## 1. Reinhold's Life and Work



Karl Leonhard Reinhold was born in Vienna October 26, 1757 (though
many older sources erroneously give 1758 as his year of his birth). He
studied at the Jesuit Seminary in Vienna for a year, until the order
was suppressed in 1773, at which time he entered the Barnabite
seminary. Following his ordination, he became a Barnabite monk and
served for several years as a parish priest and teacher of philosophy.
Reinhold's first publications were book reviews and short essays
in popular newspapers, in which he showed himself to be a zealous
advocate of Josephite reforms and an enthusiastic exponent of radical
Enlightenment and religious toleration.



In 1783 Reinhold moved to Leipzig and converted to Protestantism. He
also became a Freemason and a member of the *Illuminati*, and
he remained an active Freemason until the end of his life. Possessed
of a restless, inquiring spirit, Reinhold's early intellectual
trajectory led him from orthodox Catholicism, to reformed Catholicism,
to materialism and atheism, and then to Leibnizianism and to Humean
skepticism. Yet he always remained true to the ideal of
"Enlightenment," at least as he understood that ideal, and
he never ceased to insist that philosophy ought to make a practical
difference in the world. For all of his forays into the most technical
and arcane philosophical debates and issues, he never wavered in his
insistence that true "popularity" must remain the goal of
philosophy, and that the ultimate test of any system is its capacity
for convincing everyone of its truth. Enlightenment, for Reinhold, was
no abstract pursuit of truth, but a program of religious, moral,
social, and political reform. Coupled with this commitment to
popularity, was a pedagogic zeal to do everything in his power to
spread the message of popular Enlightenment--whether in its
materialist, its neo-Leibnizian, its skeptical, its Kantian, its
Fichtean, its Bardilian, or its distinctively
"Reinholdian" form--as widely and as effectively as
possible.



In 1784, after studying philosophy for a semester in Leipzig, Reinhold
moved to Weimar, where he became a confidant (and son-in-law) of C. M.
Wieland and a regular contributor to Wieland's widely read
*Der Teutsche Merkur*. It was in this journal that his famous
series of "Letters on the Kantian Philosophy" began to
appear in 1786. It is with these "Letters," which were
subsequently published in revised and expanded form in two volumes,
that Reinhold's name enters the history of philosophy. What
Reinhold found in Kant is clearly expressed in the first of his many
private letters to the latter: namely, a way to resolve the
debilitating conflict between faith and reason,
"superstition" and "disbelief,"
"heart" and "head." And this is precisely the
aspect of the new, Critical philosophy that is emphasized in his
*Letters on the Kantian Philosophy*: not Kant's radical
new account of space and time, nor his audacious effort to provide a
transcendental deduction of the pure categories of the understanding,
but rather the conclusions and implications of the
"transcendental dialectic."



Kantianism was recommended by Reinhold, above all, for its allegedly
salubrious and enlightened *practical consequences*,
particularly with respect to religion and morality. It was not for
nothing that Reinhold described this new philosophy to readers of
*Die Teutscher Merkur* as "the gospel of pure
reason." Rational belief in God, in the immortality of the soul,
in the reality of free will: such are the articles of this new
"gospel"--a gospel promulgated, everyone agreed, far
more effectively and popularly by Reinhold than by Kant himself. Even
Kant professed to be charmed by Reinhold's effort and gratified
by his success.



On the strength of his newfound fame as author of the
*Letters*, Reinhold was invited to be the inaugural occupant of
the first professorial chair devoted exclusively to the new Kantian
philosophy, and thus he began lecturing at the University of Jena in
1787. First at Jena, and then later at the University of Kiel,
Reinhold proved to be an immensely popular and influential teacher,
much beloved by his students. (Of the approximately 860 students
enrolled in Jena in the Spring Semester of 1794, 600 were enrolled in
Reinhold's three lecture courses.) Indeed, Reinhold was largely
responsible for making Jena the center of German philosophy, which it
remained for the next several decades.



In his published *Letters on the Kantian Philosophy* Reinhold
had excused himself from the task of presenting and examining the
theoretical foundations of Kant's Critical philosophy, in order
to concentrate instead upon the practical consequences of the same.
But once he arrived at Jena he set himself to the former task, the
surprising result of which was not so much the popularization of
another aspect of Kant's thought as a first, historically
momentous effort to *revise* and *recast* the
theoretical foundations of the new transcendental idealism in a new,
allegedly more coherent and systematic form. The fruit of this
revisionist effort was Reinhold's own "Elementary
Philosophy" (see below), which, though only a passing phase in
Reinhold's own development as a philosopher, remains his most
substantial and effective contribution to the historical development
of German Idealism.



Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy is most fully expounded in
three works he published in rapid succession during his tenure at the
University of Jena: *Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen
Vorstellungsvermogens* [*Attempt a New Theory of the Human
Faculty of Representation*] (1789), *Beytrage zur
Berichtigung bisheriger Missverstandnisse der Philosophen*,
*Erster Band* [*Contributions toward Correcting the Previous
Misunderstandings of Philosophers*, Vol. I] (1790), and *Ueber
das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens* [*On the Foundation
of Philosophical Knowledge*] (1791).



