Not only our moral life, but even our use of theoretical reason - on which we rely in rationally inquiring into nature - presupposes that we are free.

The problem is that many who reject Marx do not read him, or read him only by bringing prejudices to their reading that prevent them from understanding him.

Fichte would identify all states of our minds with states of our body - perhaps not merely of our brain, but the whole body as an acting organism.

It is actually a nice question how far Descartes himself endorses the monological and metaphysically dualistic theory of mind associated with his name and his legacy in early modern philosophy. But Fichte does reject this tradition, by suggesting that an immaterial thinking substance is an incoherent notion, and a rational being whose rationality was not developed through communication with others is a transcendental impossibility.

We are generally forced to choose one way or the other of distancing ourselves from Kant. I suppose I tend to choose the irreligious way. But I regret that Kant's path has not been followed.

Fichte takes an I or free will to be not a thing or being but an act which is not undetermined but self-determined, in accordance with reasons or norms rationally self-given.

What Smith and Marx have in common is that they were both philosophers of great vision and perceptiveness, deep humanity, and a sense of social reality that has been lost in the abstractly formalistic economic theories that have dominated the field since the last third of the nineteenth century.