Conclusion
Conclusion
This chapter considers the broader implications of Fichte's work. Fichte's The Closed Commercial State was an intensive investigation into the prospects of Europe's transformation into the kind of international federation envisioned by Kant. His analysis was not the product of an alien ideology but represented a notable attempt to join the constitutionalism of Rousseau, Sieyès, and Kant to widespread and fairly mainstream eighteenth-century views of commerce, finance, and the European states system. Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, delivered in occupied Berlin in the winter of 1808–9, have achieved much greater notoriety than The Closed Commercial State as a supposed transmission of ancien régime power politics into the age of nationalism. In fact, they represent a further effort to extend Fichte's constitutional theory into a strategic response to immensely constricting historical circumstances.
Keywords: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Closed Commercial State, constitutionalism, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, commerce, finance, European states system
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