Daniel Breazeale & Tom Rockmore 
Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered 

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.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abbreviations



Introduction. On Situating and Interpreting Fichte’s
Addresses to the German Nation


Daniel Breazeale



1. From Autonomy to Automata? Fichte on Formal and Material Freedom and Moral Cultivation


Daniel Breazeale



2.
Gedachtes Denken/Wirkliches Denken: A Strictly Philosophical Problem in Fichte’s
Reden


Mario Jorge de Carvalho



3. Linguistic Expression in Fichte’s
Addresses to the German Nation


Sıla Ozkara



4. Critique of Religion and Critical Religion in Fichte’s
Addresses to the German Nation


Benjamin D. Crowe



5. Autonomy, Moral Education, and the Carving of a National Identity


C. Jeffery Kinlaw



6. Fichte’s Nationalist Rhetoric and the Humanistic Project of
Bildung


Marina F. Bykova



7. The Ontological and Epistemological Background of German Nationalism in Fichte’s
Addresses


Rainer Schafer



8. Fichte’s Imagined Community and the Problem of Stability


Gabriel Gottlieb



9. Rights, Recognition, Nationalism, and Fichte’s Ambivalent Politics: An Attempt at a Charitable Reading of the
Addresses to the German Nation


Arnold L. Farr



10. How to Change the World: Cultural Critique and the Historical Sublime in the
Addresses to the German Nation


Michael Steinberg



11. Fichte’s
Addresses to the German Nation and the Philosopher as Guide


Tom Rockmore



12. World War I, the Two Germanies, and Fichte’s
Addresses


Anthony N. Perovich



13. Fault Lines in Fichte’s
Reden


George J. Seidel



List of Contributors

Index

Über den Autor

Daniel Breazeale is Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky.
Tom Rockmore is Humanities Chair Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Peking University, China. Both have authored, edited, and translated many books. Together, they are the coeditors of
Fichte’s Vocation of Man
: New Interpretive and Critical Essays, also published by SUNY Press.