John Dunn

Man’s power to impose

Monday, 3 March 2025 at 21:35

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Man’s power to impose

It was during the French Revolution that Fichte began to establish the importance of national cohesion as a counterweight to a resurgent neo-feudalist oligarchy, a position that was intimately bound up with both his knowledge of and break with Spinoza. It was noted above that in Tractatus Politicus 2/6, Spinoza had attacked the humanist position in which he asserted that ‘the ignorant violate the order of nature rather than conform to it; they think of men in nature as a state within a state [imperium in imperio]’. The phrase ‘imperium in imperio’ appears too in the preface to Ethics III,where Spinoza characterised the non-naturalist view that he opposed. This was a pointed attack upon the Renaissance concept, expounded by Dante, that it is possible for the individual to attain ‘crown and mitre’, i.e. freedom over his own life, temporal and spiritual, a freedom arising out of man’s power to impose order over nature rather than conform to it.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Absolute I as God-like

Sunday, 2 March 2025 at 21:28

Dante

Absolute I as God-like

Freedom was not for Fichte an end in itself, or something to be found in nature. It was certainly not a return to anything that once existed. Freedom meant an independence from nature. Only then would there be scope for the spontaneous and creative activity, which Dante had held analogous to that of the first Creator in whose image man was made - the creative activity that distinguished man from beasts and deified the Absolute I as God-like. Only with such freedom ‘could a new equality arise - a uniform progress of culture in all individual men’. Rousseau’s reduction of humanity to ‘a race of animals’ was the threat to be confronted. After all, a bestial docility was not altogether undesirable to those who would exploit the productive capacity of such ‘free’ individuals. The return to nature in Rousseau was a Spinozist and kabbalistic ‘return’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Fichte’s humanistic interpretation

Friday, 28 February 2025 at 21:33

Jean Jaques Rousseau

Fichte’s humanistic interpretation

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.

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.