El Problema de la Educación en la Staatslehre de 1813

This paper addresses the doctrine of education in Fichte’s Staatslehre from 1813. I try to show that this theory is closely connected with Fichte’s idea of the relations between ethics and politics and with his idea of the transient character of the state. In fact, Fichte thinks that in a future world structured according to ethical principles, state power will be superfluous. But this implies an effort to educate people that only someone invested both with the supreme wisdom of the divine world order and the power of constraint will be able to carry through. If a reference to the role of the Zwingherr finds no place in Fichte’s 1813 a priori exposition of the philosophy of state, it has its due place in the 1812 exposition that takes into account the actual historical circumstances in which the doctrine is exposed. At the end, I examine some misinterpretations (according to my point of view) of Fichte’s philosophy of education and I stress, against Marc Maesschalk, the fact that the Fichtean project differs from Husserl’s idea of a community of autonomous and responsible transcendental subjects. For Fichte, the Zwingherr is someone who knows how far men are from being free and the extent to which they must be constrained in order to be so.