Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814)

Renowned German idealist philosopher; chief representative of the rationalist school in the classical German philosophy.

Fichte was born on May 19, 1762, in Rammenau, Saxony, Prussia, into a poor craftsman’s family. 1771, he received financial support from Baron Miltitz of Siebeneichen, and in 1774, he enrolled in the noble school of Porta, where he read the works of the German Enlightenment thinker Lessing, which had been banned from reading. In 1780, Fichte began study at the theology seminary of the University of Jena and transferred to Leipzig University in 1781, he met with Spinoza’s philosophical works here. In 1788, due to financial difficulties, he abandoned his studies and went to work as a tutor in Zurich, Switzerland. 1790, he returned to Leipzig, where he worked as a tutor again and began to study Kant’s philosophy, and was deeply influenced by Kant’s thought. In 1791, he went to Königsberg with his article Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation to seek Kant’s advice, which was highly appreciated by Kant and recommended for publication. In 1794, Fichte was recruited as a professor at the University of Jena, where he began to teach “Wissenschaftslehre” (doctrine of science), created his own philosophical system, and openly broke with Kant in philosophical thought. During his teaching at the University of Jena, he published works such as Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (1794), Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation (1794), Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to the Theoretical Faculty (1795), Foundations of Natural Right in accordance with the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796), and System of Ethics in accordance with the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798).

As a result of his article On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World (1798), published in the Philosophical Journal, which he edited, in which he preached radical democratic ideas, he aroused the fear of the reactionary authorities, and the opposition forces accused him of “preaching atheism” and dismissed him from his post as a professor. In 1799, Fichte left the University of Jena and moved to Berlin. During his stay in Berlin, he completed his book The Vocation of Man (1800). During Napoleon’s invasion in 1806, he moved with the government to Königsberg. In August 1807, Fichte returned to Berlin, responsible for the preparation of the University of Berlin, which was completed in 1809, then he served as Dean of the College of Literature of the University of Berlin and was elected the first president of the University of Berlin in 1810.

Fichte came to the philosophical forum as a follower of Kant’s philosophy, but not content with Kant’s tendency to reconcile the dualism of materialism and idealism, he criticized Kant in terms of Right subjective idealism.

Fichte called his philosophy as “doctrine of science”. He held there are only two standpoints in the philosophy explaining knowledge: one is to explain the subject of knowledge from the object of knowledge, and to explain consciousness in terms of external objects, which is called solipsism, also known as materialism; the other is to interpret the object of knowledge from the subject of knowledge, and to explain external objects in terms of consciousness, which is called idealism. There is no third path of eclecticism. According to Fichte, all philosophy that starts directly from the object can only be solipsistic, and the only true philosophy should be an idealism that interprets the world from the subject’s consciousness, and his “doctrine of science” is such an idealist philosophy. Fichte inherited and developed Berkeley’s famous principle of “To be means to be perceived” (Esse est percipi” and Descartes’ thought of “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) and took “Ego” as the starting point of the whole philosophy. In Fichte’s view, as the starting point of the “doctrine of science”, the Ego is not a limited experience of man, but an absolute and infinite Ego, it is subjectivity in general, the initial, purely intellectual activity that precedes and produces all reality and includes its own reality, which Fichte calls “Tathandlung” (deed-action). He held that Ego is a purely abstract intellectual activity, it is the only and highest Being, and does not depend on anything, and its essence is to create oneself, establish oneself and develop oneself. As Marx and Engels pointed out in The Holy Family, Fichte’s “Ego” is unrealistic, not a scientific abstraction of the actual human spirit, but the “the egoistic individual in civil society may in his non-sensuous imagination and lifeless abstraction inflate himself into an atom, i.e., into an unrelated, self-sufficient, wantless, absolutely full, blessed being.” For Fichte, the first unconditional action of the Ego, as a purely abstract intellectual activity, is to face itself, to reflect on itself, to set itself, to affirm itself, and to give itself the status of an independent spiritual being, which is called “the Ego posits itself”. But the activity of the Ego cannot unfold, cannot enter the world of experience, without an objective object distinct from the Ego. The Ego would not be an Ego, so the second action of the Ego is to create the opposite of the ego, which is called “the Ego opposites itself a non-Ego”. In this way, Fichte replaced Kant’s thing-in-itself with the non-Ego created by the Ego itself. After positing the Ego and the Not Ego, a contradiction arises between the Ego and the non-Ego, the subject and the object, and thinking and being. In order to unify the two sides of the contradiction, the Ego is forced to take a third action and restrict the two sides, which is “both Ego and non-Ego are posited as divisible”. In the scope of the absolute “Ego”, the opposites depend on one another, influence one another, and condition one another, so as to achieve the unity of the opposites. Fichte believed that the reciprocal contradiction, dependence, influence, and conditioning between the Ego and the non-Ego, the subject and the object, and thinking and being, constitute the entire content of our empirical world. In this way, Fichte has proven the dialectical identity between thinking and being in the way of subjective idealism. Fichte died of typhoid fever in Berlin, Germany, on January 27, 1814.