FICHTE, JOHANN GOTTLIEB (1762-1814). An illustrious German philosopher. Ile was born the son of a ribbon-weaver. at Rammenau, in upper Lusatia, May 19, 1762. As a lad of prom ise he attracted the attention of a neighboring nobleman, Baron von Miltitz, who assisted him in his early education. In 1776 Fichte was placed at the gymnasium of Pfo•ta, near Naumburg, and in 1780 he entered the University of Jena. where, as subsequently at Leipzig, he studied theology and philosophy. During the years 1784 to 1788 he supported himself in a precarious way as tutor in various Saxon families. From 1788 to 1790 he taught in private families at Zurich. where he became acquainted with Pestalozzi. He then re turned to Leipzig and in 1791 obtained a tutor ship at Warsaw, in the house of a Polish nobleman. The situation, however, proved dis agreeable, and the philosopher next proceeded to Iiiinigsberg, when lie had an interview with Kant. of whom he had become an ardent disciple. Ile submitted his Kritill allcr 0 ffenharnno (Cri tique of all Revelation) to that philosopher, who praised it highly, and advised him to publish it. The following year it appeared anonymously, and was credited to Kant, who then made known its a nthorship. This incident established Fiehte's fame ;Is :I philosopher. In 1794 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at .Tena, where he eommenced to expound with extraordinary zeal his system of 'transcendental idealism.' In 1795 lie published Lis Wisscuscha f tsleh re ( Doctrine of Science), in which he clearly broke away from Kant, whose speculations did not seem to him sufficiently thor ough. In 1796 he published Orumilaut des Na turrechts ( Foundation of Natural Rights) ; in 1798, Syston der Sittenlehre (System , and in the same year an article in a philosophical journal, which cost him dear. It was entitled "I'eber den Grund tinsel's Gloubens an einc gat liche \\'eltregierung" (The Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the World). For views therein expressed lie was charged with atheism, inasmuch as he had characterized God as the living moral order of the world. In vain did he deny the atheistic nature of this doctrine; the odium theologicum was too strung for him, and he was compelled to rehnquish his chair. Fichte went to Berlin, where he delivered lectures to audiences composed of men of dis tinction, and where he made friends of such men as Schlegel, Schleiermacher, and Tieck. In 1805 he was appointed to a professorship in Erlangen. The approach of the French army drove him in 1806 to KiMigsberg, and in 1807.08 he delivered his famous "Addresses to the German Nation" ("Peden an die deutsche Nation") in Berlin. These addresses were full of the most exalted enthusiasm. The Prussian King appre ciated the zeal of the eloquent metaphysician, ztnd, on the restoration of peace, appointed him to a professorship in the newly founded Univer sity of Berlin. In 1810 the university was opened with a host of brilliant names—Fichte, Friedrich August Wolf, Wilhelm von Humboldt, De•ette, Sehleiermacher, and Savigny. By the votes of his colleagues Fichte was unanimously elected rector. In 1813 the War of Liberation broke out, and the hospitals of the Prussian capital were soon crowded with patients. Fichte's wife was one of the first to offer her services as a nurse. For five months she tended the sick with all the patient tenderness and devotion of her nature. At last she was seized with typhoid fever, and after a fearful struggle she recovered: but her husband caught the infection, and died January 27, 1814.
The fundamental notion of the idealism set forth in Fichte's writings, at least in the earlier of them, is the sole reality of the conscious self or ego, which gives rise by its activity to the not-self or non-ego, inasmuch as self-knowledge is possible only in contrast with knowledge of a non-ego. The significance of this view in the his tory of philosophy can be understood only by comparing it with Kant's (q.v.), from which it was developed. Kant had taught that experi ence arose from the concurrent action of sensa tion and thought, sensation being the product of things in themselves as they affect the mind, while thought is the spontaneous activity of the conscious self. Thus, experience for Kant is
dualistic. This dualism is what Fichte sought to overcome, and he set about it by denying that the sense element in experience is traceable to the action of objects independent of the percipient subject. The non-ego is the creation of the ego. This creation is not accomplished at the instiga tion of some external stimulus. It is an orig inal, uncaused, free activity of the self. The first result of this activity is sensation. The act of giving rise spontaneously to sensation is an unconscious act: its effect is the first object of consciousness. Because the act is unconscious, its result seems to be obtruded upon consciousness from without, a well-known of sen sation. Why does the self create a sense object in order to give free play to its activist. It sets up an object as a limit only to transcend this limit. This is thine in the sueeessive stages of knowledge, beginning with perception and ending with the categorical impend ive, which is the termination of the process, bemuse at this point the self is conscious of itself (not of some apparently alien obtrusion), as airing to itself all its determinations. The ego, in so far as it is determined by the knowledge, is the intelligent ego, and, as such, the subject of theoretical fsel ence ; the ego, on the other hand, as determining the non-ego, is the of practical science. To recapitulate, Fichte makes that which, from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, we call the world, merely a product of the ego; it exists only through the ego, for the ego, and in the ego. The ego, however, is not held by Fichte to be the phenomenal self—that is, the limited temporal self which each person takes himself to be. On the contrary, the creative ego is a uni versal self eonunon to all finite selves.' Abstrac tion must be made from the finitude of our indi vidual selves, for the finitude is itself a self-im posed limit to be transcended. The universal self thus reached is God. A popular exposition of his philosophy is given in his inwcisung zunt seligen Lcbcn. It is set forth in a strictly scien tific manner in the lectures published in the Nachgelassenc Werke, edited by 1. G. Fichte (3 vols., Bonn, 1834-35), in which his Logik and his revised theory of law and morals are particularly deserving of attention. Al though Fichte never, strictly speaking, formed a school, and although his system has been adopted only by a few, such as J. 13. Schad, Mehmel, Cra mer, Schmidt, and Michaelis, his influenee upon the subsequent. development of German philosophy has been very important, especially through the influence he exerted upon Hegel (q.v.). Fichte's collected works were published by his son, 1. II. Fichte (1845-4(1). His popular works have been translated into English. Their titles are: The Destination of Man: The Vocation of the Schol ar; The Way to the Blessed Life: The Charac teristics of the Present Age; and Outlines of the Doctrine of Knowledge. A. E. Krueger trans lated The Science of Knowledge (18;91: The Science of Rights (1869 and 1889) ; and The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge (1S97). Some of the shorter works have appeared in translations from Hine to Hine in the Journal of Speculatirc Philosophy. Con sult: Kuno Fischer, Oeschichte rler ncuern Phi losophic, vol. v. (Heidelberg, 1897 et seq.) : id., Fichte's Leber, Tierke and Leh rC Fichte (London, ISS1) Everett, Fich te's Science of Knowledge: a Critieal Exposition (Chicago, ISS41 : Schneider, Johann Oottlicb Fichte als Socialpolitiker (Halle, 1894 ) ; Lindau. Fichte and der nevcre Socialismus (Berlin, 1900) ; Weber, Fick Socialismus and sein znr llarxsehen Daktrin (Tiibingen, 1900) ; and the leading histories of philosophy.
such as Erdmann's. l'eberweg-lleinze's, baud's. and Fa 1 ekenberg's.