This Guide examines Fichte's main political concepts including morality, the summons, social contract, freedom, the body and human rights.

This Guide examines Fichte's main political concepts including morality, the summons, social contract, freedom, the body and human rights.

The German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), has long been recognized as an important and original figure in the history of philosophy and Western thought and as a seminal influence upon the Romantic tradition. The essays in this book focus on Fichte's contributions in political theory as set out in his Foundations of Natural Right. Fichte was notorious as a political radical and his ideas in in political theory proved to be decisive influences upon his contemporaries and of striking relevance to current political dispute. This volume of essays, which examine such issues as Fichte as a social contract theorist, his theory of gender relations and his theories on punishment and the criminal law among many other topics, remedies what has been a striking lacuna in the existing scholarly literature.

Reprint of the first edition in English, and the standard translation today. Fichte was one of the leading German Idealist philosophers in the period between Kant and Hegel, and is considered to be one of the founders of German nationalism. Indeed, his work is seen as a link between Kant's Critical Philosophy and Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit. The Science of Rights, a restatement of Kantian principles in terms of natural law, is his principal legal work. For Fichte, the basis of law are legal relations that illuminate the principles of positive law. "His theory of law is highly abstract, but in the notion of legal relations and in his conception of the necessary requirements of an international order he enunciated ideas of great value": Walker, The Oxford Companion to Law 468.

A complete translation into English of Fichte's most important work of political philosophy.

"This work is a model of what a philosophical text should be."--Reinhard Lauth "Breazeale's translation is fluent, precise, and perhaps most important of all . . . it is readable. . . . This is an excellent translation by the ranking Fichte scholar working in English at present, accompanied by a full, useful scholarly apparatus, likely to be of interest to Fichte scholars and all those concerned with the development of German idealism."--Review of Metaphysics "The publishing of this volume in English . . . provides us with a wealth of new material, not just about Fichte's development, but about the essentially Cartesian project that first gave rise to phenomenology in our own century."--International Philosophical Quarterly

"This work is a model of what a philosophical text should be."--Reinhard Lauth "Breazeale's translation is fluent, precise, and perhaps most important of all... it is readable.... This is an excellent translation by the ranking Fichte scholar working in English at present, accompanied by a full, useful scholarly apparatus, likely to be of interest to Fichte scholars and all those concerned with the development of German idealism."--Review of Metaphysics "The publishing of this volume in English... provides us with a wealth of new material, not just about Fichte's development, but about the essentially Cartesian project that first gave rise to phenomenology in our own century."--International Philosophical Quarterly

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) was the founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a branch of thought which grew out of Kant's critical philosophy. Fichte's work formed the crucial link between eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought and philosophical, as well as literary, Romanticism. Some of his ideas also foreshadow later nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in philosophy and in political thought, including existentialism, nationalism and socialism. This volume offers essays on all the major aspects of Fichte's philosophy, ranging from the successive versions of his foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre, through his ethical and political thought, to his philosophies of history and religion. All the main stages of Fichte's philosophical career and development are charted, and his ideas are placed in their historical and intellectual context. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Fichte currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Fichte.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Fichte is often perceived as a figure whose philosophy forms a bridge between the ideas of Kant and the German Idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Like Descartes and Kant before him, the problem of subjectivity and consciousness motivated much of his philosophical rumination. Fichte also wrote political philosophy, and is thought of by some as the father of German nationalism. His works include: Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792), Foundations of Natural Right (1796), Characteristics of the Present Age (1806) and Addresses to the German Nation (1808).