Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation

Published without its author's name and hailed as Kant's own, the book that made an unknown tutor famous.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte291 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung
First published: 1792(aged 30)
Original language: German

Overview

On 30 June 1792 the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Jena, a journal founded to promote Kant's philosophy, told its readers that anyone who had read even a little of Kant would recognise the sublime author of a new anonymous book on religion. It was wrong. The book had come out that spring in Königsberg, from Kant's own publisher, and without a name or a preface; it was known that Kant was at work on religion, and readers took this for his book. In its issue of 22 August the journal printed a statement signed by Kant: the author was a Mr Fichte, a candidate in theology from Lusatia, and Kant had taken no part in the work. Johann Gottlieb Fichte had walked to Königsberg the year before to meet Kant, been disappointed by the interview, and written this manuscript within weeks to show what he could do; Kant read it and recommended it to his publisher. Its question is one Kant had not yet answered: can a philosophy that grounds religion in morality accept any revelation at all? Fichte's answer is that a revelation can only be believed for moral reasons, can never be proved or disproved to come from God, and may teach nothing that moral reason does not already demand. Once the error was cleared up he was famous overnight, and within two years he held the chair of philosophy at Jena. The expanded second edition of 1793 added a section on the theory of the will and was dedicated to Franz Volkmar Reinhard, the senior court preacher at Dresden.

Key concepts

What is a revelation, by Fichte's definition?

A revelation is God announcing himself as moral lawgiver through a supernatural effect in the world of the senses. The definition is narrow on purpose. A revelation is not new information about heaven or the soul; it is the moral law presented with God's authority in a form that people bound to their senses can take in. Stories, signs and circumstances belong only to its outward form.

How does natural religion differ from revealed religion?

Both have the same content, God as the author of the moral law, but they reach people differently. Natural religion is found by reason, from the moral law within each person. Revealed religion is announced from outside, through some event in the world of experience. Fichte's question is whether the second can ever be needed, and he argues it can for people in whom the moral feeling has not yet woken.

What are the 'criteria of divinity' for a revelation?

They are tests a claimed revelation must pass before it may even be thought to come from God. Its content may contain nothing beyond the moral law and nothing against it. It may not move people by threatened punishment or promised reward. It may not have been spread by deceit or persecution. Failing any test proves a revelation is not from God, but passing them all proves only that it might be.

What does it mean to accept a revelation for moral reasons?

It means believing in a revelation's divine origin not as knowledge, which is impossible, but because believing helps one obey the moral law. Since no one can prove that God has or has not spoken, theoretical reason has nothing to say. A person whose moral feeling is strengthened by a revelation that passes the tests may hold it divine, and no one can refute them or compel anyone else to agree.

Themes of the book

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

Why Would God Speak?

If reason already tells everyone their duty, what could a revelation be for? Fichte answers by asking who cannot hear reason.

The moral law, Fichte argues, makes us demand a happiness matched to our worth, and so leads to God as moral lawgiver: that is religion as reason finds it. A revelation is the same God announced through an event in the world of the senses. It would be more honourable for humanity if reason's religion were always enough, he concedes, but people crushed by need hear no law except hunger, and for them God may stoop to be a teacher, waking the moral feeling through the senses themselves.

revelation
divine revelation
religion
natural religion
philosophy of religion
moral motivation
sensibility
desire
moral psychology
moral education
happiness
faith
god
theology

Enter a dialogue

Testing a Claim to Revelation

How could anyone tell a word from God from a human invention? Fichte offers tests that can rule a claim out but never prove it.

Whether God has actually spoken can never be proved or disproved, so the question can only be what a revelation may contain. Miracles and prophecies decide nothing, since inferring God's direct action from an event nature cannot explain is a false step. What decides is content and conduct. A revelation that teaches beyond the moral law, moves people by threats or rewards, or spreads by deceit or persecution is certainly not from God. One that passes may be believed, for moral reasons alone.

moral law
practical reason
reason
epistemology
a priori knowledge
causality
causation
philosophical method
morality
moral philosophy
duty
free will
freedom
will
moral agency

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 291
distinct concepts: 302
by passages held, corpus-wide: #257

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: “epistemology” and “revelation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 84 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
epistemology	revelation	24
practical reason	revelation	17
reason	revelation	11
religion	revelation	9
moral motivation	religion	8
moral law	moral motivation	7
moral law	religion	7
epistemology	practical reason	6
moral law	revelation	6
moral law	practical reason	5
moral motivation	practical reason	5
practical reason	religion	5
desire	practical reason	4
desire	religion	4
epistemology	moral law	3
epistemology	reason	3
moral law	reason	3
practical reason	reason	3
epistemology	religion	2
moral motivation	reason	2
moral motivation	revelation	2
desire	moral law	1
desire	moral motivation	1
desire	revelation	1
reason	religion	1

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.

1792 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung) you are here DE
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
1808 Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation)
His most influential book: public lectures once more, but this time a call to a defeated nation rather than a philosophy of history or a doctrine of religion.
DE
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
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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