Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Note on the text and translation
- Suggestions for further reading
- Abbreviations
- Addresses to the German Nation
- Foreword
- 1 Preliminary remarks and overview
- 2 On the nature of the new education in general
- 3 Description of the new education – continued
- 4 The principal difference between the Germans and other peoples of Teutonic descent
- 5 Consequences of the difference that has been advanced
- 6 Exposition of German characteristics in history
- 7 A yet deeper understanding of the originality and Germanness of a people
- 8 What a people is in the higher sense of the word and what is love of fatherland
- 9 At what point existing in reality the new national education of the Germans will begin
- 10 Towards a more exact definition of the German national education
- 11 On whom the execution of this plan of education will devolve
- 12 On the means of maintaining ourselves until we achieve our principal purpose
- 13 Continuation of the reflections already begun
- 14 Conclusion of the whole
- Glossary
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
1 - Preliminary remarks and overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Note on the text and translation
- Suggestions for further reading
- Abbreviations
- Addresses to the German Nation
- Foreword
- 1 Preliminary remarks and overview
- 2 On the nature of the new education in general
- 3 Description of the new education – continued
- 4 The principal difference between the Germans and other peoples of Teutonic descent
- 5 Consequences of the difference that has been advanced
- 6 Exposition of German characteristics in history
- 7 A yet deeper understanding of the originality and Germanness of a people
- 8 What a people is in the higher sense of the word and what is love of fatherland
- 9 At what point existing in reality the new national education of the Germans will begin
- 10 Towards a more exact definition of the German national education
- 11 On whom the execution of this plan of education will devolve
- 12 On the means of maintaining ourselves until we achieve our principal purpose
- 13 Continuation of the reflections already begun
- 14 Conclusion of the whole
- Glossary
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Summary
The addresses that I now begin I have announced as a continuation of the lectures which I delivered here, in this same venue, three winters ago and which have been published under the title Characteristics of the Present Age. In those lectures I showed that our age lies in the third principal epoch of world history, which epoch has mere sensuous self-interest as the impulse of all its vital stirrings and motions; that this age also understands and comprehends itself completely by recognising this impulse as the only possible one; and that through this clear insight into its nature it is deeply grounded and unshakeably fixed in this its vital essence.
With us, more than with any other age in the history of the world, time is taking giant strides. Within the three years that have passed since my interpretation of the current epoch, it has at some point run its course and come to an end. At some point selfishness has annihilated itself by its complete development, because it has thereby lost its self and the independence of that self; and, since it would not willingly posit any other end but itself, another, alien purpose has been imposed upon it by an external power. Whoever has once undertaken to interpret his age must ensure that his interpretation keep pace with its progress also, should it enjoy such progress.
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- Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation , pp. 9 - 21Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009