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

14. “There is in nature an original thinking power.": On a Claim from Book One of The Vocation of Man

14 “There is in nature an original thinking power, just as there is an original formative power.” On a Claim from Book One of The Vocation of Man Violetta L. Waibel Disturbing—this is how Fichte’s readers regarded The Vocation of Man at the beginning of the nineteenth century when it was first published in 1800, and disturbing it has remained to this very day. This treatise does too little to enforce the image of the thinker who wrote The Science of Knowledge, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and does not do enough to invite readers to dis‑ cover a different Fichte. And yet an entire conference is dedicated to this work. Hansjürgen Verweyen rightly points out that none of the titles of the three books of The Vocation of Man, “Doubt,” “Knowledge,” and “Faith,” really matches their contents.1 What kind of doubt, what kind of knowledge, what kind of faith is Fichte talking about? 241 1. Hansjürgen Verweyen, Introduction to his edition of J. G. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, based on the Fritz Medicus edition revised by Horst Brandt, with an introduction by Hansjürgen Verweyen (Hamburg: Meiner, 2000), XV. 242 / VIOLETTA L. WAIBEL Introduction Fichte’s treatise The Vocation of Man is intended to be a work of popular philosophy—which promises easier access to his Science of Knowledge as such. It is more accessible than the Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge published in 1794–95, and it is more accessible than the Wis‑ senschaftslehren of 1804, 1811, 1812, to name just these detailed versions, which Fichte presented to small audiences and which have been handed down and published as lecture notes. “More accessible than . . .”: this is a comparative judgment, which refers to something to which we compare The Vocation of Man. By becom‑ ing “more accessible,” the Science of Knowledge has not always been well received and has met with harsh criticism and many an additional misun‑ derstanding.2 A monologue about doubt in the first book, a dialogue about knowledge in the second, and finally a monologue about philosophical faith in the third book. Doubt is inspired by Descartes or Pascal or Hume, the dialogue about knowledge by Plato and Socrates, and in the monologue about faith Fichte obviously wanted to follow Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, whom he held in high esteem all his life. Such a mixture of styles and intellectual approaches raises the sus‑ picion of eclecticism. From the point of view of systems theory it seems flawed, and Fichte seems to have betrayed himself and the Science of Knowl‑ edge. But this cannot be how Fichte saw it himself. Therefore, we have to ask how we should read the three books of this treatise. “There is in Nature an original thinking power, just as there is an original formative power.”3 Fichte’s surprising view of the original represen‑ tational force in nature and the original formative power is, in my opinion, the key to reconstructing the internal unifying factors of the books on doubt, knowledge, and faith, however much these books seem to differ at first sight. Fichte does not reveal these factors himself, and certainly not to a reader who is unfamiliar with the Science of Knowledge. 2. The Editor’s Introduction to this treatise in the Akademieausgabe der Bayerischen Wissen‑ schaften gives an overview of the wide range of opinions expressed in the reviews of Fichte’s treatise. Cf. Fichte GA I/6, 147–82. 3. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Vocation of Man (Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800). Quota‑ tions taken from the scanned text from Volume I of The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 4th ed., trans. William Smith (London: Trübner & Co., 1889) [VM(PW)], 335 (BM, GA I/6, 200; SW II, 180). ON A CLAIM FROM BOOK ONE OF THE VOCATION OF MAN / 243 Under the heading Doubt, Fichte elaborates the astonishing notion that thinking power, which is said to be an exclusive power of man, is just one of the forces that nature is capable of developing. Nature includes the formative power of plants, the power of motion of animals, and the thinking power of man. However, it is not thinking power alone, but the harmoni‑ ous interplay of all three forces that constitute man’s life force.4 One might think that Fichte came to these concepts through Schelling’s philosophy of nature. According to Fichte’s thesis, the...