Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Protestant Theology

Abstract

Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s thinking is part of the Sattelzeit, in which the foundation for the modern use of important concepts is laid. The stages of Fichte’s philosophy and his various theories of religion and Christianity reflect attempts to determine the function of religion in a modern society. Important is the philosophical foundation of religion, which is transformed from a moral theology based on Kant to a unified theory of the philosophy of mind. Fichte thus offers an alternative to Hegel and Schelling. This alternative has only been taken up in Protestant theology at a small number of points, but all the more intensively.

1. The Historiography of Theology

What means and fields are used to describe the influence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) on theology? The typical way would be to interpret Fichte’s philosophy of religion as the basis for a general concept of religion, upon which a symbolically representing theology can then be built. Fichte’s philosophy is then interpreted as the ultimate foundation of religion. This theory of subjectivity starts from the self-reflection of consciousness. In this way, it decomposes a metaphysical, objective concept of God, which is critical of knowledge. It explicates the knowledge contained in the pre-reflective or immediate self-consciousness and builds the idea of an underlying absoluteness upon it. This reception is suggested by various Fichte renaissances in theology, both in late idealism and in the neo-idealist turn around 1900, and finally in the search for a general concept of religion in the context of a relecture of Schleiermacher since the 1960s. These approaches agree on this ultimate idea of a general religion based on the universal structure of human consciousness.

In the following, a different approach will be taken, one which is intended to be linked to the first. The historical semantics and social function of idealistic discourse on religion will also be taken into account (cf. Schlögl 2013, 2015). Idealism is not so much regarded as a valid philosophy of a final foundation that has to be reconstructed to this day, but rather as a self-observation of the modernizing society that can be explained in contemporary history. Fichte’s philosophy of religion is only one element of a new anthropological theory of unity, which, in contrast to the eclectic anthropology of the Enlightenment, seeks to bring to the concept the developments and transformations that occurred up to the Sattelzeit.

The Sattelzeit as a historical epoch, i.e., the years between about 1780 and 1820, reflects on the various processes of differentiation of European societies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Against the yet still valid Christian–Biblical framework theory for the world, nature, humanity, history and culture, it creates a new basis that rests upon the knowledge and experience of the human being. It is important that the (Christian) religion is reduced from a comprehensive world explanation to a separate area of social discourse, which is opposed to other sub-fields of social organization. This view follows several years of revolutionary uncertainty about whether and how religion can be explained functionally and anthropologically at all. This insecurity is compounded by the fact that, at the same time, a civil public is established in relation to politics and administration, and that its right to discuss religious matters has yet to be fought for. In the end, however, it is recognized that religion cannot be abolished by rationalization or made superfluous by functionalization. Rather, religion exists as a separate form of communication in bourgeois society. One question still remains: how the new bourgeois public sphere relates to religion and how the relationship between the public sphere and the church is to be determined. For the Christian religion always consists in the ecclesiastical public organization of worship and preaching.

2. Methodological Considerations

In European society in the 18th century, the traditional view of religion and religious practice was transforming. From something self-evident, the achievement of recognition that reflects the structure of reality as a whole, religion became a special social force of its own. This force no longer encompassed everything, but instead confronted itself with other fields of social interpretation and activity. Accordingly, changes occurred at multiple levels. Texts from the Enlightenment period, especially theological and philosophical ones, can therefore not only be read as sources for the history of concepts, discourse or ideas, but also as sources for the social shifts that can be noticed from a social–historical point of view (cf. Bergunder 2011; Trein 2023).

At a first level, it is assumed that ‘religion’—and also Christianity as a religion—does not have a firm identity. Rather, what religion is changes at the same time as the process in which the observation of religion, and the way in which it is accessed, changes. Pietism, as well as the bourgeois moral religion, which was widely developed in the 18th century, are evidence of how access to religion changes in the way of life of individuals and builds personal structures for the transmission of meaning. In addition to the social significance of religion, this connection between religion and the way of life and the self-image of individuals is the basis for ensuring that religion does not disappear at the end of the century but continues to be lived and communicated.

It can be assumed that, by the middle of the 18th century, it initially became completely unclear what religion actually is, what function it has and what it means for the individual. Deistic theology and its conception of religion, directed toward natural (namely rational) religion, makes way for a search for the function of religion beyond the reduction to the true or universal content. The anthropological question of the meaning of religion for the individual and for society arises, and various options are proposed. The differentiation of society becomes the background of religious distinctions. Public, i.e., in this case government official or political religion is distinguished from the individual private religion. In religious history, the many religions of the world are classified in the direction of moral development; the old assumption of religious knowledge as being dependent on revelation is set against its rationalization as a claim of the independence of religion. Revelation and reason, however, can both be judged inadequate to the true nature of religion as heart and conscience.

It is important that this uncertainty in the definition of religion does not initially directly affect theology as a specialist science. Rather, there is a solid tradition of both the body of texts and their treatment. The increasing neological criticism of the material notions of the Christian faith, in particular Trinity, Christology and Anthropology (doctrine of sin), does not lead to a break, but is understood in the tradition of transforming and continuing to adopt the truth of Christianity. The social transformation processes are not reflected directly, but are accompanied and illustrated in the form of a transformation of the content of faith. The ecclesiastical commitment of theology, i.e., its function for the vocational training and administration of the pastors, is generally assumed. The scientific self-conception of theology is unknowingly divided. Church bonds and their scientific orientation are held side by side, assuming that both are somehow connected.

The scholarly nature of theology is thus finally debated. Traditional theology, with its contextual discussions, which are hardly decidable in argumentation, can be described as a further and systematized form of general knowledge. At the same time, this framework of general knowledge makes it possible to express very different opinions in detail. In contrast, the modification of theology in the 18th century uses philosophical knowledge as a methodological starting point and as a criterion for the content in theology. Theology becomes a science of its own. Historical, philological and systematic arguments are equally included in their criticism and structure. Towards the end of the century, the question of how the new forms of observation of religion that seek to function for humanity can be incorporated into theology becomes a problem. Only then does the possibility arise to establish theology in terms of a philosophy of religion. At the same time, a result of this is that the reality of this new scientific theology is composed positionally, because the basis—namely the respective anthropology or philosophy of consciousness—cannot be negotiated within theology itself.

Religious and theological issues are increasingly discussed in the 18th century in a newly constituted public sphere. This is originally controversial. Still Semler argues in favour of a government authority to interpret theological discourse. The Wöllner religion edict of 1788 seeks to secure this authority. Lessing was still banned from publication after the fragment dispute. However, in the controversy over the atheism dispute, the absolutist hold over the public finally begins to topple. Nevertheless, even the assumption—still dominant in Kant’s Enlightenment article—that this free bourgeois discourse is by itself rational, critical of religion and moral, proves to be naive. The opening up of religious discourse allows both conservative and critical statements. Additionally, with regard to the differentiation of religion, it is precisely the traditional voices that determine, via majority, what religion is in modern society and how it should look and organize itself. One can also describe this the other way around: religion is a crucial issue on the basis of which the bourgeois public is formed. This is where the ideas of tolerance from the Enlightenment came in.

