Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered

Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered PDF Author: Daniel Breazeale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438462557
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Essays on one of J. G. Fichte’s best-known and most controversial works. One of J. G. Fichte’s best-known works, Addresses to the German Nation is based on a series of speeches he gave in Berlin when the city was under French occupation. They feature Fichte’s diagnosis of his own era in European history as well as his call for a new sense of German national identity, based upon a common language and culture rather than “blood and soil.” These speeches, often interpreted as key documents in the rise of modern nationalism, also contain Fichte’s most sustained reflections on pedagogical issues, including his ideas for a new egalitarian system of Prussian national education. The contributors’ reconsideration of the speeches deal not only with technical philosophical issues such as the relationship between language and identity, and the tensions between universal and particular motifs in the text, but also with issues of broader concern, including education, nationalism, and the connection between morality and politics.

Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered

Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered PDF Author: Daniel Breazeale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438462557
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
Essays on one of J. G. Fichte’s best-known and most controversial works. One of J. G. Fichte’s best-known works, Addresses to the German Nation is based on a series of speeches he gave in Berlin when the city was under French occupation. They feature Fichte’s diagnosis of his own era in European history as well as his call for a new sense of German national identity, based upon a common language and culture rather than “blood and soil.” These speeches, often interpreted as key documents in the rise of modern nationalism, also contain Fichte’s most sustained reflections on pedagogical issues, including his ideas for a new egalitarian system of Prussian national education. The contributors’ reconsideration of the speeches deal not only with technical philosophical issues such as the relationship between language and identity, and the tensions between universal and particular motifs in the text, but also with issues of broader concern, including education, nationalism, and the connection between morality and politics.

The Closed Commercial State

The Closed Commercial State PDF Author: J. G. Fichte
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438440227
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Appearing for the first time in a complete English translation, The Closed Commercial State represents the most sustained attempt of J. G. Fichte, the famed author of The Doctrine of Science, to apply idealistic philosophy to political economy. In the accompanying interpretive essay, Anthony Curtis Adler challenges the conventional scholarly view of The Closed Commercial State as a curious footnote to Fichte's thought. The Closed Commercial State, which Fichte himself regarded as his "best, most thought-through work," not only attests to a life-long interest in economics, but is of critical importance to his entire philosophical project. Carefully unpacking the philosophical nuances of Fichte's argument and its complex relationship to other texts in his oeuvre, Adler argues that The Closed Commercial State presents an understanding of the nature of history, and the relation of history to politics, that differs significantly from the teleological notions of history advanced by Schelling and later Hegel. This critical scholarly edition includes a German-English glossary, annotations, and page references to both major German editions.

Education in the Third Reich

Education in the Third Reich PDF Author: Gilmer W. Blackburn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791496805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In its determination to take absolute control, the Third Reich focused on the nation's youth, reserving for the schools the vital task of refashioning the German psyche. This book examines these propaganda efforts—one of the most radical and far-reaching experiments in educational history. The book focuses on the manipulation of the German past, one of the primary means of state intervention to ensure the triumph of the racial idea in history. It shows how textbooks written by National Socialists equalled or exceeded the most imaginative fiction, with an itinerary that extended from Valhalla and the Germania of Tacitus to the Prussia of Frederick the Great, before mounting to the pinnacle represented by the Third Reich. The primary source materials for this study consist of a broad, representative collection of history textbooks, primers, and books of readings containing historical instruction.

Polis, Nation, Global Community

Polis, Nation, Global Community PDF Author: Ann Ward
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000425800
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
This book examines the basic tenets of nation, nationalism and citizenship. It explores the relevance of the nation-state to human freedom and flourishing, as well as the concept of citizenship that it implies, in contrast to that of the ancient polis and the "global community." The volume focusses on the shifting notions of various political concepts over time to present a systematic understanding of core concepts such as polis, nation and state from antiquity to the present. It includes contributions that analyze ancient and modern thought, and sections that address postmodern and contemporary thinkers, including Aristotle, Cicero, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Arendt, Weil, Grant and Manent. A comprehensive handbook to introductory politics, this book will be invaluable to students and teachers of political science, especially political theory, political philosophy, democracy, political participation and international relations theory.

Kant and the Possibility of Progress

Kant and the Possibility of Progress PDF Author: Paul T. Wilford
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812297792
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) transformed the philosophical, cultural, and religious landscape of modern Europe. Emphasizing the priority of practical reason and moral autonomy, Kant's radically original account of human subjectivity announced new ethical imperatives and engendered new political hopes. This collection of essays investigates the centrality of progress to Kant's philosophical project and the contested legacy of Kant's faith in reason's capacity to advance not only our scientific comprehension and technological prowess, but also our moral, political, and religious lives. Accordingly, the first half of the volume explores the many facets of Kant's thinking about progress, while the remaining essays each focus on one or two thinkers who play a crucial role in post-Kantian German philosophy: J. G. Herder (1744-1803), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). This two-part structure reflects the central thesis of the volume that Kant inaugurates a distinctive theoretical tradition in which human historicity is central to political philosophy. By exploring the origins and metamorphoses of this tremendously influential tradition, the volume offers a timely perspective on fundamental questions in an age increasingly suspicious of the Enlightenment's promise of universal rational progress. It aims to help us face three sets of questions: (1) Do we still believe in the possibility of progress? If we do, on what grounds? If we do not, why have we lost the hope for a better future that animated previous generations? (2) Is the belief in progress necessary for the maintenance of today's liberal democratic order? Does a cosmopolitan vision of politics ultimately depend on a faith in humanity's gradual, asymptotic realization of that lofty aim? (3) And, if we no longer believe in progress, can we dispense with hope without succumbing to despair?

