Virtue among enemies – A reading of Fichte’s reception of Tacitus’ Germania

The third session of the EPLab Permanent Seminar will be led by João Gouveia, with a presentation titled “Virtue among enemies – A reading of Fichte’s reception of Tacitus’ Germania”. The session will take place on 20 January at 10:30 in room A209 at NOVA FCSH (Berna Campus) and will be held in Portuguese.

Abstract

During the Napoleonic Wars, Fichte received Tacitus’ Germania as a testimony to the strength and courage of the German people. Two aspects of this reception illustrate the formation of a nationalist mentality. First, there is the defence of the virtues of a people by the voice of the enemy. Rome remains the underlying theme in Tacitus’ Germania, constructing an unspoken message about the loss of primitive virtue by the Roman people and their leaders. Secondly, it is also clear how Fichte naively believes in the people’s ability to manifest old military virtues in an intellectualised and proud manner. The German idealist highlights German courage as the main theme of Tacitus’ work. However, he does so in the hope of showing that 19th-century Germans can preserve their language and remain cohesive as a linguistic community, thus affirming their destiny as spiritually sophisticated citizens. Tacitus draws on his reading of Germanic customs to show how the strengthening of moral virtues manifests itself in the strengthening of military power. Fichte, in turn, draws on the idyllic past of the German people, as described by Tacitus, to advocate the reactivation of the lost virtue of courage, now in its spiritual and linguistic manifestation. Even though both credited the recognition of universal virtue (the virtue worth following), Tacitus showed himself willing to learn from the Germanic peoples new ways of preserving the virtues he valued and new possible manifestations of them. On the other hand, Fichte was only willing to learn exclusively from the primitive Germanic peoples and to absorb their collective essence – Germanness, even if a set of particular qualities, became indistinguishable from universal virtue. According to such a view, the enemy becomes an accidental aspect for the German nation, allowing it to close in on itself narcissistically. This shows a less obvious dimension of the military weight of international relations, for even if the preservation of well-defined enemies does not necessarily lead to peaceful relations, the exclusive valorisation of our own people’s national past can undermine the ability to conceive of the very existence of enemies, without creating new ways of conceiving them at all.

More information on the EPLab Permanent Seminar here.