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Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
was a German philosopher, a reformer and a supporter of the French Revolution
and its ideals. But when France, under Napoleon, took control of Germany
along with much of the rest of Europe, he rethought his position and made
series of Addresses to the German Nation (1806),
in French occupied Berlin. The first, original, and truly
natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries.
Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of
invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they
understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves
understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one
and an inseparable whole. Such a whole, if it wishes to absorb and mingle
with itself any other people of different descent and language, cannot do so
without itself becoming confused, in the beginning at any rate, and violently
disturbing the even progress of its culture. From this internal boundary,
which is drawn by the spiritual nature of man himself, the marking of the
external boundary by dwelling place results as a consequence; and in the
natural view of things it is not because men dwell between certain mountains
and rivers that they are a people, but, on the contrary, men dwell
together-- and, if their luck has so arranged it, are protected by rivers and
mountains-- because they were a people already by a law of nature which is much
higher. Thus was the German nation
placed-- sufficiently united within itself by a common language and a common
way of thinking, and sharply enough severed from the other peoples-- in the
middle of Europe, as a wall to divide races not akin .... That things should remain thus did
not suit the selfishness of foreign countries, whose calculations did not
look more than one moment ahead. They found German bravery useful in waging
their wars and German hands useful to snatch the booty from their rivals. A
means had to be found to attain this end, and foreign cunning won an easy
victory over German ingenuousness and lack of suspicion. It was foreign
countries which first made use of the division of mind produced by religious
disputes in Germany-- Germany, which presented on a small scale the features
of Christian Europe as a whole-- foreign countries, I
say, made use of these disputes to break up the close inner unity of Germany
into separate and disconnected parts.... . . . They knew how to present
each of these separate states that had thus arisen in the lap of the one
nation-- which had no enemy except those foreign countries themselves, and no
concern except the common one of setting itself with united strength against
their seductive craft and cunning-foreign countries, I say, knew how to
present each of these states to the others as a natural enemy, against which
each state must be perpetually on its guard. On the other hand, they knew how
to make themselves appear to the German states as natural allies against the
danger threatening them from their own countrymen-- as allies with whom alone
they would themselves stand or fall, and whose enterprises they must in turn
support with all their might. It was only because of this artificial bond
that all the disputes which might arise about any matter whatever in the Old
World or the New became disputes of the German races in their relation to
each other. Every war, no matter what its cause, had to be fought out on
German soil and with German blood; every disturbance of the balance had to be
adjusted in that nation to which the whole fountainhead of such relationships
was unknown; and the German states, whose separate existence was in itself
contrary to all nature and reason, were compelled, in order that they might
count for something, to act as counterweights to the chief forces in the
scale of the European equilibrium, whose movement they followed blindly and
without any will of their own. Just as in many states abroad the citizens are
designated as belonging to this or that foreign party, or voting for this or
that foreign alliance, but no name is found for those who belong to the party
of their own country, so it was with the Germans; for long enough they
belonged only to some foreign party or other, and one seldom came across a
man who supported the party of the Germans and was of the opinion that this
country ought to make an alliance with itself. Now, at last, let us be bold
enough to look at the deceptive vision of a universal monarchy, which people
are beginning to hold up for public veneration in place of that equilibrium
which for some time has been growing more and more preposterous, and let us
perceive how hateful and contrary to reason that vision is. Spiritual nature
was able to present the essence of humanity in extremely diverse gradations
in individuals and in individuality as a whole, in peoples. Only when each
people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own
peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops
himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with
his own peculiar quality-- then, and then only, does the manifestation of
divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be; and only a man who
either entirely lacks the notion of the rule of law and divine order, or else
is an obdurate enemy thereto, could take upon himself to want to interfere
with that law, which is the highest law in the spiritual world! Only in the
invisible qualities of nations, which are hidden from their own eyes-- qualities
as the means whereby these nations remain in touch with the source of
original life-- only therein is to be found the guarantee of their present and
future worth, virtue, and merit. If these qualities are dulled by admixture
and worn away by friction, the flatness that results will bring about a
separation from spiritual nature, and this in its turn will cause all men to be
fused together in their uniform and collective destruction. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Thirteenth
Address, Addresses to the Gerrnan Nation,
ed. George A. Kelly (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1968), pp. 19091,19394,19798. Address To The German Nation, 1807 Love that is truly love, and not a
