The vocation of man
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~64,800 words · 308 passages
Cite this work
- APAJohann Fichte. (n.d.). The vocation of man. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/johann-fichte/the-vocation-of-man
- MLAJohann Fichte. The vocation of man. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/johann-fichte/the-vocation-of-man.
- ChicagoJohann Fichte. The vocation of man. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/johann-fichte/the-vocation-of-man.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Vocation of Man (1800): doubt, knowledge and faith, in three parts.
Context and history
Written deliberately for readers who were not professional philosophers, after the atheism charge had cost him his chair. It begins with an I trapped in a determined world and ends with faith as the only way out — a route Fichte makes the reader travel rather than explaining it to them. An old English translation. The catalogue also holds Fichte in German; the original is what should be cited.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
part must be what it is, because all the others are what they are; and you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place, without thereby, although perhaps imperceptibly to you, changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole. But every moment of this duration is determined by all past moments, and will determine all future moments ; and you cannot conceive even the position of a grain of sand other than it is in the Present, without being compelled to conceive the whole indefinite Past to have been other than what it has been, and the whole indefinite Future other than what it will be. Make the experiment, for instance, with this grain of quick-sand. Suppose it to lie some few paces further inland than it does : — then must the storm-wind that drove it in from the sea have been stronger than it actually was ;