3. Fichte’s Idealism in the History of Theology

It is important to integrate these methodological—social–historical, modernization and differentiation-related, and social and public-oriented questions, which change from questions of content to questions of observation—into the presentation of Fichte’s influence on theology. Fichte’s philosophy of religion is then not so much to be interpreted as the ultimate theory of truth, but as one of many possibilities of the time to reflect and observe social changes. These possibilities are to be interpreted today on the basis of the previous scientific—philosophical and theological—developments. The starting point is not Fichte’s philosophically epochal invention of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’. Instead, it is more important to describe the theological problems, possibilities and alternatives around 1790, of which Fichte’s thinking—as one of many possible further developments—begins.

At several places around this time—in the reception of Kantian criticism of knowledge, its anthropological capability theories and the application of a uniform explanatory program—idealistic ideas and various system designs are emerging. In parallel, however, the contrast between rationalism and supranaturalism develops in theology, which dominates the next decades. It does not make sense to operate with a development and overcoming program from the outset. Idealism is usually portrayed in the historiography of theology as the beginning of the 19th century and the new theology. Here, modern neo-Protestant theology begins with Schleiermacher’s ‘Reden über die Religion’ of 1799, which, as an idealistic (and early romantic) program of independence for religion, refers to Fichte’s self-consciousness-related ideas of justification.

Idealism, on the other hand, is regarded as a reflected enlightenment in the following: it is a summary and observation of the processes, ideas and developments that take place in the 18th century, the recording of which arrives at a certain conclusion in the decades of revolution. The Sattelzeit—as described above—thus lays the foundation for the way in which the modern world of Europe is built. As a tool of reflection and observation, idealism remains related to the development of modern society in the Enlightenment period. Problems and questions of the reflected enlightenment are as follows: Which basic theory replaces the old validity of a Biblical–Christian worldview? How is the position of religion to be determined in this new theory and how does it relate to the other fields of social differentiation? What is the guiding principle of a differentiating religious system? How can the historically existing religions and Christianity be related to this guiding concept? What symbolic achievement do the worlds of imagination, ever immanent to religions, provide? How can the previous theology of Christianity be integrated into this modernized understanding of religion in society and which transformations result?

In a theological–historical treatment of this time (as the basis for a presentation of Fichte’s meaning), the theory of idealism is questioned not with regard to its internal validity, but with regard to its social, cultural–historical and thus religious–historical, external references. However, even the theological drafts from 1790 onwards offer their own form of confirmation of this development. In contrast to neo-Spinocistic interpretations of the world, history and human development, which, as in the case of Herder and Goethe, use Christian content as a free means of representation, they give a representation of theology related to the Christian religion. They therefore explain what idealistic system designs seek to justify anthropologically: the free independence and separateness of religion in the modern public sphere, which is nevertheless assigned its place in a new framework theory of the human spirit (or human consciousness). The lasting problem—and this applies until the emergence of neo-Kantianism—is that the idea of justification and unity on the one hand and the religious or theological description of the system on the other hand are confused.

4. On the Development of Theology until 1790: Revolutionary Situation

The basis of the theological situation around 1790 is the implementation of neological theology (cf. Aner 1929). Its understanding of science, its image of humanity, its ecclesiasticism and its political self-image replaced the old Protestant orthodoxy and the old social theory with its supremacy of church over culture. The leading neologists can see themselves as winners of a transformation process that has fundamentally questioned ancient theology through rational, historical and experiential argumentation. It is not only in philosophy that ‘godless’ patterns of reasoning can now prevail. This had already been demonstrated by Wolff’s reinstatement against the Pietists in Halle in 1740. Now, however, even in theological science itself, every appeal to revelation and tradition must be connected with contemporary and substantiated plausibility tests. Basic assumptions of ancient theology, such as the original sinfulness of humanity, for example, and humanity’s reliance on divine revelation and its inability to improve itself, as well as the identity of this necessary revelation with the biblical text and the impossibility of its rational criticism were abandoned in a 40-year process of criticism. Nonetheless, neology is not critical of religion or Christianity: Rather, it emphasizes the importance of the Christian religion and church for society, for morality and improvement of the way of life, for political work on the foundations of the still predominantly agricultural economy. It defends the historical revelation of God as the basis of moral education and therefore sees the Church as an educational authority for a new human formation and a new self-conception of people that recognizes freedom. However, the relationship between transformation and differentiation, between theological development and religious determination remains unclear. This is reflected in the relationship between the neological view of religion and politics. Here the proximity to the absolutist state remains. On the one hand, the question arises as to how far scientific criticism of religion and the replacement of revelation by purely rational anthropology may go. On the other hand, the “crisis of Neology” (Hirsch 1949b, p. 80) is also visible in the position of the newly emerging bourgeois public sphere, specifically through state censorship in matters of religion and freedom of theological discussion.

Neology shows that there is a strong continuity on the social surface in terms of the existence of Christianity in society and the theological continuation of Christian dogmatism. Neology does indeed make strong transformational efforts with regard to the rationalization and anthropologization of theology. This also includes the acceptance of their historicity and changeability and the construction of the various disciplines—exegetic, historical, systematic and practical. However, it becomes unclear what is actually the subject matter and the method of theology appropriate to the subject matter. The perception of historicity can—as with Lessing and Kant—lead to a demand of unhistorical reason or moral religion. Anthropologization can also lead to a corresponding abolition of traditional Christianity by transforming the doctrine of original sin into a doctrine of perfection and happiness. The individualization of the private religion, as with Semler, leads to the loss of the connection between church and piety and relies on a political form of the socialization of religion. The pluralization of the understanding of religion beyond deistic and natural–religious constructs and the perception of pre-Christian and non-European religions can be carried on to the point of questioning the necessity of salvation within Christianity. In a historical–ontological reaction to the vagueness of religion, Christianity can be used, as with Herder, as a metaphorical description of the world and spiritual development as a whole. In the generation following the neologists, it becomes clear that the loss of Christianity as a framework for the conception of the world, society and self needs a new definition of ‘religion’. However, at first there is neither a philosophical basis for a new anthropology nor a comprehensive acceptable definition of the understanding of religion. It is also unclear where the transformation will lead—the loss of the Christian framework could also be final and a new materialistic, social–technical and science-based framework narrative could take its place. In addition, even if one assigns religion its own place in the cultural fields of the interpretation of life, in addition to politics, law, art, science, etc., what constitutes the nature of these fields, or according to which internal codes the religious system functions, is not recognizable.

At this point, the discourse about the new bourgeois public sphere, and the function of religion within it, is important. It develops in parallel with the disputes of this revolutionary time, or, in other words, the fragments, pantheism and atheism disputes. Kant’s Enlightenment paper addresses the demand for a public space alongside politics, in which free debates can take place. His faculty paper calls for a free philosophical science, which is superseded by the faculties dedicated to its purpose and especially the theological faculty with their authoritarian attachment to scripture, confession and tradition-protecting politics. At around 1790, the question therefore arises as to whether the discourse on religion can survive in a free society, what function it has for the whole society, and which form of religion in this free discourse will prove to be viable and sustainable.

