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WorkJohann Gottlieb Fichte

Addresses to the German Nation

Under French occupation, Fichte asks a defeated people to remake itself through a new education for every child.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte468 passages held

  • German, the original language
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Original title
Reden an die deutsche Nation
First published
(aged 46)
Original language
German

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Overview

Napoleon rode into Berlin in triumph on 27 October 1806, less than two weeks after Prussia's army was routed at Jena and Auerstedt, and the following July the Peace of Tilsit cut the kingdom to half its size. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, back in a city still under French troops, gave these fourteen addresses on Sundays at midday, from 13 December 1807 to 20 March 1808, in the round hall of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His diagnosis picks up where his Characteristics of the Present Age had left off three years before: the age of selfishness has run its full course, and a people that cared only for itself has lost its independence along with its self. The cure he proposes is not a rising but a school. A wholly new education, for every child of the nation and built on the methods of the Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, is to form the will so deeply that it can no longer will anything but the good — in that sense, Fichte says outright, it must abolish freedom of the will. The Germans can undertake this, he argues, because they alone among the Germanic peoples kept a living original language, while the others, settling in former Roman lands, took up a language alive on the surface but dead at the root. The addresses had to pass the censor and were printed as they went. Because the first was still with the censor, printing began with the second, and when the first came out shorter than the space left for it, Fichte filled the gap with extracts from his essay on Machiavelli. The book appeared in 1808. Later generations made it a founding document of German nationalism. Daniel Breazeale, a leading scholar of Fichte, calls that a place of dubious honour for a work chiefly about education and language.

Key concepts

What is the 'new education' Fichte proposes?

It is a national education for every child that aims to form the will itself, not to fill the head. The old education told pupils what was good and hoped they would choose it; the new one is to shape them so that they cannot will anything else. Its pupils are raised apart from the surrounding world, learn by direct seeing and their own activity, and receive reading and writing only as a final gift.

What makes a language living or dead, for Fichte?

A living language has grown without a break from its own origin among the people who speak it, so even its abstract words still rest on images from their own experience. A language taken over from others may stay lively on the surface, but its roots lie in a life that is not the speakers' own. Fichte's example: 'Humanität' is empty sound to a German who knows no other tongue, while 'Menschlichkeit' is understood at once.

What is a people (Volk) in these addresses?

A people is a community of human beings living on together, generation after generation, under its own particular law of how the original and divine develops in it. That law is what is usually called national character. Fichte's point is that a people is more than a population or a state: it is a continuing way of bringing something eternal into the world, which is why it can outlast political defeat.

What does love of the fatherland mean here?

It is love for one's people as the bearer of what one hopes will outlast one's own life: one's work and spirit continuing on earth. Fichte treats it as a higher authority than the state. The state exists to keep peace, property and order; love of the fatherland must govern the state, deciding what those means are for, and above all demanding that the nation be educated.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

An Education That Forms the Will

Can schooling make a person who simply cannot will what is wrong? Fichte proposes exactly that, for every child of a defeated nation.

Old education, Fichte charges, only exhorted, and promised bread and honour later to pupils who learned under threat. Telling someone to fly is useless if they have no wings. The new education, built on the methods of the Swiss educator Pestalozzi, is to shape the will so deeply that it cannot will otherwise: in that sense it must abolish freedom of the will. Pupils grow up apart from the common world, and reading and writing come only at the end, since letters lead from seeing things to mere signs.

  • education
  • moral education
  • national education
  • pedagogy
  • moral development
  • will
  • motivation
  • agency
  • autonomy
  • self-interest
  • human nature
  • knowledge
  • reason
  • creativity
  • love

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A Living Language

What does a people lose when it speaks a borrowed tongue? Fichte rests his whole case for the Germans on the life of their language.

The Germans, Fichte argues, alone among the Germanic peoples kept speaking a language that grew without break from its own source, while those who settled in Roman lands adopted one alive on the surface but dead at the root. In a living language a sharp eye could read a nation's whole history of learning in its words. Borrowed terms like 'Humanität' stay empty sound to a German who knows no other tongue. He insists the difference is one of life and death only, not of a people's other worth.

