Breazeale Daniel - Fichtes Vocation of man: new interpretive and critical essays

Fichtes Vocation of Man

New Interpretive and Critical Essays

Edited by

Daniel Breazeale

and

Tom Rockmore

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2013 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fichtes Vocation of man : new interpretive and critical essays / edited by
Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4384-4763-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 17621814. Bestimmung des Menschen. 2. Human beings. 3. Faith. I. Breazeale, Daniel. II. Rockmore, Tom, 1942

B2844.B53.F45 2013

128dc23

2012037139

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This volume collects seventeen previously unpublished essays by an international group of scholars, all focusing upon different aspects of and offering diverse perspectives upon a single, seminal text, J. G. Fichtes popular tract of 1800, Die Bestimmung des Menschen.scientific knowledge. These issues are summarized in Daniel Breazeales introductory essay on the history of the reception of this text.

This volume aims to illuminate The Vocation of Man by exploring some of the issues and controversies that have surrounded it from the start and by offering fresh and varied examples of contemporary scholarly approaches to the same. A number of these essays directly address the question of precisely what kind of work this is and propose a variety of different contexts within which it might be understood. Gnter Zller offers a theological-political interpretation of The Vocation of Man; Benjamin Crowe and Elizabeth Milln propose two different readings of it as philosophical novel or Bildungsroman; Michael Steinberg offers a performative interpretation of Fichtes text as a device for initiating readers into a liminal state beyond mere knowledge; whereas Yolanda Estes situates the task of The Vocation of Man squarely in the context of the immediately preceding Atheism Controversy and stresses its continuity with Fichtes earlier philosophy, albeit in a new communicative register.

Other authors address specific, often neglected themes in this work. Mrio Jorge de Almeida Carvalho calls attention to the crucial function of human interest in the rhetorical strategy of Book One of The Vocation of Man; Wayne Martin examines the dialectical tension between personal self-determination and objective evidence in Fichtes account of judgment in this work; Tom Rockmore argues that Fichtes account of practical reason in The Vocation of Man represents something of a retreat from his earlier advances upon Kants conception of the same; David W. Wood examines Fichtes conception of infinity in this work; Kien-How Goh analyzes Fichtes new understanding of human community in The Vocation of Man and indicates how this differs from his earlier account of the same in his System of Ethics; Jane Dryden explores Fichtes distinction between physical and moral evil in