First Address.

Preliminary Remarks and Overview of the Whole.

I have announced the addresses that I am beginning herewith as a continuation of the lectures which I delivered here in this same place three years ago during the winter, and which have been printed under the title: Characteristics of the Present Age German: Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters. This was a series of lectures Fichte gave in 1804–1805 where he laid out his philosophy of history.. In those lectures, I showed that our era stands in the third major epoch of all world-time Fichte’s philosophy of history divided human progress into five stages; the "third epoch" he refers to is an age of liberation from external authority but one that has fallen into pure selfishness and lack of higher values.—an epoch which has mere sensual self-interest German: Eigennutz. Fichte uses this term to describe a state where individuals care only for their own material well-being, lacking a connection to the "Whole" or the "Divine." as the driving force behind all its vital impulses and movements; and that this era [is] in the only possibility of