Reinhold's radical revision and implicit critique of orthodox
Kantianism exercised an immediate and immense influence upon his
contemporaries, and particularly upon the philosopher who followed him
at Jena in 1794, namely Johann Gottlieb Fichte. But though Fichte was
thoroughly convinced by Reinhold's arguments for the
incompleteness of Kant's own presentation of the Critical
philosophy and by his demand for an immediately certain "first
principle" of the same, he was not satisfied with
Reinhold's own efforts to satisfy these demands and, in the
*Aenesidemus* review and elsewhere, made public his own
criticisms of the Elementary Philosophy and of Reinhold's
"Principle of Consciousness." For a few years following
Fichte's arrival in Jena and Reinhold's transfer to Kiel,
the two men engaged in a wide-ranging and stimulating philosophical
correspondence, though they never met.



The final upshot of Reinhold's *Auseinandersetzung* with
Fichte was the former's recantation of his own Elementary
Philosophy and transference of his allegiance to the standpoint of
Fichte's *Wissenschaftslehre*. This conversion was made
public in early 1797, in the preface to Reinhold's *Auswahl
Vermischster Schriften*, *Zweyter Band* [*Selection of
Various Writings*, Volume II] and in his revised 1795 Prize Essay,
featured in that work. It was elaborated in a lengthy review essay in
the *Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung* of Fichte's recent
writings, and again, the following year, in Reinhold's *Ueber
die Paradoxien der neuesten Philosophie* [*Concerning the
Paradoxes of the most recent Philosophy*], in which he explicitly
acknowledged the inadequacy of his own Principle of Consciousness as
the foundation of philosophy as a whole and endorsed Fichte's
proposal for a more "active" first principle (the
*Tathandlung*, or "fact-act" of the I's
self-positing), which would be capable of fully integrating
theoretical with practical reason, as well as uniting theoretical and
practical philosophy.



As his contribution to the Atheism Controversy of 1798/99, which led
to Fichte's departure from Jena, Reinhold published a pamphlet
in Fichte's defense. However, it was not long before he grew
dissatisfied with what he perceived to be the
"one-sidedness" of Fichte's philosophy--and
indeed, of transcendental idealism as a whole--and publicly
sought some "third way," which could reconcile the
opposing positions of Fichte and Jacobi (whose contribution to the
Atheism Controversy was an influential "Open letter,"
criticizing philosophy in general and Fichte's transcendental
idealism in particular as "nihilism.") This effort on
Reinhold's part to mediate the differences between the
transcendental idealist "philosopher of freedom" (Fichte)
and the common-sense "non-philosopher of faith" (Jacobi)
pleased neither party, and signaled the quick and abrupt end of
Reinhold's short-lived "Fichte phase."



After resolutely turning his back on the new post-Kantian idealist
philosophy that he himself had done so much to instigate, Reinhold now
presented himself to the public, in the six issues of his own
*Beytrage zur leichtern Uebersicht des Zustandes der
Philosophie beym Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts* [*Contributions
to a Simpler Overview of the State of Philosophy at the Beginning of
the Nineteenth Century*] (1801-1803), as a partisan of C.G.
Bardili's "logical realism," which Reinhold dubbed
"rational realism." This system attempted to base
philosophy upon pure logic and upon an appeal to what Bardili called
"thinking *qua* thinking." It was this effort on
Reinhold's part, in the first issue of the
*Beytrage*, "to reduce philosophy to logic"
that drew the sarcastic ire of Hegel in his notorious appendix to his
*Differenz des Fichte'schen und Schelling'schen Systems
der Philosophie* [*Difference between the Fichtean and
Schellingian System of Philosophy*] (1801).



Soon enough, however, Reinhold became dissatisfied with
Bardili's position as well, and began publicly to criticize the
same "from the standpoint of language" and to reject all
efforts to ground philosophy in pure formal logic. Reinhold's
final project as a philosopher can be described as a pioneering effort
to take seriously the implications of ordinary language for philosophy
itself and to insist upon the intimate relationship between speaking
and thinking. These writings of Reinhold's final years went
nearly unnoticed during his own lifetime and have generally remained
unknown until very recently; yet they would appear to merit the
attention of contemporary philosophers and scholars, inasmuch as they
anticipate in certain ways the "linguistic turn" of so
much subsequent philosophy.



After a lifetime of philosophical inquiry, during which he influenced
countless readers and students, while himself moving restlessly from
one theoretical standpoint to another, Reinhold died in Kiel in
1823.


## 2. The "Elementary Philosophy"



No sooner did he begin lecturing on the first *Critique* than
Reinhold began to have serious doubts about the completeness of
Kant's philosophy, the soundness of its theoretical foundations,
and the adequacy of Kant's own arguments and deductions. With
remarkable alacrity and considerable ingenuity, he took it upon
himself to remedy these perceived defects in Kant's own
presentation and to construct his own, allegedly more systematic,
well-grounded, and "universally acceptable" version of the
new Critical philosophy.



Though Reinhold sometimes referred to his new system simply as
"philosophy without a nickname," it soon became known by
another name that he used for it, namely: "Elementary
Philosophy" or "Philosophy of the Elements"
[*Elementarphilosophie*]. After introducing his new
philosophical ideas in his own lectures, Reinhold began laying them
before the public in a series of essays in popular and professional
journals, essays which were then revised and expanded as chapters of
the three books which together constitute his "official"
exposition of the Elementary Philosophy: *Versuch einer neuen
Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermogens* (1789),
*Beytrage zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverstandnisse
der Philosophen*, *Erster Band* (1790), and *Ueber das
Fundament des philosophischen Wissens* (1791).



