Anna Marisa Schön – författare

The Doctrine of the State is a major work of political philosophy and philosophy of history by one of the most important authors of German Idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It represents Fichte's final sustained attempt to provide a synoptic overview of his entire system, including a summary of his famously evolving Wissenschaftslehre. The work's overriding concern is with founding the rule of reason in an irrational world. Fichte provides a synoptic account of human history from the dawn of humanity, through the ancient world, and into a modern world governed by a kind of secularized Christianity. His account of humanity's development is one that involves the struggle between faith and reason. Fichte's philosophical analysis of history can be compared to other important works of this period, including works by Friedrich Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel. Written against the backdrop of Napoleon's disastrous defeat in Russia in 1813, the book also revisits the question of the nature and purpose of nationhood and conflict among peoples that Fichte had originally pursued in his important nationalist work, the Addresses to the German Nation. This edition also contains translated excerpts from Fichte's 1813 diary, where his fiery republican resistance to tyranny at home and abroad appear most clearly.

Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, thinkers understood nations as communities defined by common language, culture, and descent, and sharing strong bonds of belonging and solidarity. Even so, they did not assume that nations would also be appropriate units of government. The recovery of this historical understanding, in turn, yields valuable insights for contemporary political dilemmas. Nations Before the Nation-State offers the first extended study of the idea of the nation in ancient and medieval political thought. It recovers a pre-modern conception of the nation as a cultural and linguistic community, rather than a political association, and examines better means for thinking about nationhood. Offering a historic perspective from which to address challenges of nationalism, this book engages with debates on multiculturalism, liberal nationalism, and constitutional patriotism and argues that contemporary political dilemmas can be resolved more organically by recovering modes of thinking that have resolved similar tensions for centuries.