Germany and the World since 1815

Germany and the World since 1815 PDF Author: Thomas Adam
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031633903
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description


Fichte's Vocation of Man

Fichte's Vocation of Man PDF Author: Daniel Breazeale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438447639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
New perspectives on Fichte’s best known and most popular work. Written for a general audience during a period of intense controversy in the German philosophical community, J. G. Fichte’s short book The Vocation of Man (1800) is both an introduction to and a defense of his philosophical system, and is one of the best-known contributions to German Idealism. This collection of new essays reflects a wide and instructive variety of philosophical and hermeneutic approaches, which combine to cast new light upon Fichte’s familiar text. The contributors highlight some of the overlooked complexities and implications of The Vocation of Man and situate it firmly within the intellectual context within which it was originally written, relating it to the positions of Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Schlegel, Jacobi, and others. In addition, the essays relate the text to issues of contemporary concern such as the limits of language, the character of rational agency, the problem of evil, the relation of theoretical knowledge to practical belief, and the dialectic of judgment.

The German Idealism Reader

The German Idealism Reader PDF Author: Marina F. Bykova
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474286658
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
The German Idealism Reader is a comprehensive account of the key ideas and arguments central to German idealists and their immediate critics. Expanding the scope beyond the four best-known representatives - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel - and including those thinkers often considered as secondary, but who are also crucial for understanding of this period, the Reader presents an influential era in all its philosophical complexity. Through its broad coverage of philosophers and their texts, it offers a complete dynamic picture of the intellectual period and features: - Selections from key texts by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel - Readings from Reinhold, Schiller, Maimon, Schulze, Jacobi, Hölderlin, and Novalis - Responses to and critiques of German idealist thought by late nineteenth century thinkers, such as Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche - Selections extending beyond the typical focus on epistemology and metaphysics to include ethics, religion, society, and art - A general introduction and timeline, together with a chronology and bibliography to each thinker and introductory overviews to both thinkers and text With readings carefully selected to illustrate thinkers in dialogue with each other, The German Idealism Reader provides a better appreciation of the philosophical discussions central to the period. This is essential reading for all students of German idealism and the nineteenth-century German and Continental philosophies, as well as to those studying the important movements and periods of European intellectual history.

Contribution to the Correction of the Public's Judgments on the French Revolution

Contribution to the Correction of the Public's Judgments on the French Revolution PDF Author: J. G. Fichte
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482183
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The reception history of the French Revolution in France and England is well documented among Anglophone scholars; however, the debate over the Revolution in Germany is much less well known. Fichte's Contribution played an important role in this debate. Presented here for the first time in English, Fichte's work provides a distinctive synthesis of Locke's "possessive individualism," Rousseau's general will, and Kant's moral philosophy. This eclectic blend results in an unusual rights theory that at times veers close to a form of anarchism. Written in 1792–93, just before Fichte moved to Jena to develop his philosophical system in a series of works—above all the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794—the Contribution provides invaluable insight into Fichte's early development. In addition, Fichte's work predates much of Kant's political philosophy, and can shed light on the rich dialogue in German political thought in the 1790s.

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy

The Human Vocation in German Philosophy PDF Author: Anne Pollok
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350166081
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In 18th-century Germany philosophers were occupied with questions of who we are and what we should be. Can the individual fulfill its vocation or is this possible only for humanity as a whole? Is significant progress towards perfection in any way possible for me or just for me as part of humanity? By following the origin and nature of these debates, this collection sheds light on the vocation of humanity in early German philosophy. Featuring translations of Spalding's Contemplation on the Vocation of the Human Being in its first version from 1748 and an extended translation of Abbt's and Mendelssohn's epistolary discussion around the Doubts and the Oracle from 1767, newly-commissioned chapters cover Johann Gottfried Herder's inherently cultural concept of the human being, Immanuel Kant's transformative interplay of moral and natural aspects, and the notion of metempsychosis in Fichte's work inspired by two neglected philosophers, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Georg Schlosser. Opening further lines of inquiry, contributors address questions about the adaptations of Spalding's work that focus on the vocation of women as wife, mother or citizen. Exploring the multitude of ways 18th-century German thinkers understand our position in the world, this volume captures major changes in metaphysics and anthropology and enriches current debates within modern philosophy.