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
Introduction
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
At noon on Sunday, 13 December 1807, Johann Gottlieb Fichte stood before an expectant audience in the amphitheatre of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and began the first of a series of fourteen weekly lectures known as the Addresses to the German Nation. A year before, Prussia, the last German state left standing against Napoleon, had been brought to its knees, its armies routed at the Battle of Jena. As the French advanced unopposed towards Berlin, Fichte fled the city, following the king and his government east to Königsberg. Now, after a Carthaginian peace had stripped Prussia of her rank as a major European power and reduced her to a satellite of the Grand Empire, Fichte returned to the occupied capital, traumatised, yet convinced it was his duty to mobilise a defeated people and urge their spiritual renewal. It was a course of action not without danger. Recalling the fate of Johann Palm, a Nuremberg book-dealer executed by the French for printing a seditious pamphlet, Fichte wrote: ‘I know very well what I risk; I know that a bullet may kill me, like Palm; but it is not this that I fear, and for my cause I would gladly die.’ Over the sound of the drums of French troops marching in the streets outside, he began to speak …
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- Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation , pp. xi - xxxviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009