How "natural" is Fichte's theory of natural right?
pp. 344-363
in: Matthew C. Altman (ed), The Palgrave handbook of German idealism, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Despite giving his main work on what would today be described as legal and political philosophy the title Foundations of Natural Right (Grundlage des Naturrechts), Fichte at one point in the same work announces that "there is no natural right [Naturrecht] at all in the sense often given to that term, i.e. there can be no rightful [rechtliches] relation between human beings except within a commonwealth and under positive laws" (FNR 132 [GA I/3:432]). This claim signals that natural right "in the sense often given to that term" is in some way misleading or even mistaken, because relations of a certain type between human beings are only possible given the existence of two artificial, and thus non-natural, entities: the type of legal and political community designated by the term "commonwealth" and the laws that govern such a community. In this respect, Fichte provides a negative answer to a question that he himself poses in the Foundations of Natural Right : the question as to "whether a genuine doctrine of natural right is possible, by which we mean a science of the relation of right [Rechtsverhältnis] between persons outside the state and without positive law" (FNR 92 [GA I/3:395]).
