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WorkJohann Gottlieb Fichte

The Vocation of Man

A lone voice argues its way from doubt through knowledge to faith, under a title borrowed from a Berlin preacher.

by Johann Gottlieb Fichte277 passages held

  • German, the original language
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Original title
Die Bestimmung des Menschen
First published
(aged 38)
Original language
German

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Overview

The title was borrowed, word for word. Die Bestimmung des Menschen, "the vocation of man", was the short title of a meditation by Johann Joachim Spalding, the Berlin preacher, first published in 1748 and reprinted many times; in 1799, defending himself against the charge of atheism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte had named Spalding's little book as the one that first set him thinking. A year later, newly settled in Berlin after losing his chair at Jena, he wrote a book of his own under the same title, and said in its preface that it was not meant for professional philosophers. A single speaker, "I", works through three stages. In the first, doubt, he discovers that if natural science is the whole truth, he is one link in an unbroken chain of causes and his sense of freedom is an illusion. In the second, knowledge, a spirit leads him in dialogue to see that everything he knows of the world is his own representation; that frees him from the chain, but turns the world into a dream. The third, faith, finds reality in the demand to act: his vocation is not to know but to do what his conscience requires, and the world is the material for that duty. Here the speaker addresses God directly, while refusing to think of God as a person, since personality means limits. The book also answered Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, the writer who had just accused Fichte's philosophy of nihilism in an open letter. It came out from the Vossische Buchhandlung in Berlin in 1800, and William Smith's English translation followed in 1848.

Key concepts

Why is the book divided into doubt, knowledge and faith?

Because it follows one mind through three answers to the question of what a human being is for. Doubt tries natural science and ends in a chain of causes with no room for freedom. Knowledge, taught by a spirit, frees the speaker from that chain but turns the world into his own images. Faith finds reality again in the demand to act. Each stage solves the last one's problem and creates its own.

What are the 'system of necessity' and the 'system of freedom'?

They are the two pictures of himself between which the doubting speaker cannot choose. In the system of necessity he is one product of nature's forces, every act fixed by what came before. In the system of freedom he is an independent source of his own actions. His understanding finds the first fully convincing, while his heart can live only with the second, and that split drives the rest of the book.

Why does knowledge produce only images, according to the spirit?

Because all knowing is depiction: it always pictures something and demands something real to match the picture, yet no further knowing can supply that real thing. A system built from knowledge alone is therefore a system of mere images, without reality, meaning or purpose. The spirit counts this a gain, since it destroys the error of a world that enslaves us, while admitting it cannot give truth.

What does 'faith' mean in this book?

Faith is a free decision to rest in the natural view of things, that there is a real world and other people in it, because only by holding that view can a person do what they are called to do. It is not belief in a doctrine on authority. Knowledge, Fichte's speaker finds, always presupposes something higher without end; faith stops that regress by grounding reality in the demand to act.

Themes of the book

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

Caught in the Chain of Nature

If science explains everything, is there anyone left who acts? The book's speaker reasons his way into that fear before he can find a way out.

Looking at plants, trees and animals, the speaker sees forces of nature, each at its fixed stage, and soon sees himself the same way: his shaping, moving and thinking powers are nature at work in one spot. Not a grain of sand could lie otherwise without the whole past and future changing. His understanding is satisfied. His heart is not: the system of freedom satisfies it, and the system of necessity leaves him standing cold and dead, a sluggish mirror of passing events.

  • determinism
  • causality
  • causation
  • nature
  • free will
  • freedom
  • moral responsibility
  • agency
  • skepticism

Enter a dialogue

A World Made of Images

What do we actually perceive when we think we perceive things? A midnight visitor answers, and the answer frees the speaker only to empty his world.

At midnight a spirit appears and leads the speaker, question by question, to see that everything he knows of a world outside is his own seeing, touching and thinking. The fear of necessity vanishes, since the chain of causes exists only in his knowing. But so does everything else: all reality becomes a dream without a life that is dreamed or a mind that dreams. The spirit admits it came only to destroy a false knowledge, never to give a true one, since knowing is depiction and cannot produce reality.

  • perception
  • epistemology
  • sensation
  • representation
  • external world
  • space
  • consciousness
  • self-consciousness
  • idealism
  • knowledge
  • reality
  • selfhood

Enter a dialogue

The Voice of Conscience

If knowledge cannot give us a real world, what can? The speaker finds the answer in what he is called to do.

Not merely to know, but to act on one's knowledge, is the speaker's vocation, and that inner command is where reality returns. He treats others as beings like himself because he has duties towards them, and he calls this faith: a free resting in the natural view of things, because only there can a person fulfil their vocation. The voice of conscience becomes an oracle from the eternal world. He addresses God as a sublime living will, but refuses to call God a person, since personality implies limits.

  • conscience
  • duty
  • moral law
  • practical reason
  • faith
  • will
  • reason
  • ethics
  • autonomy

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
277
distinct concepts
303
by passages held, corpus-wide
#269

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: “epistemology” and “perception”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 23 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
epistemologyperception18
perceptionself-consciousness16
epistemologyself-consciousness10
determinismnature7
consciousnessself-consciousness6
determinismfreedom6
consciousnessepistemology5
consciousnessperception5
determinismfree will4
free willnature4
freedomnature4
freedomself-consciousness3
consciousnessfreedom2
consciousnessnature2
epistemologyfree will2
epistemologyfreedom2
consciousnessdeterminism1
determinismepistemology1
determinismself-consciousness1
epistemologynature1
free willperception1
freedomperception1
natureself-consciousness1

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.

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 1794 Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation (Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten)

    Popular ethics for students, given the summer Fichte arrived at Jena in 1794, alongside the far harder Foundation.

     DE
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 1800 The Vocation of Man (Die Bestimmung des Menschen) you are here DE
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. 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
  13. 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
  14. 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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