“I am only what I make myself to be”, Fichte tells us. In this paper, I outline
Fichte’s views on sex, marriage and gender, with two aims. Firstly, to
elucidate an aspect of his moral theory which has received little attention,
and secondly to argue that Fichte’s distinctive stance on selfhood, freedom,
and normativity lead to a revisionary account of gender expression and
identity, where people can freely carve out their own identity, irrespective of
“nature”. In this paper, I therefore outline…
Read more“I am only what I make myself to be”, Fichte tells us. In this paper, I outline
Fichte’s views on sex, marriage and gender, with two aims. Firstly, to
elucidate an aspect of his moral theory which has received little attention,
and secondly to argue that Fichte’s distinctive stance on selfhood, freedom,
and normativity lead to a revisionary account of gender expression and
identity, where people can freely carve out their own identity, irrespective of
“nature”. In this paper, I therefore outline Fichte’s own views, highlighting
what I see as a tension in the texts between essentialism and antiessentialism about gender, before reconstructing a neo-Fichtean view which
foregrounds the anti-essentialist aspect.