Reinhold introduced his presentation of the Elementary Philosophy with
the following "metaphilosophical" questions: How is
philosophy possible as a strict science, and what is the
distinguishing feature of such a science? Following Kant, as well as
the entire rationalist tradition, Reinhold maintained that the essence
of science lies in universality and necessity. But these are
properties of thought, not of sensation or intuition. Only through
thinking and judging can we recognize universality and necessity, a
recognition that is, in turn, formulated and expressed in concepts and
propositions. The business of philosophy is therefore to establish
"universally valid" [*allgemeingultig*]
propositions in a manner that allows their necessity and universality
to be universally recognized as binding upon everyone
[*allgemeingeltend*]. This last requirement reveals the
intimate link between Reinhold's earlier efforts at
"popularizing" the Kantian philosophy and his subsequent
efforts to expand and to ground this same system. One of the constant
hallmarks of Reinhold's philosophical efforts was his conviction
that a genuinely scientific philosophy must be capable of being
understood and recognized as true by everyone.



What makes philosophy "scientific," according to Reinhold,
is not simply that it consists of propositions arrived at by thinking,
but rather, the logical connection between the propositions in
question--that is, their *systematic form*. Over and over
again, in one forum after another, Reinhold trumpeted the same
declaration: *scientific philosophy is systematic philosophy*.
Accordingly, he embarked upon an influential analysis of systematic
form as such, in order to gain insight into how Kantianism could be
made rigorously systematic and therefore genuinely
"scientific."



The fundamental hallmarks of systematic form, according to Reinhold,
are consistency and completeness, but it was the former of these that
attracted most of Reinhold's attention. The only way to be sure
that any two propositions are truly consistent with one
another--and hence, the only way to determine whether a number of
philosophical propositions actually constitute a
"system"--is to show that they can all be traced back
to the same first principle or foundation [*Grundsatz*]. And
the only way to show that they can indeed be "traced back"
to such a first principle is by actually "deriving" them
therefrom. (Despite his efforts to clarify this point,
Reinhold's conception of philosophical
"derivation"--which is apparently not to be
understood as simple logical deduction--nevertheless remains
extraordinarily murky.)



It follows that a philosophical system must begin with a single first
principle, which "determines" all the other propositions
of the system. (Here again, there is a certain obscurity in
Reinhold's claim, inasmuch as he insisted that the first
principle "determines" only the "form" and not
the "content" of all the other, subordinate propositions,
yet he also described the relationship between the first principle and
the subordinate principles as a "syllogism," in which the
latter are "derived" from the former.) Only if
propositions are logically related to one another in this manner can
they constitute a "system." A system with two or more
"first principles" is not a system at all, but several
different systems. As for the completeness problem, Reinhold's
implicit solution seems to have been to seek an a priori first
principle that could be known in advance to encompass the entire
domain of experience, and hence of philosophy.



What, however, can one say about the truth (or, as Reinhold was more
likely to say, the "validity" [*Gultigkeit*])
of the proposed first principle itself? If the validity of a
philosophical proposition is determined by its systematic, logical
connection to other propositions, then what determines the truth of
the first principle, from which the system as a whole is generated or
derived? The answer, Reinhold thought, is obvious: the first principle
and systematic starting point of philosophy must be
*self-evident*. It must be *immediately certain*.



Despite reservations concerning the capacity of the first principle to
determine the content, as opposed to the form, of the propositions
derived from it, Reinhold unequivocally maintained that the first
principle of all philosophy had to be a material as well as a formal
principle. Otherwise, "scientific philosophy" would be
identical to formal logic and would have no content of its own, which
Reinhold (at this point anyway) staunchly denied. Moreover, according
to Reinhold, the establishment of such a universally valid and
immediately certain first principle is not merely a pressing
requirement of theoretical reason, but also a matter of the utmost
practical urgency, inasmuch as in the absence of such a foundational
first principle "philosophy itself is impossible as a science,
in which case the basis for our ethical duties and rights -- as
well as those duties and rights themselves--must remain forever
undecided" (*Beytrage* I, p. 367; 2003: 248).



Granted, then, that a system of philosophy must begin with a single,
immediately certain, synthetic first proposition or "grounding
principle": where might one turn in order to discover and to
recognize the first principle in question, a proposition that alone
can serve as the foundation or "ground" of all other
philosophical propositions and cannot itself be established by any
argument? The answer is, *we must turn within*--to the
consideration of consciousness itself. This, Reinhold maintained, is
precisely what Kant (not to mention Descartes) had done, albeit he did
not succeed in presenting the fruits of his inquiries in an adequately
scientific and systematic form.



What then is the "first principle" of the Elementary
Philosophy? It is the "Principle of Consciousness,"
namely, the proposition that "in consciousness, the subject
distinguishes the representation from the subject and the object and
relates the representation to both" (*Beytrage* I,
p. 167; 2003: 113). In this proposition, the term
"representation" [*Vorstellung*] designates the
basic synthetic unity between subject and object, which is
constitutive of consciousness; the term "subject"
designates the one who "is conscious" of whatever one is
conscious of (the "conscious subject" or "subject of
consciousness"); and the term "object" designates
that "of which" the representation is a representation.
Reinhold distinguishes between three senses of "object":
object as *thing* [*Ding*], that to which the
representation refers; object as *represented*
[*Vorgestelltes*], the intentional object of the
representation; object as thing in itself [*Ding an sich*],
i.e. considered in abstraction from the representation
(*Beytrage I*, p. 171; 2003: 116).