An alternative solution to the question of religion can be read from Jacobi’s philosophy (cf. Timm 1974). Here faith is understood as a representation of a pre-rational or sensed unity of God, world and spirit. This is a philosophical reaction to Kant’s criticism of the rational proofs of God and to the crisis of neology expressed in this criticism. For this purpose, the emotional approaches of the time of Sturm und Drang, which understand the heart as a place of the individual’s wholeness, are included. The decisive factor is the insight that religion cannot be resolved functionally or rationally in terms of content. Faced with pantheistic solutions to the problem, which involve ontology, cosmology, consciousness, linguistics and history, and as with Herder and Goethe, Jacobi (with Hamann and Lavater) insists on an individual relationship with God as a personal counterpart. This insistence was understood by Jacobi’s contemporaries as a leap into faith. Jacobi can also be interpreted as pointing to the independence of religion in the context of cultural differentiation. For practicing Christians, religion does not consist of moral improvement or an explanation of the world in thought, but in the giving of individual meaning. This includes the individual personal relationship with God. A theology that does not take up this moment is unsuitable as an interpretation of religion. This makes it possible to see, in outline, how religion and theology are understood anew, namely in the recognition of religion as a separate entity in the life of the individual, in cultural communication and in the social organization of society. Theology becomes its own science, which on the one hand always refers to religion as its object, i.e., is not simply philosophy, but on the other hand does not identify directly with the religious attitude, but observes it.

Another development concerning theology as a science marks the publication of Kant’s critical philosophy and his proposals for determining a rational moral religion. As is well known, his acceptance of the doctrine of sin as an anthropological point of construction was interpreted in Weimar as a mockery of what was achieved in the 18th century. But for the younger generation, this was a starting point for understanding religion as an anthropologically necessary field of human self-understanding. Christology and the doctrine of sin are not forms of past moral levels but can be interpreted as permanent elements of a religion that reflects on itself. This emphasizes the intrinsic importance of Christian content. Furthermore, a new form of hermeneutic interpretation is proposed. This should no longer be about truth and object-related aspects, but rather about the anthropological and consciousness–theoretical function. The fact that these functional hermeneutics are at the same time a final stage of the truth orientation of the understanding of religion is visible in Kant’s theory of religion. He interprets the contents of Christianity as a means of representation of the moral religion of reason. The moral theological drafts of the 1790s, by Tieftrunk, Forberg, Fichte, Röhr and the young Carl Daub, show that one can continue to work well on this level of Kantian reception in terms of philosophy of religion. However, the Kantian truth of moral religion shifts to anthropological correctness and interpretability. Albrecht Ritschl later rightly invoked this side of Kantian philosophy of religion in his turn from the speculative philosophy of unity to a special concept of religion oriented toward Christianity. In addition to the aforementioned forms of a post-Kantian reception of moral religion, supranaturalism should also be read in this way. It reacts to the philosophical independence of religion initiated by Kant. Supranaturalism interprets Kant in a philosophically naive way. By restricting knowledge, Kant opened the way for faith in a new way. However, theologically, this interpretation offers the possibility of understanding the contents of Christianity as forms of description of an anthropologically anchored religion. The new appeal to revelation against reason, as practiced at the Tübingen school of Storr, can thus be understood as the foundation of a theology that is related to religion as a newly fixed subject area (cf. Pannenberg 1996, pp. 35–45).

5. The Situation of Theology around 1790: Tasks of the Sattelzeit and Reflected Enlightenment

If one summarizes the above-mentioned currents and tasks for theology, one arrives at the following: 1. There is a lack of a precise understanding of what religion is, what it means, how it functions, and how this can be named anthropologically without dissolving itself. This task can be understood as a search for the code peculiar to religion, one according to which it functions within a society that is becoming more and more differentiated. 2. Especially if this task is to be solved, the question of the connection of religion with the other new fields of social action and interpretation arises immediately. There is a lack of an anthropological foundation of the whole human being, which establishes the connection in the capacity of consciousness and classifies religion there. Here, the current Christian–religious framework theory of reality based on biblical authority and ancient thinking is abandoned and instead a modern anthropological foundation based on the self-determination of humanity is introduced. 3. There is no indication of the place where discourses about the Christian religion are meaningful and further reaching. The ecclesiastical version of the power of the pastor’s public speech, which is closely related to politics, is out of date. The individualizing compromise solution of the separation of private religion and public religion does not reflect their own place. This also means that a pure individual religion cannot be the target. Poetic and literary forms of the representation of the religion of the heart and conscience are also public forms of speech. The assignment of religious discourse purely into science, in turn, leads to a philosophical transformation. The relationship between public communication and internal religious discourse is needed, especially if both do not merge into each other, but the peculiarity of religious understanding is recognized in society. 4. The theological debates that take place as transformational discourses of the interpretation of Christian contents must be distinguished from this. Here, on the one hand, there is a persistence of the contents and their enlightened, objectively truthful processing. On the other hand, it cannot be denied in the long run that theology itself must react to the new suggestions for philosophy of religion or must incorporate them into its own foundation.

In view of these problems, the time from 1790 can be considered as Sattelzeit. In the following drafts of a religious–philosophical foundation of theology, various characteristics of religion that are decisive for modernity are worked out. First of all, the independence of religion is established, and it is incorporated into the comprehensive concept of the human spirit. Then, their relationship to the new phenomenon of a discursive bourgeois public is clarified. Additionally, theology is re-founded as a science within a concept of the human spirit, which is already thought of in religious terms. This lays the foundations of the religious system in modern society. Fichte is involved in these attempts. His philosophy of religion can be read as a variant of a modern reflexive observation of the religious system. The reflexive observation in this Sattelzeit represents a decisive difference to the specialist theology. In the context of rationalism and supranaturalism, the Christian religion is understood as a system of its own and represents it with the classical means of theology. However, it does not at first receive the reflexive foundations and rationale of the new, anthropologically founded philosophy of religion. It is precisely in this refusal, however, that the new social self-relation and independence of religion becomes theologically and scientifically visible. This also means, however, that a contemporary reception to Fichte’s theory in theology was not initially realized. Fichte’s development and its significance were hardly recognizable to his contemporaries, partly because he no longer published the versions of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’. Conversely, a popular work such as the ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’ (1806) was theologically undecipherable due to the lack of background and was read as a pious piece.

6. Fichte’s Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion until 1790

In the following, it is therefore necessary to trace the fundamental moments of Fichte’s development of thought about religion in such a way that the references to contemporary problems become visible. Different versions are recognizable. First, the pre-Kantian way of thinking until 1790 (cf. Preul 1969). Then, Fichte’s reception of Kant in his ‘Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung’ of 1792, followed by a new foundation of practical philosophy in the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ and its versions from 1794 onwards. The atheism dispute in 1799 led to Fichte’s move to Berlin, with which a new version of the relationship between religion and ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ is also carried out in the ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ of 1800. Knowledge reflection and theory of the absolute dominate the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ from 1801 onwards, which also remains the basis for Fichte’s ‘late philosophy’ between the ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’ of 1806 and his death 1814 (cf. Schmid 1995).

