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C H A P T E R 5  Fichte: Philosophy, Politics, and the German Nation It is the vocation of the scholar to be the teacher of the human race. —Fichte, “Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation”1 After Kant, philosophy took up the task of unifying theoretical and practical reason into a system. Such a system, to be complete, must account for its own ground in the seemingly extraneous regions of history, language, and politics. Kant’s reflections on these areas remain scattered among his “occasional” essays and can seem to be secondary to the project of the three Critiques. However, as I argued in Chapters 3 and 4, Kant was aware of the need to account for the empirical ground of his own philosophical activity, he understood the political ramifications of his critical philosophical activity, and he struggled to defend his project against the political authorities of his native Prussia. Although Kant was reluctant to use his voice directly to transform political life and resolve the antinomy of progress, hope for progress, as symbolically realized in the French Revolution, was a postulate of his political thinking. At most Kant claimed that political life should allow philosophers to voice their opinions in public. He did not demand that philosophers become kings nor that kings become philosophers.2 Kant’s deliberately restrained response to the question of the philosopher’s voice was eventually rejected by Fichte who actively attempted to inspire political actuality by using the poetic creative activity of his voice to cultivate the philosophical imagination of the German nation. Fichte’s deliberate political activity reflects a Platonic interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and politics: the philosopher should be the leader of the nation. Unlike Kant, Fichte believed that philosophical thought and political activity should converge to produce a nation based upon the educational authority of the philosopher. For Fichte, the philosopher who knows the truth has both the obligation and the mandate to use his voice to transform political life in order to bring the ideal into actuality. This conclusion follows from both Fichte’s theoretical and ethical systems, as well as from his conception of the linguistic basis of philosophical and political activity. 89 90 The Philosopher’s Voice In the present chapter I will set Fichte’s work in its political context. I will discuss Fichte’s commitment to the project of systematic completion including the practical component that lies in the heart of his Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre). I will further discuss Fichte’s explicit consideration of language and its relation to philosophical imagination, individuality , and political life. In the next chapter I will consider the development of Fichte’s approach to language and to politics, as it is manifest in his Addresses to the German Nation, a text that represents a reversal of the restrained approach to politics found in Kant. In this text, we find a complete picture of Fichte’s notion of the relation between philosophy, politics, and language, which led Fichte to the radical idea that the philosopher’s task was to change the world, in a philosophical direction, by using his voice to inspire the nation. Situating Fichte’s Work The scholar is especially destined for society . . . Accordingly, it is his particular duty to cultivate to the highest degree within himself the social talents of receptivity and the art of communication. —Fichte, “Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation”3 In his Addresses, we witness Fichte using his voice in a poetic manner to recreate political life according to the philosophical ideal. This philosophical ideal held that human beings could be liberated by a process of philosophical and moral education. While Kant turned to political activity as a moral task restrained by respect for moral autonomy, Fichte turned to politics as a philosophical task inspired by a new conception of the relation between philosophy, politics, and language. His radical mission was to prepare the ground for that form of philosophical insight that was necessary for the completion of the moral development of historical actuality. Fichte’s proselytizing activity pushed him beyond the limits of Kantian liberalism and filled his voice with the evangelical fervor of what G. A. Kelly calls “Fichtianity.”4 Fichte turns to political activity because he believes, as Tom Rockmore points out, that “since philosophy is concerned with the rational analysis of reality, it follows that this discipline enjoys a political role as a means to bringing about human liberty.”5 Unfortunately...

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