Your complimentary articles
You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please
If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.
To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.
If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.
Brief Lives
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
Matt Qvortrup on the cosmopolitan idealist who became the misunderstood father of German nationalism.
On the 19th of February 1919, The Times carried a report of a speech made the previous day by the German President, Friedrich Ebert. “We shall realise that which Fichte has given to the German nation as its task,” said the Social Democrat: “We want to establish a state of justice and truthfulness founded upon the equality of all humanity.” It is as telling as it is noteworthy that Ebert evoked the name of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) in his address to the Parliament of the newly established Weimar Republic. For Ebert and his contemporaries, Fichte was a cosmopolitan thinker and proponent of social justice and equality.
Fast forward almost a hundred years, and Fichte is regarded as a national chauvinist.
…