Though "self-evident" and "universally valid,"
the proposition asserting this tripartite character of consciousness
is, according to Reinhold, not analytic but synthetic. The Principle
of Consciousness is not a tautology, yet anyone who reflects upon what
is asserted by this principle will immediately recognize its truth and
universal validity, inasmuch as it expresses what Reinhold called a
"universally recognized fact of consciousness."



Self-evidence alone, however, is not enough. One of the chief merits
of the Principle of Consciousness, according to Reinhold, is that from
it one can then *derive* the starting point of Kant's own
philosophy, which appears to begin with a sheer, ungrounded assumption
of the distinction between intuiting and thinking, the difference
between theoretical and practical reason, etc. From this point,
Reinhold assures us, one can then proceed to the derivation of a
complete system of philosophy as a whole, as envisioned but never
actually accomplished by Kant himself. (One must recall that
Reinhold's work on Elementary Philosophy preceded Kant's
third *Critique*.)



With the Principle of Consciousness Reinhold believed he had uncovered
that "common root" of thought and sensibility, which Kant
had declared to be unknowable (CPR A 15/B 29). By commencing his
analysis at the level of "representations as such,"
Reinhold was convinced that he had, so to speak, hit philosophical
rock bottom, inasmuch as all consciousness is self-evidently
"representational" in character. (Fichte, however, in his
*Aenesidemus* review and his early writings on the
*Wissenschaftslehre*, would subsequently challenge precisely
this claim.) Thus, Reinhold's "Theory of
Representation" (which is the first part of the Elementary
Philosophy) purports to provide Kant's Critical philosophy with
the very foundation it so sorely lacks. And the Principle of
Consciousness is, in turn, the foundational or first principle of this
new Theory of Representation--and hence the first principle of
philosophy as a whole.



By far the most original and influential portion of the Elementary
Philosophy is its first part, the Theory of Representation, which is
devoted entirely to an analysis of our fundamental faculty of the
mind--the faculty of representation itself
[*Vorstellungsvermogen*]--in an effort to determine
"everything that can be known a priori concerning the
representations of sensibility, understanding, and reason." This
foundational portion of the Elementary Philosophy thus purports to
provide a thorough and complete analysis of the necessary features of
representation *qua* representation, an analysis that claims to
show "that *space, time*, the *twelve categories*,
and the *three forms of the ideas* are *originally*
nothing but properties of *mere representations*"
(*Fundament*, pp. 72-73; *RGS* 4, 47). This same
analysis of our faculty of representation also claims to establish the
distinction between the form and content of representations, the
necessity of both receptivity and spontaneity on the part of the
faculty of representation, the necessary multiplicity of sensations,
and the unknowability of things in themselves.



If Reinhold displays considerable originality and ingenuity in
deriving the above mentioned results from his first principle (the
Principle of Consciousness), the same cannot be said of the subsequent
part of the Elementary Philosophy, the "Theory of the Faculty of
Cognition," which follows Kant's own exposition much more
closely than the Theory of the Faculty of Representation and becomes
increasingly schematic--and less convincing--as it advances.
(Reinhold's sole attempt at a complete exposition of his
"Theory of the Faculty of Cognition" is roughly sketched
in Book 3 of the *Versuch*, whereas the "Theory of the
Faculty of Representation" is treated in elaborate detail in all
three of his book-length presentations of the Elementary
Philosophy.)



One may recall that Reinhold's intention was to provide a new
foundation not merely for the "theoretical philosophy"
expounded by Kant in the first *Critique*, but for the Critical
philosophy as a whole, including Kant's practical philosophy. In
fact, however, Reinhold provided his readers with only the barest
hints of how his Elementary Philosophy might embrace Kant's
account of will and of practical reason. Significantly, this occurs in
the final, 19-page section of his "Theory of the Faculty of
Cognition," entitled "Theory of the Faculty of
Desire," in which Reinhold limits himself to what he describes
as the mere "outline" of a strategy for demonstrating the
unity of theoretical and practical reason: if willing is the condition
for the possibility of actual, as opposed to merely possible
representation and cognition, then the "faculty of desire"
conditions the faculties of cognition and representation.



Unfortunately, Reinhold never fleshed out this fascinating outline,
never provided any arguments for the same, and never indicated how
this provocative claim concerning the relation of willing to knowing
could be reconciled with the "immediate certainties" of
his starting point. And this was precisely what provoked his most
brilliant and critical reader, J. G. Fichte to attempt his own version
of an Elementary Philosophy--a version that would *begin*
with the unity of the theoretical and the practical and that would,
with the act of "positing" or *Setzen*, claim to
have discovered a starting point even more "basic" than
that of mere "representation." (It is significant that
Fichte's unpublished notebook of 1793/94, in which he first
sketched what would subsequently be known as the
*Wissenschaftslehre* or "Theory of Scientific
Knowledge," was titled "Private Meditations on Elementary
Philosophy/Practical Philosophy.")



It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of Reinhold's
inquiries into systematicity and first principles upon an entire
generation of philosophers. Though some recent research on Reinhold
and the "Jena circle" of the late 1780s has stressed the
degree to which Reinhold himself soon came to have doubts about the
project of "philosophy from a single principle" (see the
work of Dieter Henrich and his students, such as Marcello Stamm), this
project was nevertheless enthusiastically embraced by Fichte and the
young Schelling, and inspired others, notably Hegel, to re-examine
(and to question) the alleged connection between systematic form and
self-evident first principles. Reinhold's subsequent
reservations about his own Elementary Philosophy notwithstanding, the
Elementary Philosophy remains one of the clearest examples of a
thoroughgoing "foundationalist" project in the history of
European philosophy.


