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

11. Evil and Moral Responsibility in The Vocation of Man

11 Evil and Moral Responsibility in The Vocation of Man Jane Dryden The Horrific World In the third part of the Vocation of Man, Fichte argues that the world as we experience it is so awful that we cannot rationally accept that it is all there is—it simply cannot be the case that life exists just so that it can die (VM, 81). He provides a lengthy list of the harms that surround us in this world, beginning with those inflicted by nature, such as (paraphrasing slightly): bad weather, floods, storms, volcanoes, diseases that cause the deaths of children and mature adults, plagues, loneliness, loss of parents or family, hurricanes, and earthquakes (VM, 82), and finally the recalcitrance of inert and hostile primeval forests, deserts, and swamps (VM, 83). The harms that he lists are framed as those that serve to damage or limit the possibilities of human beings; he is not concerned here with harms inflicted upon or suffered by nonhuman creatures. The harm done by nature is not the fault of the victim—the “industrious and prudent man is abandoned to hunger and misery through no fault of his own” (VM, 82). These harms squander the potential of rational agents—it seems to him a waste that “immortal spirits must still direct all their thought and ingenuity and all their effort to the soil that bears their nourishment” (VM, 82). There is hope for all these poor souls, of course. Fichte is optimistic that science and technology, properly harnessed, will ultimately weaken the power of these evils such that the natural world will present a friendlier face to us: cultivated, it will promote our ends, rather than thwarting them 185 186 / JANE DRYDEN (VM, 83). Nature, thinks Fichte, is not ultimately destined to remain a problem for us. What he is more concerned about are the evils caused by our own free agency: “Man’s most cruel enemy is man” (VM, 83). Examples are cannibalism and war (VM, 83),1 oppression of the masses by the elite, and the petty infighting even among those who fight for “the good,” who pursue their own particular conception of the good and accuse those who disagree of betrayal (VM, 84–85). The work of science, which ought to go to improving the lot of humankind, instead goes to supplying navies with weaponry to seek out men to destroy (VM, 84). Fichte is convinced that this situation cannot last forever, “unless the whole of human existence is a purposeless and meaningless game” (VM, 85). Human societies can and will progress in their cultural development, and ultimately will all come together into one true state, in which “all temptation to evil, indeed the very possibility of anyone’s rationally decid‑ ing upon evil behavior, will be fully eliminated, and man will be given all possible encouragement to direct his will to the good” (VM, 89). The improvement of the human species, of course, is intended to eradicate evil, and faith in the belief that this is possible is what drives Fichte’s conclu‑ sions in third part of the Vocation of Man. The Problem of Evil In these few pages, then, Fichte has rehearsed a number of the classic examples of evil. While he only uses the actual word evil (Böse) in reference to those harms inflicted by free agents, the two sets of examples he gives nonetheless echo the division is traditionally found within the philosophi‑ cal problem of evil, between physical evil (harm caused within the natural world such as natural disasters, disease, and the like), and moral evil (harm caused by human agency). This distinction allows for various responses to the problem of evil, which is not focused on evil itself, but on whether the existence of evil in the world is compatible with the existence of a God that is both good and omnipotent. 1. He characterizes the killing in war as murder (VM, 83), echoing his prohibition against the use of snipers (and unnecessary killing) in war in the second appendix to the Founda‑ tions of Natural Right (FNR, 328). EVIL AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE VOCATION OF MAN / 187 Those who defend the existence of God argue that moral evil can be explained away in terms of the “free will defense,”2 which states that a world that includes beings with free will is better than a world without such beings, and it...