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Chapter 1 - Fichte

from Part I - Post-Kantian German Idealism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2025

Stephen Darwall
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

What Fichte found most inspiring in Kant’s critical philosophy was its Copernican focus on the transcendental conditions of conscious thought, its doctrine of the autonomy of reason, and, most especially, its fundamental commitment to freedom of the will. Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophies of right are especially close in form and content. Both works treat the philosophy of right as a separate subject that is independent of ethical philosophy, and both ground their theories in a fundamental right of freedom from interference. We see, right at the outset, the importance of freedom in modern moral philosophy in Anscombe’s sense. We begin, however, with Fichte’s ethics. Fichte’s ethics of autonomy or, as he usually prefers to say, “self-sufficiency” or “independence,” departs from Kant’s in several important ways. The most important structurally is that whereas autonomy is at the heart of grounding what Kant takes to be the fundamentally formal character of the moral law. Fichte holds, against “all of the authors who have treated ethics merely formally,” that self-sufficiency or independence is a “material” kind of freedom. Fichte’s ethics sets autonomous self-determination as a fundamental moral end, and is ultimately consequentialist.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Fichte
  • Stephen Darwall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Modern Moral Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
  • Online publication: 15 November 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009543835.003
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  • Fichte
  • Stephen Darwall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Modern Moral Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
  • Online publication: 15 November 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009543835.003
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Fichte
  • Stephen Darwall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Modern Moral Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
  • Online publication: 15 November 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009543835.003
Available formats
×