Enlightenment Interrupted by Steinberg Michael

Author:Steinberg, Michael [Steinberg, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78279-013-6
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2014-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Fichte’s anticipation of important strains in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science is especially striking in this passage.

The provisional character of right thus has two aspects, diachronic and synchronic; it addresses a stage in human devel- opment which in the idea, at least, is to be surpassed, and it considers people as empirical individuals, a condition which the moral law reveals is not their true nature. Its apparent inconsis- tencies should be seen in that light.

But how is the state to be organized to best foster ethical growth? It is not meant to determine the good and cajole or prod people towards the light. Fichte was so far from wanting to impose morality by force that he rested his entire political theory on a series of contracts, each one establishing a group of reciprocal rights and duties. The state originates in an act of agreement, and its powers are defined by the implicit terms of the bargain which any reasonable being would necessarily enter into.

The chief aim of Fichte’s rational state is to secure the peace and to ensure that all citizens have the means to support themselves and the opportunity to participate in the moral self-education of the community, the give-and-take extolled in the Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation. One of Fichte’s fundamental social rights, then, is the right to work. Everyone must be able to support himor herself by labor, and any degree of inequality that deprives a citizen of that right must be corrected:

As soon as someone suffers from need, that portion of others’ property that would be required to spare him from such need no longer belongs to those others; rather, it rightfully belongs to the one in need. The civil contract must provide for such a repartitioning of property.9

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.