Quotes from book
The Vocation of Man

The Vocation of Man

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The Vocation of Man is a work by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The work was originally published by Fichte in 1799 and translated into English by William Smith in 1848. Fichte identifies three distinct stages in the development of faith: 1. Doubt, 2. Knowledge, 3. Faith.

“The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12

“The "I" who speaks in this book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this "I": that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually converse with himself, deliberate back and forth, deduce conclusions, make decisions like his representative in the book, and through his own work and reflection, purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 2

“If I only know what I am convinced of and have found out myself, if I really only know what I have experienced myself, then indeed I cannot say that I have the least knowledge about my vocation; I only know what others claim to know about it.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Wenn ich nur dasjenige weiß, und von ihm überzeugt bin, was ich selbst gefunden, – nur dasjenige wirklich kenne, was ich selbst erfahren habe, so kann ich in der That nicht sagen, daß ich über meine Bestimmung das Geringste wisse; ich weiß blos, was Andre darüber zu wissen behaupten.
Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 4

“It is so by nature that the plant will develop with regularity, that the animal will move purposefully, and that human beings will think. Why should I take exception to recognizing also the last as the expression of an original force of nature, as I do the first and the second?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 11

“With the same assurance with which I count on the floor to support me when I step on it, and on the fire to burn me were I to approach it, I want to be able to count on what I myself am and what I will be.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 4

“All life, Omnipotent Father, is thy life! and the eye of religion alone penetrates to the realms of truth and beauty. I am related to thee, and what I behold around me is related to me; all is full of animation, and looks towards me with bright spiritual eyes, and speaks with spirit voices to my heart.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.125
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“Should it seem to me that truth has been put to silence, and virtue trampled under foot, and that folly and vice will certainly triumph; should it happen, when all hearts were filled with hope for the human race, that the horizon should suddenly darken around them as it had never done before; should the work, well and happily begun, on which all eyes were fixed with joyous expectation, suddenly and unexpectedly be turned into a deed of shame, — yet will I not be dismayed; nor if the good cause should appear to grow and flourish, the lights of freedom and civilization be diffused, and peace and good-will amongst men be extended, shall yet my efforts be relaxed.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.123
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“Blessed be the hour in which I was first led to inquire into my own spiritual nature and destination! All my doubts are removed; I know what I can know, and have no fears for what I cannot know. I am satisfied; perfect clearness and harmony reign in my soul, and a new and more glorious existence begins for me. My entire destiny I cannot comprehend; what I am to become, exceeds my present power of conception. A part, which is concealed from me, is visible to the father of spirits. I know only that it is secure, everlasting and glorious. That part of it which is confided to me I know, for it is the root of all my other knowledge.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.120
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger on my lips. What thou art in thyself, or how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know. After living through a thousand lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this mansion of clay. What I can comprehend, becomes finite by my mere comprehension, and this can never, by perpetual ascent, be transformed into the infinite, for it does not differ from it in degree merely, but in kind. By that ascent we may find a greater and greater man, but never a God, who is capable of no measurement.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.115
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“I believe it to be this; that my will, absolutely of itself, and without the intervention of any instrument that might weaken its effect, shall act in a sphere perfectly congenial — reason upon reason, spirit upon spirit; in a sphere to which it does not give the laws of life, of activity, of progress, but which has them in itself, therefore, upon self-active reason. But spontaneous, self-active reason is will. The law of the transcendental world must, therefore, be a Will.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.110
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“The will is the living principle of the rational soul, is indeed itself reason, when purely and simply apprehended. That reason is itself active, means, that the pure will, as such, rules and is effectual. The infinite reason alone lies immediately and entirely in the purely spiritual order. The finite being lives necessarily at the same time in a sensuous order; that is to say, in one which presents to him other objects than those of pure reason; a material object, to be advanced by instruments and powers, standing indeed under the immediate command of the will, but whose efficacy is conditional also on its own natural laws.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.104
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“Reason does not exist for the sake of life, but life for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason and solve all her doubts, cannot be the true one.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.94
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts, and possessed of similar culture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of Man, have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 88
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“The voice in my soul in which I will have faith, and for the sake of which I have faith in all else, does not merely command me generally to act, but in every particular situation it declares what I shall do and what leave undone; it accompanies me through every event of my life, and it is impossible for me to contend against it. To listen to it and obey it honestly and impartially, without fear or equivocation, is the business of my existence. My life is no longer an empty I play without truth or significance. It is appointed that what I conscience ordains me shall be done, and for this purpose am I here. I have understanding to know, and power to execute it. By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 77
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“There is nothing enduring, permanent, either in me or out of me, nothing but everlasting change. I know of no existence, not even of my own. I know nothing and am nothing. Images — pictures — only are, pictures which wander by without anything existing past which they wander, without any corresponding reality which they might represent, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these images, or rather a confused image of these images. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a world of which the dream might be, or a mind that might dream it. Contemplation is a dream; thought, the source of all existence and of all that I fancied reality, of my own existence, my own capacities, is a dream of that dream.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 60
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“Spirit: Do not be deceived by sophists and half philosophers; things do not appear to thee by means of any representatives. Of the thing that exists, and that can exist, thou art conscious immediately; thou, thyself, art that of which thou art conscious. By a fundamental law of thy being thou art thus presented to thyself, and thrown out of thyself.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 53
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“Of what I am, I know no more than that I am, but here no tie is necessary between subject and object. My own being is this tie, I am at once the subject knowing, and the object known of; and this reflection or return of the knowledge on itself is what I designate by the term I, if I have any determinate meaning.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 50
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“I: My consciousness of the object is only a yet unrecognised consciousness of my production of the representation of an object. Of this production I know no more than that it is I who produce, and thus is all consciousness no more than a consciousness of myself, and so far perfectly comprehensible. Am I in the right? Spirit. Perfectly so; but whence then is derived the necessity and universality thou hast ascribed to these propositions, to that of causality for instance?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 47
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“An act of the mind of which we are conscious, as such, is called freedom. An act without consciousness of action is called spontaneity. I by no means assume as necessary any immediate consciousness of the act, but merely, that on subsequent reflection thou shouldst perceive it to be an act. The higher question of what it is that prevents any such state of indecision, or any consciousness of the act, we may perhaps subsequently be able to solve. This act of the mind is called thought and it is said that thought is a spontaneous act, to distinguish it from sensation, in which the mind is merely receptive and passive.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 44
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“Am I a free agent, or am I merely the manifestation of a foreign power? Neither appear sufficiently well founded. By the most courageous resolve of my life am I reduced to this! what Power can save me from it, from myself?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 24
The Vocation of Man (1800), Doubt

Similar authors

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

Johann Gottlieb Fichte 102

German philosopher 1762–1814

Immanuel Kant photo

Immanuel Kant 200

German philosopher

Johann Gottfried Herder photo

Johann Gottfried Herder 18

German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Friedrich Schiller photo

Friedrich Schiller 111

German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Baron d'Holbach photo

Baron d'Holbach 9

French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

Gottfried Leibniz photo

Gottfried Leibniz 29

German mathematician and philosopher

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing photo

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 18

writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic

Novalis 102

German poet and writer

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 185

German writer, artist, and politician

Matthias Claudius photo

Matthias Claudius 1

German poet

Similar authors

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

Johann Gottlieb Fichte 102

German philosopher 1762–1814

Immanuel Kant photo

Immanuel Kant 200

German philosopher

Johann Gottfried Herder photo

Johann Gottfried Herder 18

German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Friedrich Schiller photo

Friedrich Schiller 111

German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Baron d'Holbach photo

Baron d'Holbach 9

French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist