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lacking in inherent moral quality is an anomaly, the doctrine almost calls for a theory which shall make the State the supreme moral entity.
Fichte marks the beginning of the transformation; and, in his writings, it is easy to detect a marked difference of attitude toward the nationalistic state before and after 1806, when in the battle of Jena Germany went down to inglorious defeat. From the time of Fichte, the German philosophy of the State blends with its philosophy of history, so that my reservation of the latter topic for the next section is somewhat arbitrary, and I shall not try rigidly to maintain the division of themes.
I have already mentioned the fact that Kant relaxes the separation of the moral realm of freedom from the sensuous realm of nature sufficiently to assert that the former is meant to influence the latter and finally to subjugate it. By means of the little crack thus introduced into nature, Fichte rewrites the Kantian philosophy. The world of sense must be regarded from the very start as material which the free, rational, moral Ego has created in order to have material for its own adequate realization of will. Fichte had a longing for an absolute unity which did not afflict Kant, to whom, save for the concession just referred to, a complete separation of the two operations of legislative reason sufficed. Fichte was also an ardently active soul, whose very temperament assured him of the subordination of theoretical knowledge to moral action.
It would be as difficult to give, in short space, an adequate sketch of Fichte's philosophy as of Kant's. To him, however, reason was the expression of the will, not (as with Kant) the will an application of reason to action. "Im Anfang war die That" is good Fichteanism. While Kant continued the usual significance of the term Reason (with only such modifications as the rationalism of his century had made current), Fichte began the transformation which consummated in later German idealism. If the world of nature and of human relations is an expression of reason, then reason must be the sort of thing, and have the sort of attributes by means of which the world may be construed, no matter how far away this conception of reason takes us from the usual meaning of the term. To Fichte the formula which best described such aspects of the world and of life as he was interested in was effort at self-realization through struggle with difficulties and overcoming opposition. Hence his formula for reason was a Will which, having "posited" itself, then "posited" its antithesis in order, through further action subjugating this opposite, to conquer its own freedom.
The doctrine of the primacy of the Deed, and of the Duty to achieve freedom through moral self-assertion against obstacles (which, after all, are there only to further this self-assertion) was one which could, with more or less plausibility, be derived from Kant. More to our present point, it was a doctrine which could be preached with noble moral fervor in connection with the difficulties and needs of a divided and conquered Germany. Fichte saw himself as the continuator of the work of Luther and Kant. His final "science of knowledge" brought the German people alone of the peoples of the world into the possession of the idea and ideal of absolute freedom. Hence the peculiar destiny of the German scholar and the German State. It was the duty and mission of German science and philosophy to contribute to the cause of the spiritual emancipation of humanity. Kant had already taught that the acts of men were to become gradually permeated by a spirit of rationality till there should be an equation of inner freedom of mind and outer freedom of action. Fichte's doctrine demanded an acceleration of the process. Men who have attained to a consciousness of the absolute freedom and self-activity must necessarily desire to see around them similar free beings. The scholar who is truly a scholar not merely knows, but he knows the nature of knowledge—its place and function as a manifestation of the Absolute. Hence he is, in a peculiar sense, the direct manifestation of God in the world—the true priest. And his priestly function consists in bringing other men to recognize moral freedom in its creative operation. Such is the dignity of education as conducted by those who have attained true philosophic insight.
Fichte made a specific application of this idea to his own country and time. The humiliating condition of contemporary Germany was due to the prevalence of egoism, selfishness and particularism: to the fact that men had lowered themselves to the plane of sensuous life. The fall was the worse because the Germans, more than any other people, were by nature and history conscious of the ideal and spiritual principle, the principle of freedom, lying at the very basis of all things. The key to the political regeneration of Germany was to be found in a moral and spiritual regeneration effected by means of education. The key, amid political division, to political unity was to be sought in devotion to moral unity. In this spirit Fichte preached his "Addresses to the German Nation." In this spirit he collaborated in the foundation of the University of Berlin, and zealously promoted all the educational reforms introduced by Stein and Humboldt into Prussian life.
The conception of the State as an essential moral Being charged with an indispensable moral function lay close to these ideas. Education is the means of the advancement of humanity toward realization of its divine perfection. Education is the work of the State. The syllogism completes itself. But in order that the State may carry on its educational or moral mission it must not only possess organization and commensurate power, but it must also control the conditions which secure the possibility offered to the individuals composing it. To adopt Aristotle's phrase, men must live before they can live nobly. The primary condition of a secure life is that everyone be able to live by his own labor. Without this, moral self-determination is a mockery. The business of the State, outside of its educational mission, is concerned with property, and this business means insuring property to everyone as well as protecting him in what he already possesses. Moreover, property is not mere physical possession. It has a profound moral significance, for it means the subjugation of physical things to will. It is a necessary part of the realization of moral personality: the conquest of the non-ego by the ego. Since property does not mean mere appropriation, but is a right recognized and validated by society itself, property has a social basis and aim. It is an expression not of individual egotism but of the universal will. Hence it is essential to the very idea of property and of the State that all the members of society have an equal opportunity for property. Hence it is the duty of the State to secure to its every member the right to work and the reward of his work.
The outcome, as expressed in his essay on "The Closed Industrial State," is State Socialism, based on moral and idealistic grounds, not on economic considerations. In order that men may have a real opportunity to develop their moral personalities, their right to labor and to adequate living, in return for their labor must be assured. This cannot happen in a competitive society. Industry must be completely regulated by the State if these indispensable rights to labor and resulting comfort and security of life as means to moral volition are to be achieved. But a state engaged in unrestricted foreign trade will leave its workingmen at the mercy of foreign conditions. It must therefore regulate or even eliminate foreign commerce so far as is necessary to secure its own citizens. The ultimate goal is a universal state as wide as humanity, and a state in which each individual will act freely, without state-secured rights and state-imposed obligations. But before this cosmopolitan and philosophically anarchic condition can be reached, we must pass through a period of the nationalistic closed state. Thus at the end a wide gulf separates Fichte from Kant. The moral individualism of the latter has become an ethical socialism. Only in and by means of a circle of egos or personalities does a human being attain the moral reason and freedom which Kant bestowed upon him as his birthright. Only through the educational activities of the State and its complete regulation of the industrial activities of its members does the potential moral freedom of individuals become an established reality.
If I have devoted so much space to Fichte it is not because of his direct influence upon affairs or even upon thought. He did not found a school. His system was at once too personal and too formal. Nevertheless, he expressed ideas which, removed from their special context in his system, were taken up into the thought of cultivated Germany. Heine, speaking of the vogue of systems of thought, says with profound truth that "nations have an instinctive presentiment of what they require to fulfill their mission."
And Fichte's thought infiltrated through many crevices. Rodbertus and Lasalle, the socialists, were, for example, profoundly affected by him. When the latter was prosecuted in a criminal suit for his "Programme of Workingmen," his reply was that his programme was a distinctively philosophic utterance, and hence protected by the constitutional provision for freedom of science and its teaching. And this