichte's Science of Knowledge (Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1884), and several translations in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, including one of The Facts of Consciousness.—TR.]
%1. The Science of Knowledge.%
%(a) The Problem.%—In Fichte's judgment Kant did not succeed in carrying through the transformation in thought which it was his aim to effect, because the age did not understand the spirit of his philosophy. This spirit, and with it the great service of Kant, consists in transcendental idealism, which by the doctrine that objects conform themselves to representations, not representations to objects, draws philosophy away from external objects and leads it back into ourselves. We have followed the letter, he thinks, instead of the spirit of Kant, and because of a few passages with a dogmatic ring, whose references to a given matter, the thing in itself, and the like, were intended only as preliminary, have overlooked the numberless others in which the contrary is distinctly maintained. Thus the interpreters of Kant, using their own prejudices as a criterion, have read into him exactly that which he sought to refute, and have made the destroyer of all dogmatism himself a dogmatist; thus in the Kantianism of the Kantians there has sprung up a marvelous combination of crude dogmatism and uncompromising idealism. Though such an absurd mingling of entirely heterogeneous elements may be excused in the case of interpreters and successors, who have had to construct for themselves the guiding principle of the whole from their study of the critical writings, yet we cannot assume it in the author of the system, unless we believe the Critique of Pure Reason the result of the strangest chance, and not the work of intellect. Two men only, Beck, the teacher of the Standpoint, and Jacobi, the clearest mind of the century, are to be mentioned with respect as having risen above the confusion of the time to the perception that Kant teaches idealism, that, according to him, the object is not given, but made.