mere transitory lust, never clings to what is transient; only in the eternal
does it awaken and become kindled, and there alone does it rest. Man is not
able to love even himself unless he conceives himself as eternal; apart from
that he cannot even respect, much less approve, of himself. Still less can he
love anything outside himself without taking it up into the eternity of his
faith and of his soul and binding it thereto. He who does not first regard
himself as eternal has in him no love of any kind, and, moreover, cannot love
a fatherland, a thing which for him does not exist. He who regards his
invisible life as eternal, but not his visible life as similarly eternal, may
perhaps have a heaven and therein a fatherland, but here below he has no
fatherland, for this, too, is regarded only in the image of
eternity--- eternity visible and made sensuous, and for this reason also he is
unable to love his fatherland. If none has been handed down to such a man, he
is to be pitied. But he to whom a fatherland has been handed down, and in
whose soul heaven and earth, visible and invisible meet and mingle, and thus,
and only thus, create a true and enduring heaven--- such a man fights to the
last drop of his blood to hand on the precious possession unimpaired to his
posterity. Hence, the noble-minded man will
be active and effective, and will sacrifice himself for his people. Life
merely as such, the mere continuance of changing existence, has in any case
never had any value for him, he has wished for it only as the source of what
is permanent. But this permanence is promised to him only by the continuous
and independent existence of his nation. In order to save his nation he must
be ready even to die that it may live, and that he may live in it the only
life for which he has ever wished. So it has always been, although it
has not always been expressed in such general terms and so
clearly as we express it here. What inspired the men of noble mind among the
Romans, whose frame of mind and way of thinking still live and breathe among
us in their works of art, to struggles and sacrifices, to patience and
endurance for the fatherland? They themselves express it often and
distinctly. It was their firm belief in the eternal continuance of their Roma,
and their confident expectation that they themselves would eternally continue
to live in this eternity in the stream of time. In so far as this belief was
well-founded, and they themselves would have comprehended it if they had been
entirely clear in their own minds, it did not deceive them. To this very day there
still lives in our midst what was truly eternal in their eternal Roma…. In this belief in our earliest
common forefathers, the original stock of the new culture, the Germans, as
the Romans called them, bravely resisted the oncoming world dominion of the
Romans. Did they not have before their eyes the greater brilliance of the
Roman provinces next to them and the more refined enjoyments in those
provinces, to say nothing of laws and judges-- seats and lictors-- axes and fasces in superfluity? Were not the Romans
willing enough to let them share in all these blessings? In the case of
several of their own princes, who did no more than intimate that war against
such benefactors of mankind was rebellion, did they not experience proofs of
the belauded Roman clemency? To those who submitted
the Romans gave marks of distinction in the form of kingly titles, high
commands in their armies, and Roman fillets; and if they were driven out by
their countrymen, did not the Romans provide for them a place of refuge and a
means of subsistence in their colonies? Had they no appreciation of the
advantages of Roman civilization, of the superior organization of their
armies, in which even Arminius did not disdain to learn the trade of war?
Their descendants, as soon as they could do so without losing their freedom,
even assimilated Roman culture, so far as this was possible without losing
their individuality. Freedom to them meant just this:
remaining Germans and continuing to settle their own affairs, independently
and in accordance with the original spirit of their race, going on with their
development in accordance with the same spirit, and propagating this
independence in their posterity. All those blessings which the Romans offered
them meant slavery to them because then they would have to become something
that was not German, they would have to become half-Roman. They assumed as a
matter of course that every man would rather die than become half a Roman,
and that a true German could only want to live in order to be, and to remain,
just a German and to bring up his children as Germans. They did not all die; they did not
see slavery; they bequeathed freedom to their children. It is their
unyielding resistance which the whole modern world has to thank for being
what it now is. Had the Romans succeeded in bringing them also under the yoke
and in destroying them as a nation, which the Romans did in every case, the
whole development of the human race would have taken a different course, a course that one cannot think would have been
more satisfactory. It is they whom we must thank--- we, the immediate heirs
of their soil, their language, and their way of thinking--- for being Germans
still, for being still borne along on the stream of original and independent
life. It is they whom we must thank for everything that we have been as a
nation since those days, and to them we shall be indebted for everything that
we shall be in the future, unless things come to an end with us now and the
last drop of blood inherited from them has dried up in our veins. To them the
other branches of the race, whom we now look upon as
foreigners, but who by descent from them are our brothers, are indebted for
their very existence. When our ancestors triumphed over Roma the
eternal, not one of all these peoples was in existence, but the possibility
of their existence in the future was won for them in the same fight. . . . Source: From: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses
to the German Nation, trans. R. F. Jones & G. H. Turnbull (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1922), pp. 136-138, 143-145 |