Речи към немската нация

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Фихте е единственият от почти всички големи философи, който произлиза от най-дълбоките народни недра. Личните му качества и исторически условия го издигат до ректор на първия университет в пруската столица Берлин, за да го върнат в немската земя след смъртта му като санитар доброволец във войните срещу общоевропейската, макар и предимно френска империя на Наполеон Бонапарт. Наред със спекулативната дарба, у него изригва furor teutonicus, немската ярост, завещана от Верцингенторикс и Лутер, за да го нареди сред героите на духа, служещи за пример в поредица немски опити за световно господство. С характерното пренебрегване на историческия контекст и при обичайната идеологическа злоупотреба с авторитети Фихте лесно бива поставян сред „духовните бащи на фашизма“ и „враговете на отвореното общество“. Затова разглеждането му както откъм тогавашната, така и откъм днешната идеологическа конюнктура бързо го причислява сред политически некоректните и го прави ако не по-незабележим, то по-неспоменаван в сравнение със съкласиците, заклеймяван и забраняван заради антисемитски изяви, откровен национализъм и проповеди за културно и стопански самодостатъчна държава. В голяма степен това се дължи на Речи към немската нация, исторически най-влиятелното му произведение. Все по-рядкото му издаване и превеждане е напълно в духа на гузното пренаписване на историята с опит за забрава и отказ от нейната реалност, в която делото на Фихте е сред най-ярките теоретически изяви на идеята за еднородна и еднонародна държава, противопоставяща се на наднационални империи.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Germany, German Literature, Sociology, Classics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1808

About the author

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Fichte is often perceived as a figure whose philosophy forms a bridge between the ideas of Kant and the German Idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Like Descartes and Kant before him, the problem of subjectivity and consciousness motivated much of his philosophical rumination. Fichte also wrote political philosophy, and is thought of by some as the father of German nationalism.
His son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, was also a renowned philosopher.

Reviews

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10.

I believe that these addresses, generalized to the entire European people, would have as great an impact today as they did in Fichte's own time, more than 200 years ago. They connect nationalism, racialism, and God in a distinctive Faustian sense.

God has created the various peoples of the world and given them the soil they reside on. Not through "humanity", but through these individual peoples, does God manifest himself in this world. Painting, music, sculpture, philosophy, literature, devotional writings — these are not abstract to "mankind", but are the heritage of specific peoples and cultures. God shows his favor for a given people through its fruits: through its creativeness. The groups most productive are the most valuable to all of mankind due to their innate and indefatigable creative power. If they are lost, what remains? What culture remains? Who can create in an alien land with alien values?

No one can. The great man of history is the vehicle by which a given people expresses its spirit. The concordance between his writings and the people's spirit leads to wide acceptance. His nation accepts him as their mouthpiece and thus gives him wide praise.

But what values lead to such creativity, besides natural superiority? Here Fichte makes his most essential point. A nation's great man believes that his actions have an eternal imprint, but not merely on the supernatural world. No, further than that, he believes in the eternality of his race. His contributions help his people live on and continue their creations forever. In Fichte's words: "The belief of the noble man in the eternal continuance of his activity even on this earth is accordingly based on the hope for the eternal continuance of the people from which he has sprung and on the particularity of that same people".

Therefore, our actions have eternal value. Our families have eternal value. Every day that we grow stronger, more dutiful, more cognizant of deleterious propaganda, we grow for our race. Every one of our actions matters, not merely for the world to come, but for the contribution that they make to our race. The hope, nigh faith, in the eternal existence of our particular and fruitful people gives us the energy to become nobler in this life. Our ancestors call us to righteousness, to duty, to strength, to honor, to fatherhood — in short, to nobility in the traditional sense.

The media tells us to become hateful of our own people. They call us vile words in an attempt to sterilize our thoughts and actions. But the moment we relinquish our people, we relinquish ourselves. Talking of the Ancient Germans when defending their people against the Romans, Fichte says, "Slavery was the name they gave to all those blessings that the Romans offered them, because by accepting these they could not but become something other than Germans; they would have to become half-Romans. It went without saying, they assumed, that every man would sooner die than become thus and that a true German could wish to live only in order to be and remain forever a German and to bring up his children as Germans also".

What is freedom for a German? "Freedom meant to them that they remained Germans, that they continued to decide their affairs independently and originally, in keeping with their own spirit, and, likewise in keeping with their spirit, that they continued to move forward in their development, and that they passed on this independence to their posterity".

