Karl Leonhard Reinhold

Karl Leonhard Reinhold (October 26, 1757 - April 10, 1823) was an Austrian philosopher.

Related Topics:
October 26 - 1757 - April 10 - 1823 - Philosopher

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He was born at Vienna. At the age of fourteen he entered the Jesuit college of St. Anna, on the dissolution of which (1774) he joined a similar college of the order of St. Barnabas. Finding himself out of sympathy with monastic life, he fled in 1783 to North Germany, and settled in Weimar, where he became Christoph Martin Wieland's collaborator on the German Mercury(Der Teutsche Merkur), and eventually his son-in-law.

Related Topics:
Vienna - Jesuit - Weimar - Christoph Martin Wieland - Der Teutsche Merkur

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In the German Mercury he published, in the years 1786-87, his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, which were most important in making Kant known to a wider circle of readers. As a result of these Letters, Reinhold received a call to the university of Jena, where he taught from 1787 to 1794.

Related Topics:
Kant - University of Jena

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In 1789 he published his chief work, the Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermogens, in which he attempted to simplify the Kantian theory and make it more of a unity. In 1794 he accepted a call to Kiel, where he taught till his death in 1823, but his independent activity was at an end.

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In later life he was powerfully influenced by Fichte, and subsequently, on grounds of religious feeling, by F. H. Jacobi and Bardili. His historical importance belongs entirely to his earlier activity. The development of the Kantian standpoint contained in the New Theory of Human Understanding (1789), and in the Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (1791), was called by its author Elementärphilosophie.

Related Topics:
Fichte - F. H. Jacobi - Bardili

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Reinhold lays greater emphasis than Kant upon the unity and activity of consciousness. The principle of consciousness tells us that every idea is related both to an object and a subject, and is partly to be distinguished, partly united to both. Since form cannot produce matter nor subject object, we are forced to assume a thing-in-itself. But this is a notion which is self-contradictory if consciousness be essentially a relating activity. There is therefore something which must be thought and yet cannot be thought(Høffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. trans., vol. ii.). See R. Keil, Wieland und Reinhold (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1890); J. E. Erdmann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Berlin, 1866); histories of philosophy by Richard Falckenberg and Wilhelm Windelband.

Related Topics:
Consciousness - Thing-in-itself - Høffding - R. Keil - J. E. Erdmann - Richard Falckenberg - Wilhelm Windelband

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