Fichte: The System of Ethics

A translation of the most important work in moral philosophy written between Kant and Hegel.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Author), Daniel Breazeale (Edited by), Guenter Zöller (Edited by)

9780521571401, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 November 2005

448 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.83 kg

Fichte's System of Ethics, published in 1798, is at once the most accessible presentation of its author's comprehensive philosophical project, The Science of Knowledge or Wissenschaftslehre, and the most important work in moral philosophy written between Kant and Hegel. Fichte's ethics integrates the discussion of our moral duties into the systematic framework of a transcendental theory of the human subject. Its major philosophical themes include the practical nature of self-consciousness, the relation between reason and volition, the essential role of the drives in human willing, the possibility of changing the natural world, the reality of one's own body, the reality of other human beings, and the practical necessity of social relations between human beings. This volume offers a translation of the work together with an introduction that sets it in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Part I. Deduction of the Principle of Morality
Part II. Deduction of the Reality and Applicability of the Principle of Morality
Part III. Systematic Application of the Principle of Morality, or Ethics in the Narrower Sense.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD], History of Western philosophy [HPC]