Chapter 2
Post-Kantian German idealism begins with Fichte. The transition between Kant and post-Kantian German idealism was rapid and complex. Fichte’s initial and perhaps most important version of the Wissenschaftslehre (1794) (his name for his position) appeared only seven years after the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787). Since Kant continued to work nearly up until the end of his life, and since he only left the scene in 1804, this meant that, to his dismay, the reaction to his position—including post-Kantian German idealism—was well under way while he was still active.
After the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, the issue was quickly joined. Opinions were divided between those who rejected the critical philosophy in whole or in part, those who accepted it in whole or in part, and finally those who developed more or less original positions in reaction to Kant’s critical philosophy. His critics included such thinkers as Hamann, who, after reading the proofs of the book, famously objected before it was published that reason could not sit in judgment on itself; Herder, Kant’s erstwhile student, whose historicism his teacher sharply criticized; the intuitionist Jacobi; the skeptics Maimon and Schulze; Fichte, who loudly and implausibly proclaimed his utter fidelity to Kant while very obviously and deeply revising the critical philosophy, and many others. They were answered by Beck, a prominent contemporary Kantian defender, and others.
A number of Kant’s initial readers quickly sought—almost before the ink on Kant’s treatise was dry—to develop original theories in the guise of reformulations of the critical philosophy. Four non-idealist thinkers (Reinhold, Jacobi, Maimon, and Schulze) play roles of varying importance in this transition. The most important example is Karl Leonhard Reinhold, who was extremely influential in the transition period between the appearance of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the rise of post-Kantian German idealism in the writings of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who are usually taken to be the main post-Kantian German idealists.
Reinhold’s contribution to Kant studies was controversial even in his own time. Initial views of his writings were starkly opposed. The poet Schiller, for instance, wrote to Körner in August 1787 that, according to Reinhold, in a century Kant would be mentioned in the same breath as Jesus.1 Forberg, Reinhold’s student, was more direct but exceedingly less enthusiastic. He suggested that Reinhold had caused many kinds of damage to the Kantian philosophy.2 Yet even today, no one disputes Reinhold’s influence. According to Ameriks, “Fichte, Schelling, Schiller, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Friedrich Schlegel all developed their thought in reaction to Reinhold’s reading of Kant.”3 Since Reinhold’s position was constantly in flux, it is not surprising that it is understood in different ways. He seems to be most easily understood as proposing a Cartesian foundationalist restatement of the critical philosophy. But he is also sometimes understood as taking a historical turn, which observers sometimes identify with Hegel,4 or even as inventing German idealism.5
Whether Reinhold is an “idealist” depends on how the term is interpreted. His relationship to the later fortunes of the Kantian position is complex. He arguably misunderstands the critical philosophy, and further overlooks the epistemic importance of Kant’s central insight, the Copernican revolution. His philosophical views are important in the immediate context, though less so than the views of the philosophical giants of the period. Reinhold, who is unconcerned by Kant’s idealism, is rather concerned with reconstructing the critical philosophy in systematic form. He does not contribute directly to post-Kantian German idealism, and hence does not contribute to the general constructivist approach to cognition. Yet his indirect contribution is extremely important since, through his restatement of the critical philosophy in systematic (or at least more systematic) form, he begins the debate about the post-Kantian reconstruction of Kant’s position that rapidly led to post-Kantian German idealism.
Almost as soon as he began to write about Kant, Reinhold attracted sustained attention. His effort to develop the critical philosophy as a foundationalist system is Kantian as well as profoundly anti-Kantian in a number of ways. It is Kantian in that the author of the critical philosophy famously identifies the ideal of a system derived from a single principle as the indispensable condition of science. This aim is clearly suggested in modern philosophy by the Cartesian system that can be read as deriving from, hence as justified by, the cogito. Descartes—who is as much a mathematician as a philosopher, and made important contributions to geometry—relies on a Euclidean geometrical model in his conception of system. Unlike Descartes, whose idea of a system based on a single principle is unclear, Euclid does not begin with a single principle. Descartes seems to call for such a system as well as to question both its possibility and necessity. In a letter to Clerselier in June or July 1646, he writes:
One must not make it a condition of a First Principle that it be so constituted that all the other propositions can be derived from it or proved by it. It is enough if it is such that, taking it as a starting point, other things can be discovered and that no other principle occurs on which it depends or that could be discovered prior to it. For it might be the case that there is no principle in the whole world from which alone everything else can be derived.6
Kant’s view of system is complex. In the precritical Nova dilucidatio, he seems to deny that there can be a single first principle, and hence to reject epistemic foundationalism. In the critical period, unlike Descartes, his earlier doubt about the possibility of a system based on a single idea has meanwhile vanished. In a well-known passage on the “architectonic,” he defines this term as “the art of systems,” adding that a system transforms what would otherwise be “a mere aggregate” into a science. He then adds: “I understand by a system . . . the unity of the manifold cognitions under one idea” (CPR, B 860, p. 691). Kant makes a similar statement in the Prolegomena, in writing: “Nothing can be more desirable to a philosopher than to be able to derive a priori from one principle the multiplicity of concepts or basic principles that previously had exhibited themselves to him piecemeal, in the use he had made of them in concreto, and in this way to be able to unite them all in one cognition.”7 Both passages suggest that a system based on a single idea as exemplified in the Cartesian model is the criterion of a fully scientific approach to cognition. Hence, with Kant’s written approval ringing in his ears, Reinhold felt justified in embarking on a fully systematic reformulation of the critical philosophy.