## 3. Fichte Phase



Initially impressed with the brilliance Fichte displayed in his early
writings on revelation and the French Revolution, Reinhold called
Fichte the "new star on the horizon of philosophy"
(*Fichte im Gesprach* 1, p. 62) and "one of the
greatest minds and noblest human beings of our time" (*Fichte
im Gesprach* 1, p. 66). However, these rosy beginnings would
give way to rocky times. Reinhold and Fichte's storied
friendship was mired with recurrent estrangement and reconciliation,
until they parted ways--both professionally and
personally--over Reinhold's defection from the
*Wissenschaftslehre* to the standpoint of rational realism (for
details, see Breazeale 2020).



Fichte agreed with Reinhold's programmatic demands for the
systematic completeness of philosophy and its foundation in the form
of a first principle. Although Fichte admitted the validity of
Reinhold's Principle of Consciousness, he denied that it could
serve as a first principle, since it presupposes a subject and object
to be related and distinguished in representation. According to
Fichte, the first principle of philosophy must be a non-propositional
self-positing, which, by its very activity is simultaneously factive,
a *Tathandlung*. However, Reinhold was initially unphased by
these and similar criticisms by Salomon Maimon, taking himself to
anticipate them in the first essay of his 1794 *Beytrage
II*. It would be several more years before Reinhold conceded the
superiority of Fichte's *Wissenschaftslehre*.



In the first public announcement of his conversion to the
*Wissenschaftslehre*, Reinhold discusses three primary issues
deficient in the Elementary Philosophy, for which the
*Wissenschaftslehre* is supposed to account: first, the *a
priori* possibility of consciousness; second, objective matter;
and third, the unconditioned unity of theoretical and practical
reason. Concerning the first point, Reinhold had previously regarded
Fichte's pure I as an inconceivable basis of philosophy, if the
Principle of Consciousness were not presupposed. However, by early
1797 Reinhold realized "that the *possibility* of
consciousness *determined a priori* [...] can by no means be
traced to the *mere subject* of consciousness"
(*Vermischter Schriften II*, p. vii; *RGS* 5/2, 4). This
is because the subject of consciousness, as it relates to an object in
representation, can be only the "*empirical I*,"
and therefore cannot serve as an *a priori* condition of
consciousness (*Vermischter Schriften II*, p. x; *RGS*5/2, 5). Instead, the synthetic unity between subject and object
in consciousness presupposes an original activity of the absolute
subject.



Second, Reinhold claims that the Elementary Philosophy presupposes
"the wretched *thing in itself*" (*Vermischter
Schriften II*, p. 359; *RGS* 5/2, 139) and cannot account
for the objective matter of our representations. In the Elementary
Philosophy, the "matter" of a representation is that
through which the representation has objective reference
(*Beytrage I*, p. 182f.; 2003: 124f.). It is supposed to
be given in outer sensation by something distinct from the subject,
namely a thing in itself (*Versuch*, pp. 244-255; *RGS*1, 164-171). Since the thing in itself stands outside the
synthetic unity of subject and object constitutive of representation,
it cannot be represented. So, the material aspect of representation
presupposes something that cannot be given in consciousness (the thing
in itself) and that therefore stands outside the purview of the
Principle of Consciousness. This is problematic because the Principle
of Consciousness is supposed to be the first principle of philosophy;
thus, the Elementary Philosophy cannot account for the ground of the
objective matter of representation. Reinhold had attempted to deal
with this issue by distinguishing between the thing in itself and the
noumenon (which he sometimes calls "noumen"). While the
thing in itself cannot be represented, we may represent the mere idea
of the putative ground of objective matter, the noumenon
(*Fundament*, p. 191n; *RGS* 4, 107n; *Beytrage
I*, p. 216f; 2003: 151). By his conversion to the
*Wissenschaftslehre*, Reinhold considered this distinction
futile: the external ground of sensation cannot be posited in the
noumenon, since the latter is a "mere product of reason"
(*Vermischter Schriften II*, p. x; *RGS* 5/2, 4) and
thus cannot account for the objectivity of the matter presupposed by
consciousness (*Vermischter Schriften II*, p. 322f; *RGS*5/2, 126).



Third, Reinhold takes the Elementary Philosophy to entail an
unbridgeable gap between theoretical and practical reason. The task of
unifying theoretical and practical philosophy in a comprehensive
system had been a major stumbling block for Reinhold (see Gerten 2003;
Imhof 2012). In his 1789 *Versuch*, Reinhold had tenuously
attempted to unify the theoretical and practical sides of the
Elementary Philosophy by making the faculty of desire an actualizing
condition of the faculty of representation. In the second volume of
the *Letters on the Kantian Philosophy*, one of
Reinhold's most extensive endeavors in practical philosophy, he
makes no attempt to systematically connect the "results"
of his investigation with the Elementary Philosophy, promising instead
to derive them on another occasion. By his conversion to Fichte,
Reinhold realized that practical philosophy could not be
systematically integrated into the Elementary Philosophy, but only
conjoined to it as an "annex" (*Vermischter Schriften
II*, p. 324; *RGS* 5/2, 127).



