Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays

332 Pages·2013·1.222 MB·English

by  Daniel Breazeale, Tom Rockmore

Fichte’s Vocation of Man

Fichte’s Vocation of Man
New Interpretive and Critical Essays
Edited by
Daniel Breazeale
and
Tom Rockmore
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fichte’s Vocation of man : new interpretive and critical essays / edited by
Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4763-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1762–1814. Bestimmung des Menschen. 2. Human
beings. 3. Faith. I. Breazeale, Daniel. II. Rockmore, Tom, 1942–
B2844.B53.F45 2013
128—dc23 2012037139
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Key to Abbreviations vii
Preface ix
Introduction: The Checkered Reception of Fichte’s
Vocation of Man 1
Daniel Breazeale
1 “An Other and Better World”: Fichte’s The Vocation of Man
as a Theologico-Political Treatise 19
Günter Zöller
2 Fichte’s Philosophical Bildungsroman 33
Benjamin Crowe
3 Bestimmung as Bildung: On Reading Fichte’s Vocation of Man
as a Bildungsroman 45
Elizabeth Millán
4 Knowledge Teaches Us Nothing: The Vocation of Man
as Textual Initiation 57
Michael Steinberg
5 J. G. Fichte’s Vocation of Man: An Effort to Communicate 79
Yolanda Estes
6 “Interest”: An Overlooked Protagonist in Book I of
Fichte’s Bestimmung des Menschen 103
Mário Jorge de Carvalho
vi / CONTENTS
7 The Dialectic of Judgment and The Vocation of Man 127
Wayne Martin
8 The Traction of the World, or Fichte on Practical Reason
and the Vocation of Man 145
Tom Rockmore
9 Fichte’s Conception of Infinity in the Bestimmung des Menschen 155
David W. Wood
10 Intersubjectivity and the Communality of Our Final End in
Fichte’s Vocation of Man 173
Kien‑How Goh
11 Evil and Moral Responsibility in The Vocation of Man 185
Jane Dryden
12 Jumping the Transcendental Shark: Fichte’s “Argument of
Belief” in Book III of Die Bestimmung des Menschen and the
Transition from the Earlier to the Later Wissenschaftslehre 199
Daniel Breazeale
13 Determination and Freedom in Kant and in Fichte’s
Bestimmung des Menschen 225
Angelica Nuzzo
14 “There is in nature an original thinking power, just as there
is an original formative power.” On a Claim from Book One
of The Vocation of Man 241
Violetta L. Waibel
15 Erkenntnis and Interesse: Schelling’s System of Transcendental
Idealism and Fichte’s Vocation of Man 255
Michael Vater
16 Faith and Knowledge and Vocation of Man: A Comparison
between Hegel and Fichte 273
Marco Ivaldo
17 The Vocation of Postmodern Man: Why Fichte Now? Again! 285
Arnold Farr
Index 301
Key to Abbreviations
AA Immanuel Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902
ff.)
AD J. G. Fichte and the Atheism Dispute (1798–1800), ed. and
trans. Curtis Bowman, ed. and commentary by Yolanda Estes
(Burlington, VT, and Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010)
BM Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800)
BM(pb) Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, ed. Fritz Medicus and
Erich Fuchs (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1979)
BWL Fichte, Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (1794)
EPW Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel
Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988)
FiG Fichte in Gespräch, ed. Erich Fuchs (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann-Holzboog. 1980)
FNR Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right, ed. Frederick Neuhous-
er, trans. Michael Baur (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000)
FTP Fichte: Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaft‑
slehre) nova methodo, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1992)
GA J. G. Fichte‑Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wis‑
senschaften, ed. Erich Fuchs, Reinhard Lauth,† and Hans
Gliwitzky† (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog,
1964ff.)
GG Fichte, Über den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Wel‑
tregierung (1798)
GNR Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts (1796/97)
vii
viii / KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS
GWL Fichte, Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95)
IWL Fichte, Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writ‑
ings, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1994)
KpV Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788)
KrV Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. As is customary, references
to KrV will be simply to the page numbers of the A (1781)
and B (1787) eds.
KU Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790).
P Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als
Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1781)
SE Fichte, System of Ethics, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale
and Günter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005)
SK Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. Peter Heath
and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982)
SS Fichte, System der Sittenlehre (1798)
SW Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte,
eight vols. (Berlin: Viet & Co., 1845–46); rpt., along with
the three vols. of Johann Gottlieb Fichtes nachgelassene Werke
(Bonn: Adolphus-Marcus, 1834–35), as Fichtes Werke (Ber-
lin: de Gruyter, 1971)
WLnm[H] Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (“Halle Nachshrift,”
1796/97)
WLnm[K] Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (“Krause Nachschrift,”
1798/99)
VM Fichte, The Vocation of Man, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapo-
lis: Hackett, 1987)
VM(LLA) Fichte, The Vocation of Man, trans. William Smith, ed.
Roderick Chisholm (Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts/
Bobbs-Merrill, 1956)
VM(PW) Fichte, The Vocation of Man, trans. William Smith, in Vol.
I of The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (London,
Trübner & Co., 4th ed., 1889).
Preface
This volume collects seventeen previously unpublished essays by an interna-
tional group of scholars, all focusing upon different aspects of and offering
diverse perspectives upon a single, seminal text, J. G. Fichte’s “popular”
tract of 1800, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.1 The Vocation of Man has
been translated into English no fewer than three times, first in 1846 by
Percy Sennet, then again in 1848 by William Smith, whose translation
was subsequently revised and reissued on several different occasions, and
most recently, in 1987, by Peter Preuss.2 Though it is unquestionably the
best known of Fichte’s writings among Anglophone readers and students
of German Idealism, there is in fact and has long been a great deal of
controversy among Fichte scholars concerning its significance and its rela-
tionship to Fichte’s other, less popular—or, as he himself would have put
it, more “scientific”—treatises, especially the various versions of his distinc-
tive philosophical system, the so-called Wissenschaftslehre or “doctrine of
1. All of these essays are revised versions of papers that were originally presented at the
Tenth Biennial Meeting of the North American Fichte Society, held April 27–30, 2010, in
Lisbon, Portugal, with the generous support of the Unidade de Investigação LIF (Universidade
de Coimbra), the Centro de Estudos Filosóficos (Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas/
Universidade Nova de Lisboa), the Fundação Engenheiro António de Almeida, and the Fundação
Luso‑Americana.
2. J. G. Fichte, The Destination of Man, trans. Mrs. Percy Sinnett (London: John Chapman,
1846); J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, trans. William Smith (London: John Chapman,
1848), 265–554; 2nd., substantially rev. ed. in Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Popular Works (London:
Trübner, 1873), 233–379 (later reissued several times as a single volume, The Vocation of Man,
with an introduction by E. Ritchie [LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1906, 1931, 1965]); 3rd. rev.
ed. in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (London: Trübner, 1889), 319–478 (further
rev. and with an introduction by Roderick Chisholm [Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts/
Bobbs-Merrill, 1956]; J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987).
ix