Fichte’s early texts, written before his reception of Kant, reveal a metaphysical system of thought that represents a mixture of the philosophies of Spinoza and the Wolffian school. Fichte calls this theology without any difference to philosophy. Theology is thus interpreted as a philosophical search for the reason of the world, the context of things and their thinking. Religion is understood as a life-world form of individual contemplation. Here he takes up the search for the determination of the conscience and heart of the religious in the context of the enlightened moral religion. Religion has an impact on the life of the individual. It is a mood of feeling that makes her joyful to do good in the face of a personally reactive God. It is important that Fichte does not construct a connection between theology and religion. Both functions are simply side by side, they do not contradict each other or affect each other. Science as a declaration of the world is different from religion, which stands for a moral-pedagogical basic determination of the individual. There can be no revelation in a strictly deterministic world; an interpretation of reality as a place of individual commitment and reconciliation is unthinkable. What is missing, however, is an explanation of how both can be united in one person—at least the philosophical or theological thinking person. Fichte notes a deficiency here.

7. Fichte’s Philosophy and Ethicotheology 1790–1794

The reception of Kant in 1790, along with the adoption of the philosophy of freedom, resulted in new content for theology and religion. However, the fundamental problem of the separation between ultimately substantiating and reflexive knowledge on the one hand, and moral–personal immediacy on the other, remains. Fichte’s philosophy of religion is visible in the first two editions of the ‘Offenbarungsschrift’ (cf. Kessler 1986; Wittekind 1997a, 1997b). The deterministic system of thought is replaced by a justification of thought and the conception of reality based on the principle of freedom that gives itself its moral law. In this system of freedom, the idea of God—and here Fichte also calls this system “theology”—stands for the harmony of nature and morality. This transforms the opposition of determinism and personal attribution into another opposition, namely that of rational moral determination and its enforcement in the place of an individual being that is only finite, i.e., one that is at the same time subordinated to the world of the senses. Fichte reformulates religion as a determinacy of the lower appetitive faculty, as a search for appropriate action in the context of the reality of the world with the help of the sense-related ethical judgment. Kantian theology is now interpreted as an autonomous knowledge of the moral determination of practical reason. However, Fichte does not conceive religion—as Kant then does in the ‘Religionsschrift’—as an illustration of the structurally general transition to purely moral determination, but rather as a continuous influence on all human actions in the context of reality. The moral law, in which pure practical reason gives itself the law, acts in the form of its objectifying interpretation—as given by God and understanding God as continued causality—back on the will of humanity. This is the formal principle of religion. From here it is asked whether and under what conditions revelation is necessary and possible. Fichte concludes that this is the case where humanity is completely under the dominance of sensual desire and the legislation of moral reason is no longer heard. Where, however, moral freedom, even if only rudimentary, is given, God’s revelation is given not as an outward event, but as an expression of morality itself. Fichte’s theory is thus already based on the gradual arrangement of states of self-consciousness with regard to the reflection of autonomy.

Theologically, Fichte’s claim becomes visible in the criticism practiced by F.G. Süskind as a pupil of the older supranaturalist school in Tübingen (Süskind 1794). He sees Fichte’s ultimate intention of revelatory thought for autonomous morality at the moment of its loss in the world of life, but cannot accept the loss of significance for the bourgeois way of life. Religion is conceived by Süskind as an ever-accompanying awareness of God’s revelation in life, not as an expression of morality. Thus, an external moment experienced in religion is recorded as its constant characteristic. The appeal to God as a counterpart becomes an essential feature of religious communication. It is clear that this definition of religion cannot be dissolved into a (religious) historical model of development toward rational–reflexive self-justification. The new supranaturalism represented by Süskind counteracts the crisis of theism by pointing to the necessity of the concept of God for religion. Thus, the differentiation of religion as a separate social context of interpretation in theology, which proceeds according to its own laws and codes, becomes tangible.

The dominance of a discourse of justification, aimed at conscious reflection within the conception of religion—as opposed to the question of its own area-forming characteristics—is also evident in Fichte’s statements on Judaism, which are reflected in his opinion on the French Revolution. This concerns the right of public opinion and discussion in the state. The justification for the revolution depends on the general negotiation of the state constitution. Fichte, however, excludes from this discussion those groups that form their own state within the state. This includes, for example, the military, but primarily Judaism. Because the Jews do not celebrate the Christian—and secular or political—festivals of the people, they have no share in the community and are only to be respected as individual carriers of human rights. Like morality, Fichte’s integration into the community depends on conscious approval. Religion is also subordinated to this. There is no room for Judaism as a religion in its own right and thus for the independence and anti-modernity of religion in general in Fichte’s society-related theory of ultimate justification.

8. Fichte’s Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion from 1794

With the beginning of the work at the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ in 1794, the term ‘theology’ for the foundation of philosophy in consciousness ceases to exist. The subjectivity–theoretical foundation is not intended to include the philosophy of religion. Nevertheless, a potential for the treatment of questions of philosophy of religion remains in the foundation of knowledge. From the ‘Bestimmungsschrift’ of 1800 onwards, this has an increasing effect on the theory of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’. It is transformed into a speculative theory resting upon knowledge of the Absolute, as is evident in the ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’ of 1806. Religion is negotiated on three levels: Initially, as a question of a reflected theory of final justification and its core of reality. Then, as a question of the specific contribution of religion to the individual, morally oriented way of life. Finally, as a question of the different religions and their historical sorting. Fichte’s thought on religion in the period between the ‘Kritik aller Offenbarung’ of 1792/93 and the ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ of 1800 can be read from his recurring commentary on Platner’s philosophical aphorisms, which is part of his teaching duties as a professor in Jena (cf. Wittekind 1993).

In the third edition of his aphorisms, Platner proposed a peculiar reception of Kant. He recognizes the constructiveness of consciousness for object recognition. At the same time, however, he postulates that this self-generated thinking actually corresponds to things. For God, too, Platner held on to such an analogy that acknowledged objectivity. The ideas of perfection and aseity point to God as an object. Thereby, eclectically, Platner tried to balance the metaphysical foundation of the world with the modern critique of knowledge. Fichte, on the other hand, has fixed Kant’s transcendental philosophy on the reflexive illumination of the conditions of thought. God is not before or outside the thought of God. However, this only applies to philosophy. Religion as a life-world phenomenon is distinguished precisely by the fact that it is certain of God’s ‘objectivity’. The task of philosophy is to explain how this religious certainty is possible and how it arises.

Fichte’s Platner lectures show a differentiated reflection on religion, arguing at different levels. On the transcendental level, the idea of God as the guiding idea of religion depends on the self-knowledge of the freedom that gives itself its law. However, because this freedom in humanity as finite beings exposed to the sensory world is not consistently legislative, various moral standpoints arise. Each of these points of view is associated with a particular type of religion and these types can have different forms, representations and contents depending on their historical location. Thus, a religious symbol theory is combined with a morally staggered religious history. It is held together in a common concept of religion, namely the expression of immediate certainty. With these elements Fichte reacts to the requirements of a determination of religion in modernity. However, this sequence remains controlled by the foundation of religion in the moral consciousness of freedom, which cannot be betrayed by reason because of the fundamental self-positing structure. Philosophical derivation dominates the sphere of the religious, for which immediate certainty is also claimed.

