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Johann Gottlieb Fichte

110 quotes

“The infinitely smallest part of space is always a space, something endowed with continuity, not at all a mere point or the boundary between specified places in space.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) first seen 1795 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen (1795) GA I.3, as quoted/translated by Erhard Scholz, "Philosophy as a Cultural Resource and Medium of Reflection for Herma…
“The correct relationship between the higher and lower classes, the appropriate mutual interaction between the two is, as such, the true underlying support on which the improvement of the human species rests. The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs; the former are the thinking and designing [Entwerfende] part, the latter the executive part.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The System of Ethics According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798; Cambridge, 2005), p. 320.
“The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) first seen 1807 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Addresses to the German Nation (1807), Second Address : "The General Nature of the New Education". Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922, p. 20.
“If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) first seen 1807 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Addresses to the German Nation (1807), Second Address : "The General Nature of the New Education". Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922, p. 21
“Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; — all but the possibility of improvement.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Vocation of the Scholar" (1794), as translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
“I posit myself as rational, that is, as free. In doing so I have the representation of freedom. In the same undivided act I posit other free beings. Hence, I describe through my power of imagination a sphere of freedom, which these many separate beings divide amongst themselves. I do not ascribe to myself all the freedom which I have posited, because I must also posit other free beings, and must ascribe part of it to them. Thus, in appropriating freedom to myself, I at the same time restrict myself, by leaving freedom to others.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conception of Rights involves that when men are to live in a community, each must so restrict his freedom as to permit the coexistence of the freedom of all others. But it does not involve that this particular person, A, is to restrict his freedom by the freedom of those particular persons, B, C, and D. That it has happened so that I, A, must conform myself particularly to the freedom of these, B, C, and D, of all other men, is purely the result of my living together with them; and I so live with them, simply by my free-will, not because there is an obligation for me to do so.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What man is to be, he must become; and as he is to be a being for himself, must become through himself. Nature completed all her works; only from man did she withdraw her hands, and precisely thereby gave him over to himself. Cultivability, as such, is the character of mankind. The impossibility of subsuming to the human form any other conception than that of his own Ego, is it, which forces every man inwardly to consider every other man as his equal.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All law relations are determined by this principle: each one must restrict his freedom by the possibility of the freedom of the other. … My freedom is limited by the freedom of the other only on condition that he limits his freedom by the conception of mine. Otherwise he is lawless. Hence, if a law-relation is to result from my cognition of the other, the cognition and the consequent limitation of freedom must have been mutual. All law-relation between persons is, therefore, conditioned by their mutual cognition of each other, and is, at the same time, completely determined thereby.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am excluded from the possession of a determined object, not through the will of the other, but only through my own free-will. If I had not excluded myself, I should not be excluded. But I must exclude myself from something in virtue of the Conception of Rights. ** P. 182”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other. But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The supervision of the state extends to the lock upon the door, and there begins mine own. The lock is the boundary line between the power of the government and my own private power. It is the intention of locks to make possible self-protection. In my own house my person is sacred and inviolable even to the government. In civil cases government has no right to attack me in my house, but must wait till I am upon public ground.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marriage is a union between two persons — one man and one woman. A woman who has given herself up to one, can not give herself up to a second, for her whole dignity requires that she should belong only to this one.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us apply these principles to adultery. The state can no more prohibit it or punish it by law than any other illegitimate satisfaction of the sexual impulse.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Has woman the same rights in the state which man has? This question may appear ridiculous to many. For if the only ground of all legal rights is reason and freedom, how can a distinction exist between two sexes which possess both the same reason and the same freedom. Nevertheless, it seems that, so long as men have lived, this has been differently held, and the female sex seems not to have been placed on a par with the male sex in the exercise of its rights. Such a universal sentiment must have a ground, to discover which was never a more urgent problem than in our days.