Description of the new education
Chapter 3, part 1 of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's "Addresses to the German Nation"
The specific nature of the proposed new education, insofar as it was described in the previous address, consisted in this, that it was the deliberate and sure art of cultivating the pupil to pure morality. To pure morality, I said. This morality is something primary, independent, self-sufficient, and self-existent; and not at all, like the lawfulness often intended before now, linked to and grafted on to a non-moral drive whose satisfaction it serves. It is the deliberate and sure art of this moral education, I said. It does not wander aimlessly and haphazardly, but proceeds according to a fixed rule well known to it and is certain of its success. Its pupil goes forth at the proper time as a fixed and immutable product of its art, who could not go in any other way save that determined by it, who requires no assistance, but continues of himself and according to his own law.
True, this education also cultivates the mind of the pupil and indeed its work begins with this mental culture. Yet this development of the mind is not its primary and sovereign purpose, but only the means by which it imparts moral culture to the pupil. In the meantime, this mental culture, though acquired but incidentally, remains an ineradicable possession of the pupil’s life and the eternally blazing beacon of his moral love. However great or small the sum of the knowledge that he takes with him from education, he has surely been left with a mind that for the rest of his life can grasp every truth whose cognition will become necessary to him, that remains as constantly receptive to instruction by others as it is capable of independent reflection.
Thus far had we come in our description of the new education. At the conclusion of the previous address we remarked that it is not yet brought to completion, but must accomplish another task, one that is distinct from those assigned hitherto. And now we turn to the business of delineating this task.
The pupil who shall receive this education is not only a member of human society here on earth and for the short span of life vouchsafed him; he is also, and undoubtedly acknowledged to be such by education, a link in the eternal chain of the life of the spirit in general and subject to a higher social order. It goes without saying that a culture that has undertaken to embrace his entire being must lead him to insight into this higher order; and, just as it led him to trace out, through his own self-activity, an image of that moral order of the world which never is but forever shall be, so it must guide him to project, with the same self-activity, a mental image of that supersensuous world order in which nothing becomes, nor which has itself ever become, but forever only is, and to do this in such a way that he intimately understands and perceives that it could not be otherwise. With proper guidance, he will bring his attempts at such an image to a successful conclusion and then find that nothing truly exists save life, namely the spiritual life that lives in thought [Gedanken]; that nothing else truly exists, but only appears to exist, and he will likewise grasp, even if only in general terms, that the ground of this appearance proceeds from thought. He will further understand that, in the manifold forms it has received, not by accident but by a law grounded in God, the spiritual life that alone truly exists is ultimately one, the divine life itself, which exists and is revealed only in living thought. Thus will he recognise his own life, and every other spiritual life, as an eternal link in the chain of the revelation of divine life and learn to hold it sacred. He will find life and light and blessedness only in the immediate communion with God, in the unmediated outpouring of his life from Him; but death, darkness and misery in the remoteness from such immediacy. In a word: this development will cultivate him to religion; and this religion that consists in living our life in God should indeed prevail and be carefully nurtured in the new age also. By contrast, the religion of the past age, which separated the spiritual life from the divine life, and only by falling away from the latter could obtain for the former that absolute existence intended for it;1 which used God as a thread to introduce selfishness into other worlds even after the death of the mortal frame and, through hope and fear, to fortify the selfishness that had remained weak for the present world – this religion, plainly a handmaiden of selfishness, shall indeed be laid to rest along with the past age. For in the new age eternity does not dawn only beyond the grave, but comes into the midst of the present; selfishness, however, is dismissed from government as well as from service and departs, taking its servants with it.
Education to true religion is hence the final business of the new education. Whether, in projecting the image of the supersensuous world order required for this purpose, the pupil has proceeded with true self-activity, and whether the projected image is on all sides correct, and thoroughly clear and intelligible, this education will be able to judge with ease, in the same way as it does with other objects of knowledge: for this too remains in the realm of knowledge.
More significant, though, is the question of how our education can assess and guarantee that this religious knowledge will not remain cold and dead, but will express itself in the actual life of the pupil. Before addressing this question we must answer another, namely: how and in what way does religion generally manifest itself in life?
