David James

The relation of right to morality in Fichte's Jena theory of the state and society

I argue that despite the various ways in which Fichte separates right from morality in his 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right, he nevertheless suggests in the writings from the period of his professorship at the University of Jena that there is a reciprocal relation between them. This requires, however, reading the Foundations of Natural Right in the light of The System of Ethics, which was published in 1798, especially the account of the ethical duties deriving from a persons membership of a profession that Fichte gives in this work. Although this approach allows us to attribute to Fichte a different conception of the state to the amoral one found in the Foundations of Natural Right, I argue that the separation of right from morality developed in this work remains valid and amounts to one of Fichtes main achievements, namely, his identification of the different dispositions that may characterize an individuals relation to the society in which he or she lives. This point is developed by comparing Fichtes amoral conception of the state to Hegels account of civil society as the ‘state of necessity’. This does not involve an attempt to turn Fichte into Hegel but to show how the insights contained in Fichtes distinction between right and morality can be illuminated with reference to Hegels theory of civil society and can be retained in the face of a powerful criticism that Hegel makes of the kind of contract theory of the state offered by Fichte. ☆ This article was written during a post-doctoral fellowship supported by the South African National Research Foundation. I would like to thank Lawrence Hamilton for his comments on an earlier version of the article.

Independence and Property in Kant's Rechtslehre

I argue that the freedom which is to coexist with the freedom of choice of others in accordance with a universal law mentioned in Kants Rechtslehre is not itself freedom of choice. Rather, it is the independence which is a condition of being able to exercise genuine free choice by not having to act in accordance with the choices of others. Kants distinction between active and passive citizenship appears, however, to undermine this idea of independence, because the possession of a certain type of property right on the part of some citizens makes it possible for them to dominate others. Kants account of property in this way turns out to be central to the question as to whether his Rechtslehre represents an internally consistent account of how freedom can be guaranteed within a legal and political community. I go on to argue that Kants attempt to justify a pre-political right of property cannot be viewed as a successful justification of private property, and that he should have abandoned the notion of such a right together with any presumption in favour of private property.

Rousseau on needs, language and pity: The limits of ‘public reason’

The idea of ‘public reason’ has recently been associated with Rousseau’s views on the formation of a general will. Advocates of this idea in the Kantian tradition tend to emphasize reflective acts of rational deliberation which, I suggest, are more suited to written than to spoken language. Rousseau’s accounts of the role of spoken language as a means of expressing human needs and the role of pity in the development of a moral form of reasoning, which allows one properly to take into account the interests of others, show that he cannot be so easily interpreted as an advocate of the idea of public reason. This is because his views on the importance of spoken language in democratic politics and the essential part played by the sentiment of pity in the development of moral reasoning imply the legitimacy of modes of expression in the formation of a general will that are not, in any obvious sense, compatible with the demands of public reason.

From Kant to Sade: a fragment of the history of philosophy in the Dialectic of Enlightenment

ABSTRACT In this paper, I set out (1) to consider the extent to which Horkheimer and Adornos account of the transition from Kants philosophy to key features of the novels of the Marquis de Sade in the Second Excursus of their Dialectic of Enlightenment can be viewed as a fragment of the ‘history of philosophy’ and (2) to explain this account in a way that allows us to ask whether it succeeds in establishing a necessary connection between Kants philosophy and Sades novels. In connection with (2), a particular problem emerges. This problem concerns the role played by a non-instrumental form of reason in Horkheimer and Adornos attempt to establish an essential connection between Kants theoretical philosophy and Sades novels, in which the practical implications of the theoretical employment of reason allegedly become explicit. It will be shown that, despite appearances to the contrary, an employment of reason of the relevant type is not identified by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Self-mastery and universal history: Horkheimer and Adorno on the conditions of a society ‘in control of itself’

Horkheimer and Adorno make claims that imply a complete rejection of the idea of a universal history developed in classical German philosophy. Using Kant’s account of universal history, I argue that some features of the idea of a universal history can nevertheless be detected in the Dialectic of Enlightenment and some of Adorno’s remarks on freedom and history. This is done in connection with the kind of rational self-mastery that they associate with the story of Odysseus. Some claims made by Adorno in particular will be shown to imply that this self-mastery is a necessary condition of a better, freer society, especially in relation to this society’s material conditions. On the other hand, certain essential features of the idea of a universal history are clearly absent in virtue of the ultimate contingency of events and states of affairs that Adorno seeks to preserve. I show that the absence of these features and the preservation of contingency are, in fact, the means of saving the notion of the possibility of progress which informs the idea of a universal history.

Enlightenment and the Unconditional Good: From Fichte to the Frankfurt School

Abstract In a series of lectures from 1804–05, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sets out a conception of enlightenment whose basic structure is, I argue, to some extent reproduced in two more famous accounts of enlightenment found in post-Kantian German philosophy: Hegel’s account of the Enlightenment’s struggle with faith in his Phenomenology of Spirit and the conception of enlightenment rationality presented in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. The narrative I offer serves to highlight, moreover, the critical role played by the notion of an unconditional good in Fichte’s and Hegel’s critiques of enlightenment. The lack of an explicit appeal to, and account of, this notion in Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of enlightenment will be shown to raise questions concerning how successful their critique of enlightenment can really be thought to be.