There are at least five reasons to consider Reinhold in the debate concerning the systematic reconstruction of the critical philosophy. As the author of the Letters on the Critical Philosophy (1786–1787) and as the holder of the first chair devoted to the critical philosophy at the University of Jena starting in 1787, Reinhold had a central early role in calling attention to Kant’s theories.
Second, as concerns Kant, Reinhold is a pioneer, a conceptual explorer who discovers but fails to describe to any degree a new continent of thought in proposing a basic reformulation of the critical philosophy—in his case, as a foundationalist system. Reinhold, who claims for the first time to formulate the rigorous scientific system for which the critical philosophy is only the propadeutic,8 seemed—at least initially, to Kant as well—to contribute to the critical philosophy. His concern to restate the critical philosophy as a system appeals to the unity of cognition through an underlying principle, or foundation.9 It was only later that Kant, as well as other observers, became aware that what Reinhold intended was incompatible with the Kantian position.
Third, and as noted, before he understood Reinhold’s intentions, Kant warmly accepted him as an early friendly expositor of the critical philosophy.10 Kant’s desire to acknowledge Reinhold’s contribution in this regard is not difficult to comprehend. It is well known that his exasperation about the early critical reaction (especially the notorious Garve-Feder review in 1782) of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason was a factor in his decision to write the Prolegomena, which appeared only a year later, as well as to bring out a second edition of his major treatise.
Fourth, Reinhold—not surprisingly, as the result of his endorsement by Kant—was widely believed by contemporaries to be proposing a nearly identical doctrine in the form of his so-called elementary philosophy.11 Finally, in his writings on Kant Reinhold began the effort by many hands, which has since never ceased, to reformulate the critical philosophy. It is fair to say that the entire later Kant discussion is composed either directly or indirectly of a series of responses to Reinhold’s endeavor to reconstruct Kant’s position.
Reinhold, who quickly changed his position, was, like Schelling, a protean figure, though without the latter’s obvious brilliance. Reinhold’s own position, which he called the elementary philosophy, rapidly passed through a series of stages prior to its abandonment by its author.12 During this period, Reinhold’s views are inseparable from his interpretation, defense, and revision of the critical philosophy. Reinhold’s interest in Kant, which was quickly exhausted, was just as quickly replaced by his successive interest in such post-Kantians as Fichte (like Kant, a major figure) and C. G. Bardili (an extremely minor figure, one of Hegel’s early teachers in the seminary and the author of a work on logic).
Though as a thinker he was not on the same level as the great post-Kantian German idealists, Reinhold exerted enormous influence in the context of the early reception of the critical philosophy. According to Kroner, Reinhold deserves mention since “Reinhold is one of those who mediated between the Critique of Reason and the Wissenschaftslehre, and therefore he must not be omitted from any delineation of the path from Kant to Fichte.”13 This tepid suggestion vastly understates the case. Reinhold, in anticipating Fichte, claims to be able to provide full confirmation of Kant’s results in the first Critique in independence of Kant.14 Fichte later makes a similar claim. According to Nicolai Hartmann, contemporaries saw Kant’s philosophy in the light of Reinhold’s, and the differences appeared unimportant.15 Schulze, a contemporary skeptic, takes Reinhold as merely offering a more advanced form of the critical philosophy, so that in criticizing Reinhold he was also criticizing Kant.
Hegel, who was sharply critical of Reinhold in the Differenzschrift but more favorable in the Science of Logic, does not discuss the elementary philosophy in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. A more nuanced assessment of Reinhold’s importance emerged only after German idealism; for instance, in the post-Kantian speculation after Hegel’s death (1831) by Hegel’s student K. L. Michelet.16 Still more sympathetic accounts of the elementary philosophy are formulated later by such Hegelian historians of philosophy as Johann Eduard Erdmann and Kuno Fischer.17 Other observers consider Reinhold an example of how not to interpret Kant. In the twentieth century, this approach is represented by the Hegelian Kroner and the neo-Kantian Cassirer. The latter claims Reinhold falls into a typical psychologistic misunderstanding of the critical philosophy.18
Recent English-language discussion of Reinhold has been friendlier to Reinhold. According to Breazeale, Reinhold is extremely important and his view that philosophy needs to be systematic and grounded in a first principle is basically sound. Yet there is truth in di Giovanni’s claim that few philosophers are as badly misunderstood by their contemporaries as Kant.19 Despite superficial similarities, Kant and Reinhold certainly have basically different conceptions of system in mind. Though Reinhold was concerned with an important theme, he simply leads in the wrong direction from the perspectives of either the critical philosophy or post-Kantian German idealism.
