Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
That which the God devoted man may not do for any consideration, is indeed also outwardly forbidden in the Perfect State; but he has already cast it … - Johann Gottlieb Fichte
" "That which the God devoted man may not do for any consideration, is indeed also outwardly forbidden in the Perfect State; but he has already cast it from him in obedience to the Will of God, without regard to any outward prohibition. That which alone this God-devoted man loves and desires to do, is indeed outwardly commanded in this Perfect State; but he has already done it in obedience to the Will of God. If, then, this religious frame of mind is to exist in the State, and yet never to come into collision with it, it is absolutely necessary that the State should at all times keep pace with the development of the religious sense among its Citizens, so that it shall never command anything which True Religion forbids, or forbid anything which she enjoins. In such a state of things, the well-known principle, that we must obey God rather than man, could never come into application; for in that case man would only command what God also commanded, and there would remain to the willing servant only the choice whether he would pay his obedience to the command of human power, or to the Will of God, which he loves before all things else. From this perfect Freedom and superiority which Religion possesses over the State, arises the duty of both to keep themselves absolutely separate, and to cast off all immediate dependence on each other.
English
Collect this quote
About Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (19 May 1762 – 27 January 1814) was a German philosopher, who was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Johann Fichte
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Johann Gottlieb Fichte
How then does the Third Age acquire the kind of scoffing irony which serves it in place of Wit, and its measure of the Ridiculous! Thus:–it sets it down as indisputable that its Truth is the right Truth; and whatever is contrary to that must be false. Should anyone then take up the opposite position, he is of course in error, which is absurd: and hereupon it shows, in striking examples, how entirely different the opposite view is from its own, and that in no single point can they coalesce; which indeed may be true. This once laughed at, it readily finds those who will join the laugh, if it only apply to the right quarter. Assuming a scientific form, according to established custom, this principle of the Age is soon understood and dogmatically announced; and it now appears as an axiom to this effect, —that ‘Ridicule is the touchstone of truth, and consequently that anything may be at once recognised as false, without farther proof, if a jest can be raised at its expense, in the manner indicated above.
What the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equal Rights for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equal Privileges, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;—but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;—and in so far there did not exist Equal Privileges.
The supervision of the state extends to the lock upon the door, and there begins mine own. The lock is the boundary line between the power of the government and my own private power. It is the intention of locks to make possible self-protection. In my own house my person is sacred and inviolable even to the government. In civil cases government has no right to attack me in my house, but must wait till I am upon public ground.
Loading...