|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other authors named Johann:
|
|
|
|
Author's popularity: 1
Vote:  
|
If you like or dislike this author in general or one or more of their quotes in particular, please give us your feedback by clicking on the icon to vote for, or the icon to vote against them.
|
|
Popularity: -1
Vote: | A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | As to those in whom the will of God is not inwardly accomplished, - because there is no inward life in them, for they are altogether outward, - upon them the will of God is wrought as alone it can be; appearing at first sight bitter and ungracious, though in reality merciful and loving in the highest degree. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | By philosophy the mind of man comes to itself, and from henceforth rests on itself without foreign aid, and is completely master of itself, as the dancer of his feet, or the boxer of his hands. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Full surely there is a blessedness beyond the grave for those who have already entered on it here, and in no other form than that wherein they know it here, at any moment. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | He who is firm in will molds the world to himself. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I cannot think of the present state of humanity as that in which it is destined to remain; I am absolutely unable to conceive of this as its complete and final vocation... .Only in so far as I can regard this state as the means towards a better, as the transition-point to a higher and more perfect state, has it any value in my eyes. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | If [a woman] is married, her whole dignity depends upon her being completely subjected, and seeming to be so subjected, to her husband. She has the power to withdraw her freedom, if she could have the will to do so. But that is the very point; she cannot rationally will to be free. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Philosophy... elevates the human mind higher than any geometry can. It gives the mind not only attentiveness, dexterity, stability, but at the same time absolute independence, forcing it to be alone with itself, and to live and manage by itself. Compared with it, every other mental operation is infinitely easy; and to one who has been exercised in it nothing comes hard. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Pure thought is itself the divine existence; and conversely, the divine existence, in its immediate essence, is nothing else than pure thought. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Religion consists herein, that man in his own person, with his own spiritual eye, immediately beholds and possesses God. This, however, is possible through pure independent thought alone; for only through this does man assume real personality, and this alone is the eye to which God becomes visible. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | There are two great classes of men: the people and the scholars, the men of science. For the former, nothing exists but that which directly leads to action. It is for the latter to see beyond. They are the free artists who create the future and its history, the conscious architects of the world. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | To those who do not love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation at last. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it. |
|
Biography
|
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (May 19, 1762 - January 27, 1814) has significance in the history of Western philosophy as one of the progenitors of German idealism and as a follower of Kant.
Fichte did not endorse Kant's argument for the existence of noumena, of "things as they are", not just as they are perceived through the categories of human reason. Fichte saw the rigorous and systematic separation of "things as they are" (noumena) and things "as they appear to be" (phenomena) as an invitation to skepticism.
Rather than invite such skepticism, Fichte made the radical suggestion that we should throw out the notion of a noumenal world and instead accept the fact that consciousness does not have a grounding in a so-called "real world". In fact, Fichte achieved fame for originating the argument that consciousness is not grounded in anything outside of itself. This notion eventually became the defining characteristic of German Idealism and thus an essential underpinning to understanding the philosophies of Hegel, and of Arthur Schopenhauer, though they both reject Fichte's notion that human consciousness is itself sufficient ground for experience, and therefore postulate another "absolute" consciousness.
In 1806, in a Berlin occupied by Napoléon, Fichte gave a series of Addresses to the German Nation which became an incentive for German nationalism. Here, Fichte indirectly continues his anti-Semitic argumentation from his early works on religion and the French Revolution.
His son Immanuel Hermann Fichte also made contributions to philosophy.
At age 51 Fichte died of typhus.
Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Early Philosophical Writings Edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988
Foundations of the Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) Nova Methodo (1796-1799) Edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992
Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings (1797 - 1800) Edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994
Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792,93) Translated by Garret Green. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978
Science of Knowledge with the First and Second Introductions Translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982
Addresses to the German Nation Edited by George Armstrong Kelly. Translated by R F Jones and George Henry Turnbull. New York: Harper & Row, 1968
Foundations of Natural Right Edited by Frederick Neuhouser. Translated by Michael Baur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000
The Vocation of Man Translated by Peter Preuss. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987
Secondary Sources (English):
Daniel Breazeale. "Fichte's 'Aenesidemus' Review and the Transformation of German Idealism" The Review of Metaphysics 34 (1980/1) 545-68.
Daniel Breazeale and Thomas Rockmore (eds) Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Controversies. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1997.
Dieter Henrich. "Fichte's Original Insight" Contemporary German Philosophy 1 (1982) 15-52.
Wayne Martin. Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte's Jena Project. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Frederick Neuhouser. Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Robert R Williams. Recognition: Fichte and Schelling on the Other. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Gunther Zoller. Fichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
...(more on Wikipedia)
|
|
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Johann Gottlieb Fichte".
|
|
|