In everyday life, and in a well-ordered society, there is no immediate need at all for religion to mould life; true morality is perfectly sufficient for this purpose. In this regard, therefore, religion is not practical, nor can and should it become practical, but is knowledge pure and simple: it renders man perfectly clear and intelligible to himself, provides an answer to the highest question he can pose, resolves the final contradiction, thus bringing perfect self-unity and clarity to his understanding. It represents his complete deliverance and liberation from all external bonds; and thus it owes him education as something that is his due simply and without ulterior purpose. Religion only acquires a domain where it can operate as an impulse either in a highly immoral and corrupt society or when man’s sphere of activity lies not within but beyond the social order and he has constantly to create and preserve this order anew – as with the regent, who often could not discharge his office in good conscience without religion. The latter case is not at issue in an education adapted to all and to the entire nation. As for the former case: if, despite a clear recognition of the incorrigibility of the age, work to improve it nevertheless continues unabated; if the sweat and toil of the sowing of the land is unflinchingly endured even with little prospect of a harvest; if even the ingrate is rewarded and those who curse are blessed with charity and goods in the clear foreknowledge that they will curse again; if after a hundredfold failures one still perseveres with faith and love: then it is not mere morality that impels one here, for morality demands a purpose. It is religion, the submission to a higher law unknown to us, the awestruck silence before God, the fervent love for His life that has broken forth in ours, the life that alone shall be saved for its own sake, where the eye sees nothing left to save.
In this way, the religious insight achieved by the pupils of the new education in the little commonwealth in which they initially grow up cannot become practical knowledge; nor should it even. This commonwealth is well ordered, and whatever is deftly undertaken there always meets with success. Also, in these still tender years man should be maintained in his innocence and serene faith in humanity. Let knowledge of its perfidy be postponed until he is ready to experience it firsthand at a mellowed and more settled age.
Only at this riper age, therefore, when life is lived in earnest, and after education has long since left him to his own resources, may the pupil, if his social relations are to advance from simplicity to a higher level, have need of his religious knowledge as a motive. Now, how shall education, which cannot examine the pupil on this point for as long as he remains in its care, yet be sure that, when the need arises, this motive too will work infallibly? I reply: by the pupil being formed in such a way that no knowledge in his possession will remain cold and dead when there is a possibility that it can receive life; rather, all knowledge shall of necessity intervene directly in life, as and when life needs it. I shall substantiate this claim presently, and in doing so elevate in its entirety the idea elaborated in this address and the foregoing one, and incorporate it into a greater system of knowledge, on which, with the help of this idea, I shall in turn throw a new light and bestow a higher clarity. But only after I have given a definite account of the true nature of the new education, whose general description I have just concluded.
This education now no longer appears, as it did at the beginning of today’s address, merely as the art of cultivating the pupil to pure morality. Rather, it is evidently the art of cultivating the whole man thoroughly and completely to humanity. Of relevance here are two main points. First, with regard to form, it is the real, living man who is cultivated, all the way down to his vital root, not just the mere shadow and outline of a man; and second, with regard to content, all essential parts of man are developed fully, uniformly and without exception. These parts are the understanding and the will, and education must have for its object the clarity of the former and the purity of the latter. In connection with the clarity of the understanding, however, two principal questions must be raised. First, what is it that the pure will wills, properly speaking, and by what means is that which is willed to be attained (under which head is included all the other knowledge that is to be imparted to the pupil)? Secondly, what is this pure will itself in ground and essence (under which head is included knowledge of religion)? Both these parts we have mentioned, developed until they intervene in life, education demands absolutely and does not think to exempt a single pupil in the least, for each shall be precisely a human being. As to what someone might become above and beyond that, and what particular form general humanity assumes in him, or receives, this is of no concern to our education and lies outside its sphere.
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A possible allusion to Schelling’s Philosophie und Religion (1804), in which Schelling describes the ‘absolute’ as the only reality and the ground of finite entities as lying in a ‘falling away’ (Abfall) from the absolute (p. 35).