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

3. Bestimmung as Bildung: On Reading Fichte’s Vocation of Man as a Bildungsroman

3 Bestimmung as Bildung On Reading Fichte’s Vocation of Man as a Bildungsroman Elizabeth Millán Was suchst Du doch mein klagendes Herz? The Philosopher of Freedom Meets the Singer of Fados At the heart of the Bestimmung text is Fichte’s commitment to analyzing the idea of freedom. This is not surprising: Fichte is a philosopher of freedom. G. E. Moore, given his famous or infamous, “Refutation of Idealism,”1 is an unlikely cheerleader for Fichte. But even Moore, in a review of an early translation into English (a translation that Moore despised, among other reasons because it completely botched “Fichte’s simple and forcible style”) of Fichte’s Sittenlehre, praises Fichte’s attention to freedom: “[Fichte’s work on ethics] contains the most thoroughgoing attempt ever made to build a complete ethical system solely on the basis of freedom.”2 In an introduction to the English translation of the Bestimmung text, Roderick Chisholm also focuses on the notion of freedom, claiming that 45 1. Unlikely in light of his famous or infamous “Refutation of Idealism,” Mind (1903): 433–53. 2. Review of The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge, International Journal of Ethics 9, no. 1 (October 1898): 92–97, at p. 96. 46 / ELIZABETH MILLáN The system of freedom satisfies my heart; the opposite system kills and annihilates it. To stand there, cold and dead and merely to look at the change of events an inert mirror of fleeting forms— that is an unbearable existence and I disdain and deplore it. I want to love, I want to lose myself in taking an interest, I want to be glad and be sad. For me the highest object of this interest is myself, and the only thing in me with which I can give it an ongoing content is my activity. I want to do everything for the best; want to feel glad about myself when I have done well, and be sad about myself when I have done badly. And even this sadness is to be sweet to me, for it is interest in myself and a pledge of future improvement. Only in love is there life, without it there is death and annihilation.6 A question that Fichte takes most seriously in the Bestimmung text is the question of whether “love [shall] be made subordinate to knowledge or knowledge to love?” [ob der Erkenntnis die Liebe, oder der Liebe die Erkenntnis untergeordnet werden soll].7 Our hero remains, “unentschieden” and moreover has “schlechthin keinen Entscheidungs‑Grund weder für das Eine noch für das Andere.”8 A key character in reaching some sort of decision on this mat‑ ter of whether love shall be made subject to knowledge or knowledge to love is the Spirit. And because the preservation of freedom is central in the journey that our hero (which is our own self) has to undertake, the Spirit cannot make our decision for us, but rather can help clear the path for us to reach a decision on our own terms. The Spirit wishes to “free [us] from [our] false knowledge” but by no means “to teach [us] the truth” [Ich wollte dich, von deinem falschen Wissen befreien; keineswegs aber dir das wahre beibringen].9 If the Spirit were to bring us to truth and spare us the journey, then our freedom would be compromised: we must have the independence to bring ourselves to truth. The aim of the Spirit is to “destroy and annihilate” error [es zerstört und vernichtet den Irrtum],10 thus opening the path to the truth and ultimately to our freedom; and this path is one that we alone must forge. We can be aided in the process of doubt, but knowledge must be obtained by us alone. As the Spirit tells us: 6. VM(LLA), 24/BM, 32. 7. VM(LLA), 26/BM, 34. 8. Ibid. 9. VM(LLA), 64/BM, 82. 10. VM(LLA), 65/BM, 83. BESTIMMUNG AS BILDUNG / 47 [t]he argument of The Vocation of Man is essentially this: If we were to consider only what seems to be the position of man in nature, we would be led to a false conception of man. We would be led to suppose that he is a product of natural forces, both physiologically and psychologically, and that all of his actions, like other physical events, are the inevitable...