9. Fichte’s Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion at the Time of the Atheism Dispute

Fichte’s essay ‘Über den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung’ of 1798, which triggered the atheism dispute, provides a summary of the religious theory developed in the context of the Platner lectures. Fichte published these considerations as a correction of Forberg’s essay ‘Entwicklung des Begriffs der Religion’ of 1798 (Röhr 1991). There, Kant’s philosophy was continued with its separation from practical and theoretical reason. For religion, this means that a theoretical claim to knowledge for the thought of God can no longer be made. Practical reason contains immanent assumptions that require action as if God exists. Nothing is said about this existence itself. Against this position of Forberg, Fichte wants to show that practical reason is directly connected with the assumption of the reality of God. The moral world order is synonymous with God and is directly a religious self-interpretation, which is given at the same time as the moral self-determination of humanity. After the successive elaborations of the relationship between morality and reality developed in the Platner lectures, every claim about reality must be waived. The moral world order is an interpretation of the immediately certain present constitution of will; it is impossible to draw realistic conclusions from it for the post-mortem survival of people and the actual establishment of the Kingdom of God in time. Fichte not only tried to hold on to Kant as guarantor for a comprehensive theory of the human world. Instead, he also takes up moments of criticism of his own theory, as had been expressed in particular by Jacobi. His transformation of the concept of God was supported by a decisive criticism of the metaphysical remnants in the concept of God, as they were still recognizable by Platner. For Fichte, this criticism also included the idea of God as a person of his own, facing the world with will and mind.

Because of this criticism and the increasing decoupling of the moral order from world and history, Fichte was accused of atheism, initially by an indictment of the Higher Consistory in Dresden. On the one hand, the contents of Christianity were defended, like God as the transmundian creator and the immortality of the soul. At the same time and beyond, Fichte’s ‘atheism’ was presented as incompatible with any modern natural conception of religion. Similarly, in a letter from a father to his student son, the neological interpretation of Christianity, continued in the present in rationalism and supranaturalism, was presented as exemplary (Röhr 1991). In these allegations Fichte’s philosophical reconstruction efforts for a transcendental justification of religion were not even understood. Fichte found it easy to reject them. He even turned the accusation of atheism upside down and in his turn accused his opponents of atheism. For that ‘thing’ with will and mind, which they have in mind as God, cannot be morally significant. However, it becomes apparent in this dispute that the transcendental philosophical justification of religion contradicts religion’s view of itself. Fichte’s opponents included not only traditionalists and neologically minded people, but also Jacobi, Goethe and Herder as well as, for example, Reinhard, who represents his own form of supranaturalism, among the churchmen. They were all of the opinion that religion had to be defended as the necessary greatness of social order and governance and to which substantially belonged the dependence on a transcendent power, which must not be dissolved anthropologically. In other words, Fichte’s separation of the philosophical level of reconstruction and the religious-content-related attitude and concept in the individual person is not perceived as sufficient to understand religion. Rather, as a result of the dispute, it can be recorded in the context of the Sattelzeit modernization of key social concepts. On the transcendental level of the argumentation itself, it is to be reasoned that realistic moments of a transcendental counterpart to the consciousness of the human being exist, for otherwise it becomes pointless to hold on to religion as a determining power on the level of the living world.

10. The Change in Fichte’s Philosophy after the Atheism Controversy

Following the atheism dispute, and after his withdrawal from the professorship in Jena, Fichte continued to work at this point, namely on the foundation of his anthropological theory of freedom in absolute theory (cf. U. Barth [1999] 2003; Danz 2012a). However, the extensions of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, which have been associated with the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ since 1794, have been retained. As a result, from 1801 onwards, the foundation of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ becomes a puzzle of well-founded logical reasoning and permanent reflection on the possibility of knowing this. Fichte’s processing of the atheism dispute does not only take place on a content level. He also sees his role as a publicist operating in the public sphere under attack. The crisis of theism, described by philosophers, is not really possible in increasingly conservative social communication (and as a result of its permanent political lack of freedom threatened by censorship). Fichte repeatedly tried to point out in this dispute that he wanted to distinguish two levels of reflection from each other. On the level of philosophical reflection, the classical idea of God is no longer sustainable under further developed Cartesian as well as under neo-Spinozist and Kantian conditions. However, this does not apply to the life-world level of people’s immediate religious attitudes. However, it was not only Goethe who deliberately reduced Fichte’s philosophy of the ego (i.e., the general structure of ego) to its empirical impossibility.

Fichte’s philosophy from 1800 onwards and the connection to the philosophy of religion, which has now been (re)inscribed into it, cannot be viewed in isolation from the point of view of theology, but only in the context of other contemporary attempts at a final foundation of philosophy (cf. Fulda and Stolzenberg 2001; Stolzenberg 2007; Danz and Stolzenberg 2011; Waibel et al. 2018). The absolute claimed in this case can be described in realistic, truth, unity reflection or negation theoretic terms. At the very least, the names Jacobi, Novalis, Schlegel and Schleiermacher could be mentioned, as could Reinhold as a catalyst for Fichte, Schiller for his aesthetic continuation of Kant, and the Tübingen line with Hölderlin, Schelling and Hegel. The various foundations of a new (idealistic) type of philosophy, as well as the mutual historical dependencies, respective renewals and claims to overcome, have been worked on in philosophy for decades and can be researched through the growing editions of the protagonists’ works. In theology, these results are rather en passant and only received in depth by individuals. The connection between the philosophy of absoluteness and the philosophy of religion, as well as the connection between a such founded philosophy of religion and theological dogmatism, is unclear. Fichte’s influence on Schleiermacher is itself a dispute in theological historiography and is influenced by the respective reception of positions. The relationship of Fichte to Enlightenment and neo-Spinocistic attempts to integrate cosmology and the natural and spiritual–cultural history of development can also be regarded as a precursor for a theological–historical reconstruction. Fichte’s philosophy from the unity of being, which enables truth and certainty, presents itself as an alternative to Hegel’s dialectics. In this, every possible determinacy of thought about the immanent movement of the double negation is generated. The absolute or the absolute spirit as the final thought of the system is also genetically constructed in this way. It is precisely the possibility of this construction that Fichte denies. However, he maintains that his idea of unity is also the result of the reflexivity carried out until the very end. The absolute or absolute being is not to be interpreted as a mere setting, a mystical relic or a fideistic assertion. The questions as to what exactly Fichte means with his ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ from 1800 onwards are still open today. It is a question of what affinity exists between science and philosophy of religion, how religion as a worldly attitude follows from it, what is the core of religion in the world of life, how the diversity of religions can be understood and what all this means for theology. To this day, this question can be answered in a manner that is less text-related but that relies instead on the frequently broken research process on Fichte’s late philosophy up to the present.