Ever committed to the Enlightenment ideal of making philosophy
universally recognizable, Reinhold's conversion to the
*Wissenschaftslehre* was coupled with a missionary zeal to
impart its truth (cf. Reinhold to Fichte, 17 February 1797: GA III/2,
50). Nevertheless, there is widespread consensus that Reinhold's
commitment to Fichte's philosophy was lukewarm at best (e.g.
Breazeale 2020; Bondeli 1995; Bondeli 2020; Klemmt 1958: 537). In
particular, it is doubtful that Reinhold fully understood the
*Wissenschaftslehre*; much of his omnibus review of
Fichte's system evinces only a superficial understanding of it.
Furthermore, by 1799 Reinhold adopted a middle position between Fichte
and Jacobi. In his *Ueber die Paradoxien* and open letters to
J.C. Lavater and Fichte, Reinhold addresses the apparent paradox
between the validity of the *Wissenschaftslehre* and the
impossibility of grasping its results by means of ordinary
understanding (see Breazeale 2020:29ff; di Giovanni 2003). He attempts
to resolve this tension by prioritizing faith and moral conscience,
arguing that philosophy depends on these for its certainty. Yet, this
effort to mediate between Fichte and Jacobi was short-lived: by the
end of 1799, Reinhold had become enthralled with J.G. Bardili's
logical realism and his relationship with Fichte soon came to an
end.


## 4. Rational Realism



After intense study of Bardili's *Grundriss der Ersten
Logik, gereinigt von den Irrthummern bisheriger Logiken
uberhaupt, der Kantischen insbesondere; Keine Kritik sondern eine
Medicina mentis, brauchbar hauptsachlich fur Deutschlands
Kritische Philosophie* [*Outline of First Logic, Cleansed of
the Errors of Previous Logics in General and of the Kantian Logic in
Particular. Not a Critique but a Medicine for the Mind, Especially
Useful for Germany*'*s Critical Philosophy*],
Reinhold declared his allegiance to Bardili's system in December
1799. Reinhold's explicit commitment to rational realism would
last until his "linguistic turn." However, this final
phase of Reinhold's philosophical development, focused on
language, was still strongly informed by rational realism.



Rational realism can be conceived of as a kind of ontological logic
insofar as the logical laws of thought are constitutive of nature. It
foregrounds the concept of thinking *qua* thinking (*Denken
als Denken*). Thinking *qua* thinking is not to be
understood representationally as involving the relation between
subject and object, but as an original unity of thought and being. The
principle of thinking *qua* thinking is expressed formally as
"A as A in A and through A." This principle indicates the
essence, or "inner character," of thinking *qua*thinking, namely "eternally absolute identity"
(*BzU* 1, p. 103). Absolute identity excludes all
distinguishability, distinction, and difference. For this reason, the
essence of thinking *qua* thinking cannot consist in concepts,
judgments, or inferences, and cannot admit of categorial
determinations of quantity, quality, relation, or modality. These hold
only for the *application* of thinking *qua* thinking to
some matter. This matter is not derived directly from the principle of
thinking *qua* thinking but is postulated (*BzU* 1,
p. 111), since it is the condition of something being thought
(*BzU* 2, p. 182f; Bardili 1800: 67). Formally, matter is
represented as C, which, in relation to *reality* (B) and
*possibility* (-B), yields a determinate object (b).
These terms are--somewhat obscurely--employed in various
mathematical operations (addition, multiplication, division) to derive
the forms of intuition, the essence of a "thing *qua*thing," the essence of judgment, organisms, life, and the
categories of *substance*, *cause*, and *ground*(*BzU* 2, pp. 182-199). For Reinhold, the
manifestation of pure thinking in nature is to be conceived of
theologically: at bottom, rational realism represents "the
*manifestation of the original being in the essence* of things,
or the revelation of God in nature" (*BzU* 4, p.
219; for discussion of rational realism's Neo-Platonist and
religious overtones, see Ahlers 2012).



Reinhold and Bardili's joint project faced significant
criticism. Fichte was quick to rebuke his former disciple in his
two-part review of Bardili's *Grundriss*, where he
also attacked Reinhold's earlier review of the same work.
Despite his critical stance toward rational realism, lecture notes
from 1804-1807 indicate that Fichte incorporated some of its
elements into his own system (see Ferraguto 2020). Hegel, too, lost no
time in joining the fray, assailing Reinhold in his
*Differenzschrift* of 1801. Hegel would join forces with
Schelling, co-editing the *Kritisches Journal der Philosophie*,
which contained fierce criticisms of rational realism. Reinhold
replied to these onslaughts in subsequent issues of his
*Beytrage*, taking aim especially at Schelling. The
exchanges between these thinkers were bitter, leading Reinhold to call
the dispute a "war of annihilation" (*BzU* 5,
iii). This debate did not go unnoticed by the philosophical public,
Joseph Kurz addressing the incendiary discourse in a short treatise in
1803, *Der philosophische Vertilgungskrieg* [*The
Philosophical War of Annihilation*]. Marked by considerable mutual
misunderstanding, the controversy also highlights implicit lines of
influence and important contrasts in the protagonists'
conceptions of the relationships between thought and being, form and
matter, and subjectivity and objectivity (for studies of this
constellation, see: Ahlers 2006; Ahlers 2012; Bondeli 1995a:
314-414; Bondeli 1995b; Bondeli 1997a; and Di Giovanni
2006).


