The Use of History in Fichte’s Closed Commercial State

Abstract Contemporary critics of capitalism often argue that prolonged exposure to the current economic order makes this order increasingly seem inevitable. Habituated to its structures, we come to perceive economic circumstances as ever more necessary and resistance as ever more futile. In this paper, I argue that Fichte’s 1800 Closed Commercial State , even though this has largely gone unnoticed, already anticipates an early version of this problem and even proposes a potential response. Writing that there is a »disease to regard the contingent as necessary« ( GA I /7: 92) that can affect our perception of the economic world, Fichte proposes that immersion in history, esp. in economic history, can cure this disease and reignite our sense of economic possibility. By confronting how the politico-economic world has changed in the past and how human agency has shaped those changes, we can, Fichte thinks, regain the sense that economic change is possible even now.