The political theology of Fichte’s Staatslehre: immanence and transcendence

ABSTRACT Given its use of religious concepts and language, it is tempting to class Fichte’s rarely discussed Staatslehre as a political theology. I argue that the Staatslehre can be classed as a political theology because of the way in which it can be understood in terms of the concepts of immanence and transcendence. The concept of immanence applies to Fichte’s account of history in particular. Fichte himself allows for a moment of transcendence at the very beginning of history. I argue that the concept of transcendence is also implicit in the Staatslehre in relation to some problems faced by Fichte’s own account of the role of the Zwingherr in the historical development and actualization of right and moral freedom, despite his attempt to avoid introducing theologically based explanations of political concepts at this stage of his Staatslehre.

The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte insists that, unlike other theorists of right (Recht) who are content to offer a merely formal account of this concept, he sees part of the task of any genuine theory of right to consist in showing how the principles of this theory can be applied to the conditions of the sensible world. His The Closed Commercial State (1800) outlines the measures demanded by the application of the principles of right to the economic sphere. It must therefore be viewed as central to Fichte’s own understanding of what a fully developed theory of right would look like. It is fair to say, however, that the later text has been widely ignored at the same time as there has been a growing interest in the Foundations of Natural Right. Isaac Nakhimovsky’s well-written and insightful book represents a welcome alternative to this tendency. The book situates Fichte’s rarely discussed The Closed Commercial State within a set of debates concerning the possibility of international peace, which took place against the background of the European states system and the power politics that characterized this system. Immanuel Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace (1795) was and remains the most famous contribution to this debate. Nakhimovsky shows that Fichte also made a major contribution to this debate by locating his book within a pan-European debate concerning the moral and political implications of the rise of modern commerce and finance. Nakhimovsky’s three main claims on Fichte’s contribution are as follows: First, “The Closed Commercial State was part of Fichte’s attempt to reformulate Rousseau’s theory of popular sovereignty and constitutional government in order to accommodate the changing nature of economic activity in a ‘commercial society,’ or an increasingly postagrarian society marked by an extensive and expanding division of labor.” Secondly, Fichte was responding to a problem that had preoccupied both Rousseau and Kant, namely, “how to neutralize an unstable system of international relations whose escalating violence threatened to undermine the logic of the social contract and make it impossible to create and maintain a government of laws.” And thirdly, Fichte claimed that Europe could transform itself into a peaceful federation of constitutional republics only if “economic life could be disentangled from the competitive dynamics of relations between states,” by means of “a transition to a planned and largely selfsufficient national economy, made possible by a radical monetary policy” (2). The second and the third claims appear to be the easiest to substantiate. A review of Kant’s Perpetual Peace counts among Fichte’s earliest publications. While writing this review Fichte was already giving the lectures on natural right that formed the basis of his Foundations of Natural Right, in which he develops both a contract theory of the state, and a theory of cosmopolitan right, which includes the notion that a confederation of states constitutes a condition of the possibility of establishing lasting peace between independent states. Then in The Closed Commercial State we encounter Fichte’s attempt to further apply the concept of right and, more specifically, his theory of property as the right to be able to live from one’s labour, which he derives from his concept of right. The application of the concept of right is here seen to demand an economic independence from other states that is in large part made possible by the introduction of a new national currency. In Chapter 1, Nakhimovsky sets out to establish the first claim by presenting Fichte’s view of the independent state, which was partly shaped by Siéyes’s view of representation in a large complex society with a division of labour, as well as by what contemporaries took as Kant’s endorsement of this view. Kant’s and Siéyes’s—and ultimately Fichte’s—view of representative institutions required by a constitutional form of government are motivated by the wish to preserve the distinction Rousseau draws between sovereignty and government in the Social Contract. The theory of the state on which The Closed Commercial State is based is also said to contain a Hobbesian element which is to be found together with the republican element in Rousseau’s thought. 122 BOOK REVIEWS

How “Natural” Is Fichte’s Theory of Natural Right?

Despite giving his main work on what would today be described as legal and political philosophy the title Foundations of Natural Right (Grundlage des Naturrechts), Fichte at one point in the same work announces that “there is no natural right [Naturrecht] at all in the sense often given to that term, i.e. there can be no rightful [rechtliches] relation between human beings except within a commonwealth and under positive laws” (FNR 132 [GA I/3:432]). This claim signals that natural right “in the sense often given to that term” is in some way misleading or even mistaken, because relations of a certain type between human beings are only possible given the existence of two artificial, and thus non-natural, entities: the type of legal and political community designated by the term “commonwealth” and the laws that govern such a community. In this respect, Fichte provides a negative answer to a question that he himself poses in the Foundations of Natural Right : the question as to “whether a genuine doctrine of natural right is possible, by which we mean a science of the relation of right [Rechtsverhaltnis] between persons outside the state and without positive law” (FNR 92 [GA I/3:395]).

The Role of Evil in Kant's Liberalism

Abstract Carl Schmitt distinguishes between political theories in terms of whether they rest on the anthropological assumption that man is evil by nature or on the anthropological assumption that man is good by nature, and he claims that liberal political theory is based on the latter assumption. Contrary to this claim, I show how Kants liberalism is shaped by his theory of the radical evil in human nature, and that his liberalism corresponds to the characterization of liberalism that Schmitt himself offers. My discussion of this issue will be shown to have certain implications with respect to the view that for Kant evil is the product of society. I show that this view is mistaken insofar as it fails to recognize that Kants political philosophy implies that human beings require the type of society that best suits their radically evil natures, namely, a commercial one in which the “vices of culture” largely have free play, while the states role is limited to that of preventing the antagonisms found in society leading to the mutual destruction of its members.