We’ll look at Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s criticism of the incompleteness of Kant’s critical philosophy and his (Reinhold’s) conception of what is needed to complete it. We’ll also look at criticisms of Reinhold’s “principle of consciousness” by Schulze and Fichte.
Readings
- Reinhold, The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (from p. 61 onward)
- Schulze, Aenesidemus (excerpt, pp. 105-12)
- Fichte, Review of Aenesidemus
- Notes: Reinhold’s “Philosophy of Elements” & Its Critics (PDF)
- GRADS: (pick one)
- Messina, “Answering Aenesidemus”
- Frketich, “The First Principle of Philosophy in Fichte’s 1794 Aenesidemus Review”
- (Optional) Beiser, The Fate of Reason, chs. eight & nine
Questions
- Who are Reinhold, Schulze, and Fichte?
- Why reasons does Reinhold give for thinking Kant’s Critical philosophy is incomplete?
- Why does philosophy need to be derived from a single principle?
- What does “derive” mean here?
- What is the connection between this sort of derivation and skepticism?
- What is Reinhold’s conception of representation and why does he put this at the foundation of his own system?
- What are Schulze’s objections to Reinhold’s representationalist system?
- How does Fichte defend Reinhold?