What is freedom for a modern European, whether he be in Europe, America, Australia, or abroad? Currently, he is reviled, spit on continually, and told that he has no culture. He is a slave to alien influences. Aliens invade his country, lie to him about his heritage, and weaken him through degeneracy and saccharine pleasure.

Freedom is breaking free from this utter slavery. It is reclaiming your history, not as "world history" nor as the "contributions of man", but as the deeds of your ancestors. And that is something to be proud of! Our insidious rulers offer us many benefits, just as the Romans did to the Germans, if we relinquish our culture. If we accept these benefits, and "cure" ourselves of "racism", "toxic masculinity", and "homophobia", we will be applauded by the media. But in the process of doing so, we will become self-hating and weak. We will destroy the very substance that led to our greatness.

The solution is to turn away. Turn away from fake heroes and replace them with the real heroes who you descended from. Replace Superman with the Spartans. Replace Batman with the brave Vikings and explorers who crossed oceans. Replace consumerist kitsch with reality — the reality of your own heritage. Preserving our culture begins first by accepting it, then loving it, and finally by passing that love down to our children. May we hope, changing a few words of Fichte's, that a true European could wish to live only in order to be and remain forever a European and to bring up his children as Europeans also. We were not born to be consumerist drones. We were born to be strong and noble Europeans.

[Hristo Ivanov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiche after having finished with his "hard" philosophy and letting his students finish the job(Schelling and indirectly Hegel), went on to make popular philosophy and writings because he feld a connection with the ideal of the German Nation and it's people. The French Revolution in Germany was this, an emerging Nationalism after the decay of the Holy Roman Empire and the loss of the Austrians by Napoleon and before that by the French armies of the French Revolution.

This gave the germans and their philosophers the dream of a unified German Nation that would stand as well as England, France and Spain.

Fiche being the first to spread this among the people(Herder being the first theoretically to form the idea of Nationalism), had these addresses formed. All subsequent nationalism in all of Central and Eastern Europe followed the general rules he wrote for awakening the nations, that were under various empires.

Fichte is a hero for composing this, not only for Germany, but also for all nations that lead liberation wars against occupying armies.

[Zon · Rating 1 out of 5]

-1 point parce que c’est le pire livre du programme de l’agreg, sinon j’ai pas aimé et j’ai pas compris la partie du milieu

[Hakan Alpan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ein Buch wie ein Hieb ins Gesicht des geschichtlichen Verständnisses.

Als ich dieses Werk zu lesen begann begleiteten mich sowohl die Empfehlungen mancher wie auch die Warnungen anderer. Manch einem erschien dies als Schlüssel zum gesunden Nationalverständnisses und zum freien Charakter, dem anderen als verworrenes, idealistisches Werk eines Kindes seiner Zeit.
Was man lobend erwähnen muss ist, dass die Passagen über die Erziehung in einer sehr nachvollziehbaren fast löblichen Abhandlung geschrieben ist. Auch die Aufteilung in sprachlich abgegrenzte Räume erscheint logisch und gut begründet.
Dieses Besuch ist eine gelungene Ergänzung zu Herders Ausführungen zum Thema Nationalismus.
Aber...
Zu weilen hat man das Gefühl Fichte möchte gar nicht richtig verstanden werden. Seine Ausführungen wiederholen sich ab und zu. Es ist nicht immer klar worauf Fichte abzieht oder worin der Kern seines Gedankens besteht. Manchmal ist man verwirrt von langen Sätzen, welche verschachtelt und unstrukturiert scheinen.

Fazit:
Ein Muss für jeden der das Phänomen Nationalismus verstehen will ohne von den Einflüssen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts in seiner Meinung verfälscht zu werden. Allerdings benötigt dieses Werk eine kritische Lesweise (insbesondere beim Thema der Religion).

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the diatribes on the "superiority" of the German race and the (interesting) thoughts on the differences between the "dead" foreign languages and the "living" German language, this was a remarkable text. Forcefully written (Fichte was quite the orator) and powerful. Particularly enjoyed his thoughts on education and his insistence that all problems with the state of the nation could be traced back to matters of education. I think that diagnosis could easily apply to the present day United States as well.

[Luis Francisco Contreras · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've skimmed through all the addresses to get a good idea of his principles, but I've especially focused on his second, third, and tenth addresses. It's chilling to the bone to read the principles and justifications of our western schooling system. After reading it it's not surprising to understand the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of the current system.

[Madison De Asis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to read for class, wanted to die the whole time.

