Fichte, JOHANN GOTTLIEB, a distinguished German philosopher, was born at Rammenau, near Bautzen, in Upper Lusatia, 19th May 1762, of a family distinguished for their simple piety, uprightness, and firmness of character. His earlier years were marked by a love of solitary musing and meditation. In 1774 he was placed at the gymnasium of Pforta, near Naumburg; and in 1780 he entered the university of Jena, where he devoted himself at first to theology, but afterwards to philosophy. During the years 1784-88 he supported himself in a precarious way as tutor in various Saxon families. Subsequently he went to Zurich in a similar capa- city, where he first met Johanna Maria Rahn, who afterwards became his wife. Circumstances preventing their immediate union, Fichte in 1791 accepted a tutorship at Warsaw, in the house of a Polish nobleman. The situation proving disagreeable, it was thrown up, and Fichte proceeded to Königsberg, where he had an interview with Kant, of whom he had become an ardent disciple. At first he met with a rather chilling reception. With the view of establishing a better understanding, he resolved to write his 'Critique of all Revelation' (Kritik aller Offenbarung), published in 1792. Kant, on the work being submitted to him, praised it highly, and ultimately recommended Fichte to his own publisher, Hartung. In the meantime, however, Fichte's available means of subsistence being exhausted, he was forced to ask the loan of a small sum of money from Kant, which the latter refused. A temporary appointment as tutor in the family of the Count of Krokow, near Danzig, relieved him from immediate difficulties; and the high literary fame which rapidly followed the publication of the Kritik having opened to him a new career in life, he returned to Zurich in 1793, where on 22d October he married Johanna Rahn. In 1794 he was appointed to the chair of Philosophy at Jena, where he commenced to expound his system of transcendental idealism. His prelections were distinguished by singular earnestness and oratorical power, combined with the enunciation of the loftiest moral principle.
He now clearly broke away from the limitations of the Critical Philosophy of Kant, of which he had already declared, writing to Niethammer in 1793: 'My conviction is, that Kant has only indicated the truth, but neither unfolded nor proved it.' His 'Doctrine of Knowledge' (Wissenschaftslehre, Jena, 1795), his work on the 'Foundation of Natural Rights' (Grundlage des Naturrechts, 1796), and the 'Ethical System' (System der Sittenlehre, 1798) contain a systematic exposition of his philosophy in its earlier form, expressed in an abstract and somewhat repellent terminology which was laid aside in his later and more popular works. In 1799 an absurd accusation of atheism, fervidly but fruitlessly refuted, led to his removal to Berlin, where he delivered lectures on philosophy to a select auditory. In 1800 appeared his work 'On the Vocation of Man' (Ueber die Bestimmung des Menschen). In 1805 he obtained the chair of Philosophy at Erlangen, with the privilege of residing at Berlin during winter. Here he delivered his celebrated lectures 'On the Nature of the Scholar' (Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten, 1805-6). In 1806 appeared his 'Characteristics of the Present Age' (Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters), and in the same year his 'Way to the Blessed Life, or the Doctrine of Religion' (Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder Religionslehre). In these works we find the highest expression of his philosophy in its mature form, divested of the earlier technicalities. In his relation to the public events of his time Fichte exhibited a high-toned and earnest patriotism. The victories of Napoleon at Auerstadt and Jena drew forth the famous 'Addresses to the German Nation' (Reden an die Deutschen). In these addresses, following out the leading idea of his 'Characteristics,' Fichte summoned his fellow-countrymen, in tones of spirit-stirring enthusiasm, to the duty handed down to them from past ages, of founding an empire of reason in which mind alone should assume the guidance of human affairs. With impassioned eloquence he pointed out the true means of national regeneration in a system of public education, of which he laid down the plan and delineated the chief features. His patriotic zeal was fully appreciated by the king, who on the restoration of peace requested him to draw up a constitution for a new university in Berlin. In 1810 the university was opened, with a host of brilliant names, Fichte, Wolff, Müller, Humboldt, De Wette, Schleiermacher, Neander, Klaproth, and Savigny. By the votes of his colleagues, Fichte was unanimously elected rector. Here, as at Jena, he laboured with unremitting energy for the suppression of all those customs which he deemed barbarous in themselves, and incompatible with the true idea of a scholar. But his public career came to a premature close. In 1813 the war of independence broke out, and the hospitals of the Prussian capital were soon crowded with patients. Fichte's wife was one of the first who offered her services as a nurse. For five months she tended the sick with all the patient tenderness and devotion of her nature. At last she was seized with fever, 3d January 1814. After a fearful struggle she recovered; but her husband caught the infection, and in spite of all remedies sank under its influence, and died 27th January 1814. Of Fichte it may be said that he combines the penetration of a philosopher with the fire of a prophet and the thunder of an orator; and over all his life lies the beauty of a stainless purity. See Fichtes Leben, by his son (1831); and Dr William Smith's Memoir, prefixed to his translation of the Popular Works (4th ed. 1889).
