THE GOSPELS REVISED! PRELIMINARY OVERVIEW OF FOUR CRITICAL DOCTRINES IN A NEW “IMPROVED” VERSION

Kant and Reinhold: Influence and Difference

The work of Karl Leonhard Reinhold has come to receive growing attention recently from specialists, but I believe it has a much broader significance than has yet been realized. It can be argued that not only did this supposedly minor figure directly determine the main lines of the immediate reception of Kant's philosophy, but he also was at least indirectly responsible for determining some of the most influential preconceptions still current today about the basic alternatives within modern philosophy.

Reinhold presented his own system only after he had suddenly become famous through his exposition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781, A edition; 1787, B edition). It is often forgotten that the first responses to Kant's long and difficult main work were mixed at best, and that even the influential figures who did not attack the book, such as Mendelssohn and Goethe, made it known that the work was inordinately hard to understand, let alone appropriate. Here Reinhold played a crucial role, for he was not only very sympathetic to Kant's work but also unusually lucid and persuasive in his presentation of it. In setting forth to explain Kant, Reinhold conceded that the Critique had met considerable resistance. While he contended that such resistance rested largely on misunderstandings, Reinhold also believed that the text needed to be reformulated so that its major points would not be obscured by its complex details.