Fichte: The System of Ethics

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 new translation of the work together with an introduction that sets it in its philosophical and historical contexts.

• The only available modern translation • The most important work in ethical theory between Kant’s writings on moral philosophy and Hegel’s Philosophy of Right • Volume includes an introduction and helpful notes on further reading

Contents

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.