Introduction; 1. Selfhood, virtue and the Wissenschaftslehre; 1.1 Fichte's critique of Rousseau; 1.2 The dispute between idealism and dogmatism; 1.3 Idealism and virtue; 1.4 The republic of scholars; 2. Practical reason, conscience and ethical vocation; 2.1 The primacy of practical reason; 2.2 Conscience and radical evil; 2.3 Ethical vocation; 3. The relation between moral subjectivity and history in Fichte's defence of the French Revolution; 3.1 Moral subjectivity and history; 3.2 Experience and history; 4. Fichte's philosophy of history: the future ages of humanity as postulates of pure practical reason; 4.1 Practical need and the end of reason; 4.2 Fichte's world plan; 4.3 Fichte's instrumentalization of history; 5. The absolute state: coercion and perfectibility; 5.1 The absolute state; 5.2 From Rechtsstaat to Kulturstaat; 6. Fichte's Republic; 6.1 The idea of a new German university; 6.2 The role of the new university in a German national education; 6.3 Philosophy and the life of the nation; 6.4 Love of fatherland and the moral will; 6.5 The German Republic; 7. The role of language in Fichte's construction of the nation; 7.1 Creating the nation; 7.2 Fichte's idea of an original language; 7.3 The Germans as speakers of an original language; 7.4 Language and the construction of the nation; 7.5 Fichte and Machiavelli; Bibliography; Index.

'In his enlightening new book David James turns to the question of what becomes of Fichte's idealist subject when it is transposed into the political realm, challenging both those who would see in Fichte an ideologue and those who would divorce Fichte's political writings from his systematic writings.' Stefan Bird-Pollan, University of Vienna