It goes beyond the limits of the present discussion to consider the merits of Reinhold’s elementary philosophy. We will restrict our attention to its relation to the critical philosophy. Reinhold’s grasp of the critical philosophy is obviously suspect; in a letter dated October 12, 1787, he wrote to Kant to say that he could understand only the way the author of the critical philosophy developed “fundamental truths of religion from the foundations of moral knowledge” and that he found the critical philosophy useful to “overcome the unfortunate choice between superstition and belief.”20 Kant replied that Reinhold exactly understood his view in a letter of December 28, 1787.21 In still another letter, dated September 21, 1791, Kant apologizes to Reinhold for not writing.22 However, he nearly immediately changed his mind. In a later letter to Jacob Sigismund Beck (September 27, 1791), he indicated he did not follow Reinhold’s ideas as well as his understandable unease at the need for a new foundation for the critical philosophy.23 In a letter to Beck dated November 2, 1791, Kant further complains that Reinhold’s theory of the faculty of representation was appallingly obscure. This is false, since Reinhold is a mainly clear writer. Kant’s suggestion that Reinhold was unlikely to be influential was also mistaken; the latter’s efforts to grapple with the critical philosophy quickly led to post-Kantian German idealism.24
Reinhold’s early concern to attract attention to Kant sharply differs from his later effort to revise the critical philosophy. His discussion of Kant began in a series of Letters on the Kantian Philosophy (Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie), which appeared in 1786–1787 in Der Teutsche Merkur, an important Weimar journal, and later in a second edition in book form in 1790. Reinhold’s intention in this text is to protect Kant’s critical theory against the meta-criticism leveled against it by Herder. In comparison to the extreme difficulty of the first Critique, Reinhold’s Letters on the Kantian Philosophy is a semipopular work. It was extremely influential—even, according to James Hebbeler, the editor of a recent translation, the most influential of the very many books concerning Kant.25 In a letter to Herder, Reinhold indicates in dramatic terms his desire to be one of the “voices in the desert” to “prepare the way” for the “second Immanuel.”26 It is for this reason that Schopenhauer later compared him to the first apostle.
Reinhold’s work had the considerable merit of offering comparatively easy access to Kant’s difficult position. On the strength of the Letters, Reinhold was appointed to the first chair for the study of Kant’s philosophy in Jena. Through his efforts, he helped to transform Jena into a center of Kant studies. He was later followed in Jena by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Each of them was strongly influenced by Kant, and all of them, unlike Reinhold, were thinkers of the first rank.
Reinhold clearly influenced the early reception of the critical philosophy and may also have influenced Kant. The latter was revising the first edition of the Critique Pure Reason as Reinhold’s Letters began to appear. The First Letter, which came out in August 1686 (before the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason), refers to the relationship between Kant and revolution,27 and then to Kant and Copernicus (and also to Newton).28 Reinhold seems here to anticipate Kant’s famous remarks comparing his view and Copernican astronomy in the B preface. Yet, despite this allusion, unlike the post-Kantian German idealists, Reinhold apparently never grasps either here or elsewhere the cognitive importance of Kant’s Copernican revolution, and hence never comprehends the arguably central insight of the critical philosophy.29
The Letters turn away from Kant’s difficult approach to cognition to focus on concrete practical and religious themes.30 Reinhold, a former Catholic priest with liberal leanings, further attracted attention to Kant’s religious views. He suggested, before Kant wrote Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone (1793), that the critical philosophy shows how to support rational religion and morality. For instance, in the Second Letter, he argues that Kant helps us avoid the alternative between faith and reason in a rational faith.31
Kant’s successors, including Reinhold, found fault not only with the form of Kant’s theories but also with their content. As early as the Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Capacity for Representation (Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungvermögens, 1789), Reinhold focuses on identifying, explaining, and justifying Kant’s premises through the introduction of a new theory of the capacity of representation (Vorstellungsvermögen).
This view is further developed in the awkwardly named Contributions to the Correction of Previous Misunderstandings of Philosophers (Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverständnisse der Philosophen), published in two volumes (1790, 1794). In the first volume of this work, entitled Concerning the Foundation of the Elementary Philosophy (Das Fundament der Elementarphilosophie betreffend), Reinhold formulates the principle of representation, the basic concept of his position during its Kantian phase,32 as follows: “In consciousness, the representation [Vorstellung] is distinguished from both subject and object, and related to both.”33 Slightly later, he published a concise précis of his position entitled On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (Über das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens, 1791), where he briefly passes in review the major themes of the fundamental philosophy.34
Reinhold, who was an extremely protean thinker, was attracted in rapid succession to the theories of Kant, Fichte, and then later Bardili.35 Reinhold’s aim to ground Kant’s critical philosophy was a central influence in the thought of this period, as witness his exchange of letters with Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Maimon, and others.
