Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Note on the text and translation
- Suggestions for further reading
- Abbreviations
- Addresses to the German Nation
- Foreword
- 1 Preliminary remarks and overview
- 2 On the nature of the new education in general
- 3 Description of the new education – continued
- 4 The principal difference between the Germans and other peoples of Teutonic descent
- 5 Consequences of the difference that has been advanced
- 6 Exposition of German characteristics in history
- 7 A yet deeper understanding of the originality and Germanness of a people
- 8 What a people is in the higher sense of the word and what is love of fatherland
- 9 At what point existing in reality the new national education of the Germans will begin
- 10 Towards a more exact definition of the German national education
- 11 On whom the execution of this plan of education will devolve
- 12 On the means of maintaining ourselves until we achieve our principal purpose
- 13 Continuation of the reflections already begun
- 14 Conclusion of the whole
- Glossary
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
12 - On the means of maintaining ourselves until we achieve our principal purpose
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Note on the text and translation
- Suggestions for further reading
- Abbreviations
- Addresses to the German Nation
- Foreword
- 1 Preliminary remarks and overview
- 2 On the nature of the new education in general
- 3 Description of the new education – continued
- 4 The principal difference between the Germans and other peoples of Teutonic descent
- 5 Consequences of the difference that has been advanced
- 6 Exposition of German characteristics in history
- 7 A yet deeper understanding of the originality and Germanness of a people
- 8 What a people is in the higher sense of the word and what is love of fatherland
- 9 At what point existing in reality the new national education of the Germans will begin
- 10 Towards a more exact definition of the German national education
- 11 On whom the execution of this plan of education will devolve
- 12 On the means of maintaining ourselves until we achieve our principal purpose
- 13 Continuation of the reflections already begun
- 14 Conclusion of the whole
- Glossary
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Summary
That education which we put before the Germans as their future national education has now been amply described. When once the race formed by this education stands before us, this race driven solely by its taste for the right and good and by nothing else; this race endowed with an understanding that is adequate for its standpoint and recognises the right unerringly on every occasion; this race equipped with every mental and physical power to realise its will – then from the very existence of that race all that we can long for, even in our boldest wishes, will come true and grow out of it naturally. Such an age has so little need of our prescriptions that we would rather have to learn from it.
Since this race is not yet at hand, but must first be raised to maturity; and since, even if our expectations should be surpassed, we shall still have need of a considerable interval of time in order to cross over into that age, there arises the more immediate question: how shall we make it through this interval? Since we can do nothing better, how shall we maintain ourselves, at least as the soil on which the improvement can take place and as the point from which it proceeds? When once the race formed in this way steps forth from its isolation and comes among us, how are we to prevent it from finding in us a reality that has not the slightest kinship with the order of things it has conceived as right; a reality in which no one understands it or harbours the least desire and need for such an order of things, but regards the already existing order of things as wholly natural and the only possible one?
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- Information
- Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation , pp. 154 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009