Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was born in 1762 at Rommenau and died in 1814. Despite being born of poor parents, he was educated at Jena University, Leipzig and Wittenberg. He spent several years as a private tutor in Switzerland and in Prussia Proper, and in Konigsberg made the acquaintance of the great Kant, who showed some appreciation of his talents. His Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (Essay towards a Criticism of all Revelation, 1792) attracted general attention, and procured him the professorship of philosophy in Jena in 1793.
In 1800 he was ono of the most prominent professors of Jena university during its most brilliant period. Here he published, under the name of Wissenschaftalehre (Theory of Science), a philosophical system, which, though founded on Kant's system, gives the latter a highly idealistic development which was strongly repudiated by the Konigsberg philosopher. On account of an article he had written to the Philosophical Journal (on the grounds of our belief in the divine government of the world) he fell under the suspicion of atheistical views. This gave rise to an inquiry, which ended in Johann Fichte losing his chair. He then went to Prussia, where he was appointed in 1805 professor of philosophy at Erlangen.
During the war between Prussia and France he went to Konigsberg, where he delivered lectures for a short time, returned to Berlin after the Peace of Tilsit, and in 1810, on the establishment of the university in that city, was appointed rector and professor of philosophy. Fichte's philosophy, though there are two distinct periods to be distinguished in it, is a consistent idealism, representing all that the individual perceives as distinct from himself, the ego, as a creation of this I or ego. This ego, however, is not the consciousness of the individual so much as the divine or universal consciousness of which the other is but a part. His philosophy thus came to assume a strongly moral and religious character. Amongst his best-known works, besides those already mentioned, are: System der Sittenlehre (Systematic Ethics), Die Bestimmung des Menschen (The Destination of Man), Das Wesen des Gelehrten (The Nature of the Scholar), Grundzuge des Gegenwartigen Zeitalters (Characteristics of the Present Age), Reden an die Deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation). Research Johann Fichte
Abbreviations
Research Johann Fichte
