The Vocation of Man

has become; to presuppose for every state another state, for every being being: Seyn, a stable or underlying state of existence another being, and to allow absolutely nothing to arise out of nothing original: aus dem Nichts. This refers to the classical metaphysical principle ex nihilo nihil fit, suggesting that everything that begins to exist must have a cause..

Let me dwell upon this longer, develop it, and make perfectly clear to myself what lies within it! For it could easily be that the entire success original: Glück. While often translated as "happiness" or "luck," here Fichte refers to the "fortune" or successful outcome of his logical inquiry. of my further investigation depends upon my clear insight into this point of my reflection.

Why, and for what reason, are the determinations determinations: Bestimmungen, the specific characteristics, properties, or boundaries that define an object of objects objects: Gegenstände, the things in the world that the mind perceives as being "outside" itself in this moment exactly those that they are?—I began to ask. I thus presupposed, without further proof and without the slightest investigation, as something known in itself, immediately true, and absolutely certain—as indeed it is, and as I still find it, and always shall find it—I presupposed, I say, that they had a ground ground: Grund, the underlying reason or cause that explains why a thing is the way it is; that they were not through themselves, but through something lying outside them,