In 1794, he left Jena for Kiel. In 1797, he abandoned his elementary philosophy and became a disciple of Fichte,36 whom he also influenced.37 (I come back to this theme below.) In a series of letters between them, Reinhold accepted Fichte’s view in renouncing his own position. Yet as soon as the atheism controversy emerged, Reinhold turned away from Fichte, and, after a short period in which he was a follower of Jacobi, in 1800 his allegiance, as noted, shifted to Bardili.38
C. G. Bardili was a minor anti-Kantian, who tended toward a pre-Kantian form of objective realism but opposed any subjective contamination of knowledge. He appealed to logic as the ground of philosophy. According to Reinhold, Bardili’s position falls between the views of Fichte and Jacobi and supersedes the Wissenschaftslehre.39 Bardili was considerably younger than Reinhold and may well have been influenced by him, as Fichte later claimed. Certainly Bardili’s concept of representation is a central theme in Reinhold’s position, both prior to and after their philosophical encounter. In a volume of letters between them, which he later edited, Reinhold notes in the preface that his review of Bardili was the first to appear.40
In Bardili’s capacity as preceptor of the Tübinger Stift during Hegel’s student years there, before he moved to a professorship in Stuttgart, he was well known to, but not well thought of by, Hegel. Bardili influenced Reinhold, but was strongly criticized by Fichte and Hegel. Fichte, who reviewed Bardili’s reduction of philosophy to logic, was answered by Reinhold, to whom he in turn replied.41 According to Fichte, Bardili’s reduction of philosophy to logic was no more than an edulcorated version of Reinhold’s elementary philosophy.42 This in turn explains Reinhold’s interest in Bardili’s theories. Hegel strongly criticizes Bardili in the Differenzschrift. (I come back to this point below.)
Reinhold’s view evolved unusually quickly. He typically became interested in and highly enthusiastic about a particular thinker before becoming just as quickly disillusioned. Reinhold’s interest in Kant was brief but very significant. He was never simply a disciple, though he was that as well during a brief period in which he recommended the critical philosophy as “this masterpiece of the philosophical spirit.”43 Yet only a year earlier (1785) Reinhold was defending Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Menschheit against Kant’s harsh reviews.
This brief account of Reinhold’s changing series of philosophical allegiances illustrates as well as reflects the rapidly evolving debate about reformulating the critical philosophy. This debate was set in motion by the elementary philosophy. Yet several years later, this position was no longer held, even by its author. And when Hegel, less than a decade later, began to write in context of the continuing discussion of the critical philosophy, the form of Reinhold’s view to which he reacted was no longer in an early, more significant phase but was rather a distant, nearly unrelated successor, formulated under the influence of Bardili. However, even after the most interesting stage of a philosophical position, which was never more than modestly important, Reinhold continued to play the role of a conceptual catalyst in the evolution of the post-Kantian discussion through his reception by Hegel.
Reinhold describes the elementary philosophy in more than one text. On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge has the advantage of being concise as well as presenting a mature form of this most protean position. As early as the preface, Reinhold raises the question of the form appropriate to science in order to justify the elementary philosophy. He remarks that neither logic, metaphysics, ethics, natural theology, nor the Critique of Pure Reason, nor any other empirical science, insofar as it presupposes philosophy, possesses “secure, recognized, generally valid foundations.”44 He further remarks the necessary foundation will be lacking until a fundamental philosophy is elaborated as “a science of the common principles of all particular philosophical sciences.”45 Otherwise stated, the elementary philosophy is intended as the science of principles supposedly presupposed by, as well as necessary to, grounding any and all forms of philosophical science.
This definition of elementary philosophy is justified by Reinhold’s reading of the philosophical tradition. Following Aristotle, Kant, and many others, Reinhold seizes on circularity to refute major modern cognitive positions, including the critical philosophy. According to Reinhold—for whom the main modern cognitive theorists are Locke and Leibniz, Hume, and Kant—modern philosophy fails to carry out its task, which is completed in his own position. In different ways he disqualifies all the main preceding theories. Thus Locke’s empiricism and Leibniz’s rationalism are precritical, since they dogmatically assume but fail to justify their respective presuppositions. Locke’s and Leibniz’s adherents defend their respective theories only through a circular, hence inadmissible, form of reasoning. Hume refutes Locke’s and Leibniz’s presuppositions in overturning their positions. Kant does the same for dogmatic skepticism.
Reinhold, who devotes special attention to Kant, claims the critical philosophy is based on a simple presupposition incapable of demonstration: “Its meaning can be explained only through its application, but in no way can it be developed or justified without a circle.”46 Kant discovered a new foundation of philosophical science that contains everything that is true in preceding unsystematic thought. Yet this foundation is neither broad enough nor secure enough to support the entire scientific structure of philosophy. Kant’s theory, which is only part of metaphysics, does not provide a thorough treatment of the general principles of the critique of reason. Reinhold, who reads the elementary philosophy into the critical philosophy, believes Kant shows that the real foundation of philosophy is the fact of consciousness (“Thatsache des Bewusstseins”).47
In Jena, Reinhold tempered his initial enthusiasm for Kant’s thought in pointing to the imperfect manner in which it was stated. In following Kant, he insists on the need for philosophy to become fully scientific. Scientific philosophy demands consistency and completeness. This in turn requires the logical interrelation between propositions that depends on a single basic principle or epistemic foundation, which Reinhold identifies as his capacity for representation.
