John Dunn

Subject Nature to Reason

Thursday, 27 February 2025 at 21:53

Subject Nature to Reason

Like many a young romantic, Fichte had once embraced the seemingly liberating possibilities of the French Revolution. It was, however, his rejection of Spinozism that led to his rightward interpretation of events. He did not view equality, the rights of man, universal brotherhood and perpetual peace as ends in themselves. His egalitarian concern was to release the full potentialities of each individual in order that a common moral end could be most effectively pursued. ‘The aim of all culture of human capacity’, he wrote in the Vocation of the Scholar, ‘is to subject Nature... to Reason’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Societal commitment

Wednesday, 26 February 2025 at 21:43

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Societal commitment

In order to counter the dehumanising influence of Spinozism, Fichte contended that cultural cohesion must be total, demanding a moral commitment from everyone.

It is the duty of every one, not only to endeavour to make himself useful to society generally; but also to direct all his efforts, according to the best knowledge which he possesses, towards the ultimate object of society - towards the ever- increasing ennoblement of the human race; that is, to set it more and more at freedom from the bondage of Nature...

This call for sacrifices now toward the ennoblement of mankind in the future was the precursor of Nietzsche’s demand for action now to prepare the way for the superman. Fichte offered the keys to Paradise in return for a societal commitment that passed down the generations into Eternity.

That which men call Death cannot interrupt my activity; for my work must go on to its completion, and it cannot be completed in Time; - hence my existence is limited by no Time, and I am Eternal: - with the assumption of this great task, I have also laid hold of Eternity.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Man’s moral purpose

Tuesday, 25 February 2025 at 21:18

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man’s moral purpose

Fichte consciously opposed his ideas to those of Rousseau, arguing that for Rousseau, ‘the advancement of culture is the sole cause of all human depravity. According to him there is no salvation for man but in a State of Nature...’ The vices of society might cease to exist in such a condition, ‘but with it, Virtue and Reason too would be destroyed. Man becomes an irrational creature; there is a new race of animals, and men no longer exist’.

The Spinozist turn to the French Revolution, fuelled by the writings of Rousseau and others, spelt out danger to Fichte. (The centrality of Spinozism to the French Revolution and the affinities linking Spinoza, Diderot, and Rousseau, was recognised by Fichte long before Jonathan Israel, but Israel’s obsession with Spinoza’s impact bolsters Fichte’s much earlier observation.) In Fichte’s humanistic interpretation of events, Rousseau’s man in ‘his primitive state’ was a sub-human threat to the very existence of the human race. The failure to advance actively mankind’s dominance over nature risked a slide into the passivity that endangered the pursuit of man’s moral purpose and, by definition, his humanness.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Young romantic

Monday, 24 February 2025 at 21:36

Young romantic

Like many a young romantic, Fichte had once embraced the seemingly liberating possibilities of the French Revolution. It was, however, his rejection of Spinozism that led to his rightward interpretation of events. He did not view equality, the rights of man, universal brotherhood and perpetual peace as ends in themselves. His egalitarian concern was to release the full potentialities of each individual in order that a common moral end could be most effectively pursued. ‘The aim of all culture of human capacity’, he wrote in the Vocation of the Scholar, ‘is to subject Nature... to Reason’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Humanity’s moral destiny

Sunday, 23 February 2025 at 21:10

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Humanity’s moral destiny

The vocation of man for Fichte was a moral one, which meant to transform nature and bring it into accord with his ideals. The world existed so that man could express those ideals and bring a moral order into being. Even so, to act upon the world was more than a moral purpose for Fichte,it was by definition what it meant to be human at all, even divine. He sometimes referred to the concept of the Absolute I as God and at other times as pure rational and spontaneous activity. From this standpoint, to hold to a Spinozist passivity was to expunge the Absolute I and bring about the death of the incarnated God. The preservation of humanity’s moral destiny against the threat of deterministic genocide was therefore the duty of everyone who considered himself fully human. Failure to inculcate the benefits of an actively moral culture into each member of society served not only to dehumanise those individuals, but also to endanger the human race as a whole. This destruction of man was the fearthat Fichte expressed in The Vocation of the Scholar.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Creative imagination once more

Saturday, 22 February 2025 at 21:11

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Creative imagination once more

F.H. Jacobi (1743-1819), an obsessive Spinozist, saw in Spinoza’s ‘novel conception of God, the way toward a new religion or religiousness which was to inspire a wholly new kind of society, a new kind of church’. Jacobi was blinded to an appreciation of the significance of Fichte’s inversion of Spinoza, and yet his criticism of Fichte was unknowingly astute. He claimed that Fichte’s position was nothing more than an inverted Spinozism, and that the concept of the Absolute I played the same role in Fichte’s system as the concept of Substance played in Spinoza’s. What Jacobi failed to appreciate was that whereas Spinozism starts and finishes in materialism, Fichte’s system starts and finishes with thought. The inversion changed everything. With Fichte, we pass from passivity to activity, from slave to ruler. Fichte pitted man as creator, doer and producer against Spinozist determinism, necessitarianism and fatalism. Humanness and the imagination became one.The creative imagination once more became the defining factor of the whole human enterprise.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Kantian rebuttal of Spinozism

Friday, 21 February 2025 at 16:30

Kant and Fichte

Kantian rebuttal of Spinozism

Any move to the political Right from Marxism will be analogous to the one made by Fichte from Spinozism to idealism. One has to know the thing to which one is opposed before one can claim to know the truth of that which one supports. (True modern day thinkers on the political Right will commonly have made the switch from Marxism. A mere move from Marxism to liberalism in any of its variants or vice versa is no move.)

It was after reading Kant that Fichte turned Spinoza on his head. He saw in Kant’s work the rebuttal of Spinozist determinism and the way to freedom.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.