Abstract
Few thinkers have lived more remarkable lives than Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), whose career began with an incredible ascent from rural poverty to academic celebrity and was filled with challenge, conflict, failure, and ultimate triumph. Despite the abstract nature of his philosophical ideas and difficulty to grasp the dynamics of his thought, it is possible to notice some important parallels between Fichte’s highly technical “philosophy of striving” and his personal striving to establish himself professionally and socially, to position himself within the philosophical field, and, most important, through his work to have an effect upon his contemporaries and his troublesome age. Exploring links between Fichte’s career, philosophy, and a specific intellectual context is the primary goal of this chapter. The main assumption that guides this exploration is that the meaning of philosophical ideas and philosophical texts can be recovered contextually as a product of a particular time and place. Hence the chapter aims at contextualizing Fichte’s scholarly development and exploring his philosophy in the context of that social and intellectual discourse that influenced him both personally and professionally. I hope to draw a portrait of a thinker in his world and his intellectual interactions with his surroundings.
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Notes
Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 24–60; as well as Chapter 1 of this volume.
See Anthony J. La Vopa, Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762–1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 32–34.
See Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, trans. Garrett Green, ed. Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). The original German title of the work is Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, 14 vols., ed. Erich Trunz, 14th ed. [München: Beck, 1989], 10: 440–41).
Eckart Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction, trans. Brady Bowman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 155.
G. E. Schulze, Aenesidemus (excerpts), trans. George di Giovanni, in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, ed. George di Giovanni and H. S. Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 104–35.
Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed. David S. Pacini (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 150–51.
F. K. Forberg, Fichte in vetraulichen Briefen seiner Zeitgenossen, ed. Hans Schulz (Leipzig: Haessel, 1923), 43–44.
(Rudolf Steiner, “Sieben Briefe von Fichte an Goethe. Zwei Briefe von Fichte an Schiller,” Goethe-Jahrbuch 15 [1894]: 49).
F. K. Forberg, “Development of the Concept of Religion,” in J. G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798–1800), trans. Curtis Bowman, ed. Yolanda Estes (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), 37–47.
F. K. Forberg, “Entwicklung des Begriffs der Religion,” in Die Schriften zu f. G. Fichtes Atheismusstreit, 1798–1800, ed. Hans Lindau (Munich: Müller, 1913), 37–58.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, “Open Letter to Fichte, 1799,” trans. Diana I. Behler, in Philosophy of German Idealism, ed. Ernst Behler (New York: Continuum, 2003), 127 (GA III/3, no. 428.I).
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© 2014 Marina F. Bykova
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Bykova, M.F. (2014). Fichte: His Life and Philosophical Calling. In: Altman, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-33475-6_14
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