The Vocation of Man

—into a closed chain of appearances appearances: Erscheinungen, things as they are perceived by the senses, which Fichte argues are bound by the laws of cause and effect, where every link is determined by the one preceding it and determines the one following it. It is a firm interconnectedness, such that from any given moment, I would be able to find all possible states of the universe through mere reflection—looking "upward" original: aufwärts. That is, looking backward in time toward the origins or causes of a thing. by explaining the given moment, or "downward" original: abwärts. That is, looking forward in time toward the results or effects. by deriving from it. Looking upward, I would seek the causes through which alone that moment could become real; looking downward, I would seek the consequences that it must necessarily produce. In every individual part, I grasp the whole, because each part is what it is only through the whole; and through the whole, it is necessarily that which it is.

What is it, then, that I have actually just discovered? When I survey my assertions as a whole, I find this to be their spirit: to presuppose for every becoming becoming: Werden, the process of change, movement, or coming into existence a being being: Seyn, a stable, underlying state of existence out of which and through which it The text cuts off here as it moves to the next page, mid-sentence, reflecting the ongoing derivation of the relationship between existence and change.