Fichte''s Ethics

Michelle Kosch offers a systematic, historically informed reconstruction of the ethical theory of the great German Idealist J. G. Fichte (1762-1814). Central to Fichte's theory are his accounts of rational agency and autonomy. Kosch highlights the theory's very substantial potential for contribution to ethics today.

List of contents

• 1: Introduction


• 2: Rational Agency


• 3: Material independence


• 4: Formal independence


• 5: Independence as constitutive end


• 6: Conclusion

About the author

Michelle Kosch received a BA from Harvard College in 1990 and a PhD from Columbia University in 1999. She was employed as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen from 1999-2000, and thereafter as an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of Michigan, before moving to Cornell in 2006.

Summary

Michelle Kosch offers a systematic, historically informed reconstruction of the ethical theory of the great German Idealist J. G. Fichte (1762-1814). Central to Fichte's theory are his accounts of rational agency and autonomy. Kosch highlights the theory's very substantial potential for contribution to ethics today.

Additional text

One of the many virtues of Michelle Kosch's provocative, tightly-argued, and insightful book is that she clearly establishes what, for Fichte, our moral duties consist in, if we are to take his conception of freedom, understood as absolute independence or self-sufficiency, as our guide. . . . Fichte's Ethics is highly recommended for its clarity and insight, as well as its potential to promote valuable debate about the nature of Fichte's ethics.

Product details

• Authors: Michelle Kosch, Michelle (Cornell University) Kosch, Kosch Michelle
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2019
• EAN: 9780198849759
• ISBN: 978-0-19-884975-9
• No. of pages: 208
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; PHILOSOPHY / Social, PHILOSOPHY / Political, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Modern, PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Ethics & moral philosophy, Ethics and moral philosophy, Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900, Philosophical traditions and schools of thought