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WorkJohann Gottlieb Fichte

The Characteristics of the Present Age

Fichte places his own era at the exact midpoint of history and names it the age of completed sinfulness.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte480 passages held

  • German, the original language
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Original title
Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters
First published
(aged 44)
Original language
German

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Overview

Between November 1804 and March 1805, in seventeen public lectures in Berlin, Johann Gottlieb Fichte set out to place his own time on a map of the whole of human history. The map has five epochs. In the first, reason rules humanity blindly, through instinct: a state of innocence. In the second, that instinct hardens into outside authority, systems of doctrine that demand obedience and blind belief. In the third, people free themselves from authority and with it from reason in every form, and live in indifference to all truth. Reason then returns as knowledge in the fourth epoch, and in the fifth humanity shapes itself, deliberately and surely, into the image of reason. Fichte puts the present squarely in the third age, at the exact midpoint of all time, and names it the age of completed sinfulness. The age's maxim, as Fichte describes it, is to accept nothing it cannot grasp through ordinary experience, to make plain common sense the measure of everything, and to laugh off whatever goes further as fanaticism. The lectures range widely, from a myth of an original "normal people" living by reason to an account of two Christianities, John's Gospel and the Apostle Paul's, of which Fichte holds John's to be the true one. The book appeared in Berlin in the spring of 1806. That October Prussia's army was destroyed at Jena and Auerstedt and the French entered Berlin. When Fichte returned to the lectern in the occupied city in the winter of 1807–08, he presented his Addresses to the German Nation as a continuation of these lectures.

Key concepts

What is the 'world plan' behind these lectures?

The world plan is the single idea of what humanity's life on earth is for, from which its main ages can be worked out in advance. Fichte openly presupposes it rather than proving it here. Its content is that humanity's earthly purpose is to order all its relations freely according to reason, so every age can be placed by how far it has come along that road.

What are the five ages, briefly?

First, reason rules as blind instinct: innocence. Second, instinct turns into outside authority demanding obedience: sin beginning. Third, people break free of authority and of reason with it: completed sinfulness, Fichte's own time. Fourth, reason returns as knowledge people understand: justification beginning. Fifth, humanity shapes all its relations by reason as a deliberate art: completed justification and sanctification.

What does Fichte mean by living for an Idea?

An Idea, in these lectures, is a purpose beyond one's own life and comfort, such as truth, the good of the species or the shaping of a nation. Living for one means forgetting oneself in it and finding one's only pleasure there. Fichte's example from history is Alexander's campaign: not chance, he argues, but an idea began it and carried it to success.

Why does Fichte speak of the life of the species?

Because reason, which is one and the same in everyone, appears on earth split among many individuals, and so shows itself as the life of the whole human species. The instinct of reason aims at that common life, while the mere drive of self-preservation aims only at the single person. History, for Fichte, is the story of the species, and each age counts only when it has gradually taken hold of all.

Themes of the book

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

Five Ages of Humanity

Does history have a shape that thinking alone can reveal? Fichte claims it does, and finds his own century halfway along it.

Fichte presupposes a world plan, a single idea of humanity's earthly life from which its main epochs follow. Reason first rules blindly, as instinct; then that instinct hardens into outside authority; then people free themselves from authority and from reason with it; then reason returns as knowledge, and at last humanity shapes itself freely into reason's image. Behind it all stands an original 'normal people' living by reason without science or art, so contented that it left no history, since one day passed like the next.

  • philosophy of history
  • historical development
  • historical method
  • historical philosophy
  • reason
  • human nature
  • metaphysics
  • speculation

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An Age Indifferent to Truth

What happens to a people that has thrown off every authority and kept nothing in its place? Fichte's portrait of his own age is unsparing.

The present, Fichte says, stands in the third age, the age of absolute indifference to all truth and of completed sinfulness. Its basic maxim is 'what I do not understand does not exist', and since it understands nothing except what concerns its own wellbeing, it ends by believing the whole world exists so that it may live comfortably. Experience and plain common sense become the measure of everything. Whoever speaks of ideas is laughed at as a dreamer and a fanatic.

  • empiricism
  • egoism
  • epistemology
  • knowledge
  • truth
  • scientific method
  • science
  • scholarship
  • morality
  • ethics
  • rhetoric
  • aesthetics

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Living for Ideas

Is a life worth anything if it serves only itself? Fichte answers from history, from the state and from two rival forms of Christianity.

The good and true life, Fichte says, lies in forgetting oneself in ideas and seeking no pleasure but in them, and every present generation is the result of earlier ones who gave up their own comfort for such ideas. An idea, not chance, drives great undertakings. The state that works steadily to increase its inner strength is driven to abolish privilege and equalise rights. Christianity, too, appears in two forms, John's and Paul's, and Fichte blames Paul for making the faith answerable to argument.

  • state
  • political philosophy
  • political authority
  • sacrifice
  • religion
  • christianity
  • freedom
  • ideas
  • education

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Within this work

passages held
480
distinct concepts
601
by passages held, corpus-wide
#154

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: “freedom” and “reason”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 22 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
freedomreason17
political philosophystate14
philosophy of historyreason12
freedomphilosophy of history10
reasonreligion9
ideasreason6
freedomreligion5
freedomstate5
educationreason4
educationstate4
religionstate4
educationreligion3
educationideas2
freedompolitical philosophy2
philosophy of historypolitical philosophy2
philosophy of historyreligion2
political philosophyreligion2
educationpolitical philosophy1
ideaspolitical philosophy1
philosophy of historystate1
political philosophyreason1
reasonstate1

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) you are here 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)

    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
  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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