The Vocation of Man

Why now, and for what reason, did it become exactly as it had become; why, among the infinitely manifold determinations determinations: Bestimmungen, the specific qualities, conditions, or boundaries that define a thing's state of being that nature can assume, did she assume exactly these in this moment—those which she actually assumed—and no others?

It is because those specific states preceded them which did precede them, and no other possible ones; and because the present states followed precisely from those, and no other possible ones. If, in the preceding moment, anything had been different in the slightest degree from what it was, then in the present moment something would also be different from what it is. — And for what reason was everything in the preceding moment exactly as it was? Because in the moment that preceded that one, things were exactly as they were. And that moment depended, in turn, on the one that preceded it; and this last one again on its predecessor; — and so on, upwards into the indefinite original: ins unbestimmte fort. Fichte is describing a "regress," a chain of cause and effect that stretches back into the past without a visible beginning.. Even

Vocabulary used in this section: Nature, determinations, moments, causality, determinism.