Johann Gottlieb Fichte - Final Period in Berlin

Final Period in Berlin

Fichte gave a wide range of public and private lectures in Berlin from the last decade of his life. These form some of his best known work, and are the basis of a revived German-speaking scholarly interest in his work.

The lectures include two works from 1806. In The Characteristics of the Present Age, Fichte outlines his theory of different historical and cultural epochs. His mystic work The Way Towards the Blessed Life gave his fullest thoughts on religion. In 1808 he gave a series of speeches in French-occupied Berlin, Addresses to the German Nation.

In 1810, the new Berlin University was set up, designed along lines put forward by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Fichte was made its rector and also the first Chair of Philosophy. This was in part because of educational themes in Addresses..., and in part because of his earlier work at Jena University.

Fichte lectured on further versions of his Wissenschaftslehre. Of these, he only published a brief work from 1810, The Science of Knowledge in its General Outline. His son published some of these thirty years after his death.

Most only became public in the last decades of the twentieth century, in his collected works. This included reworked versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, (1810–1813), a Doctrine of Right (1812), and a Doctrine of Ethics (1812).