SOURCE: "Fichte's Theory of Man as Active Self," in Fichte, Marx, and the German Philosophical Tradition, Southern Illinois University Press, 1980, pp. 6-27.

In the excerpt that follows, Rockmore reviews Fichte's philosophy as it defined his notion of human activity. Rockmore concludes that "in Fichte's position the attempted solution to the problem of consciousness requires a view of man as an active being."

Bertrand Russell Criticizes Fichte's Use of Subjectivism:

Kant's immediate successor, Fichte (1762-1814), abandoned "things in themselves," and carried subjectivism to a point which seems almost to involve a kind of insanity. He holds that the Ego is the only ultimate reality, and that it exists because it posits itself; the non-Ego, which has a subordinate reality, also exists only because the Ego posits it. Fichte is not important as a pure philosopher, but as the theoretical founder of German nationalism, by his Addresses to the German...