Reinhold’s “critical” reading of the modern philosophical tradition presupposes a rationalist normative standard. As in the Cartesian position, cognition must be based on a single Archimedean point—in this case, the capacity of representation. Reinhold describes this principle, which supposedly arises as a fact in consciousness, as indemonstrable but self-evidently true. He thinks that through this principle, he is able to provide an unshakable foundation for the elementary philosophy, which—in closely Kantian fashion—he regards as the condition of the possibility of all science of whatever kind, and accordingly as the source of all cognition.
Reinhold’s conception of a first principle differs in certain respects from preceding views.48 Since the first principle must have content and be true, he rejects efforts to rely on a formal principle as in Leibniz.49 The fundamental principle must also be self-evidently true as universally valid and accepted as such.50 According to Reinhold—who at this point is very obviously a Cartesian cognitive foundationalist—either there is a first principle or philosophy is impossible.51
Cognitive foundationalism is better understood as a strategy for knowledge than as relevant to the critical philosophy. Since Kant can be read as rejecting foundationalism, Reinhold’s claim to carry further and complete Kant’s position is suspect. Reinhold contends that the model is old but the materials needed to construct a scientific philosophy are at hand in the Critique of Pure Reason, which, though not sufficiently rigorous, needs only to be revised and recast.52 A similar idea was later imported into the Marxist debate in Habermas’s effort to revise historical materialism by taking it apart and putting it back together again in the shape of a new and supposedly more effective position.53
Reinhold’s huge impact on the later debate is enormously greater than the modest nature of his own theory. His importance in the early reception of the critical philosophy derives from his ability to provide a simple statement of some main ideas—enormously simpler than Kant’s—and to propose what at the time seemed to be an important further stage in its development. However, though apparently promising, both developments are illusory. Reinhold does not detect what is original in Kant and also does not understand the critical philosophy very well. He proposes a concept of system different from and incompatible with Kant’s position, which he reformulates in the elementary philosophy in a way clearly inconsistent with its letter as well as its spirit.
Reinhold’s proposed solution—allegedly Kantian in manner—of the cognitive problem quickly provoked heated debate. It was argued that since the critical philosophy was already complete in its original formulation, it did not require a reconstruction of the type suggested by Reinhold or in general. Further, Kant’s critique of Reinhold’s effort to reform the critical philosophy led to a searching examination of the elementary philosophy, an effort associated above all with Fichte. Finally, by a wave of the conceptual magic wand as it were, circularity—which from the time of Aristotle until the post-Kantian debate had mainly been regarded as an insuperable epistemic liability—was transformed into a necessary ingredient for cognition. The series of reactions called forth either directly or indirectly by the elementary philosophy are associated respectively with the names of Maimon and Schulze, Fichte and Hegel.
Maimon, Schulze, and Cognitive Circularity
Maimon and Schulze were contemporary skeptics in the later eighteenth century. Maimon is by far more important as concerns the intrinsic interest of his position, even if Schulze is more influential in the debate concerning the reformulation of Kant’s position. Maimon deeply impressed his contemporaries, including both Kant and Fichte. Maimon’s significance in the discussion—in which seemingly each and every participant routinely raised the claim to formulate a unique but wholly satisfactory account of the critical philosophy—is attested to by none other than its author. In a letter to Herz dated May 26, 1789, in discussing the manuscript of Maimon’s Attempt at Transcendental Philosophy (Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie), Kant clearly states that the latter’s reading of the critical philosophy is unrivaled for its grasp of the main problem.54 Not surprisingly, Kant declined to help Maimon in publishing his book, which was largely directed against the critical philosophy. Yet Kant notes that he agrees with Maimon on the need to reformulate the principles of metaphysics. Fichte holds a similar but still more positive view: in a letter he states that his admiration for Maimon’s talent was limitless, and adds in melodramatic tones that future centuries will look down on those who looked down on Maimon, who had overturned the way Reinhold and others generally understood the critical philosophy.55
Maimon is critical but also highly appreciative of the critical philosophy. Though an epistemic skeptic, in Essay on Transcendental Philosophy he clearly states “The great Kant supplies a complete idea of transcendental philosophy (although not the whole science itself) in his immortal work the Critique of Pure Reason.”56 This statement echoes Kant’s claim in the Prolegomena to provide the foundations of the future science of metaphysics, but not the science itself. Yet Maimon disagrees with Kant about the latter’s famous claim to supply the quid juris, or justification of knowledge. According to Maimon, the transcendental deduction and the schematism of the categories do not resolve the cognitive problem. Maimon also differs about the concept of pure intuition, which is central for Kant, but for Maimon either does not exist or does not carry out the task Kant assigns to it. Maimon further disagrees about the status of the thing in itself. He holds that the thing in itself stands only as an object of inquiry, rather than an independent, noumenal entity.57 According to Maimon, it is “nothing other than the complete cognition of appearances. Metaphysics is thus not the study of something apart from experience, but rather merely of the limits (Ideas) of experience itself.”58 Yet in other respects, he is close to Kant, particularly as concerns the crucial insight that we know only what we in some sense construct.
