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
11 - On whom the execution of this plan of education will devolve
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
The plan of the new German national education has been set forth in sufficient detail for our purposes. The next question that arises is this: who should lead the way in executing this plan, whom can we count on to do so, and on whom have we counted in the past?
We have established this education as the highest and, at the present time, single most urgent concern for German love of fatherland, and wish through it to usher into the world the improvement and regeneration of the entire human race. To begin with, however, that love of fatherland should inspire the state in every German territory, preside over it, and be the driving force behind all its decisions. It ought to be the state, therefore, on which we first fix our expectant gaze.
Will the state realise our hopes? What can the foregoing lead us to expect of it – always, it goes without saying, looking not to one particular state but to Germany as a whole?
In modern Europe education did not actually proceed from the state, but from that power from which states for the most part derived their own: from the celestial spiritual realm of the Church. The Church saw itself not so much as a constituent of the earthly commonwealth as a colony of heaven quite alien to it, sent to enlist citizens for this foreign state wherever it could take root; its education aimed at nothing save that men would not be damned in the other world but blessed.
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- Information
- Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation , pp. 141 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009