In 1790 he moved to Jena, where he studied Kantian philosophy under Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823).

In 1798, the journal published Friedrich Karl Forberg's Entwicklung des Begriffs der Religion ("Development of the Concept of Religion"), an essay that Fichte prefaced with Über den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung ("Grounds of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe").

Philanthropinism valued practical and physical education and largely rejected rote-learning of the classics.

Niethammer agreed with the philanthropinists in that a measure of autonomy was important in education, but he found their teaching philosophy too extreme.

He believed that a sense of civics and civility were vital in a child's education, and made efforts to combine the best of philanthropinism with the best of "humanism", a word that he derived from Cicero's "humanitas".