11. The Change of Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion after the Atheism Dispute

Since his reception of Kant in 1790, it was clear for Fichte that the foundation of religion can only be a component of the philosophy of practical reason. This practical reason depends on the self-positing structure of knowledge in general. The change in the foundation of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’, which began with the publication ‘Die Bestimmung des Menschen’ of 1800, consists in the fact that overarching aspects of a sphere of absoluteness are incorporated into the foundation of knowledge (cf. Hirsch 1914; Stolzenberg 1986; U. Barth 1992, pp. 311–54). Thus, the possibility of the philosophy of religion shifts from the treatment of a subsequent problem of moral consciousness to the incorporation into the foundation of the highest principles of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ itself. Not only all morally bound actions of the human being, also all reality related knowledge is reflected religiously. This shift becomes visible in the ‘Bestimmungsschrift’. For the question arises here from moral doctrine: what is the framework within which the individual determinacy of my duty in relation to the determinations of other individuals can be recognized? The possible answer is linked to the religious conception of the Kingdom of God. This is not only the result of the actions of people under ethical normativity, but is already a basic condition for this ethical determination. Thus, the Kingdom of God is the framework within which free spirits can have knowledge of free spirits. As a religious term, it is the necessary absolute–theoretical condition of intersubjectivity. At the same time, the superordinate dimension that this implies is not only a guarantee of determination but also of reality for all of the knowledge constituted by free knowledge. Thus, the new foundation links the philosophy of freedom not only with the awareness of one’s respective duty, but also with the certainty of the worldly understanding of reality.

Fichte’s variations on ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ from 1801 onwards revolve around the question of how to know about the reason constructed in this way. The problem is how the determination and the necessary construction performance of knowledge can be given at the same time and how this double determination can also be represented in the execution of knowledge itself. With the help of metaphorical expressions, such as light and eye, the connection between the execution dimension, determination, reflexivity and certainty is anchored in the centre of the knowledge of the ego about itself. With this, Fichte enriches his theory of self-positing in the intellectual intuition from the early ‘Wissenschaftslehre’. This basic form of consciousness in the intellectual intuition constructs philosophy in a double distinction between freedom and being on the one hand, and direct and reflected knowledge on the other, which is held together by the act of realisation. This is the scheme of the fivefold synthesis of knowledge (cf. Meckenstock 1974).

12. Fichte’s Philosophy in Late ‘Wissenschaftslehre’

According to the conviction of secondary literature, the most detailed construction and determination of the absolute as the basis of self-knowledge in its fivefold form is available in the versions of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ from the year 1804, which in turn forms the philosophical basis of Fichte’s writing on the philosophy of religion, ‘Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben’ of 1806. The elaboration of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ of 1801, which almost made it to print, offers a decisive step in this direction, insofar as here the transparency of absolute knowledge as freedom is attached to its antinomic reference to absolute being. In 1804, on the other hand, absolute knowledge is developed as a moment of the absolute or a presupposed absolute truth and unity (R. Barth 2004, pp. 257–356). Pure certainty, which is not the certainty of this or that, is thus rooted in a superior transcendental absoluteness sphere in which absolute truth and unity of knowledge are co-represented in this Self as its execution and condition. At the same time, the pure certainty thus reconstructed proves to be the condition of the possibility of certainty with regard to all individual capacities of consciousness and every single act of this consciousness. Fichte takes up Kant’s transcendental method but combines it with a further idealistic claim to unity. All faculties have their foundation in the moment of production of knowledge, of imagination. It is inescapably set with the feeling of certainty of itself, against the romantic irony and inexhaustibility of the imagination. From this, it is deduced that every form of human interaction with the world is accessible to itself. Each determination of consciousness in life represents in its own way the pure certainty that underlies it, the certainty of that unity which is at the same time truth. In all of these forms, self-presenting knowledge is understood as a representation of the absolute, whose image must first be regarded as pure knowledge for itself.

13. Fichte’s Philosophy of Religion in the ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’

Fichte’s ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’ of 1806 is his most important writing in the philosophy of religion (Pecina 2007). Behind the popular use of Christian images, such as the Johannine love metaphor in particular, stands a complicated architecture, sorting the religious theme into various argumentative contexts. This assumes the foundation of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ in the absolute from 1800 onwards, in theory of truth and unity. For this absolute, Fichte already uses the concept of God in purely philosophical contexts. In relation to the absolute is the form of self-transparency of consciousness, which is related to knowledge and recognition, as it is genetically reconstructed by the ‘Wissenschaftlehre’. It sees itself as a representation of the absolute. However, this representation of the absolute always exists only in the form of five various standpoints in which the subject realizes her free self-referentiality. These standpoints form the foundation of the living-world, in which they are then provided with cultural and historical variants of symbolic contents. The presentation of the five possible standpoints is initially oriented toward the reconstruction of forms of self-consciousness. It is only in a further step that a framework of supportive self-experiences is assigned to the respective standpoint. It is only here that the foundation of the philosophy of religion arrives at its goal, by connecting religion to the affects and thus allowing the longing for fulfilment of the destiny of humanity to be transferred into the idea of religious love. The core of this is the transformation of the concept of the Kingdom of God, which already determines the moral religion. This becomes a framework concept of universality. Only this makes possible the recognition of a God who encompasses all individuals and thus truly enables intersubjectivity.

It is important that the doctrine of the five standpoints describes religion as the highest stage of the realization of the destiny of humanity. While the sensual and the legalistic standpoints shift the internal certainty of the absolute to outer dimensions, the moral standpoint, which refers to the autonomous value of all cultural creations and interpretive achievements of humanity, is already directed to the internal self-reflection of freedom. Only religion, however, completes internalization by combining the recognition of others as moral beings with the self-experience of moral freedom. In this recognition, absolute truth and unity is realized in the place of the individual in the execution of faith and represented in the concept of God as love. The genetic reconstruction of the path in the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ forms the fifth standpoint, which, however, does not add anything to religious inwardness.

For the (Christian) religion, the reception of the thought of love as the affective agreement of the individuals in the kingdom of God becomes the centre. Fichte thus distances himself from theological definitions of the nature of Christianity in terms of sin, justification and redemption. Reconciliation is not a renunciation of sin but becomes the fulfilment of humanity in faith. Time-related and changing aspects of self-interpretation are dissolved into the notion of eternity. Fichte only takes up elements of Christianity that allow it to be interpreted as the realization of its unity figure based on the theory of absoluteness and truth.