## 5. Linguistic Turn



A definitive starting point for Reinhold's philosophy of
language, the final phase of his philosophical development, is
difficult to determine. He is reported to have spoken of a "new
standpoint" in 1805 (Ernst Reinhold 1825: 337; cf. Bondeli 1995:
267), and in 1806 he published *Versuch einer Critik der Logik aus
dem Gesichtspunkt der Sprache* [*Attempt at a Critique of Logic
from the Perspective of Language*]. In this work, Reinhold asserts
the indispensable relationship between thought and language, which
would become a hallmark of his mature works in philosophy of language.
However, at this point, the relationship between thought and language
is assumed to be undeniable and is not further developed, with the
bulk of the 1806 *Critik* focusing on establishing a hierarchy
of logical concepts. Reinhold appears to break with Bardili in the
preface to his 1808 *Die Anfangsgrunde der Erkenntnis der
Wahrheit in einer Fibel fur noch unbefriedigte Forscher nach
dieser Erkenntnis* [*Foundations of the Cognition of Truth in a
Primer for Still Dissatisfied Inquirers of this Cognition*],
making this a convenient marker for the end of Reinhold's phase
of rational realism and the beginning of his linguistic turn. Yet, the
preface to his *Grundlegung einer Synonymik fur den
allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch in den philosophischen Wissenschaften*[*Groundwork of a Synonymic for the Universal Use of Language
in the Philosophical Sciences*] (1812) suggests that *this*work signals a new direction in his philosophical thought since
his endorsement of rational realism. Whatever difficulties there might
be in sharply categorizing distinct phases of Reinhold's late
philosophical development, so much is clear: linguistic concerns
garnered Reinhold's attention for some time and his project of
basing philosophy on a critique of language comes to fruition in the
*Grundlegung einer Synonymik* and subsequent works, including
*Das menschliche Erkenntnissvermogen aus dem
Gesichtspunkt des durch die Wortsprache vermittelten Zusammenhang
zwischen der Sinnlichkeit und dem Denkvermogen* [*The
Human Faculty of Cognition from the Perspective of the Connection,
Mediated by Spoken Word, Between Sensibility and the Faculty of
Thought*] (1816) and *Die Alte Frage: Was ist die Wahrheit?*[*The Old Question: What is Truth?*] (1820).



While Reinhold claims in the 1806 *Critik* that no one doubts
thought is conditioned by language, he comes to appreciate that many
philosophers hold a contrary, instrumentalist view of the relationship
between thought and language (e.g. Fichte, Jakob Friedrich Fries, and
Gottlob Ernst Schulze), according to which language merely expresses
thought, where thought is independent of language. Reinhold rejects
this instrumentalist view of language. In his view, language and
thought are mutually conditioning and essentially intertwined
(*Grundlegung einer Synonymik*, p. 3). As a result of this
connection, ambiguities and inconsistencies in language carry over to
thought. This, Reinhold maintains, explains philosophy's lack of
systematic consistency and the lack of unanimity among philosophers:
philosophical disputes are attributable to linguistic ambiguities.
Broadly following Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Georg Hamann,
Reinhold proposes a critique of language as a meta-critique of
reason.



For Reinhold, critique of language consists in rectifying the
ambiguities of language, an enterprise Reinhold calls
"synonymic." The "primary task" of this
critique, and of "philosophy as science" more generally,
is to define the "fundamental concepts of human cognition"
(*Grundlegung einer Synonymik*, p. 185). There is a general
consensus in the literature that synonymic promises more than it can
deliver (Cloeren 1972; Cloeren 1988; Gerten 2006; Imhof 2015; Valenza
2003). One problem concerns the justification of the definitions
Reinhold proposes and their hierarchical ordering: at times, these
seem little more than arbitrarily stipulated. Another problem concerns
the ontological underpinning of Reinhold's system. In
particular, he appeals to the rational realist notion of the unity of
thought and being (on the prefiguration of Reinhold's linguistic
phase in his early correspondence with Bardili, see Valenza 2004).
Thus, in addition to human, representational thought--which is
inextricably tied up with language--Reinhold presupposes
speechless thinking (*sprachloses Denken*), identified with
God's thinking. This non-representational thinking, which
Reinhold variously calls "thinking in the narrowest sense"
(*Grundlegung einer Synonymik*, p. 116) and--harking back
to rational realism--"thinking *qua*thinking," is to be understood as the
"*immutable*, *subordinating order of being* in
itself" (*Das menschliche Erkenntniss*, p. 57).
Especially in *Das menschliche Erkenntniss*, Reinhold
emphasizes the indispensable relationship between representational
thought and language in order to distinguish the former from divine
thinking *qua* thinking. However, it is unclear whether this
ontological foundation, which draws on rational realism, is properly
accounted for within the framework of Reinhold's philosophy of
language.



Despite these perceived shortcomings, scholars agree that
Reinhold's final philosophical phase offers many insights.
Reinhold actively engages with various philosophers who thematize
language: in addition to referring to thinkers in his proximity (e.g.
Bernhardi, Bouterwek, Fichte, Fries, Hamann, Herder, Jacobi, and
Schulze), he cites Leibniz as a forerunner of synonymic
(*Grundlegung einer Synonymik*, p. 185f.) and draws on the
British tradition in figures such as Bacon, Locke, and Hume. Reinhold
anticipates Wilhelm von Humboldt's rejection of instrumentalist
views of language in support of the interdependence of thought and
language, as well as aspects of Frege (Bondeli 1995: 271) and
Wittgenstein (Bernecker 2018: 3374f.). There is still much to be
investigated in the history of the philosophy of language in general
(for studies of this history in German philosophy, see Cloeren 1988;
Forster 2010; and Forster 2011) and Reinhold's place in it in
particular.


