 Fichte’s philosophy of right (or of “natural law”), as expounded in his Foundation of Natural Right, is one of the most original and influential portions of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre. Written prior to Kant’s treatment of the same topic (in Part One of the Metaphysics of Morals), Fichte’s philosophy of right is notable, first of all, because of the way in which it distinguishes sharply between the realm of ethics and that of “right” and tries to develop a complete theory of the latter (a “theory of justice”) without appealing to the categorical imperative or the moral law, and secondly, because of the inclusion within this theory of a thoroughly original “deduction” of the social character of human beings.