In summary, it can be stated that Fichte’s philosophy of religion provides a rich theoretical toolkit for the comprehension of religion, Christianity and life-world piety. The foundation is a philosophy of consciousness, which, in contrast with the eclectic anthropology of the Enlightenment, ultimately establishes the unity of consciousness. This is undertaken in a truth-related manner that is bound to constructively determining knowledge. This foundation is followed by a concept of religion, one which describes the difference between religion and other forms of consciousness such as morality, sensuality or science. However, and this is what makes Fichte’s standpoints special, they are ultimately constructed in a teleological series toward the self-transparency of pure knowledge and thus all deducible from a self-reflexive relation of determinacy. On this basis, in a further step, the internal leading figure for the determination of religion is developed. Here Fichte offers the supermoral certainty of a universal kingdom of God instead of a sin-related construction of salvation. At this point, too, which is clearly already laid out for a certain interpretation of Christianity as the true religion—namely, one that can be substantiated in the theory of consciousness—Fichte’s construction, directed at the realization of the determination of man, shows itself to be not really capable of pluralism. The unified construction of science dominates the difference between historical forms of realization. However, in a further step, it should be pointed out that Fichte takes up the search for an empirical–historical history of religion in the various viewpoints. As in the Platner lectures, this leads to the structuring and classification of the de facto religions of humanity according to moral points of view directed to the self-consciousness of free knowledge. On the basis of the Kantian transcendental philosophy, Fichte brings together Hume’s natural history and Lessing’s moral pedagogical view, incorporating Rousseau’s individualistic understanding of religion. From each standpoint there is also the form of religious self-interpretation that is unique to it, just as the standpoints are again present in a transformed form from the standpoint of religion. Finally, at the end of the religious–philosophical construction chain stands the interpretation of Christianity from its internal heritage. Here, Fichte, like other idealistic and early romantic contemporaries, draws on the Johannine writings of the New Testament and opposes the Pauline–Augustine–Reformation view.

Fichte thus takes up the requirements for a comprehensive theory of religion. What is needed is a definition of the concept of religion, a sorting of religions and the history of religion, a definition of the nature of Christianity, and, finally, a theory of symbols that enables the use of traditional statements in the present and, at the same time, controls them critically. Only with this set of theories can the questions of religion and Christianity be dealt with in the process of social change.

Fichte does not only refer to religion, but to all the knowledge, action and feeling of the world of life, to forms of underlying reflection and transparency of certainty. Thus, his theory is given an unstoppable compulsive and demanding character, which affects the individual. ‘Normal’ life, which is not aware of its moral, freedom and destiny-related nature, can only be regarded as superficial and dispersed. In addition, the difference between the different modes of participation of the individual in social fields of meaning cannot be adequately represented. Citizenship and participation in the ethical community and in the church are individually charged in a normative way. Thus, the independence of the Church is not conceivable: A socio-theoretically oriented concept of church fails. Fichte does not differentiate between the bourgeois public sphere, the Christian church and the politically controlled community. Thus, he is in good company in idealistic system building. However, for him, the connection between Kantian restriction of cognition, individual participation in the determination of man and unity-related foundations of the cognition system has a particularly aggravating effect. The later systems of idealism work without the unconditional inclusion of the individual, which also opens up areas of freedom. Apart from the special case of Kierkegaard, only the theology of Wilhelm Herrmann followed by the theologies of Karl Holl and Emanuel Hirsch have been comparably strict in this respect.

14. The Theological Reception of Fichte in Speculative Theology

Not only the theological, but also the philosophical reception of Fichte presented peculiar difficulties. One of these is due to the various versions of the system: From the renewed neological thought of God to the moral theological reception of Kant and to the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ and its new idea of God and the kingdom, which becomes visible in the atheism dispute. Since the ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ of 1800, the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ has gained a new absoluteness-related form, which became particularly visible in the ‘Anweisungsschrift’ in terms of the philosophy of religion. To which of the versions should this reception refer? Does development not dissolve the idea of a valid version of the final reasoning? Did Fichte sacrifice God to freedom at the beginning, and freedom to God at the end? Another difficulty lies in the language form available in the later versions of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’. For this does not consistently separate between philosophical absolute constructs and the religious idea of God but uses the concept of God for the philosophical absolute in favour of representability and intelligibility. This raises the problem of whether the theological reception should refer to the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ or specifically to the philosophy of religion. Conversely, philosophers can ask themselves whether the late ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ can be philosophically accepted at all or whether it is only a disguise of beliefs. Finally, another question arises from Fichte’s separation of philosophical thinking and popular representation. Particularly with regard to the ‘Anweisungsschrift’, it was unclear to contemporaries whether it was a popularization of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ itself or an independent philosophy of religion.

In the 1840s, Immanuel Hermann Fichte organized an edition of all of his father’s works. In his foreword to the religious–philosophical volume, the Fichte reception of the speculative Hegel succession can be easily recognized (Fichte 1845, pp. V–XXXVII). On the one hand, I.H. Fichte places a strong emphasis on the development and the various stages of Fichte’s philosophy. He underpins this teleological model of progressive knowledge and reflection. On the other hand, he therefore considers the respective positions to be incomplete. In a positive way, he only emphasizes the critical dimension of Fichte’s thinking in relation to the external rationalism of the time. The son understands the transcendental reflexivity of the father as the ‘immanentization’ of the absolute. I.H. Fichte does not understand the critical reserve in the determinations of absolute knowledge. I.H. Fichte sees the unit functions that have just been granted by Fichte, which become visible in knowledge as basic conditions, only as a break-off of reflection. The son postulates a necessary transition to absolute self-consciousness, which as reflexive knowledge becomes aware of its own self-justification in the form of the generation of determinacy. Fichte’s ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ thus becomes a point of passage within idealistic speculation via Schelling to Hegel. On the other hand, I.H. Fichte negatively assesses the philosophy of religion throughout. In particular, the ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’ is criticized as a failed attempt to popularize science. For I.H. Fichte does not admit an independence of religion and theology. In the inwardness of absolute self-consciousness, philosophy and religion are united. The representational indifference between the absolute and the concept of God, already recognizable in Fichte, becomes a matter of principle. Theology as a science becomes a part of the philosophy of spirit, which, when it deals with the absolute spirit, is itself a philosophy of religion. I.H. Fichte’s reception thus becomes recognizable as part of a romantic theology in which the derivatives of knowledge operate in the spirit with the same idea of God as the Christianity-related reinterpretations of theology. One can speak of an excess of the construction of generality and objectivity, disguised in the idea of absolute self-consciousness. In the attempts to break down this generality to individuals, I.H. Fichte can then use Fichte’s—originally structurally intended—descriptions of certainty and life-world explanations of faith. Theology here becomes a description of the general spirituality of educated bourgeois society. The controllability of theological statements is already lost in the philosophical and speculative statements about the spirit.

15. The Theological Reception of Fichte in New Idealism

After the end of speculative idealism, Fichte disappears from theological–historical consciousness for many decades. The 18th century is even more discredited than in speculative theology and Fichte’s moral theology is read as an extension to the theology of the enlightenment.1 It is not the idealistic philosophy of the system, but the historical way of thinking based on romanticism that becomes a springboard for the present. Until the First World War, approaches to this are seen more with Herder and Lessing than with Fichte. Theology refers formally to Schleiermacher and his separation of religion. However, new questions will be dealt with in terms of content. This deals with the nature of religion in history on the one hand and the nature of Christianity in the context of its religious–historical development on the other. Fichte does not appear to be a promising interlocutor on any of the questions.

