Quotes from book
The Vocation of Man

Name: The Vocation of Man
Author: 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.

“That I should by necessity be either wise and good, or foolish or vicious, without having in one case or the other merit or fault — this it was that filled me with aversion and horror. The determination of my actions by a cause out of myself, whose manifestations were again determined by other causes — this it was from which I so violently revolted. The freedom which was not mine, but that of a foreign power, and, in that, only a conditional, half freedom — this it was with which I could not rest satisfied. I myself — that which in this system only appears as the manifestation of a higher existence, I will be independent, — will be something, not by another or through another, but of myself.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 21
The Vocation of Man (1800), Doubt

“My immediate consciousness, my absolute perception, cannot go beyond myself, — I have immediate knowledge only of myself, whatever I know further I know only by reasoning, in the same manner in which I have come to those conclusions concerning the original powers of Nature, which certainly do not lie within the circle of my perceptions. I, however, — that which I call myself, — am not the man-forming power of Nature, but only one of its manifestations; and only of this manifestation am I conscious, not of that power, whose existence I have only discovered from the necessity of explaining my own.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 13
The Vocation of Man (1800), Doubt

“Mit derselben Sicherheit, mit welcher ich darauf rechne, daß dieser Boden mich tragen wird, wenn ich darauf trete, daß dieses Feuer mich verbrennen würde, wenn ich mich ihm näherte, will ich darauf rechnen können, was ich selbst bin, und was ich sein werde. 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), Doubt, P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 4

“Who am I? Subject and object in one — contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 71
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith