Customer Reviews

The Vocation Of Man

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Fichte's excellent little treatise is both an outline of the argument for transcendental idealism and a passionate response that finds the Kantian position to be inadequate to speak to our deepest sentiments. It is intended as a popular treatise, but is not lacking in profundity and not an easy read -- it is popular in the way that Descartes' Meditations is popular: there is a line of thinking that is easy enough to trace throughout the book but the details can be quite daunting.

The beginning of the book is in fact clearly set as an intriguing contrast to that of Descartes. Where Descartes says that for as much as he knows he can't be sure of anything, Fichte says that even if we could be sure of everything, that still wouldn't answer the most fundamental question of what to do, of how to find one's true vocation. The treatise is broken down into three books, one on "Doubt," one on "Knowledge," and one on "Faith" (as another reviewer notes, the culmination of his position in faith is intended as a response to the charges of atheism that were levelled against Fichte, but for those who understand his argument and what he proposes in the book on faith, it should be clear that his avowal of faith is not exactly a commitment to Christian dogma).

The first book sets up what seems to be an ordinary or natural conception of the world. We are free agents faced with a reality outside of us that is governed by causal laws. Seems obvious enough, but Fichte shows that this conception is ultimately contradictory: if the world is governed by laws then so are we, or at least so are our bodies, and our bodies form the only basis for interaction with the world. Without bodies we are not agents, able to make a difference in the reality we face. On the other hand, if we are agents, then we interrupt the causality of the world, and where there are exceptions there can be no law. So, it seems, either we are not free, or the world is not subject to law.

The second book is set up as a dialogue between Fichte and an unknown Spirit (seemingly not malicious, but as a literary trope to be compared with Socrates' daemon and Descartes' evil genius). The Spirit pushes Fichte to realize that whatever law he discovers out there in nature can be nothing other than what he himself posits as the structure to his experience. Causality (as in Kant) is not something that exists out there in the thing itself but is something we bring with us, and only by representing the world as a causally structured totality is experience of the world possible. But that means that the order we discover in the world is not "out there" but of our own making. What we call "the world" or "reality" is nothing more than representation. This seems to solve the contradiction of the first book insofar as the idea that we are determined in our actions does not proceed from an objective knowledge of true causes outside of us. The problem is that it replaces the despair over determinism with a despair over reality: if I can't really know anything out there and independent of me and my experience then I seem to be stuck in a solipsistic cave, and nothing means anything, and the question of vocation seems silly.

The third book on Faith is where he resolves this. His solution is fairly elaborate and he outlines it in several stages, but in a nutshell the solution is to say: as far as I can know this world may as well be a dream and my choices absurd and everything meaningless, but I choose not to rest upon what I can know. Just because I can't know any further than representation doesn't mean I have to treat my world as a mere representation. I can consciously return to the naive attitude which takes an interest in the world, and invests what seem to the idealist as mere images with a significance and meaning. I can't know other people, for example, but can choose to treat what reason tells me are images of people as if they were rational agents like myself, owed a respect and dignity that is deeper than knowledge can account for. I can choose to think myself free, and attempt to fulfill my destiny -- and if it comes to nothing I can believe that my good intentions are nevertheless counted as right in the ultimate scheme of things, which I can't know but posit by faith.

All of the above is not intended to spoil the excitement of this very valuable philosophical treatise. It is a harder read than it seems at the outset, and having some grasp of the trajectory can be useful to the beginning reader. At the same time, it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you can meaningfully assess and respond to the approach Fichte concludes with. I'm troubled a bit by the idea that faith alone gives me access to others -- but I find the book as a whole to be an exemplary and lively attempt to continue the philosophical dialogue where Kant left off. Definitely worth reading for anyone with an interest in the history of philosophy, and essential for those seeking to understand the Kantian heritage.

The publication I bought from Amazon is a disaster. It is quite literally the worst publication I have ever seen. Amazon should ban this publisher(general books). Let me tell you why. While i was excited to purchase Fichte and have indeed bought many philosophy books from Amazon I was a bit apprhensive. This book is not poorly translated , it is not even translated by a human! The publisher had a computer scan and translate the original Vocation of man! To make matters worse no one and I mean no one took the time too actually look at the translation! I have read Fichte before and I never knew he wrote lines similiar to "thus the #$%mmMhfksjgSSS is theidea of hurt SHsdHG@$*___//" and those type of mistakes are everywhere. If you want to see the worst book ever made this amy be it! Dont buy this book! and dont endorse lazy publishers who dont even open thier product to see if it even readable. THIS IS UNREADABLE! This is from General books. Really a shame since Fichtes stuff is rather charming.

This book was written by Fichte to discredit the charges of atheism which were brought against him which forced him to leave the University of Jena. The book is written for non-professional philosophers, he intended it for the greater public; because of this, it is among the easier reads in philosophy.

Fichte challenges reality itself in this book. He leads you down his path of thought from doubt to belief in a supreme moral being. He essentially illustrates the historical stages of metaphysical thought within his lucid self directed dialogue.

I read this book for a philosophy course on German Idealism. It was a pleasant preface to other German idealism philosophers.

Contrary to another reviewer's claims, this book is translated by a human being, namely William Smith who died in 1896. The publisher is not lazy, and obviously selling a $13 edition of a book by Fichte will not make anyone rich.

The publisher is very clear that this is a fast and cheap, fully automated OCR scan of an old edition, not proofread by humans, so that there will be many typos and even some large pieces of missing text -- as a way to make many hard to find books available at low price.

Overall, though, it does not work. Many crucial passages are unreadable. When you read Fichte referring to "subs-Q tance" you know this is an OCR induced typo for "substance." When you read "Es rvthjn Jhat ctjjally, exists" you can see this means "everything that actually exists." But then Fichte explains the crucial matter of how actual being has properties: "in a determinate mepjure asJWRJbuandji. actual,. existsjalthough I may adm. it. rajt.-ioahiluy,, Jhoroiighly to exhaust all the properties )fjmvjone objectr,." You can barely make out half of what that means, and many such jumbles are much longer.

The publisher gives you web access to a downloadable pdf of the complete original, and it is easily readable. With current technology the publisher would do a better service by binding and selling these pdf scans. Someday automated OCR will work: it will produce say 99.5% accuracy and it will not lose formating such as footnotes and it will not destroy graphics. This publisher is bringing that day closer. But it is not here yet.