Daniel Breazeale & Tom Rockmore 
Fichte’s Vocation of Man 
New Interpretive and Critical Essays

Written for a general audience during a period of intense controversy in the German philosophical community, J. G. Fichte’s short book
The Vocation of Man (1800) is both an introduction to and a defense of his philosophical system, and is one of the best-known contributions to German Idealism. This collection of new essays reflects a wide and instructive variety of philosophical and hermeneutic approaches, which combine to cast new light upon Fichte’s familiar text. The contributors highlight some of the overlooked complexities and implications of
The Vocation of Man and situate it firmly within the intellectual context within which it was originally written, relating it to the positions of Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Schlegel, Jacobi, and others. In addition, the essays relate the text to issues of contemporary concern such as the limits of language, the character of rational agency, the problem of evil, the relation of theoretical knowledge to practical belief, and the dialectic of judgment.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Key to Abbreviations

Preface



Introduction: The Checkered Reception of Fichte’s
The Vocation of Man


Daniel Breazeale



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


Günter Zóller



2. Fichte’s Philosophical
Bildungsroman


Benjamin Crowe



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


Elizabeth Millán



4. Knowledge Teaches Us Nothing:
The Vocation of Man as Textual Initiation


Michael Steinberg



5. J. G. Fichte’s
Vocation of Man: An Effort to Communicate


Yolanda Estes



6. “Interest”: An Overlooked Protagonist in Book I of Fichte’s
Bestimmung des Menschen


M. Jorge de Almeida Carvalho



7. The Dialectic of Judgment and
The Vocation of Man


Wayne Martin



8. The Traction of the World, or Fichte on Practical Reason and the
Vocation of Man


Tom Rockmore



9. Fichte’s Conception of Infinity in the
Bestimmung des Menschen


David W. Wood



10. Intersubjectivity and the Communality of Our Final End in Fichte’s
Vocation of Man


Kien-How Goh



11. Evil and Moral Responsibility in
The Vocation of Man


Jane Dryden



12. Jumping the Transcendental Shark: Fichte’s “Argument of Belief” in Book III of
Die Bestimmung des Menschen and the Transition from the Earlier to the Later
Wissenschaftslehre


Daniel Breazeale



13. Determination and Freedom in Kant and in Fichte’s
Bestimmung des Menschen


Angelica Nuzzo



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


15.
Erkenntnis and
Interesse: Schelling’s
System of Transcendental Idealism and Fichte’s
Vocation of Man


Michael Vater



16.
Faith and Knowledge and
Vocation of Man: A Comparison between Hegel and Fichte


Marco Ivaldo



17. The Vocation of Postmodern Man: Why Fichte Now? Again!


Arnold Farr



Index

Über den Autor

Daniel Breazeale is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. He is the editor and translator of several volumes of Fichte’s writings, including
Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings and
Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre
and Other Writings.
Tom Rockmore is Mc Anulty College Distinguished Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University. He is the author of many books, including
Kant and Phenomenology and
In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Together Breazeale and Rockmore have coedited many volumes, including
Rights, Bodies and Recognition: New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right.