Journal of the History of Philosophy

According to a popular view, shared by the great atheists of the nineteenth century (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) and by students in introductory courses on the philosophy of religion, religious belief is, at best, an edifying fiction. Given that it has apparently lost the ability to edify large sections of the population (the so-called “death of God”), it has also lost its only real claim to credibility. Following Hegel’s famous account of the “unhappy consciousness” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Feuerbach and his successors diagnose religion as a symptom of “alienation.” Human beings have a tendency to compensate for their own shortcomings, and those of the harsh environment they inhabit, by projecting an image of human perfection and (unconsciously) endowing this projected image with a life of its own, thereby impeding our ability to make up for these shortcomings by our own efforts. But, so the story goes, modern intellectuals have pierced through the veil erected by human psychology, economics, and religious institutions and have seen the ideas of God, heaven, and the like for what they really are—illusions that, at best, edify the weak-minded, and, at worst, perpetuate intellectual and material bondage. Call this view atheistic fictionalism. According to the received wisdom, J. G. Fichte (1762–1814) should occupy a prominent place in any account of the pedigree of atheistic fictionalism. On the received view, Fichte is a sort of extreme subjectivist or solipsist. So one is not surprised to learn that this Fichte was accused of atheism in 1798, and forced to relinquish his chair at Jena the following year, entering the pantheon of persecuted freethinkers alongside Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Spinoza.

A substantial portion of this received wisdom has, however, been seriously challenged by a cohort of scholars in the United States and Europe.¹ Fichte the [End Page 595] heroic solipsist of legend has been replaced by a philosopher who argues that self-consciousness is impossible without the “check” (Anstoß) or “summons” (Aufforderung) of mind-independent reality and the moral demands of other rational beings. The broader aim of the present paper is to contribute to this reassessment of Fichte’s thought by focusing on one particular, and particularly contentious, element of his larger system, viz. the philosophy of religion. My thesis is that, far from being an ancestor of Feuerbach and Freud, Fichte actually turns atheistic fictionalism on its head.

That said, a few general qualifications of this thesis must be made at the outset to avoid possible misunderstandings. First of all, the question of whether Fichte thought of religion as illusory must be separated from the question of Fichte’s theological orthodoxy. In other words, in defending my core thesis, I have no intention of making the additional claim that Fichte’s philosophy of religion maps onto or is even remotely compatible with the mainstream theological commitments of his age.² A second, related point is that I will defend my own thesis without taking a position on the famous “Atheism Controversy.” Doing the latter with any claim to plausibility would require a detailed analysis of what counted as “atheism” in the late eighteenth century, what counts as “atheism” more generally, and of what Fichte thought counts as “atheism.” The claim that Fichte is no proto-Feuerbachian can be defended without taking a position on any of these issues, and therefore without taking a position regarding Fichte’s alleged “atheism.” Finally, it is worth pointing out that my primary focus is on Fichte’s interlocking views of the nature of religion (prior to philosophical reflection) and the status of his own philosophical explanation of religion. Thus, the various sketches of a deduction of religion that Fichte presented in the late 1790s will receive a somewhat cursory treatment. This is certainly not because these deductions are unimportant, but rather because the question that I raise here can be addressed independently of any detailed analysis of these deductions themselves. A further paper would be required in order to treat them in a way that does justice to their (1) internal complexity, (2) relationships to other parts of the Wissenschaftslehre, and...