2025.07.9 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Kienhow Goh, Fichte on Free Will and Predestination, Routledge, 2024, 199pp., $190.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781032455204.
Reviewed by Steven Hoeltzel, James Madison University
Among the first things one typically learns about Fichte is that he dubbed his philosophical system “the first system of freedom,” on the grounds that it frees us “from those external influences with which all previous systems—including the Kantian—have more or less fettered man” (1988, 385). Far less often acknowledged, let alone thoroughly researched, are such claims as this: “all free actions are predestined through reason for all eternity – i.e., outside of all time” (2005, 216). To examine the content and justification of such claims, and thence to contend for their compatibility with Fichte’s commitment to freedom, is the challenge boldly taken up by Kienhow Goh in this remarkable new book.
Goh’s scholarship is exemplary, and his analyses and interpretations are incisive and provocative….
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