Fellow project: "Elements of an Ideological History: J.G. Spruce and the First World War"
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century the interest addressed to Johann Gottlieb Fichte was so great that the philosophical historiography speaks of a Fichte-Renaissance. Traditionally, Fichte’s philosophy has been viewed in connection with nationalism, especially after the resonance of his Reden an die deutsche Nation. Nevertheless Fichte was popular also among socialists, who tried to show that he has been ahead of his time on many socialist issues (pedagogic theory, the idea of the “closed” State, the view of history and rational action…). My research focuses on the “double” reception of Fichte’s thought between 1899 and 1922, turning particular attention to the years of the First World War. Considering that part of Fichte’s fortune is connected with the falsification of his philosophy by the nationalistic (and National Socialistic) propaganda, the study of alternative and pluralistic receptions philosophy permits not only to integrate the history of Fichteanism by rectifying the traditional philosophical historiography. It also highlights the intersection of philosophical issues with rhetorical needs and focuses, by means of an exemplary case, the question of the relationship between philosophy and political ideologies.