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8 - The Vocation of Humankind Revisited, 1800: Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2009

George di Giovanni
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
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Summary

“Your vocation is not merely to know, but to act according to your knowledge”: this is loudly proclaimed in the innermost depths of my soul, as soon as I recollect myself for a moment and turn my observation inward upon my self. “You are here, not for idle contemplation of yourself, or for brooding over devout sensations – no, you are here for action; your action, and your action alone, determines your worth.”

Fichte

The practical reason is the root of all reason. […] I am hungry, not because food is before me, but a thing becomes food for me because I am hungry; similarly, I act as I do not because a certain end is to be attained, but the end becomes an end to me because I am bound to act in the manner by which it may be attained.

Fichte

Everything that is is good and absolutely legitimate. There is but one world possible – a thoroughly good world.

Fichte

Voltaire's procedure is an authentic example of sane sound sense which Voltaire possessed in such high measure, while others babble about it all the time in order to pass off their insanities as sound sense.

Hegel

NEW BOOK, OLD THEMES

In January 5, 1795, writing from his Tübingen seminary, Schelling bitterly complained to his friend Hegel:

Here there are Kantians in droves. […] All imaginable dogmas have been stamped as postulates of practical reason, and wherever theoretical and historical proofs are lacking, the practical Tübingian reason cuts the knot. […] Before you know it, the deus ex machina pops up, the personal individual being who sits up there in heaven!

Type
Chapter
Information
Freedom and Religion in Kant and his Immediate Successors
The Vocation of Humankind, 1774–1800
, pp. 271 - 300
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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