Abstract

Josiah Royce relates the following story concerning the writing and publication of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's first major work, the Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation.Fichte … called upon Kant at Königsberg, in July, 1791. The aged, prudent, and … highly economical philosopher regarded this reverent, fiery, but obviously impecunious young disciple with a certain suspicion, and received his confidences coolly. The rebuff only heated Fichte the more. He tarried in Königsberg two months, in order … to write, for presentation to Kant, a work on religious philosophy, which, once finished, proved to be so thoroughly in Kant's spirit that, when in the spring of the next year the book was published anonymously, it was very generally hailed by Kant's admirers as a new production of the master's own genius. Kant himself had to correct this misapprehension, and in doing so named, and now with warm praise, the real author.