Abstract
Reinhold has long been well known for his interest in foundational philosophy. More recently, he has been becoming much better known for his interest in history and the history of philosophy as well. These two interests can appear to be antithetical to one another, but it is also possible to see them as complementary. In particular, I argue that one can read even one of Reinhold’s most foundational texts, his essay “On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge,” in such a way that it too is best understood in relation to Reinhold’s lifelong concern with practical and historical issues. In the second half of this essay I supplement this analysis with a reaction to four fundamental questions about Reinhold’s relation to history that are raised by Daniel Breazeale in an essay in this volume.
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Notes
- 1.
“Each progressing step of philosophical reason presupposes the previous ones and is possible only through them”.
- 2.
Portions of this essay are translated in Reinhold 1791a, but many of the passages I refer to here are only in the full German edition, cited above.
- 3.
In addition to Daniel Breazeale, the list of other scholars with significant recent research bearing on the theme of Reinhold and history includes Frederick Beiser, Martin Bondeli, George di Giovanni, Manfred Frank, Paul Franks, Marion Heinz, Dieter Henrich, Sabine Roehr, Marcelo Stamm, and Vittorio Hösle.
- 4.
I now see that several especially important points about the connection between Reinhold and history are already elaborated in Breazeale (1998). I am not sure whether I had studied this essay in the course of drafting this essay and researching recent publications on Reinhold, but it is obvious to me now that there are many ways in which it anticipates and overlaps my views. I am in any case already explicitly indebted in other publications (see Ameriks 2000, 81–160; Ameriks 1989a, 2004, 2005b, 2006) to several other path-breaking essays on the period by Breazeale.
- 5.
In a review, I contend that for an orthodox Kantian the status of reason itself was never put seriously into doubt in this period, and that the doubts about Critical rationalism that arose then were largely a function of an overly ambitious conception of what mere reason can accomplish (Ameriks 1989b). This is consistent with conceding the historical point that many leading figures of the era did appear to think that reason was suddenly in special danger and required radical vindication – for example, in a Hegelian way (cf. the discussion of Beiser’s more recent work in Ameriks 2006, Ch. 11).
- 6.
This is a reiteration of a parenthetical remark in Ameriks (2006), 23.
- 7.
It is important to keep in mind that for Kant even the moral law’s relevance to us presupposes some results from theoretical philosophy, insofar as the doctrine of transcendental idealism is needed to escape the metaphysical objections of those who say that (given the universal natural laws that govern phenomena) the moral law must be a mere chimera because we do not really have the freedom to fulfill it.
- 8.
On Kant’s discussion of the need for enlightenment, see Ameriks (2009a); cf. Pippin (2007), 535.
- 9.
See Hochschild (2007) for an informative review of a recent film on this event, Amazing Grace, which explains how, in addition to Wilberforce, widespread popular movements and boycotts were, apparently for a first time, crucial to the significant change in policy on the slave trade.
- 10.
As long as independent minds are not in agreement with themselves about the ultimate grounds of our legal duties in this life and our expectations in the next … the course of human culture will be subject to direction by contingent events and the guardianship of natural necessity, and humanity must remain in a state of immaturity … for it can govern itself and do so by its own laws only insofar as it is in agreement with itself about these laws.
- 11.
- 12.
From the section “Self-Consciousness,” the last sentence before the subsection “Master and Slave.” Very similar images are used in Letters.
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Ameriks, K. (2010). Reinhold, History, and the Foundation of Philosophy. In: Giovanni, G. (eds) Karl Leonhard Reinhold and the Enlightenment. Studies in German Idealism, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3227-0_8
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