Maimon’s reaction to Reinhold is available in an exchange of letters between the two thinkers he later collected and published with an accompanying philosophical manifesto. In addition to its evident philosophical interest, this book has a personal side rare in the normally arid philosophical literature. The letters reveal Maimon’s increasing frustration at Reinhold’s refusal (or, more likely, incapacity) to engage in serious discussion on the grounds that he finds the other view incomprehensible. According to Maimon, Reinhold belongs to that class of thinkers who think through concepts without concerning themselves sufficiently with the objective reality of ideas underlying their proofs, and which in Reinhold’s case are mainly false.59 Goethe seems to have a similar view of Reinhold. In a letter to Jacobi, he reports: “Reinhold . . . was never able to go out of himself, and to be anything at all he needed to remain within a narrow circle. It was impossible to have a conversation with him, and I have never been able to learn anything through him or from him.”60
This importance of this passage surpasses its personal nature. It establishes that Maimon’s view of Reinhold presupposes the latter’s relation to Kant. Hence it presupposes an independent interpretation of the critical philosophy. Though critical of Kant, Maimon is convinced the critical philosophy is already fully developed. According to Maimon, the reformulations proposed in the immediate post-Kantian period were more apt to lower than to raise the level of Kant’s position.61
The significance of this claim is almost self-evident. Maimon is not suggesting that Kant’s thought is beyond amelioration. But as concerns the intrinsic subject matter, no progress can be made. This implies that the debate set in motion by Reinhold cannot improve or, even less, perfect Kant’s position. Yet the debate about Reinhold’s foundationalist reformulation of the critical philosophy was certainly philosophically useful, since it eventually led to the positions of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
Maimon’s verdict on the elementary philosophy is a function of its claim to found knowledge in an initial principle. He concedes that Reinhold’s “law of consciousness” expresses a fact (which no one would deny). Yet he holds that, other than through confusion, neither a transcendental nor a psychological deduction can show that this principle (Satz) is an ultimately primitive fact (ursprüngliches Faktum) without falling prey to circular reasoning (ohne einen Zirkel zu begehn).62
In short, Maimon grants the purely factual nature of Reinhold’s principle of consciousness, but disallows the further claim made on its behalf. In effect, he raises against Reinhold the same sort of objection the latter previously brought against the major positions he identifies in the modern philosophical tradition. Reinhold’s strategy consists in appealing to a factual resolution of a supposed conceptual impasse. He aims to circumvent the inability of theory to ground itself without falling into circular reasoning. Maimon points out that this strategy fails since it only leads to a similar result. In short, Reinhold’s effort to found the critical philosophy through invoking the capacity of representation presupposes Kant’s transcendental deduction. Hence, as Maimon indicates in a letter to Kant dated November 30, 1792, it is not possible to go further than Kant in establishing a ground prior to the critical philosophy.63
Maimon’s objections to Reinhold concern the limits of system, and finally the possibility of a foundation in the latter’s sense of the term. In a letter to Reinhold, Maimon notes he links necessity and validity to system based in facts in suggesting that claims to truth, for instance in science, need not be a priori at all. Maimon writes:
We have chosen different philosophical methods. For your system, necessity and absolute universal validity are of paramount importance. Hence you ground your philosophy on facts that are most appropriate to this goal. For me truth is the most important even if it is demonstrated in a way that is less systematic, absolutely necessary and universally valid. Newton’s Principia, which contribute so much to the extension of our knowledge of nature, are for me more important than every theory of the faculty of a priori cognition, which can only be used to deduce what is already known (although of course less rigorously), and which is itself grounded in undemonstrated propositions.64
In his letter to Kant dated September 20, 1791, Maimon further contests Reinhold’s principle of representation from a closely Kantian perspective. Maimon questions whether in every conscious experience the representation is distinguished, as Reinhold claims, from both the subject and the object. Following Kant, Maimon claims that an intuition becomes a representation only when it is united with other intuitions through synthesis. The synthesis that results is related to the represented object.
According to Maimon, Reinhold’s principle is valid only in the special case that there is consciousness of the representation. Maimon notes it is a delusion to believe that every intuition is related to a real object.65 In still another letter, dated November 30, 1792, Maimon criticizes Reinhold’s as well as Kant’s views of representation.66 Since Kant did not answer either letter, we do not know how he would have responded to Maimon.
