Catastrophic Idealism: The case of Fichte

Abstract

The abusive interpretation of a text is common practice in the history of philosophy. Johann Gottlieb Fichte is, however, from this point of view, a ‘case’. He is the model of
a well-intentioned author, who attacks, in his writings of political philosophy, a de-demonization of the political power, through a new kind of education. This process, how­ever, has led to the emergence of other ‘demons’. He is the creator of the myth of the nation as political myth, in which the magical function of the word predominates over the function of semantics, in the meanings specified by Cassirer in The Myth of the State.
In Nazi philosophical and ideological discourse, ‘The Divine Idea’ of Fichte is tacitly replaced by the new Weltanschauung, his political idealism thus becoming a danger.