ABSTRACT
This paper examines J.G. Fichte’s liberal nationalism as developed in his Closed Commercial State and Addresses to the German Nation. It argues that Fichte’s economic and cultural nationalism are both motivated by the same purpose, namely, to curb, discipline and direct the selfish desires of the modern age toward moral ends. This paper also holds that Fichte’s nationalism can contribute to contemporary liberal nationalism by revealing how nationalism can curb the imperial impulses built into the liberal project that have been the subject of recent scholarship.
