The essay shows that Fichte's Grundzüge contain a dialectic understanding of the contradictions of capitalist society. The Grundzüge criticize the «accomplished sinfulness» of a present characterized by a set of pathologies that, from many point of view, are the same of our present time: anomic individualism, fetishist absolutization of the economic, social disaggregation, metaphysical agnosticism, sanctification of the sensible.