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

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

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 Daniel Breazeale Assessing the “Vocation of Humanity,” 1794–1800 Let us begin our reconsideration of the place of Die Bestimmung des Men‑ schen within the larger framework of Fichte’s development and its relation‑ ship to his earlier “scientific” presentations of his philosophy somewhat obliquely: namely, by means of a brief comparison of this popular work of 1800, not to any of the scientific treatises or private lectures from the Jena period, but instead to another, earlier set of thoroughly “popular” lectures and writings—namely, the ones Fichte produced immediately prior to or simultaneous with his first efforts to present the foundations of his new phi‑ losophy. Here, I am referring, first of all, to Über die Würde des Menschen, the printed address with which he concluded his private Zurich lectures in February 1794, and, secondly, to the series of popular lectures he delivered during his first semester in Jena under the collective title Von den Pflichten der Gelehrten, the first five of which were published in the summer of 1794 under the title Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, and of 199 200 / DANIEL BREAZEALE these I will be focusing particularly upon the very first one, significantly entitled Über die Bestimmung des Menschen als solchen.1 In doing this, my strategy will be to compare what is said about “the vocation of man” in Fichte’s popular writings at the beginning of the Jena period with what he had to say on the same topic at the very end of the same period, in order to determine if this suggests any major changes in his philosophical doctrines and in his conception of what philosophy can and cannot demonstrate and how it should go about doing this. Philosophy as Denkart As Günter Zöller has pointed out,2 one important goal of Fichte’s popular writings is to describe the Denkart or “way of thinking” that he associ‑ ated with his philosophy and believed could and would be produced in anyone who had mastered the same—though at the same time he insisted that one must never confuse scientific philosophy per se (which occupies the theoretical standpoint of “speculation”) with the Denkart in question (which occupies the practical standpoint of “life”). This “philosophical” Denkart is described in very similar terms in 1794 and 1800: namely, as a rather stoic elevation of the soul above earthly disappointments and failures, accompanied by a firm resolve to do one’s duty no matter what, undismayed by hardships and fears, including the fear of death, and accompanied by 1. The Zurich lecture, Über die Würde des Menschen [henceforth, WM], may be found in GA, I/2, 83–89 and SW, I, 412–16. An English translation, “Concerning Human Dignity,” is in Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) [henceforth, EPW], 83–86. For the first five Jena lectures, Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Menschen [henceforth, VBM] see GA, I/3, 25–68 and SW, VI, 291–346; English trans., “Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation,” in EPW, 144–84. The other surviving and unpublished lectures from the Pflichten der Gelehrten series of the sum‑ mer semester of 1794 were first edited by Siegfried Berger and published in 1924 (Leipzig: Meiner) under the title Über den Unterschied des Geistes und des Buchstabens in der Philosophie [henceforth, UGB] and may now be found in GA, II/3, 315–42; English trans. “Concerning the Difference between the Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy,” EPW, 192–215. All of these texts are readily available in a single volume in Fichte, Von den Pflichten der Gelehrten. Jenaer Vorlesungen 1794/95, ed. Reinhard Lauth, Hans Jacob, and Peter Schneider (Hamburg: Meiner, 1971), with an informative introduction by Lauth. 2. Günter Zöller, “ ‘Das Element aller Gewissheit.’ Jacobi, Kant, und Fichte über den Glauben,” Fichte‑Studien 14 (1998): 21–41. JUMPING THE TRANSCENDENTAL SHARK / 201 a firm, indeed joyous, confidence in the ultimate triumph of morality, the final victory of spirit over nature.3 Insofar as they are concerned simply with promulgating such a way of thinking, all of these popular writings might well be considered purely “edifying,” in the Kierkegaardian sense, and to that extent to...