Maimon’s criticism disposes of Reinhold’s specific strategy to provide an ultimate justification of knowledge by grounding the capacity of presentation in a fact. He goes beyond specific criticism in order to make a more general point. According to Maimon, it is neither possible nor necessary to demonstrate the truth of initial principles. We are not concerned about their reality, possibility, or actuality. We are rather interested in their contribution to justifying the deduction of science in the form of a systematic unity. For instance, in the realms of higher mathematics and physics, principles have the status of mere fictions invoked to explain a given appearance (Erscheinung). But other than that, they remain hypothetical. Even if principles appear to be self-evidently true, they cannot be verified. It is not possible to show anything more than the need to appeal to them.67
The extraordinary interest of Maimon’s criticism is by no means limited to the immediate context. His very general point counts against the entire post-Kantian discussion concerning the systematic reformulation of the critical philosophy. According to Maimon, this debate is superfluous, since knowledge as such neither requires nor admits of an ultimate justification. In this way, Maimon surpasses the quasi-Cartesian foundationalist approach in German philosophy espoused by Reinhold and many who reacted to him while anticipating later interest in ungrounded epistemology. Long before Nietzsche, and in a more precise form, Maimon can be said to raise a fundamental objection against the need for and possibility of a foundationalist form of philosophical system. But as is often the case in philosophy, the most profound thinkers are not heard rapidly, if indeed they are heard at all. Therefore it should not come as a surprise that Schulze’s more systematic but superficial critique of Reinhold was also more influential in the post-Kantian context.
Schulze’s Skeptical Critique of Reinhold
G. E. Schulze (pseud. Aenesidemus) intervened in the debate with a book whose full title reads Aenesidemus, or on the Bases of the Elementary Philosophy Proposed by Professor Reinhold in Jena: Together with a Defense of Skepticism against the Presumptions of Rational Critique. Schulze’s critique of Reinhold appeared anonymously under the pseudonym Aenesidemus. This critique needs to be understood against the background of Schulze’s own system, whose outlines are already apparent in the complicated title of this book.
Schulze is above all a skeptical thinker, as is evident in the choice of his pseudonym. Aenesidemus was a leading Greek skeptic who renewed the teachings of Pyrrhonism in Alexandria in the first century BC. Skepticism, as Schulze understands it, sets itself in opposition to any restricted claim to know of whatever sort. For this reason, Schulze’s discussion of Reinhold is not an end in itself. Though much of the discussion in this work in fact directly concerns Reinhold, Schulze’s interest is not in the position as such, but rather in it as representative of the critical philosophy.
Schulze, who is an opponent of Reinhold’s neo-Cartesian approach to cognition, begins by denying (as early as the title of his book) Reinhold’s intention to found the critical philosophy. Reinhold’s version of epistemic foundationalism presupposes the need to base all knowledge on no more than a single principle or foundation. In choosing the plural term “bases” (Fundamente), Schulze clearly signals his unwillingness even to consider the idea that all knowledge can be grounded in a single foundational principle in favor of an analysis of the foundations of Reinhold’s position.
Schulze detects an opposition between critical reason (Vernunftkritik) and skepticism (A, p. 2). Reinhold intends to carry out the task begun by Kant. According to Schulze, skepticism cannot accept the claim either to the certainty or the universality of the basic propositions (Grundsätze), or premises on which the critical philosophy is based (A, p. 15). Hence, skepticism is unaffected either by the critical philosophy or by Reinhold’s reformulation of it.
Schulze correctly perceives an opposition between the critical philosophy and skepticism, though perhaps not in the simplistic fashion he suggests. Kant’s view of skepticism avoids any simple opposition through an important distinction between the skeptical method and skepticism. According to Kant, skepticism as such is intended to defeat any claim to knowledge; it is a “principle of technical and scientific ignorance . . . which strives in all possible ways to destroy its reliability and steadfastness” (CPR, B 451, p. 468).
On the contrary, the skeptical method concerns itself with the resolution of disputes arising within the understanding. It aims at “certainty” (Gewissheit) through the discovery of “the point of misunderstanding in the case of disputes which are sincerely and competently conducted by both sides” (CPR, B 452, p. 468). As so defined, the skeptical method is fully in accord with—and in fact indispensable for—Kant’s position, as Schulze stresses. It is above all required for an account of the antinomies of reason. But skepticism is to be rejected, for lack of knowledge—which can never be an end point of the discussion—is rather the cause of its beginning (see CPR, B 786, pp. 652–53).
To put the point in another way: in the development of pure reason, skepticism—the counter to dogmatism—must give way before “the critique of pure reason” (CPR, B 789, p. 654). Hence, Schulze and Kant basically disagree about skepticism. Schulze holds it is sufficient merely to refute any and all claims to know, as he tries to do here. Kant, on the contrary, believes that the task of the criticism of other views is merely a necessary preparation to the formulation of a truly critical position.
Schulze’s skeptical critique of Kant, which runs counter to the latter’s view of skepticism, is external, not internal, since it is not based on any idea, principle, or concept that Kant accepts. The simplistic fashion in which Schulze opposes Kant’s understanding of skepticism as well as the critical philosophy determines the entirely negative, philosophically jejune manner in which he criticizes Reinhold. A comparison between Schulze’s and Maimon’s critiques of the elementary philosophy points to the former’s lack of nuance. In a part of the book written in the form of a pseudo-letter addressed by Aenesidemus, the skeptic, to Hermias, a critical thinker, the former suggests the hypothesis that truth is encountered in conscious experience, and that this can be adopted as a hypothesis to resist the attacks of rationalism and empiricism. Yet he thinks that neither the critical philosophy nor the elementary philosophy demonstrates its apodictic truth claims (A, pp. 306–307).
