Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right

This Guide examines Fichte's main political concepts including morality, the summons, social contract, freedom, the body and human rights.

Despite being a great influence on nineteenth-century philosophy, Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right remains little understood. This Guide presents cutting-edge research that highlights its most important ideas and innovations. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought.Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right (1796/97) was one of the most influential books in nineteenth-century philosophy. It was read carefully by Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, and initiated a tradition in German philosophy that considers human subjectivity to be relational and intersubjective, thus requiring relations of recognition between subjects. The essays in this volume highlight this little-understood book's most important ideas and innovations. They offer discussions of Fichte's conception of freedom, self-consciousness, coercion, the summons, the body, and human rights, together with new analyses of his deduction of right, his views on the social contract, and his arguments for the separation of right from morality. The essays expand and deepen ongoing debates in the scholarship and chart new avenues of thought about Fichte's most enduring work of political philosophy. They will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought.