The Vocation of Man

—change, then in it there is no longer any determinacy determinacy: Bestimmtheit, the state of being precisely defined or fixed with specific boundaries anymore, but rather a transition from one state into the opposite other through a state of indeterminacy. The state of a thing’s determinacy is therefore a state and an expression of mere passivity passivity: Leiden, literally "suffering." In this philosophical context, it refers to the state of being acted upon by an outside force rather than acting of one's own accord; and mere passivity is an incomplete existence. It requires an activity original: Thätigkeit. Fichte uses this to mean a productive energy or agency. that corresponds to this passivity, from which that passivity can be explained, and through and by means of which it can first be thought; or, as one usually expresses it, an activity that contains the ground original: Grund. The underlying reason or foundation that explains why something is the way it is. of this passivity.

What I thought, and was compelled to think, was therefore by no means this: that the various successive determinations of nature, as such, cause one another; that the current condition original: Beschaffenheit. This refers to the specific "make-up" or constitution of a thing at a particular moment. destroys itself and, in the future moment when it no longer exists, produces another in its place—one which is not itself and which does not lie within it—which is completely unthinkable. The condition brings...