This criticism resembles Maimon’s reading of Reinhold. As skeptics, Schulze and Maimon both criticize any appeal to a single foundational principle. Yet Maimon’s analysis possesses a philosophical finesse largely absent in Schulze’s text. The latter’s insensitivity to philosophical nuance is apparent in two main differences concerning the problem posed by an initial epistemic principle.
Perhaps because his ultimate target is not Reinhold but Kant, Schulze is less concerned than his fellow skeptic to inquire into the extent to which the spirit of the elementary philosophy is consistent with that of the critical philosophy. As an opponent of the critical philosophy, Schulze needs to counter an important commentator pretending to extend Kant’s position beyond Kant. But it does not follow that the claim to complete the critical philosophy need be granted. In fact, Maimon’s analysis of the very concept of an initial principle calls into question the internal consistency of Reinhold’s endeavor.
Since Schulze does not study the relation between Reinhold and Kant, his treatment of the problem of the supposedly initial, or foundational, principle is not persuasive. Maimon’s suggestion that such principles need not be demonstrated is doubly significant. He claims Reinhold’s effort to achieve certainty is inimical to the critical philosophy. He further maintains a sophisticated form of skepticism based on a subtle interpretation of the thing in itself largely in accord with the critical philosophy. Kant is obviously skeptical, since he clearly denies knowledge of the thing in itself, or mind-independent reality.
Maimon does not simply reject the critical philosophy, but rather elaborates one of its consequences. Schulze’s skepticism is comparatively more simplistic. Its aim is merely to undermine any claim to establish certain principles. In antiquity, Aenesidemus established a series of skeptical tropes questioning the veracity of sense perception. Schulze, who extends this perspective to the level of conceptual principles, explicitly excludes the hypothetical status of such principles as incompatible with cognition. This is clearly different from Maimon’s view, and perhaps from Kant’s as well.
Schulze’s strategy follows his view of skepticism as the constant reestablishment of doubt. He seeks to show that Reinhold fails to ground the principles of the philosophy in the so-called principle of consciousness (Satz des Bewusstseins) since he does not demonstrate this principle. This discussion unfolds under the heading of “The Fundamental Teaching of the Elementary Philosophy” (“Fundamentale Lehre der Elementar-Philosophie”) in nine sections. Each section examines one or more supposedly central theses. The most important part of the discussion is contained in the first two sections concerning respectively the proposition of consciousness (A, pp. 44–58) and “The Underlying Concept of Representation” (Der ursprüngliche Begriff der Vorstellung; A, pp. 59–69).
These accounts are at best uneven. Schulze offers three main criticisms of Reinhold’s principle of representation: it is “not a basic proposition” (A, p. 45); it is not “throughout limited by itself” (A, p. 48); and it does not express either “a generally valid proposition [or] . . . a fact which is not bound to any definite experience or certain reasoning” (A, p. 53). These criticisms, though not without merit, are mainly formulated without consideration of Reinhold’s view, to which, hence, they are not always relevant. The first criticism is based on the Aristotelian assumption that the law of noncontradiction is the absolutely fundamental law of thought. We recall that Kant relies on noncontradiction in analytic judgments. Schulze adopts this strategy to suggest Reinhold cannot demonstrate the primacy of the law of consciousness without circular reasoning (A, p. 47). Since Schulze merely asserts but fails to establish the claim upon which the accusation of circularity rests, the refutation either does not hold, or does not hold in the form in which it is stated. This criticism is also not obviously relevant to Reinhold, who is not concerned with the intrinsic order of principles, which supposedly must be presupposed for rational discourse. He is rather concerned with the conditions of the derivation of cognition from experience.
The other criticism, which concerns the imprecision in Reinhold’s statement of his basic concept, is relevant and important. Schulze develops this point in the second part of his discussion concerning the principle of representation (Vorstellung). He begins by clarifying the meanings of the terms “representation,” “subject,” and “object.” Then he remarks that a representation must be considered not insofar as it relates to subject and object, but rather as it can be thought in relation to both subject and object (A, p. 61). This subtle correction of Reinhold grounds the possibility of knowledge of objects through their representation. Claims to know require that the same representation relate to both subjective and objective epistemic poles. This observation was extremely influential in the immediate debate. Fichte acknowledges the importance of Schulze’s reformulation of Reinhold’s concept of representation as a crucial step in the formulation of his own position.
Maimon and Schulze both react to Reinhold’s reformulation of the critical philosophy as a foundationalist system. Yet the differences in their respective approaches could scarcely be greater. I have been unable to find any evidence of Schulze’s reaction to Maimon. However, Maimon was fully aware of the lack of agreement between their views: in a letter to Reinhold, he describes this difference as of “celestial proportions [himmelweit].”68