The fundamental idea of the Wissenschaftslehre in its earlier form is that of a primitive act of consciousness; the Ego, or I, posits itself—it affirms itself, simply and unconditionally. But in this self-affirmation it necessarily posits a negative—a Non-ego—an opposite which is not itself. This activity of the ego is its very essence, the necessary condition of its existence. It is itself the absolutely productive, which, however, would not attain to consciousness of itself—i.e. of its infinite spontaneous activity, did it not at the same time place in contrast to itself, and as an impediment (anstoss) and limit to its activity, the non-ego—i.e. the objective world, or nature. The ego, in so far as it is determined by the non-ego, is the intelligent ego, and, as such, the subject of theoretical science—the science of cognition; the ego, on the other hand, as determining the non-ego, is the subject of practical science—the science of the will. Freedom, absolute, spontaneous activity, for its own sake, is not with Fichte, as with Kant, the condition and presupposition of moral action, but is itself the highest expression of the problem of the moral law. To realise this self-activity, however, the ego requires an external world of objects, in order that in them as limits it may become conscious of its own activity. Generally speaking, Fichte makes that which, from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, we call the world merely a product of the ego; it exists only through the ego, for the ego, and in the ego. In his later and more popular writings, from 1800 onward, Fichte's transcendentalism assumes a more profoundly religious character, the centre of the system being now an Absolute Ego, in whose self-determination all the Non-ego is determined—the One Universal Being or God, of whom all finite existence is but a manifestation—the vesture of the Infinite. This transition first appears in his Bestimmung des Menschen ('Vocation of Man,' 1800), and is more fully developed in the Wesen des Gelehrten and the Religionslehre; and it is also set forth in a strictly scientific manner in the Nachgelassene Werke (1835), in which his Speculative Logik and his revised theory of right and morals are particularly deserving of attention.
Although Fichte never, strictly speaking, formed a school, his influence upon the subsequent development of German philosophy has been very im- portant; and indirectly, through the writings of Thomas Carlyle, he has exercised a marked and important influence on the course of recent thought both in Great Britain and America. Fichte's doctrine of the Divine Idea of the Universe underlies Carlyle's most impressive teachings regarding human life and duty. His popular works have been translated into English by Dr William Smith; their titles are: The Vocation of the Scholar; The Nature of the Scholar; The Vocation of Man; The Characteristics of the Present Age; and The Way to the Blessed Life, or the Doctrine of Religion (4th ed. 1889). An American translation of the Wissenschaftslehre and the Naturrecht, by A. E. Kröger, appeared at Philadelphia in 1868–69 (reprinted London, 1889). An admirable monograph of Fichte, by Professor Adamson, forms one of the volumes of Blackwood's Philosophical Classics (1881).
IMMANUEL HERMANN VON FICHTE, son of the former, was born at Jena, 18th July 1797. Occupied at first as a teacher, he was appointed professor of Philosophy in Bonn in 1836, and from 1842 to 1863 held a chair in the university of Tübingen. He was ennobled in 1867, and died at Stuttgart, 8th August 1879. He wrote works on speculative theology (1847), ethics (1850), anthropology (1856), psychology (1864), the immortality of the soul (1873). In philosophy he occupies the position of a mediator between an extreme monistic and an equally extreme individualistic metaphysic, between pantheism and deism, between Hegel and Herbart. The great aim of his speculations was to find a philosophic basis for the personality of God, and for his theory on this subject he proposed the term Concrete Theism, to distinguish it alike from the abstract theism which makes God almost an unreality—a barren aggregate of lifeless attributes—and, on the other hand, from the all-absorbing pantheism of Hegel, which swallows up the human and the divine in its own inapprehensible totality.