Fichte never intended his ideas to be a narcissistic celebration of the self. Instead, he always insisted that our freedom was tightly interwoven with our moral obligations. ‘Only those are free’, he told students during his first lecture series, in 1794, ‘who will try to make everyone around them free.’ Freedom gives us the choice as to how to act and behave, and elevates us above base instincts such as greed, hunger or fear. Freedom always brings along its twin: moral duty.
