ARTICLE How to become an idealist: Fichte on the transition from dogmatism to idealism R. S. Kemp Department of Philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, USA ABSTRACT In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant claims that all human beings are originally and radically evil: they choose to adopt a ‘supreme maxim’ that gives preference to sensibility over the moral law. Because Kant thinks that all agents have a duty to develop good character, part of his task in the Religion is to explain how moral conversion is possible. Four years after Kant publishes the Religion, J. G. Fichte takes up the issue of conversion in slightly different terms: he is interested in how people he characterizes as ‘dogmatists’ (those who minimize or deny their status as free agents) become ‘idealist’ (those who recognize and exercise their freedom). Against recent interpreters, I argue that Fichte characterizes the choice to convert from dogmatism to idealism as one that is grounded in a non-rational choice. Along the way, I consider Daniel Breazeale and Allen Wood’s recent arguments to the contrary, alternative accounts of what it might mean for a conversion to count as ‘rational’, and how well my conclusion harmonizes with Fichte’s views on education. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 12 July 2016; Revised 9 December 2016; Accepted 27 February 2017 KEYWORDS Fichte; transformation; education; practical reason; conversion; idealism; existentialism; Wissenschaftslehre In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant claims that all human beings are originally evil: 1 they choose to adopt a ‘supreme maxim’ that gives preference to sensibility over the moral law. 2 This supreme maxim expresses an agent’s moral character, a disposition that can take only one of © 2017 BSHP CONTACT R. S. Kemp ryan.s.kemp@gmail.com 1 While Kant does say things that suggest that evil can be originally attributed to all human beings (e.g. 6:32), some commentators have recently argued that Kant intends such claims to be regulative, that evil is merely subjectively ‘presupposed’. See, for example, Muchnik, ‘An Alternative Proof of the Universal Propensity to Evil’ and Kemp, ‘The Contingency of Evil’. All references to Kant are to the volume and page (e.g. 6:32) of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften. Trans- lations are taken from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. See the Bibliography for further citation information. 2 Technically, an ‘evil will’ is one in which either the ‘predisposition to humanity’ (i.e. an inclination to ‘gain worth in the opinion of others’) or the ‘predisposition to animality’ (i.e. an inclination to meet one’s phys- ical needs) is given priority over the ‘predisposition to personality’ (i.e. ‘susceptibility to respect for the moral law’). Kant claims that each predisposition is, in itself, natural and good. See 6:27. BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 2017 VOL. 25, NO. 6, 1161–1179 https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2017.1301372