[Jesse · Rating 1 out of 5]

With Napoleon's invasion of the German States, Fichte's earlier Jacobin universalism is transformed into an extreme German nationalism, albeit with pretensions to being the saviors of all humane and Christian ideals for the world. Scholars seem to argue about whether this is an "ethnic" or a "cultural" nationalism, but I'm not sure that such a distinction can really be made.

Fichte believes in a very close connection between a People/Nation (völk) and their Language, following an extreme version of Herder's philosophy of language. He argues that most of Europe is inhabited by descendants of Germanic tribes, but that these peoples, with the exception of the modern Germans, have been cut off from their true German-language heritage due to the imposition of Romance languages. This break prevents these foreigners (ausländer) from truly understanding the abstract words which their language uses to describe the "supersensible", spiritual world. Thus all the speakers of these dead languages are spiritually dead, unaware of their potential for freedom, unable to create truly new things and to achieve infinite progress. A less grandiose argument, which he only vaguely alludes to, seems to be that the intellectuals and elites in other European states use a different language that can't be understood by the people at large, while in Germany the classes are united by a common language.

He blames the moral and intellectual degeneration of modern Germans on the negative influence of foreign ideas - for example, the "mechanical" conception of the state is a French idea, while real Germans know that a love for the fatherland, which can't possibly be encoded in mechanical rules, is what invigorates a truly progressive state. These flaws in the French spirit are presumably what explains the degeneration of the French Revolution in Fichte's eyes.

Fichte's hope for the preservation of the German nation against Napoleonic despotism lies in the implementation of a national education system. (I'm not sure why the subjugated German states will have the autonomy in matters of education that Fichte fears they will lack in other areas.) He seems less interested in preserving German literature, as one might expect from his emphasis on language, than in instilling an austere, Kantian morality in the kids, through schools that emphasize knowledge for knowledge's sake alone, a love of the spontaneously discovered Universal Law. His only example of this is kids mentally intuiting that it takes 3 lines to enclose a planar region - closely following Kant in using now-discredited ideas about space/geometry to back up his moral program. This love of freedom and autonomy appears to be the true German heritage - thanks, Luther!

This schooling should be compulsory, for people of all ranks and classes, co-educational. It should separate children from their parents, and extend until the age of majority. More surprisingly, each school should be run like a little autarchic state, producing all of its own goods from scratch, as if Fichte was hoping for at least a toy model of his plans for a "Closed Commercial State" (1800) which he thinks was unjustly and disastrously ignored.

[이 지호 · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1806, when Prussia was in crisis after losing the war with Napoleon, philosopher J.G. Fichte delivered a patriotic lecture in the auditorium of the Berlin Academy under enemy occupation.

This was the time of the so-called Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Napoleon, who had conquered all of Europe, had occupied Germany without exception, and seeing the German people so helpless under the hooves of the French army, Fichte felt that they needed a rallying cry. So, for three months, from December 13, 1807, to March 12 of the following year, Fichte lectured every Sunday at the German Hanlin Institute.

Despite the sounds of French military bands and hoofbeats outside and the watchful eyes of the guards in the auditorium, Fichte stood firm and delivered a lecture aimed at arousing the patriotism of the German people, whose main theme was national liberation through the revitalization of education.
In these lectures, Fichte emphasized that the way to rebuild Germany lay first and foremost in the revitalization of the national spirit, which was a great encouragement to the German people.

This book is organized as follows: Lecture 1 is an introduction, Lectures 2 through 11 are on the theory of the education of the German people, Lectures 12 and 13 are on the enlightenment of the German people who should be in charge of the education of the German people, and Lecture 14 is a conclusion. All of these lectures are in their original form, except for Lecture 13, whose manuscript was lost by the censors.

The main point of this lecture is that the fundamental cause of the ruin of the German people is selfishness, and that this selfishness must be overcome by a new national education. This new national education is combined with Pestalozzi's educational ideas, which emphasize the importance of subjective mental activity, and when this education awakens a true national consciousness in Germany, the German people can regain their lost independence and fulfill their true function as a people in world history.

For Fichte, the new education is a national education, an education that stimulates the mental self-activity of the student. Fichte absolutely agrees with Pestalozzi's religious theory and considers Pestalozzi comparable to Luther, the consummator of the Reformation, but he also criticizes Pestalozzi's educational theory for its weaknesses. In short, Fichte's idea of national education is a general human education, which is the premise of an education that allows people to discover for themselves and develop their own minds, rather than accumulate knowledge that is imposed upon them. Fichte's concern is with the question of how to educate the German people in such a way that they would not fall into a state of neglect and despair.

