First Human Beings, Orangutangs and Urgeschlechter: Fichte and the Debates on the Origins of Human Race and History

A long section of The Doctrine of the State is devoted to determining what Fichte here defines as the two original human races, reformulating his earlier thesis of the original inequality between the Normalvolk and savages. This essay aims to clarify the scope and reasons for this reformulation. Against the backdrop of Fichte’s early involvement in the dispute between Herder and Kant regarding the origin of the human race and history (§1), it will be demonstrated that the dualism between Normalvolk and savages reflects Fichte’s speculative and ambivalent approach to reconciling the unity of the human race with physical and cultural differences: this approach rejects any fixed division while simultaneously justifying colonialism. In 1813, in the context of the uprising of French-occupied Prussia against Napoleon, Fichte reconsidered the relationship between the two original human races, polemically responding to Schlegel’s anti-Napoleonic attempt to justify the cultural superiority of German tribes by claiming their descent from ancient India. In contrast to this conservative nationalist view, Fichte advocates the primacy of the second and ‘savage’ human race, in order to lay the groundwork for his assertion of the primacy of the Germans, as destined to initiate a ‘new history’ by dissolving all hereditary social and political orders. However, this does not alter Fichte’s view of non-European savages as a ‘margin’ and ‘exception’ in the course of history.