Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation

Five public lectures telling Jena's students that their learning belongs to humanity, and answering Rousseau's case against culture.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte100 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten
First published: 1794(aged 32)
Original language: German

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Overview

From his first months at Jena in 1794, rumours went round that Johann Gottlieb Fichte had told students there would be no more kings or princes within twenty years. These lectures, given that summer to a large audience of students, actually say that the purpose of all government is to make government unnecessary, and that the moment may lie myriads of years away. That autumn he had the first five printed exactly as he had delivered them, saying in a short preface only that an outside occasion had made him do it. The argument climbs from the person to society to the scholar. A human being's final vocation is complete agreement with oneself, which means bringing everything, oneself included, under reason; no one can do that alone, so people are made for society, and society for the slow improvement of the whole species. The scholar's task is to watch over that progress, and the duty that comes with it is to be the morally best person of the age. The fifth lecture turns on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had argued that the arts and sciences corrupt those who possess them. Fichte answers that Rousseau used every power his own cultivation gave him to persuade mankind to go back to nature, and forgot that humanity can reach what he longed for only through care, toil and work. The five lectures opened his public series on the morality of scholars, which became enormously popular.

Key concepts

What is a person's 'vocation' in these lectures?

A vocation (Bestimmung) is what a being is meant for, its final purpose. For a human being, Fichte says, it is complete agreement with oneself: bringing everything, including oneself, under reason. That perfection could only be reached by ceasing to be human and becoming God, so the vocation is not to arrive but to keep improving without end, becoming morally better and making everything around one better too.

What does Fichte mean by society?

Society is free, reasoning beings acting on one another by means of ideas, a community with a shared purpose. It is more than people living side by side. Each person recognises others as free like themselves and tries to raise them to their own idea of what a human being should be, so that in this contest of minds the whole species improves.

Why does Fichte accept a division of society into estates?

Because people are born with unequal gifts and no one can develop every ability at once. Each estate, such as farming, trade or learning, cultivates one side of human ability and shares its results with the rest. Fichte argues that this new inequality produces a new equality: everyone shares in a uniform advance of culture, which serves society's final aim, the complete equality of its members.

Who counts as a scholar here?

A scholar is someone whose estate is knowledge of humanity's vocation and of the means to reach it, and whose task is to oversee and promote humanity's actual progress. Fichte means a role in society rather than a private passion for learning. Because that role makes the scholar a teacher of the whole species, the lectures hold scholars to a higher moral standard than anyone else.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Made for One Another

Why can no one become fully human alone? Fichte argues from the single person to society, and lets the argument end at the disappearance of the state.

A human being's vocation, Fichte tells the students, is complete agreement with oneself: bringing everything, oneself included, under reason. That goal can never be reached without ceasing to be human, so the vocation is endless self-improvement, and it needs others. Society is free beings acting on each other by concepts, and its aim is the complete equality of its members, reached through a division into estates. Anyone who thinks himself master of others is a slave, and the purpose of all government is to make government unnecessary.

human nature
freedom
autonomy
social philosophy
social cooperation
reciprocity
other minds
human dignity
division of labor
social progress
humanity
ideals
practical reason
moral law
self-consciousness
reason
will
human development

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What Learning Owes the World

What is a learned person for? Fichte's answer turns the scholar into the guardian of human progress and puts him to a moral test.

The scholar's estate exists to oversee the actual progress of the human race and keep it moving; it cannot make humanity leap, only stop it standing still or slipping back. That makes the scholar the educator of humanity, and so obliged to be the morally best person of the age. The fifth lecture turns to Rousseau, who blamed culture for every human corruption. Fichte answers that Rousseau argued with every power culture had given him, and forgot that the goal he longed for is reached only through care, toil and work.

scholarship
education
professional vocation
vocation
truth
rousseau
virtue
ethics
nature
culture
duty
epistemology

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Within this work

passages held: 100
distinct concepts: 182
by passages held, corpus-wide: #501

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “education” and “scholarship”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 72 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
education	scholarship	4
education	social progress	4
scholarship	social progress	3
scholarship	truth	3
education	reason	2
education	truth	2
freedom	social progress	2
human nature	reason	2
education	freedom	1
education	human nature	1
freedom	human nature	1
human nature	practical reason	1
human nature	social progress	1
practical reason	reason	1
practical reason	social progress	1
reason	social progress	1
social progress	truth	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1792 Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung)
The debut, written in weeks in Königsberg to impress Kant: a book on religion that made Fichte famous before he had a system of his own.
DE
1794 Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre (Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie – als Einladungsschrift zu seinen Vorlesungen über diese Wissenschaft)
A manifesto before the system: the short programme Fichte printed to introduce himself to Jena, months before the first sheets of the Foundation reached his students.
DE
1794 Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre)
The first full statement of the system and his best-known treatise, begun as lecture handouts in 1794; the 1795 Outline carries its theoretical half further, and the First Introduction of 1797 starts the explanation again.
DE
1794 Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation (Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten) you are here DE
1795 Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with respect to the Theoretical Faculty (Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre)
A companion rather than a book of its own: the 1795 supplement that carries the Foundation's theoretical half on into sensation, space and time.
DE
1797 First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre (Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre)
Written for beginners: the 1797 journal essay in which Fichte, frustrated with how the Foundation had been read, began explaining his system again from first principles.
DE
1799 Streitschriften zur Denk- und Gewissensfreiheit
Gathered here from two separate publications, of 1793 and 1799, that bracket Fichte's rise to fame and his fall at Jena.
DE
1800 The Closed Commercial State (Der geschlossene Handelsstaat)
A venture into economics, offered as an appendix to his theory of right and published in 1800, the same year as The Vocation of Man.
DE
1800 The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen)
Written straight after the Atheism Dispute, in his first months in Berlin: the system retold for general readers as a first-person passage from doubt to faith.
DE
1806 The Characteristics of the Present Age (Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters)
One of three popular lecture courses Fichte published in 1806: the philosophy of history that the Addresses to the German Nation would later claim to continue.
DE
1806 The Way Towards the Blessed Life (Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben)
The summit, in Fichte's own estimate, of the popular lectures he gave in Berlin before the war: religion presented as the result of the Wissenschaftslehre, his "doctrine of science", for listeners with no philosophy.
DE
1808 Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation)
His most influential book: public lectures once more, but this time a call to a defeated nation rather than a philosophy of history or a doctrine of religion.
DE
1810 Kürzere Darstellungen der Wissenschaftslehre
A Jena beginning and a Berlin summing-up, published separately and gathered on one page, on either side of the many versions of the system Fichte kept to the lecture room.
DE
1845 Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre. Aus dem Jahre 1801 (Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre aus dem Jahre 1801)
An early Berlin reworking of the system, written in 1801 as Fichte and Schelling were drifting apart, and left among his papers.
DE

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