“The Idealist Spinoza”: the First Absolute Idealism Fichte’s Place in Feuerbach’s Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy

The contribution aims at investigating the early reception of Fichte’s thought in Feuerbach’s philosophy. Between 1835 and 1836 Feuerbach held a course of lectures on the history of modern philosophy in Erlangen and he was deeply studying Fichte to prepare the section dedicated to idealism. An impressively large portion of these lectures is dedicated to Fichte, as he is considered there as the “central point” of modern philosophy: ‘the idealist Spinoza’. It will be shown how Feuerbach’s lectures could be considered the first rehabilitation of Fichte’s whole philosophy, in contrast to the Hegelian interpretation of it. Feuerbach seems to consider Fichte the first philosopher to have implemented absolute idealism. From these premises, it will be argued that the history of modern philosophy is reconsidered by Feuerbach in a new way. In the conclusion, it will be suggested how this reinterpretation of the history of philosophy influenced Feuerbach’s later speculative growth. If Fichte and Hegel are interpreted as two different possibilities of absolute idealism – respectively, from the point of view of the finite and the limited or from the point of view of the absolute itself – and not put in a logic of a progressive refinement of philosophy, Feuerbach’s interpretation of Fichte in the Erlangen Lectures could indicate a parallel path within Feuerbach’s thought, which would lead to his criticism of Hegel’s philosophy and his late humanistic perspective.