Abstract

Written and delivered with the purpose of promoting the German spiritual and political re-birth after the defeat of Prussia at Jena, then put aside in the years of the Restoration and the Holy Alliance, Fichte’s Reden were interpreted on a nationalist key during the Bismarckian Reich. Fichte, the Enlightenment and cosmopolitan thinker, was therefore transformed in Fichte the Prussian nationalist, originating a die-hard prejudice. In fact, the educational project outlined in the Reden can be fully understood only if they are placed in the context of Fichte’s overall transcendental system. On the other side, Fichte’s notion of “being German”, oscillating between particularism and universalism, contributed to this misunderstanding