Lectures on the Theory of Ethics (1812) (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)
Language: English
Pages: 216
ISBN: 1438458703
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Lectures from the late period of Fichte’s career, never before available in English.
Translated here for the first time into English, this text furnishes a new window into the final phase of Fichte’s career. Delivered in the summer of 1812 at the newly founded University of Berlin, Fichte’s lectures on ethics explore some of the key concepts and issues in his evolving system of radical idealism. Addressing moral theory, the theory of education, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of religion, Fichte engages both directly and indirectly with some of his most important contemporaries and philosophical rivals, including Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. Benjamin D. Crowe’s translation includes extensive annotations and a German-English glossary. His introduction situates the text systematically, historically, and institutionally within an era of cultural ferment and intellectual experimentation, and includes a bibliography of recent scholarship on Fichte’s moral theory and on the final period of his career.
University of Utah for granting me leave during the academic year 2013-14 to complete the work for this translation, as well as to the Philosophy Department at Temple University for affording me a visiting position and research resources during that time. I owe a particular debt to Kristin Gjesdal (Temple University) for her warm hospitality and many helpful conversations. I am likewise grateful to Andew Kenyon, Laurie Searl, and Eileen Nizer at SUNY Press for their hard work in preparing this
of [the concept’s] making itself into such an I. But this guarantees the eternity of the I. Is such an I capable of changing its will during the course of time? Of course [it would be], were it the will of an I! But [the moral will] is the appearance of the one absolute concept, which is eternally identical to itself and | exists in no time. Were the will changed at some point, this would only be proof that it was never there, and that one had merely imagined it through some error of judgment. 1.
only in the immoral appearance) {or} unconditionally [schlechthin] not through itself, but rather through the image that lies within the concept. In the latter manner, [the I] is not at all a self, and there is no feeling [of self], nor love [of self], or of anything at all, which would have to be put to death.3 (That there are, in fact, no individuals, but rather that these are merely forms of self-appearance that result from the formal laws of self-appearance, is a theoretical proposition of
standpoint might consist not only in imperfection and a lack of clear knowledge but rather in an | actual error stemming from the former. If, for example, the correct cognition that there is a God were further determined as follows: there is an arbitrary ruler of the world [Weltherrscher] who issues laws without any conceivable reason, which we must uphold because he is mightier, and things go badly for us if we are disobedient—then this is an error, and, like all errors, it is contrary to
ascribed to the founder of our Christian religion that he was inspired by God, and by means of this inspiration was wrenched from every link with worlds that came before or after in the natural progression of education [Bildung], [i.e.,] was an exceptional moral genius like those of a different kind who we also recognize among different peoples [Völkern] of antiquity—which would be the least that anyone who conversed with him would verbally confess—then one should not assume it to be simply