## 6. Reception of Reinhold's Philosophy



During Reinhold's own lifetime, or at least during certain
phases of the same, he was among the more influential philosophers in
Germany -- first as an immensely successful popularizer of the
Kantian revolution and then, with his effort to construct an
Elementary Philosophy, as one of the founders of "post-Kantian
idealism." This, however, nearly exhausts his positive influence
upon his contemporaries.



Following the heyday of German idealism, Reinhold's name has
generally been relegated to the history of philosophy, within which he
is assigned the role of serving as a small, but not insignificant rung
on the alleged ladder "from Kant to Hegel," and this is
precisely how he is still treated in most general histories of
philosophy. In this context, Reinhold is usually credited with (or
blamed for) putting the issues of systematic form and
"philosophical foundations" at the center of philosophical
concern. Even those, such as Fichte, who roundly criticized the
details of his Elementary Philosophy professed sincere admiration for
Reinhold's "systematic spirit." And many of those
who rejected his contention that the Principle of Consciousness could
serve as the first principle of a philosophy as a whole, nevertheless
praised him as the philosopher who first recognized the need for some
such principle and first sought to provide Kantianism with a solid
"foundation." In both of these respects, Reinhold served
as an important catalyst or stimulus for further philosophical
developments.



Given this situation, it his hardly surprising that until recently the
only works of Reinhold familiar even to most scholars--with a few
minor exceptions--were the *Letters on the Kantian
Philosophy* and the three, above-mentioned volumes in which he
expounded his Elementary Philosophy. This, however, is unfortunate,
inasmuch as these texts represent only a small fraction of
Reinhold's literary output and do not include some of his most
original ideas, projects, and literary productions, such as his final
writings on philosophy and language and his pioneering, lifelong
efforts to get philosophers to take seriously the history of their own
discipline and to understand the "history of philosophy"
philosophically.



This situation has begun to change, however. The first critical
edition of Reinhold's complete works, *Karl Leonhard
Reinhold: Gesammelte Schriften*, was inaugurated in 2007.
Furthermore, the critical edition of Reinhold's voluminous and
important philosophical correspondence, *Karl Leonhard Reinhold:
Korrespondenzausgabe*, has resumed regular output since 2007,
after a 25-year hiatus. Newly edited editions of some of
Reinhold's major works have also begun to appear, most notably
the two volumes of his *Beytrage zur Berichtigung bisheriger
Missverstandnisse der Philosophen*, edited by Faustino
Fabbianelli, and an edition of *Versuch einer neuen Theorie des
menschlichen Vorstellungsvermogen*, edited by Ernst-Otto
Onnasch, all issued in the "Philosophische Bibliothek"
series published by Felix Meiner.



For many years, the serious secondary literary on Reinhold was very
sparse and was dominated by Alfred Klimmt's monograph (see
below). Recent years, however, have seen a spate of new articles and
monographs devoted to Reinhold. Also worth mentioning is Alexander von
Schonborn's annotated bibliography of Reinhold's
writings, a fine example of scholarly detective work and an essential
tool for further research. In conjunction with and as part of the
renaissance of Fichte studies over the past decades, there have been
numerous efforts to reexamine the relationship between Reinhold and
Fichte, and, in particular, to reassess the precise debt of the
*Wissenschaftslehre* to the Elementary Philosophy. Accordingly,
the scholarly literature on Fichte includes numerous studies of this
aspect of Reinhold's achievement. Even more recently and for the
first time ever, Reinhold's ideas have begun to be expounded,
criticized, and debated among Anglophone scholars and philosophers,
including Karl Ameriks, Frederick C. Beiser, Daniel Breazeale, Paul
Guyer, Paul Franks, Michelle Kosch, and Alexander von
Schonborn.



Appreciation and discussion of Reinhold among Anglophone readers can
be expected to spread more widely as more of Reinhold's writings
become available in English. Recently, several partial translations of
works by Reinhold have appeared: one, by George di Giovanni, of
excerpts from the *Fundament*; another, by Sabine Rohr, of
portions of the *Verhandlung uber die Grundbegriffe und
Grundsatze der Moralitat aus dem Gesichtspunke des gemeinen
und gesunden Verstandes*; and two, by Jorg Noller and John
Walsh, of excerpts from the *Beytrage II* and
*Vermischter Schriften II* relevant to the post-Kantian debate
on free will. In 2005 a fine translation of the first series of
Reinhold's "Letters on the Kantian Philosophy,"
translated by James Hebbeler and edited by Karl Ameriks, was published
in the series of "Cambridge Texts in the History of
Philosophy." Furthermore, a translation of the second volume of
Reinhold's *Letters on the Kantian Philosophy* is
currently underway. The rest of Reinhold's philosophical
writings still await English translation.



In 1998 Reinhold's philosophy was the subject of an
international academic conference--the first such conference ever
to be devoted to Reinhold--in Bad Homburg, Germany. The second
international Reinhold conference was held in Luzern, Switzerland in
2002; the third, in Rome, Italy in 2004; the fourth in Montreal,
Canada in 2007; the fifth in Siegen, Germany in 2010; and the sixth in
Kiel, Germany in 2017. (The proceedings of the first five of these
conferences have been published.) The level of scholarship and
philosophical acumen on display at these two events was very high and
augurs well for the future. Indeed, one could argue that the future of
Reinhold Studies is brighter today than at any time since
Reinhold's death.