Der Denker und sein Glaube

For the first time in Fichte scholarship, Traub offers an account of the influence of pietistic ideas on Fichte's philosophy and his academic and political self-image. Evidence of this is, for example, Fichte's personalisation and popularisation of the knowledge of faith, the culture of internal moral theological and rational self-examination, or the primacy of "praxis pietatis". The analysis focuses on the little investigated denominational aspects of Fichte's early education: in his family and upbringing, in school and university. Especially with Fichte's early work on Dogmatics and Christology, Traub proves that Fichte's theology and philosophy had - far before reading Kant - a firm denominational orientation that must be taken into account for any appropriate understanding of his later philosophy.