FICHTE, JOHANN GOTTLIEB, was born in Upper Lusatia in 1792. After receiving a school education, he studied at the univer sities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wfirtemberg. lie afterwards became aoquainted with Kant and Peatalozzi ; and in 1792 attracted general attention by his Versuch eluer Critik alley Offenbarung ' Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation '), on account of which he was made pro fessor of philosophy at Jena. Here he began to promulgate the system of philosophy which is known under the name of Wiesen echaftelehre' (' Doctrine of Science'). A treadles on Faith and Provi dence which he wrote at Jena having brought upon him the suspicion of irreligion, he retired to Prussia, and after living for some time at Berlin, rerooved to Erlangen, where he was appointed professor of philosophy, with leave to visit Prussia in the winter time.
The character of Fichte has alwnys been held iu high esteem. His 'Discourses to the German People' during the French invasion are justly valued, and he is said to have died, as he always lived, fur a good cause. During his residence at Berlin in the year 1S14, he urged his wife to visit the sick in the military hospital of that city; in conse quence of which she caught a fever, from which she recovered, but communicated it to her husband. Fichte died at Berlin in 1814, leaving a eon, Immanuel Hermann, who became a professor at Bonn, and acquired considerable distinction as a writer and teacher of philosophy.
Fichte 's Wiesenschaftslehre' grew out of the philosophy of Kant, of whom he at first considered himself a mere disciple. Kant had dogmatically assumed the school logic as the foundation of his system ; the forms of propositions, as affirmative, negative, etc., had supplied him with his table of categories, and ho never thought that any one would sok for the origin of these forms themselves. According to the system of Kant, time and space have no existence exterior to the mind, bat are merely the forms in which it discerns objects, and which only abide io itself. An intuition (or immediate contemplation) was divided into matter or form : thus iu a red surface, the mere colour red was called the matter of the intuition, and the extension its form. The first was held to be a manifestation of something external to ourselves ; the latter as merely dwelling in our own minds.
This was Kant's theory of sensation Tmnacendentale iEsthetik') and it is followed by an investigation of the laws of the understandiug.
These laws he worked out from the table of categories, which, as before said, was constructed from the logical form of propositions.
Thus, propositions are divided iuto universal, particular, and singular. Hence the objects of propositions cousidered in this light, are ' all,' 'many; or 'one,' or may be said to come wader the categories of ' totality," multiplicity,' and 'unity.' In the same manner, from the divisions of propositions into affirmative, negative, and infleito, Kant got the categories of ' reality," negation,' and 'limitation,' and from the division into categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, the cate gories of substance and accident'—' cause and etfect'—' action and reaction.' A fourth series of categories obtained from the modal divi sion are 'necessity," actuality," possibility ;' and as we cannot think of objects at all except under the forms expressed by these proposi tions, It follows that all objects of thought must come under the categories. From this Kant conelndee, that as time and space are the forms of our intuition, so are ' cause and effect,' etc., the forms of our thought, having likewise no existence without, our own minds ; and that when we say the law of cause and effect is a law of nature, no more is cooveyed than that the law of cause and effect is that under which we are compelled to observe nature, having nothing to do with external things themselves. Kant compares his own system to that of Copes alms, observing that the latter makes the planets move round the sera, and that he in the same manner puts the mind In the centre, and makes the objects adapt themselves to the forms of the mind, instead of the mind (snowing the laws of the objects. Hence, according to his view, we are altogether without knowledge of things in themselves, the ex tended form in which they appear being merely in our own mind, anc likewise the laws by which we suppose they are regulated. We mcrel3 contemplate various phrenomena, which are the exponents of thing' we cannot know anything about, and to which these very phsenoment lo not bear the slightest resemblance. This is not intended as a complete view of the eystem of Kant, but only a sketch of so much of it as will serve to reader the account of Fichte intelligible.