Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, born on 19 May 1762 and dying on 29 January 1814, was a German philosopher and a key founder of German idealism, a movement that grew out of Immanuel Kant’s theoretical and ethical work. Fichte stands as an important thinker in his own right because of his original ideas about self-consciousness, or self-awareness. Like Descartes and Kant before him, he was driven by the problem of subjectivity and consciousness. He also wrote political philosophy and is often considered one of the fathers of German nationalism.

Fichte was born in Rammenau, Upper Lusatia, and was baptized a Lutheran. His father, Christian Fichte, was a ribbon weaver, and the family was pious and had lived in the region for generations. His mother, Maria Dorothea Fichte, née Schurich, married somewhat above her class. Some have suggested that Fichte’s lifelong impatience came from his mother. He received only a basic education from his father, but showed remarkable ability early on. Because of his reputation among villagers, he got a chance at a better education. The story goes that a landowner, the Freiherr von Miltitz, arrived too late to hear a local pastor preach. Told that a local boy could repeat the sermon almost word for word, the baron took Fichte under his protection and paid for his schooling.

Fichte was placed with Pastor Krebel in Niederau near Meissen, where he got a thorough grounding in the classics. From then on, he saw little of his parents. In October 1774, he entered the famous foundation-school at Pforta near Naumburg. Von Miltitz continued to support him but died that same year. Pforta is associated with names like Novalis, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, and Nietzsche. The school had a semi-monastic spirit, and while the education was excellent, it likely lacked enough social life and worldly contact for Fichte.

In 1780, Fichte began studying at the University of Jena’s Lutheran theology seminary. A year later, he transferred to Leipzig University. During this period of poverty and struggle, he supported himself. Without von Miltitz’s financial help, he had to end his studies without a degree. From 1784 to 1788, he barely supported himself as a tutor for various Saxon families. In early 1788, he returned to Leipzig hoping for better work, but ended up taking a less promising position with an innkeeper’s family in Zürich. He lived there for the next two years, meeting his future wife, Johanna Rahn, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. In 1793, he joined the Freemason lodge “Modestia cum Libertate,” which also counted Johann Wolfgang Goethe among its members. He became engaged to Johanna in the spring of 1790. That summer, he began studying Kant’s works because a student wanted to know about them. This had a lasting effect on his life and thought. But while he was studying Kant, the Rahn family suffered financial setbacks, and his marriage had to be postponed.

From Zürich, Fichte returned to Leipzig in May 1790. In early 1791, he got a tutoring job in Warsaw with a Polish nobleman, but the situation quickly turned disagreeable and he was let go. He then got a chance to see Kant in Königsberg. After a disappointing interview on 4 July of that year, he shut himself in his lodgings and poured all his energy into writing an essay that would catch Kant’s attention. Completed in five weeks, it was the *Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation* (1792). In this book, Fichte examined the connections between divine revelation and Kant’s critical philosophy. The first edition was published without Kant’s or Fichte’s knowledge and without Fichte’s name or a signed preface. The public therefore believed it was a new work by Kant. When Kant cleared up the confusion and openly praised the work and its author, Fichte’s reputation soared. In a letter to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Jens Baggesen wrote that it was “the most shocking and astonishing news... since nobody but Kant could have written this book. This amazing news of a third sun in the philosophical heavens has set me into such confusion.” Kant waited seven years to make a public statement; under external pressure, he finally dissociated himself from Fichte, writing, “May God protect us from our friends. From our enemies, we can try to protect ourselves.”

In October 1793, Fichte married in Zürich and stayed there for the rest of the year. Stirred by the French Revolution, he wrote and anonymously published two pamphlets that made him seen as a devoted defender of liberty of thought and action and an advocate of political change. In December of that year, he was invited to become an extraordinary professor of philosophy at the University of Jena. He accepted and began lecturing in May 1794. With extraordinary zeal, he expounded his system of “transcendental idealism.” His success was immediate. He excelled as a lecturer because of the earnestness and force of his personality. These lectures were later published.