Fichte: Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation

Offers a clear and accessible translation of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation.

Garrett Green (Translated by), Allen Wood (Author)

9780521112796, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 December 2009

196 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.46 kg

"....this text is important both historically and in its own right as an attempt to investigate religion from a transcendental standpoint.... Readers also will benefit from Wood's interpretation of the method Fichte utilizes in the text.... English-language Fichte scholarship has been been quite vibrant in recent decades, ranging from new translations of key Fichte texts to the activity of the North American Fichte Society. This new edition of Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, especially as it includes Wood's excellent introductory essay, is a fine addition to this resurgence of interest in and attention to Fichte's work."
--Kevin Zanelotti, McKendree University, Philosophy in Review

The Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792) was the first published work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), the founder of the German idealist movement in philosophy. It predated the system of philosophy which Fichte developed during his years in Jena, and for that reason - and possibly also because of its religious orientation - later commentators have tended to overlook the work in their treatments of Fichte's philosophy. It is, however, already representative of the most interesting aspects of Fichte's thought. It displays an affinity with his later moral psychology, introduces (in theological form) Fichte's distinctively 'second-person' conception of moral requirements, and employs the 'synthetic method' which is crucial to the transcendental systems Fichte developed during his Jena period. This volume offers a clear and accessible translation of the work by Garrett Green, while an introduction by Allen Wood sets the work in its historical and philosophical contexts.

Introduction
Chronology
Further reading
Note on the text and translation
Dedication
Preface to the first edition
Preface to the second edition
1. Introduction
2. Theory of the will in preparation for a deduction of religion in general
3. Deduction of religion in general
4. Division of religion in general into natural and revealed
5. Formal discussion of the concept of revelation in preparation for a material discussion of it
6. Material discussion of the concept of revelation in preparation for a deduction of it
7. Deduction of the concept of revelation from a priori principles of pure reason
8. The possibility of the empirical datum presupposed in the concept of revelation
9. The physical possibility of a revelation
10. Criteria of the divinity of a revelation with regard to its possible content
11. Criteria of the divinity of a revelation with regard to the possible presentation of this content
12. Systematic order of these criteria
13. The possibility of receiving a given appearance as divine revelation
14. General overview of this critique
Concluding remark
Appendix: passages omitted in the second edition
Glossary
Index.

Subject Areas: History of Western philosophy [HPC]