Fichte. Robert Adamson
free interchange and communication of thought, nor is it given to any man or body of men to pronounce on the wisdom or goodness of thoughts with such confidence as to afford foundation for a supposed right to suppress freedom of thought on the ground of possible danger from, errors of thinking.[3]
The same fundamental principle, that the ultimate foundation, and consequently the criterion, of all state rights, is to be found in the conditions necessary for the realisation of the ethical end, the spiritual development towards moral freedom, gives an answer to the more complicated problem of the right of revolution. Constitutional forms must needs be alterable; they cannot continuously correspond to the requirements of a developing moral culture. No original contract can be of a final nature, can prescribe limits to the moral and legal development of a community. The right to state reform is inalienable or indefeasible.
Nevertheless the dissolution of a constitutional form implies withdrawal from the original state contract, and such withdrawal appears almost in terms to contradict the very notion upon which state rights are founded.[4] Fichte boldly faces this difficulty, contends that in all cases withdrawal from contract is possible, and that law or justice requires only compensation for such breach of pact, not unconditional fulfilment of it. If injury has been done by dissolving the contract on which the existing form of state government rests, let due compensation in kind and amount be rendered. Now the injury may be inflicted on the state itself, or on certain privileged classes in it. So far as the state itself is concerned, the only relations of life in respect of which compensation could be demanded, are those which rest upon or are secured by the assistance of the state—e.g., rights of property or right to development of one’s own culture. But the smallest consideration enables us to see that these rights and relations are prior in nature to state arrangements. They do not spring from the state, but the state is the mechanism whereby they are protected and regulated. No penalty, therefore, can be exacted by the state in consequence of the withdrawal of one or all of its members from the original contract. These dissentient wills may combine and form a state within the state: this is the essence of political revolution.[5]
The consideration of the possible injury to privileged classes in the state, consequent on revolution, leads Fichte, in the second Heft of the Beiträge, into a somewhat elaborate discussion of the origin of privileges in general The principles of social economy involved in his treatment are not so distinct as they afterwards became; and as in dealing with his later writings some attention must be paid to them, it is sufficient here to remark that he subjects to the most trenchant criticism the grounds for the privileges of the nobility and the Church, absolutely rejects these as theoretically indefensible, and foreshadows the semi-socialist doctrine which is worked out in his later politico-economical treatises.[6]
These political writings, breathing the warmest enthusiasm for the French Revolution, not unnaturally drew attention to Fichte. He was marked as a dangerous political character, and accused, both at the time and afterwards, of democratic tendencies. The influence of this feeling regarding his political sympathies is a notable fact in all the events of his after-career. As we shall see, much of the bitterness that was poured out against him at Jena on account of his theological views had its root in hatred for his advanced political doctrines. In substance the pamphlets are still interesting, both in themselves and as indicating the strong practical bent of Fichte’s thinking; in form, however, they are somewhat hard and pedantic. As in the ‘Critique of Revelation/ so here, the language is full of Kantian technicalities, the structure and progress of the argument are determined by the abstract forms of the Kantian system. In both works, Fichte had advanced to the limits drawn by the Critical Philosophy. He was now prepared to push beyond them.
Footnotes
1 ↑ Leben, i. 55–58. The whole letter, as there given, is translated by Dr. Smith.
2 ↑ It is impossible to give any exact single equivalent in English for the term Recht, which in different references may mean either law or the rights of the individual about which law is concerned, may be either an abstract or a collective notion, and may signify either positive enactments or the ultimate ethical foundation for such enactments. In Fichte’s writings a right is the specific mode of action, or realisation of a motive in external fact, which is indispensably necessary under the supposition of a common ethical law or supreme ethical end. Assuming such moral end, we can point to specific modes of action which must be approved by the community, unless violence is done to the very notion of ethical law. Alongside of this, however, there are rights which are mere specific modes of action approved by the community as a whole, though not indispensable for the realisation of the ethical end.
3 ↑ Fichte’s argument here may be compared with the fuller and more concrete treatment of the same problem in J. S. Mill’s tract, “On Liberty.”
4 ↑ This contradiction is left as a kind of unsolved problem by Kant (see ‘Rechtslehre,’ § 49, ‘Allgemeine Anmerkung,’ A.)
5 ↑ It is interesting to note that Fichte supports his argument in favour of a state within the state, by pointing to examples of such dual formations. These are mainly the existence of Jews in a Christian community, and the existence of a military class. His expressions with regard to the Jews are hardly exceeded in bitterness by any of the modern assailants of the Semitic element in Germany. See specially ‘Werke,’ vol. vi. pp. 150, 151.
6 ↑ Especially the ‘Geschlossene Handels-staat’ and the ‘Staatslehre.’
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