The Science of Rights

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TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The Science of Knowledge having been established as the science of all sciences, Fichte, soon after its discovery and publication, deemed it advisable to illustrate by an example in what manner other sciences take their starting-point from it, and apply the form which it prescribes for all sciences. Intensely interested in the political state of affairs in Europe, he naturally hit upon the Science of Rights, or of Law generally, as the science which it would be most congenial for him to treat; and this preference was strengthened by the reflection that the deduction of the principle of law would involve a circumstantial deduction of the principle of individuality—an extremely difficult and important point in the Science of Knowledge, thus he came to write the Science of Rights, herewith presented to the American public, one of his most complete and artistic productions. It ought to have preeminent interest for the people of this Republic, since what the philosopher has in it deduced as the only rational form of government has been realized and established as such here. What our law-books and political treatises lack, the a priori deduction of our fundamental principle of government and law from the conception of reason as reason, (or from the Ego,) Fichte's Science of Rights supplies. It completes the comprehension of our form of government, and should on that account be studied by every citizen.

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Contents:



Introduction

First Part Of The Science Of Rights
Book First: Deduction of the Conception of Rights
Book Second: Deduction of the Applicability of the Conception of Rights
Book Third: Application of the Conception of Rights

Second Part Of The Science Of Rights
Book First: Concerning State Organization
Book Second: Concerning the State Constitution
Book Third: Concerning Municipal Law

First Appendix Of The Science Of Rights
Fundamental Principles of the Rights of Family

Second Appendix Of The Science Of Rights
International and Cosmopolitan Law

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An excerpt from the beginning of the:

INTRODUCTION:

I. - HOW A REAL PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCE IS DISTINGUISHED FROM A MERE FORMULAR PHILOSOPHY.


THE character of Reason consists in this, that the acting and the object of the acting are one and the same; and this description completely exhausts the sphere of Reason. Use of language has designated this sublime conception for those who are able to think it, that is, for those who are able to abstract from their own Ego, by the word Ego. Hence, Reason generally has been characterized as Egohood. Whatsoever exists for a rational being exists in it; but nothing is in it except by virtue of an acting upon itself; what it contemplates it contemplates in itself, but there is nothing to be contemplated in it but its acting; and the Ego itself is nothing but an acting upon itself. To enter into explanations about this matter is not worthwhile. This insight is the exclusive condition of all philosophizing; and unless a person has attained this insight, he is not yet ripe for philosophy. And, indeed, all true philosophers have philosophized from this stand-point; only without being clearly conscious of it.

This inner acting of the rational being occurs either necessarily or through freedom.

The rational being is simply in so far as it posits itself as being; that is, in so far as it is self-conscious. All Being, that of the Ego as well as that of the Non-Ego, is a determined modification of consciousness; and without consciousness there is no Being. Whosoever assumes the latter assumes a substrate of the Ego, which is to be an Ego without being such, and thus contradicts himself. Hence, only those are necessary acts which result from the conception of the rational being, or through which the possibility of self-consciousness is conditioned; but these acts are most certainly all necessary, and result as certainly as there is a rational being. The rational being necessarily posits itself; hence, it necessarily does also all that may belong to this act of positing itself through itself.