This changes on a broad front with the neo-idealist turn around 1900. There is also a smaller movement of neo-Fichteanism. Within this movement, the lifelong occupation of Emanuel Hirsch with Fichte stands out in particular, and was initially inspired by Hirsch’s friend Paul Tillich and his philosophical teacher Medicus. Hirsch was not only a theological historian interested in Fichte, but he also read him as a guarantor for a new philosophy of religion founded on the theory of consciousness (Hirsch 1914, 1917, 1920, 1926; 1949a, pp. 337–406). This new foundation of religion became necessary because the moral–spiritual framework surrounding the understanding of religion of the Ritschl and the history of religious school in the context of modernity around 1900 had been broken. Religion was once again perceived as independent in a new way as it functions derive from its own internal guiding point of view. This could be described in a new way, one that incorporates aspects of religious psychology, sociology and phenomenology. Idealism was increasingly used as a foil for this new understanding of religion. This applies not only to positive reception and connection, but also to delimitation and criticism, for which Fichte, with his clear contradictions, was particularly well suited (Schlatter 1906, pp. 168–78). Hirsch was influenced here by Holl’s individualistically deepened reception of Luther’s religion of conscience. This was especially true of the construction of God’s antinomous function for conscience. With Fichte’s philosophy, Hirsch attempts to establish this understanding of the religion of conscience in a transcendental way. To this end, Hirsch assesses the different phases and the development of Fichte’s thinking as emerging from a uniform question. This combines the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ as a self-consciousness–theoretical final foundation and the religion–theoretical relationship to the absolute or God. Hirsch sees the overcoming of the ethical–theological Kantian phase of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ toward absoluteness-related philosophy from 1800 onwards as an indication of the need to expand the ethical concept of conscience in terms of truth theory. In contrast with other interpretations of Fichte, Hirsch sees that Fichte does not want to give up the foundation of philosophy in the idea of freedom. Rather, with the help of the reference to the absolute, it is precisely about the justification of the possibility and the transparency of freedom. In this doubleness of the reflection that sets itself as already determined, Hirsch incorporates the idea of a fundamentally antinomic relation to the absolute in knowledge, which originates from Holl’s idea of justification. He recognizes it in the structure of the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ from 1801. For Hirsch, the philosophy of religion in the narrower sense, as presented in the ‘Anweisung zum seligen Leben’, is only a direct application of this structure in the conscious life and the way of life of the individual. In this form, Fichte’s ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ in its middle phase becomes the starting point for a dogmatic theology built up by the concept of the certainty of truth. The relationship between philosophy and theology is reversed: the structures of reflection in the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ become the basis of a new theology, which conceptualizes the internal self-transparency of faith.

This form of a new theology is poured into entirely different linguistic forms by other theologians, using similar patterns of reflection. Karl Barth’s revelation–theological development of neo-Kantianism seeks a similar core of religion in the realization of faith. He understands the structure of this process, theologically, with the help of material Christian language images. Because of this self-image of theology as an aid to the preaching of the Church, Karl Barth must determine the relationship between theology and idealism differently. This becomes the point of crystallization of a modern world, which is determined by the reference to the human. Fichte’s God is for Karl Barth only a self-describing projection (K. Barth 1948, pp. 113–28).2 The theory of the self-positing structure of knowledge of the early ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ becomes an outward proof of the self-empowerment of modern humanity. This view is applied to the whole philosophy of religious idealism. Fichte’s late philosophy of religion and its talk of the absolute must then also be theologically corrected and rethought, as has been attempted several times in the wake of Karl Barth (cf. Jüngel 1977, pp. 170–87; Bader 1975).

16. The Theological Reception of Fichte in the Present

Fichte’s reception in contemporary Protestant theology has two roots. On the one hand, it takes up the textual and source-oriented scientific and philosophical–historical research of German idealism, as it developed in Germany after the Second World War. On the other hand, it is a result of the Schleiermacher renaissance since the 1960s, with which the German revelation theology, which was influenced by Karl Barth, was to be overcome in favour of a new orientation toward the general anthropological concept of religion. Both come together within the scope of the critical and complete edition of Schleiermacher, which is edited in parallel with Fichte’s and with those of other important idealistic philosophers. In addition to Günter Meckenstock (cf. also Meckenstock 1993), Ulrich Barth in particular should be mentioned here. His dissertation focuses on a subjectivity–theoretical reconstruction of the foundations of Schleiermacher’s theology. In the habilitation thesis, then, in close connection with Emanuel Hirsch’s reception of Fichte, the ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ of 1801 is examined from an epistemological, reflection–logical and subjectivity–philosophical perspective. Ulrich Barth’s reception of Fichte stands in contrast with another line of Fichte’s interpretation in theology. He differs from Falk Wagner’s depiction of Fichte’s philosophy of religion (cf. Mette 2013, pp. 60–110; U. Barth 2015). In his dissertation on the thought of the personality of God, Wagner had argued that Fichte’s theory of self-consciousness leads to permanent aporias. That is why Hegel’s negation–dialectical determination of the absolute must be passed on as the basis of the theological concept of God. With the assertion of aporias in Fichte’s theory, Wagner, like his teacher Wolfhart Pannenberg (Pannenberg [1992] 1999; cf. Axt-Piscalar 2023, 254 Anm. 6 and pp. 273–5) referred to an influential essay by the philosopher Dieter Henrich. He had explained that Fichte had the idea of developing a theory of self-sufficiency of the ego from an original act of self-positing. Henrich claimed that, despite several reflexive extensions to the structure of this original act of self-positing, Fichte had failed in this program. Henrich therefore had Fichte’s philosophy of unification set against Hölderlin’s, with which he himself wanted to go on to a pre-reflexive form of the opening up of self-consciousness. Ulrich Barth, for his part, pointed out that Henrich could also have gained this program with a more adequate presentation of Fichte’s ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ (1801–1804). In the phase of his habilitation, however, Ulrich Barth himself (following Hirsch) favours a truth–theoretical interpretation of Fichte’s philosophy of religion. In his later essays on Fichte’s development, he also points out their aspects of philosophy of unity and symbol theory. These different points of view have then been interrogated again in dissertations of Ulrich Barth’s students with reference to Fichte’s sources (cf. R. Barth 2004; Pecina 2007). In Jörg Dierken, moments of an own speculative connection to Fichte can be seen as he attempts to anchor freedom as individuality within the absolute and with permanent and simultaneous difference to the absolute (Dierken 1998, [1999] 2005). Additionally, in the context of Schleiermacher research, the question of the connection to Fichte’s foundation of ego philosophy and its inner connection with a feeling theory of the absolute is addressed (Grove 2004, pp. 156–250).

As with Ulrich Barth himself, the reception of idealism in theology in the 20th century itself has become the subject of theological–historical analysis in his wider circle (cf. U. Barth [2010] 2014; Graf and Christophersen 2004). Not only for Hirsch, but also for Gogarten, Tillich and other theologians, the connection to Fichte (and other idealistic philosophers) was investigated more closely (cf. Neugebauer 2012; Danz 2012b, 2017). This research helps to separate the later theological use and its intention more clearly from the original concern of idealistic philosophy. In general, it is to be asked whether a Fichte reception can be directly helpful for the understanding of faith, but also for the understanding of ‘theology’ as a science of faith in the present. If one detaches oneself from an anthropological and self-consciousness theoretical justification and the question of truth that is still inherent within it, other basic concepts for religion, e.g., linguistic–pragmatic, hermeneutic or narratological, are also conceivable.