K. L. Reinhold und der Glaube der Vernunft

Abstract

According to Reinhold’s own testimony of 1787, his early enthusiasm for Kant’s critical philosophy has its origin in the critique of rational theology contained in the Transcendental Dialectic and the Transcendental Doctrine of Method of the Critique of Pure Reason. In these texts Reinhold claims to have found the almost undiscoverable means to resolve the “unfortunate conflict between superstition and disbelief.” By contrast, in a letter to Baggesen of 1792, Reinhold holds that only Fichte’s Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation succeeded in correcting his otherwise reductionist view of moral theology through its proof of the possibility of revelation out of the nature of practical reason. In my paper I shall try to show, first, that this shift in Reinhold’s appreciation of Kantian moral theology is to be explained by changes affecting Reinhold’s theoretical and practical philosophy between 1787 and 1792, and not by changes in Kant’s moral theology between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. In a second step, I shall argue that it is Fichte’s Attempt which enables Reinhold to find the correction of his deficient moral theology in his own modified Elementarphilosophie.