1812 Doctrine of Right and Other Late Political Writings of J. G. Fichte

The first translation of a major work of political philosophy by J. G. Fichte, as well several additional works that help contextualize some of his other widely misunderstood translated work.After moving from Jena to Berlin, J. G. Fichte continued to develop and revise his political philosophy. The 1812 Doctrine of Right and Other Political Writings contains most of the major works by Fichte in this period. It includes several pieces, unpublished in Fichte's lifetime, that help contextualize his most well-known work, The Addresses to the German Nation (1807–1808). In addition, this volume contains two lecture series from Fichte's return to teaching at the University of Berlin. The first, Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar (1811), revisits the topic of the purpose of the philosophical life that Fichte had discussed several times prior in his career. The second, The Doctrine of Right (1812), amplifies and revises his theory of justice, law, and contract that he had originally published in his Foundations of Natural Right (1797–1798).

Jeffrey Church is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is coeditor and cotranslator, with Anna Marisa Schön, of Fichte's Contribution to the Correction of the Public's Judgments of the French Revolution, also by SUNY Press. Benjamin Hofmann is postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Bamberg. He is coauthor, with Moritz Schulz, Johannes Marx, and Daniel Mayerhoffer, of Methoden der Politischen Theorie: Eine anwendungsorientierte Einführung.