Breazeale Daniel - Fichtes Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered

FICHTES

Addresses to the German Nation

RECONSIDERED

FICHTES

Addresses to the German Nation

RECONSIDERED

Edited by

Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore

Published by

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Albany

2016 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Breazeale, Daniel, editor. | Rockmore, Tom, 1942 editor.

Title: Fichtes addresses to the German nation reconsidered / edited by Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016007289 (print) | LCCN 2016030221 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438462554 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438462561 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1762-1814. Reden an die deutsche Nation. | GermanyPolitics and government1806-1815. | Education and stateGermanyHistory19th century. | National characteristics, GermanHistory19th century.

Classification: LCC DD199.F43 F53 2016 (print) | LCC DD199.F43 (ebook) | DDC 320.540943dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007289

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Daniel Breazeale

Daniel Breazeale

Mrio Jorge de Carvalho

Sla zkara

Benjamin D. Crowe

C. Jeffery Kinlaw

Marina F. Bykova

Rainer Schfer

Gabriel Gottlieb

Arnold L. Farr

Michael Steinberg

Tom Rockmore

Anthony N. Perovich

George J. Seidel

Abbreviations Used in This Volume

Introduction

On Situating and Interpreting Fichtes Addresses to the German Nation

D ANIEL B REAZEALE

In July 1799, shortly after losing his position as professor of philosophy at the University of Jena, Fichte moved to Berlin. At that point, the Prussian capital still lacked a university of its own, and thus Fichte was forced to support himself and his family (which remained in Jena until joining him in Berlin a few years later) solely by mean of his writings and privately subscribed lessons and lectures. To this end, he composed and published in quick succession four books intended for a broad popular audience: The Vocation of Man (January 1800), The Closed Commercial State (November 1800), the Sun-Clear Report to the General Public concerning the Essence of the Latest Philosophy (April 1801), and Friedrich Nicolais Life and Remarkable Opinions (May 1801).

One suspects that financial exigencies Yet despite all of this disruption and popular literary activity, Fichte by no means abandoned his ongoing scientific efforts to perfect his system after arriving in Berlin; on the contrary, he immediately set to work on a new version of the Wissenschaftslehre , based upon the text of his lectures on Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy ( Wissenschaftslehre ) nova methodo , which he had successfully delivered three times in Jena. Presumably, this was also the version that he employed as the basis for a private tutorial on his philosophy, which he conducted in late 1800 for a local banker, Samuel Solomon Levy.

Sometime in the winter of 180001, however, he abandoned his efforts to revise his Jena lectures and began instead an altogether new presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre. Once again, as was his custom, he developed this new version in conjunction with private lectures that he delivered daily in his own apartment to a small group of listeners in the spring of 1802. Though he produced a complete manuscript of this new version of the Wissenschaftslehre (New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre , 180102 Despite the truly immense effort that he had devoted to these efforts, none of these radically new presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre appeared during the authors lifetime, and some did not appear until the first decade of the twenty-first century.

During the latter part of 1804 Fichte announced plans to deliver, by subscription and individual ticket sales, weekly Sunday lectures in a rented hall in the Academy of Sciences. The announced topic of these Sunday lectures was A Philosophical Characteristic of the Age. The series began November 4, 1804, and continued until March 17, 1805. Despite the rather high cost of both subscriptions and individual tickets, the audience for these lectures numbered well over one hundred and included government ministers and foreign ambassadors. These same lectures were eventually published in April 1806 under title Characteristics of the Present Age.