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

1. “An Other and Better World”: Fichte’s The Vocation of Man as a Theologico-Political Treatise

1 “An Other and Better World” Fichte’s The Vocation of Man as a Theologico‑Political Treatise Günter Zöller Habent sua fata libelli* Like Plato before him and Heidegger after him, Fichte was a prolific author but not really a writer of books. In the comprehensive edition of his col‑ lected works undertaken by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, which comprises some thirty‑five volumes, the works published by Fichte himself only amount to ten tomes. Moreover, most of those works originated in academic lectures at the universities of Jena, Erlangen, and Berlin and were subsequently, or in one case simultaneously, published by Fichte, chiefly in an attempt to expand their audience to a more general learned readership. Among Fichte’s early works only the political writings on the French Revo‑ lution (Contribution to the Rectification of the Public’s Judgments About the French Revolution, Revindication of the Freedom of Thought From the Princes of Europe) and the pseudo‑Kantian essay in the philosophy of revealed religion 19 *The Latin quotation that precedes the first section of this chapter is taken from the fragmen‑ tarily preserved didactic poem entitled De litteris (On Literature), by the ancient grammarian Terentianus Maurus. The complete line (v. 1286) reads: Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli (Booklets have their fate depending on the mental capacity of the reader). 20 / GüNTER ZöLLER (Attempt At a Critique Of All Revelation) did not originate in prior public or private lectures. In fact, all three of those publications predate Fichte’s first academic appointment, just as Fichte’s later genuine book publica‑ tions—The Vocation of Man (1800), Crystal‑Clear Report (1800), The Closed Commercial State (1801), and Friedrich Nicolai’s Life and Literary Opinions (1801)—all date from a period of time in which Fichte was without an academic appointment and even without a substitute extra‑academic audi‑ ence. Moreover, after the fiasco of the so‑called atheism dispute and the ensuing loss of his professorship at Jena, Fichte even desisted from lending book form to many of his later academic lectures, including all of those on the Wissenschaftslehre, effectively limiting his remaining published work to popular, lecture‑based treatments of the philosophy of history, political philosophy, and philosophy of education, as well as condensed presentations of the philosophy of law and ethics. The motivation behind Fichte’s lifelong reticence regarding the writ‑ ing of books and his equally lifelong preferred practice of turning his lec‑ tures into books—and thereby making his books into lectures—is his deep conviction of the eminently pneumatic nature of philosophy. For Fichte, philosophy proper does not have a subject matter (Stoff) that lends itself to doctrinal fixation and transmission. Rather, philosophy is an individual intellectual activity that is to mirror the active, spontaneous, and free char‑ acter of its sole subject matter, viz., the human mind (Geist), the I (Ich), or knowledge (Wissen), viewed not as an entity, a faculty, or a body of cognitions but as the normative sum total of principled reason (Vernunft). Accordingly, communication of philosophical matters is targeted at con‑ veying the elusive “spirit” (Geist) of philosophy and resorts to the “letter” (Buchstabe) only for practical purposes and with the ultimate intention of leaving behind the medium as well as its artificial product, namely, literature.1 Fichte’s horror libri is, to a large extent, responsible for the failed, fragmentary, and faulty reception as well as effective history (Wirkungsge‑ schichte) of his philosophy in general and that of its speculative core, the Wissenschaftslehre, in particular. After an initial phase of tremendous philo‑ sophical and cultural influence on his contemporaries, Fichte—traumatized 1. On the pneumatic nature of Fichte’s philosophy, see Günter Zöller, “Die Sittlichkeit des Geistes und der Geist der Sittlichkeit. Fichtes systematischer Beitrag,” in Geist und Sittlichkeit. Ethik‑Modelle von Platon bis Levinas, ed. Edith Düsing, Klaus Düsing, and Hans‑Dieter Klein (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2009), 217–38. “AN OTHER AND BETTER WORLD” / 21 and rendered oversensitive by the tendentious and hostile readings of his philosophy in the so‑called atheism dispute—virtually withdrew from par‑ ticipating in the ongoing public debate about the development of post‑ Kantian philosophy, effectively leaving the terrain to his junior rivals, Schelling and Hegel. It was only the posthumous publication of some of his later Berlin lectures in the mid‑nineteenth century and the complete...