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each citizen of a state promises, in the original compact, that he will promote, as far as lies in his power, all the conditions of the possibility of the state ; hence, also, the condition just mentioned. This he can best do by educating children who may grow up to realize various ends of reason. The state has the right to make this education of children a condition of the state-compact, and thus education becomes an external, legal obligation, which the parents owe to the state.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a proof that the state is not an arbitrary invention, but is established by nature and reason, when we actually find that, in places where men have lived together for a time and have become educated, states are erected, although the people in the one such place know not that the same thing has been done in other places. Each people, which does not live in a condition of nature, but has a government, no matter how constituted, has a right to compel its recognition from all adjoining states.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The representation of the self-sufficiency of the I can certainly co-exist with a representation of the self-sufficiency of the thing, though the self-sufficiency of the I itself cannot co-exist with that of the thing. Only one of these two can come first, only one can be the starting point; only one can be independent. The one that comes second, just because it comes second, necessarily becomes dependent upon the one that comes first, with which it is supposed to be connected. Which of these two should come first?”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The "I" who speaks in this book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this "I": that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually converse with himself, deliberate back and forth, deduce conclusions, make decisions like his representative in the book, and through his own work and reflection, purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 2
“Wenn ich nur dasjenige weiß, und von ihm überzeugt bin, was ich selbst gefunden, – nur dasjenige wirklich kenne, was ich selbst erfahren habe, so kann ich in der That nicht sagen, daß ich über meine Bestimmung das Geringste wisse; ich weiß blos, was Andre darüber zu wissen behaupten.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 4
“Mit derselben Sicherheit, mit welcher ich darauf rechne, daß dieser Boden mich tragen wird, wenn ich darauf trete, daß dieses Feuer mich verbrennen würde, wenn ich mich ihm näherte, will ich darauf rechnen können, was ich selbst bin, und was ich sein werde. With the same assurance with which I count on the floor to support me when I step on it, and on the fire to burn me were I to approach it, I want to be able to count on what I myself am and what I will be.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 4
“It is so by nature that the plant will develop with regularity, that the animal will move purposefully, and that human beings will think. Why should I take exception to recognizing also the last as the expression of an original force of nature, as I do the first and the second?”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 11
“The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
“Am I a free agent, or am I merely the manifestation of a foreign power? Neither appear sufficiently well founded.By the most courageous resolve of my life am I reduced to this! what Power can save me from it, from myself?”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 24
“I: My consciousness of the object is only a yet unrecognised consciousness of my production of the representation of an object. Of this production I know no more than that it is I who produce, and thus is all consciousness no more than a consciousness of myself, and so far perfectly comprehensible. Am I in the right? Spirit. Perfectly so ; but whence then is derived the necessity and universality thou hast ascribed to these propositions, to that of causality for instance?”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 47
“Of what I am, I know no more than that I am, but here no tie is necessary between subject and object. My own being is this tie, I am at once the subject knowing, and the object known of; and this reflection or return of the knowledge on itself is what I designate by the term I, if I have any determinate meaning.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 50
“Spirit: Do not be deceived by sophists and half philosophers; things do not appear to thee by means of any representatives. Of the thing that exists, and that can exist, thou art conscious immediately ; thou, thyself, art that of which thou art conscious. By a fundamental law of thy being thou art thus presented to thyself, and thrown out of thyself.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 53
“Who am I? Subject and object in one — contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 71
“It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts, and possessed of similar culture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of Man, have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 88
“Reason does not exist for the sake of life, but life for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason and solve all her doubts, cannot be the true one.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.94
“I believe it to be this; that my will, absolutely of itself, and without the intervention of any instrument that might weaken its effect, shall act in a sphere perfectly congenial — reason upon reason, spirit upon spirit; in a sphere to which it does not give the laws of life, of activity, of progress, but which has them in itself, therefore, upon self-active reason. But spontaneous, self-active reason is will. The law of the transcendental world must, therefore, be a Will.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.110
“I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger on my lips. What thou art in thyself, or how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know. After living through a thousand lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this mansion of clay. What I can comprehend, becomes finite by my mere comprehension, and this can never, by perpetual ascent, be transformed into the infinite, for it does not differ from it in degree merely, but in kind. By that ascent we may find a greater and greater man, but never a God, who is capable of no measurement.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.115
