The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume V | Page 4

system of Hegel.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Ramenau, Oberlausitz, May 19, 1762, the son of a poor weaver. Through the generosity of a nobleman, the gifted lad was enabled to follow his intellectual bent; after attending the schools at Meissen and Schulpforta he studied theology at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg with the purpose of entering the ministry. His poverty frequently compelled him to interrupt his studies by accepting private tutorships in families, so that he never succeeded in preparing him self for the examinations. In 1790 he became acquainted with Kant's philosophy, which two students had asked him to expound to them, and to which he now devoted himself with feverish zeal. It revolutionized his entire mode of thought and determined the course of his life. The anonymous publication of his book, _Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation_, in 1792, written from the Kantian point of view and mistaken at first for a work of the great criticist, won him fame and a professorship at Jena (1794). Here, in the intellectual centre of Germany, Fichte became the eloquent exponent of the new idealism, which aimed at the reform of life as well as of _Wissenschaft_; he not only taught philosophy, but preached it, as Kuno Fischer has aptly said. During the Jena period he laid the foundations for his "Science of Knowledge" (_Wissenschaftslehre_) which he presented in numerous works: _The Conception of the Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of Natural Rights_, 1796; _The System of Ethics_, 1798--(all these translated by Kroeger); the two _Introductions to the Science of Knowledge_, 1797 (trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_). The appearance of an article _Concerning the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World-Order_, 1798, in which Fichte seemed to identify God with the moral world-order, brought down upon him the charge of atheism, against which he vigorously defended himself in his Appeal to the Public and a series of other writings. Full of indignation over the attitude which his government assumed in the matter, be offered his resignation (1799) and removed to Berlin, where he presented his philosophical notions in popular public lectures and in writings which were characterized by clearness, force, and moral earnestness rather than by their systematic form. There appeared: _The Vocation of Man_, 1800 (translated by Dr. Smith); _A Sun-Clear Statement concerning the Nature of the New Philosophy_, 1801 (trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_); _The Nature of the Scholar_, 1806 (trans. by Smith); _Characteristics of the Present Age_, 1806 (trans. by Smith); _The Way towards the Blessed Life_, 1806 (trans. by Smith). After the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon, in 1806, Fichte fled from Berlin to K?nigsberg and Sweden, but returned when peace was declared in 1807, and delivered his celebrated _Addresses to the German Nation_, 1807-08, in which he sought to arouse the German people to a consciousness of their national mission and their duty even while the French army was still occupying the Prussian capital.
Fichte was appointed professor of philosophy (1810) in the new University of Berlin, for which he had been invited to construct a plan and in the establishment of which he took a lively interest. During the last period of his life he devoted himself to the development of his thoughts in systematic form and wrote a number of books; most of these were published after his death, which occurred January 27, 1814. Among them we mention: _General Outline of the Science of Knowledge_, 1810 (trans. by Smith); _The Facts of Consciousness_, 1813; _Theory of the State_, published 1820. The Complete Works, edited by his son, J.H. Fichte, appeared 1843-46. New editions of particular works are now appearing.
The world for Fichte is at bottom a spiritual order, the revelation of a self-determining ego or reason; hence the science of the ego, or reason, the _Wissenschaftslehre_, is the key to all knowledge, and we can understand nature and man only when we have caught the secret of the self-active ego. Philosophy must, therefore, be _Wissenschaftslehre_, for in it all natural and mental sciences find their ultimate roots; they can yield genuine knowledge only when and in so far as they are based on the principles of the Science of Knowledge--mere empirical sciences having no real cognitive value. The ego-principle itself, however, without which there could be no knowledge, cannot be grasped by the ordinary discursive understanding with its spatial, temporal, and causal categories. Kant is right: if we were limited to the scientific intellect, we could never rise above the conception of a phenomenal order absolutely ruled by the causal law. But there is another source of knowledge: in an act of inner vision or intellectual intuition, which is itself an act of freedom,