Robert Adamson

“ However this may be, and however widely the united German empire may differ in inner characteristics from that patriotic state to which Fichte, in his famous ‘Addresses,’ summoned his countrymen, no German who feels the full significance of the unity of his nation can fail to look back with pride and gratitude to the eloquent thinker, who, with the thoroughness of a philosopher and the zeal of a patriot, drew in ideal form the outlines of that which has now been happily realised. ”

“ As a patriot, as representative of what seems noblest and loftiest in the German character, he lives, and will doubtless continue to live, in the grateful remembrance of his countrymen; as a metaphysician, he lives not at all beyond the learned pages of the historians of philosophy.
That such should be the case will not appear surprising when there are taken into consideration the nature of the historical surroundings of Fichte’s career, and the relations in which he stood to them. ”

“ It happens but rarely that the life of a philosopher has been so closely connected with the historical development of his people, that his name should be remembered rather on account of his practical activity than for his speculative researches. Yet if one does not misinterpret the evidence supplied in ample quantity by the numerous speeches, addresses, essays, memorials, and other documents which marked the celebration of the centenary of Fichte in 1862, circumstances in his case must have combined to bring about this result. ”

“ In all knowledge, as he strove to show, there is a common element which springs from the very essence of the subject as cognitive or conscious; in all action, the indispensable element is the conscious exercise of will under common, universal law. Thus in the Kantian philosophy, the ultimate standard, both of intellectual and of ethical judgment, was indeed the individual, but the individual only as containing a universal or common feature. On the basis supplied by this common element, philosophy might proceed to reconstruct what had been dissolved by the speculative atomism of Hume. ”

“ The new political idea of the French Revolution—an idea expressed clearly, though with some contradictoriness, in the Contrat social—was that of the human agent, endowed by nature with certain primitive and inalienable rights, as the unit in the organisation of the state. The individual, on this view, was no longer to be regarded as receiving all state-rights by historical accident; distinctions of rank among citizens were no longer to be accepted on mere ground of fact ”

“ Although, from the nature of the matter, no similarly exact statement can be given for the essence of the intellectual efforts in the direction of pure literature, there was manifest in them in various degrees the same tendency towards expression of the universal common elements in human life, as opposed to the treatment of trivial, personal, and accidental aims and occurrences which had characterised much of the earlier eighteenth century literature. ”