“Das Eine, was der Philosophie Not ist”: Reinhold’s argument concerning the absolute principle of philosophy

Abstract

The present essay is devoted to analyzing Reinhold’s contribution to one of the most relevant questions in German idealism, namely, the possibility of an absolute principle of all philosophy, as a task left open by Kant’s critical enterprise. The main aim is to assess the extent to which Reinhold is the first to propose this philosophical problem as a question of language, and in doing so the possibility of an absolutely apodictic philosophical language, as it would be later resumed and developed by Fichte and other authors. Keywords: Reinhold, language, philosophy, principle, consciousness.