  • language
  • cultural identity
  • national identity

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A Fatherland and an Earthly Eternity

Why should anyone love a nation that has just lost its independence? Fichte answers with a claim about what makes a life outlast itself.

Selfishness, Fichte tells his listeners, has destroyed itself by developing completely, and with it the nation's independence; a new age must begin from something other than self-interest. A noble person wants their work to last on earth for ever, and only a people, held together by its own law of developing the divine, can carry that hope. That is why love of the fatherland must govern the state itself as its highest authority, and why the cure is a school, not a rising.

  • nationalism
  • patriotism
  • state
  • political philosophy
  • political authority
  • freedom
  • religion
  • philosophy of history
  • social change
  • metaphysics
  • idealism
  • philosophy

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Within this work

passages held
468
distinct concepts
650
by passages held, corpus-wide
#160

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “education” and “national identity”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
educationnational identity12
languagenational identity11
educationknowledge9
educationlanguage9
educationreligion9
national identitypolitical philosophy6
educationpolitical philosophy5
freedompolitical philosophy5
educationmoral education4
freedomnational identity4
educationfreedom3
knowledgereligion3
moral educationpolitical philosophy3
freedomknowledge2
freedomreligion2
knowledgepolitical philosophy2
languagereligion2
moral educationnational identity2
freedomlanguage1
languagepolitical philosophy1
national identityreligion1
political philosophyreligion1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1792 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung)

    The debut, written in weeks in Königsberg to impress Kant: a book on religion that made Fichte famous before he had a system of his own.

     DE
  2. 1794 Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre (Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie – als Einladungsschrift zu seinen Vorlesungen über diese Wissenschaft)

    A manifesto before the system: the short programme Fichte printed to introduce himself to Jena, months before the first sheets of the Foundation reached his students.

     DE
  3. 1794 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre)

    The first full statement of the system and his best-known treatise, begun as lecture handouts in 1794; the 1795 Outline carries its theoretical half further, and the First Introduction of 1797 starts the explanation again.

     DE
  4. 1794 Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation (Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten)

    Popular ethics for students, given the summer Fichte arrived at Jena in 1794, alongside the far harder Foundation.

     DE
  5. 1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Faculty (Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre)

    A companion rather than a book of its own: the 1795 supplement that carries the Foundation's theoretical half on into sensation, space and time.

     DE
  6. 1797 First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre (Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre)

    Written for beginners: the 1797 journal essay in which Fichte, frustrated with how the Foundation had been read, began explaining his system again from first principles.

     DE
  7. 1799 Streitschriften zur Denk- und Gewissensfreiheit

    Gathered here from two separate publications, of 1793 and 1799, that bracket Fichte's rise to fame and his fall at Jena.

     DE
  8. 1800 The Closed Commercial State (Der geschlossene Handelsstaat)

    A venture into economics, offered as an appendix to his theory of right and published in 1800, the same year as The Vocation of Man.

     DE
  9. 1800 The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen)

    Written straight after the Atheism Dispute, in his first months in Berlin: the system retold for general readers as a first-person passage from doubt to faith.

     DE
  10. 1806 The Characteristics of the Present Age (Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters)

    One of three popular lecture courses Fichte published in 1806: the philosophy of history that the Addresses to the German Nation would later claim to continue.

     DE
  11. 1806 The Way Towards the Blessed Life (Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben)

    The summit, in Fichte's own estimate, of the popular lectures he gave in Berlin before the war: religion presented as the result of the Wissenschaftslehre, his "doctrine of science", for listeners with no philosophy.

     DE
  12. 1808 Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) you are here DE
  13. 1810 Kürzere Darstellungen der Wissenschaftslehre

    A Jena beginning and a Berlin summing-up, published separately and gathered on one page, on either side of the many versions of the system Fichte kept to the lecture room.

     DE
  14. 1845 Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre. Aus dem Jahre 1801 (Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre aus dem Jahre 1801)

    An early Berlin reworking of the system, written in 1801 as Fichte and Schelling were drifting apart, and left among his papers.

     DE
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