I could identify for virtually every important figure in the history of modern continental philosophy an idea (or more than one) absolutely central to that philosopher's thought, whose original author was Fichte.

We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.

We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.

For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian adopts) and about which actions or moral rules would contribute to maximizing the good. For the rational intuitionist, there are truths about which actions should be done and not done.

We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal order of nature.

It is a culturally interesting (but also deeply depressing) fact that many religious claims seem to retain their emotional power for believers only if taken in ways that are intellectually unsupportable and even morally contemptible.

Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.