ABSTRACT
Below I will trace the development of German idealist thinking about moral theory from Immanuel Kant through Gottlieb Fichte to G. W. F. Hegel. The exposition will focus on the theoretical structure of German idealist theories about morality in the narrower sense, mostly leaving aside what these thinkers would call “right” (Recht) (and Hegel would call ‘abstract right’), especially the aspects of right that deal with legal and political theory. In comparing these thinkers it has been customary to emphasize points of disagreement – as if, for instance, we were faced with an inevitable choice between Kant and Hegel, whose basic views present us with something like mutually exclusive (if not jointly exhaustive) alternatives. But I think the development is much better understood if we focus on the continuity within the tradition, and view the disagreements as presenting us with interesting variations on a common position. Most of the important developments within this tradition took place between Kant and Fichte; Hegel’s contributions, though original and highly signi…cant, consisted mainly in new ways of appropriating Fichte’s insights. Fichte, however, did not see his theory as fundamentally at odds with Kant’s, and I think he was right – from which it follows that Hegel’s theory is not fundamentally at odds with it either.