According to Fichte, human reason unfolds through language, so that the national language is not shaped by man, but rather man is shaped by the national language. Language is the decisive factor that shapes the character of a people. Therefore, the use of the German language is the most important requirement for claiming to be German: only those who speak German are German.

Through this article,

First, we can learn what true patriotism is. Fichte's idea that love for one's own people, its own language and culture, and a belief in its infinite development and improvement is true patriotism.

Second, we can sense the right direction of education. It makes us think about where we should set the direction of national education or subjective education.

Third, we can sense what true subjectivity, especially national subjectivity, should be. Of course, even if Fichte's idea of national subjectivity is already outdated, its fundamental orientation still has life.

Fourth, Fichte's macro-view and his patience are particularly inspiring. His persuasion that true revival was possible only through the thorough improvement of the German people, and that the final goal should be reached by education without haste and with determination, is a valuable lesson for our attitude toward history.

Fifth, it makes us reconsider the role of intellectuals. Especially in the conclusion, when the author solemnly laments the attitude of intellectuals who flattered or remained silent when their country was on the path of destruction, and then, once the powerful man fell, condemned him as if all his faults were his own.

[Natan Bedrosian]

These addresses are fascinating—not only in terms of their content but also in the motivations behind them. As a student majoring in History and Political Thought, I see Fichte as attempting to construct a sense of German nationhood in the aftermath of the capitulation following the French conquest. It is also compelling to read about the Napoleonic Wars from the perspective of an occupied, non-French nation—in this case, the Germans—and to observe how they viewed both the occupation and themselves as a social group living within a political entity under French supervision.
In summary, Fichte's primary objective in these addresses is to preserve Germans' sense of identity and belonging through the promotion of culture. To achieve this, he stresses the significance of language and education while also advocating for revolutionary measures, such as the unification of Germans across religious denominations (notably Protestant and Catholic). This work is highly recommended for those interested in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly from the perspective of the nations that fought against Napoleon and for those intrigued by modern German history.

[John Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Prof Fichte’s addresses were delivered at a time of low national morale following the recent defeat by Napoleon (1806). Fichte’s main purpose is to raise national morale and German self confidence. His emphasis is on planning for the future, especially state education of the young. Fichte looks forward to a time when Germany is united under a strong, inspirational leader with clear vision. The unification would come 60 odd years later.

Fichte talks up the German language which he argues is a living and developing language compared to Latin, which he sees as dead, though idolised by contemporaries, including German cultural snobs.

Hitler was an admirer of Fichte and he featured in the Fuhrer’s library. I’m sure that Hitler could see himself in the role that Fichte envisages here. I found this volume very heavy going and I was guilty of skim reading from 40% onwards. But there is a lot of repetition so I did not feel to miss too much.

[Cathrine · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Eight address)

[Leonardo]

La soberanía nacional y la soberanía popular fueron, por lo tanto, productos de una construcción espiritual, es decir, la construcción de una identidad. Cuando Edmund Burke se opuso a Sieyés, su postura fue mucho menos diferente que lo que el clima polémico tórrido de la época podría hacernos suponer. Aún para Burke, de hecho, la soberanía nacional era el producto de una construcción espiritual de identidad. Este hecho puede reconocerse aún más claramente en la obra de aquellos que levantaron el estandarte del proyecto contrarrevolucionario en el continente europeo. Las concepciones continentales de esta construcción espiritual revivieron tanto las tradiciones de la nación históricas como las voluntaristas y agregaron a la concepción del desarrollo histórico una síntesis trascendental en la soberanía nacional. Esta síntesis ya está alcanzada en la identidad de la nación y el pueblo. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, por ejemplo, proclama en términos más o menos mitológicos que la patria y el pueblo son representación y medida de eternidad terrena; son lo que aquí en la tierra puede ser inmortal.

Imperio Pág. 83

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, myself, have only read the fourth address, and seeing the roots of German supremacist thought form through the eloquent speech of Fichte is truly frightening.

That being said the content of his Fourth Address truly made me want to learn German.

I would have given this a 5 star simply because Fitche is obviously a genius but I found his way of writing a bit tedious and at times confusing. I much prefer Herder's method of writing.

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of nationalistic clap trap here, but Fichte standing up and delivering them as Napoleon's armies were overrunning Germany was very courageous.

[nlam · Rating 1 out of 5]

go to therapy