“All life, Omnipotent Father, is thy life! and the eye of religion alone penetrates to the realms of truth and beauty. I am related to thee, and what I behold around me is related to me; all is full of animation, and looks towards me with bright spiritual eyes, and speaks with spirit voices to my heart.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.125
“The determination to print them (his lectures), and to communicate them to the General Public, must also speak for itself; and should it not do so, any other recommendation of them would be thrown away. Thus, with respect to the appearance of this work, I have nothing further to say to the Public, than that I have nothing to say.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The End of the Life of Mankind on Earth is this,—that in this Life they may order all their relations with FREEDOM according to REASON.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instinct is blind;—a consciousness without insight. Freedom, as the opposite of Instinct, is thus seeing, and clearly conscious of the grounds of its activity.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Among other men Reason awakes in another form—as the impulse towards Personal Freedom, which, although it never opposes the mild rule of the inward Instinct which it loves, yet rises in rebellion against the pressure of a stranger Instinct which has usurped its rights; and in this awakening it breaks the chains,—not of Reason as Instinct itself, but of the Instinct of foreign natures clothed in the garb of external power.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science raises itself above all Ages and all Times, embracing and apprehending the ONE UNCHANGING TIME as the higher source of all Ages and Epochs, and grasping that vast idea in its free, unbounded comprehension.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An infirmity which affects the whole race, is no proper object for the scorn of an individual who belongs to that race, and who, before he could expose it, must himself have been its slave.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every other art,—as poetry, music, painting,—may be practised without the process showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted ;—but in the self-cognizant art of the philosopher, no step can be taken without declaring the grounds upon which it proceeds.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the THIRD, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority, indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:–the state of completed sinfulness.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the ONE universal and necessary Thought.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true Christian knows no Covenant or Mediation with God, but only the Old, Eternal, and Unchangeable Relation, that in Him we live, and move, and have our being; and he asks not who has said this, but only what has been said;—even the book wherein this may be written is nothing to him as a proof, but only as a means of culture; he bears the proof in his own breast. This is my view of the matter…”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History is mere Empiricism; it has only facts to communicate, and all its proofs are founded upon facts alone. To attempt to rise to Primeval History on this foundation of fact, or to argue by this means how such or such a thing might have been, and then to take for granted that it has been so in reality,is to stray beyond the limits of History, and produce an a priori History; just as the Philosophy of Nature, referred to in our preceding lecture, endeavoured to find an a priori Science of Physics.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equal Rights for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equal Privileges, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;—but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;—and in so far there did not exist Equal Privileges.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was these Romans who reunited in one State the Culture which had now been produced by the intermixture of different races, and thereby completed the period of Ancient Time, and closed the simple course of Ancient Civilization. With respect to its influence on Universal History, this nation, more than any other, was the blind and unconscious instrument for the furtherance of a higher World-Plan; after having formed itself, by its internal des tiny indicated above, into a most fit and proper instrument for that purpose.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Show me what thou truly lovest, what thou seekest and strivest for with thy whole heart when thou hopest to attain to true en joyment of thyself—and thou hast thereby shown me thy Life. What thou lovest, in that thou livest. This very Love is thy Life, the root, the seat, the central point of thy being. All other emotions within thee have life only in so far as they are governed by this one central emotion.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Being and Life are one and the same, so are Death and Nothingness one and the same. But there is no real Death and no real Nothing ness, as we have already said. There is, however, an Apparent Life, and this is the mixture of life and death, of being and nothingness.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While all these are disturbed and divided by the multifarious objects to which their thoughts must be applied, the Philosopher pursues, in solitary silence and in unbroken concentration of mind, his single and undeviating course towards the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and that is his daily labour, to which others can only resort at times for rest and refreshment after toil.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing whatever in Existence but immediate and living Thought:—Thought, I say, but by no means a thinking substance, a dead body in which thought inheres,—with which no-thought indeed a no-thinker is full surely at hand:—Thought, I say, and also the real Life of this Thought, which at bot tom is the Divine Life; both of which—Thought and , this its real Life—are molten together into one inward organic Unity; like as, outwardly, they are one simple, identical, eternal, and unchangeable Unity.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source