Speaking the language of freedom. On the hermeneutical actuality of the political thought of Fichte

Abstract

We can find in the late writings of Fichte an important turn from an individualistic perspective of I to the community perspective of We. He tried in his Reden an die deutsche Nation to explicate a spiritual relationship that works against the atomization of a given society. He elaborated thus an interesting concept of cultural nation. The constitutive factor of such a nation is language, and with it: the ways of thinking and of experiencing the reality. It was a  step ahead not only towards the famous Hegel’s claim about the historical progress through the great, leading nations, but also towards a hermeneutical turn in the European philosophy. Fichte’s late social philosophy is an interesting mixture of transcendental rationalism and modern historical consciousness. He situated his thought on the threshold to something the German contemporary philosopher H. Schnadelbach called a second, historical-hermeneutical Enlightenment.