Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Gesamtausgabe / Reihe I: Werke. Band 9: Werke 1806–1807

The principle work contained in this, the penultimate volume of Part One, is the ›Anweisung zum seelingen Leben‹, a work in which Fichte takes a daring step and becomes the first important philosopher since Hermann Samuel Reimarus to investigate religion and the thought of the incarnation of the absolute from the standpoint of philosophical principles. In doing this, he arrives at a very different conclusion from that arrived at by, e.g., Franz Volkmar Reinhard or, subsequently, Hegel. He here stakes out a polemical position in opposition to the conceptions of Jesus presented by Schleiermacher, Jacobi, and Schelling. These contemporary references, as well as the manner in which they were reflected in the contemporary reception of Fichte's work, are explicated in detail in the forward to this volume. This volume also includes Fichte's treatise on Machiavelli (1807), as well as a translation of his from Dante.