Fichte: Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation

The Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (1792) was the first published work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), the founder of the German idealist movement in philosophy. It predated the system of philosophy which Fichte developed during his years in Jena, and for that reason - and possibly also because of its religious orientation - later commentators have tended to overlook the work in their treatments of Fichte's philosophy. It is, however, already representative of the most interesting aspects of Fichte's thought. It displays an affinity with his later moral psychology, introduces (in theological form) Fichte's distinctively 'second-person' conception of moral requirements, and employs the 'synthetic method' which is crucial to the transcendental systems Fichte developed during his Jena period. This volume offers a clear and accessible translation of the work by Garrett Green, while an introduction by Allen Wood sets the work in its historical and philosophical contexts.

"Annotated translation of the first published work by the German philosopher (1762-1814)..." --The Chronicle of Higher Education, "....this text is important both historically and in its own right as an attempt to investigate religion from a transcendental standpoint.... Readers also will benefit from Wood's interpretation of the method Fichte utilizes in the text.... English-language Fichte scholarship has been been quite vibrant in recent decades, ranging from new translations of key Fichte texts to the activity of the North American Fichte Society. This new edition of Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, especially as it includes Wood's excellent introductory essay, is a fine addition to this resurgence of interest in and attention to Fichte's work." --Kevin Zanelotti, McKendree University, Philosophy in Review

Garrett Green is the Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Connecticut College. His previous publications include Theology, Hermeneutics and Imagination: The Crisis of Interpretation at the End of Modernity (2000) and Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination (1989). He previously edited and translated Karl Barth's On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion (2006). Allen Wood is Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and Indiana University. His previous publications include Kantian Ethics (Cambridge, 2008), Unsettling Obligations: Essays on Reason, Reality and the Ethics of Belief (2002) and Hegel's Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1990).