Abstract

An examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte develops his ethical program in the Jena period and its immediate aftermath reveals the determining presence of Leibniz, and the complex heritage of Leibnizian perfectionist thought from which Kantian, and post-Kantian, ethics seek to extricate themselves. While Kant blocks any reversion to the older, Leibnizian perfectionism, his criticisms leave open a space for a new kind of perfectionist ethic, one whose object is the promotion not of any determinate notion of eudaimonia or thriving, but of the possibility of free agency itself. The aim of post-Kantian perfectionism is to sustain the conditions of free, spontaneous action. Fichte’s ethical system is one example of post-Kantian perfectionism.