A Autocrítica de Reinhold à Filosofia do Sujeito na Filosofia Elementar

Abstract

In February 1797, Reinhold wrote to his friend Baggesen, and a few days later to Fichte, acknowledging the unsustainability of his Elementary Philosophy after revising it for the second volume of the Auswahl vermischter Schriften. At this moment of self-critique, he was concerned, among other concepts, with the issue related to the subject – namely, his failure to conceive of it as a mere subject or a pure self. It is precisely this point that constitutes the focus of my analysis: to understand the reasons why Reinhold began to criticize directly the concept of the subject as established in his system, concluding that his conception made inevitable the presupposition of an external and independent origin of the object. In doing so, he simultaneously introduced the problem of the object and, as a consequence, that of the thing-in-itself. I believe that this investigation can justify his rapprochement with Fichte's Doctrine of Science.