Immanuel Hermann Fichte's 'System of Ethics' was written against the background of an internal political torpor in Germany following the Revolution of 1848 and, almost simultaneously, the economic take-off of the industrial age in the same country. Making direct reference to this era of political, economic and social upheaval, Fichte's conception offers guidelines for a sweeping reform of state and society. Not least as an answer to the 'social question', he proposes a professional and educational reorientation, the promotion of civil-societal enterprises and the revitalization of Christian values to prepare the ground for the emergence of a culture in which individual and collective potential could be fulfilled.