Jena 1800

“An exhilarating account of a remarkable historical moment, in which characters known to many of us as immutable icons are rendered as vital, passionate, fallible beings . . . Lively, precise, and accessible.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a one-two punch to the dynastic system. Confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village of just four thousand residents. Jena became the place for the young and intellectually curious, the site of a new departure, of philosophical disruption. Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then an elder statesman and artistic eminence, the leading figures among the disruptors—the translator August Wilhelm Schlegel; the philosophers Friedrich "Fritz" Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling; the dazzling, controversial intellectual Caroline Schlegel, married to August; Dorothea Schlegel, a poet and translator, married to Fritz; and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalis—resolved to rethink the world, to establish a republic of free spirits. They didn’t just question inherited societal traditions; with their provocative views of the individual and of nature, they revolutionized our understanding of freedom and reality. With wit and elegance, Peter Neumann brings this remarkable circle of friends and rivals to life in Jena 1800, a work of intellectual history that is colorful and passionate, informative and intimate—as fresh and full of surprises as its subjects.

The atheism dispute is one of the most important philosophical controversies of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Germany. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the leading philosophers of the period, was accused of atheism after publishing his essay 'On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World-Governance', which he had written in response to Karl Friedrich Forberg's essay 'Development of the Concept of Religion'. Fichte argued that recognition of the moral law includes affirmation of a 'moral world order', which he identified with God. Critics charged both Forberg and Fichte with atheism, thereby prompting Fichte to launch a public campaign of defense that included his threat to resign his position at the University of Jena if he were subjected to any government reprimand. Fichte was forced to make good this threat when his work was censured. The dispute eventually died down but it influenced many other thinkers for years to come. J. G. Fichte: The Atheism Dispute (1798-1800) is the first English commentary devoted solely to the atheism dispute as well as the first English translation of collected writings from the Atheism Dispute. This book brings together many major essays and documents relating to this dispute. These include the anonymous polemic 'A Father's Letter to his Student Son about Fichte's and Forberg's Atheism', Fichte's essays 'Appeal to the Public' and 'Juridical Defense', and numerous documents from the University of Jena and the ducal courts of Dresden, Weimar, and Gotha. Most of the texts are translated from German into English for the first time, and all are accompanied by full commentaries and detailed notes. Bowman and Estes bring to an English speaking audience the full details of this controversy, which ended Fichte's career in Jena and profoundly influenced his approach to communicating philosophical and religious concepts.