Descartes in der Debatte über die Begründung der Philosophie am Anfang des deutschen Idealismus

In the debate about the foundation of philosophy in the last decade of the 18th century, i.e., starting from Reinhold’s reception of criticism through Fichte’s foundation of the collected Wissenschaftslehre up to Schelling’s and Hegel’s philosophy of identity at the beginning of the 19th century, Descartes seems to be, on the one hand, central and, on the other hand, marginal. He seems to be on the margins because no main figure in this debate places himself under Cartesian authority although he is still recognized as the initiator of modern philosophy. However, he is also in the middle of the debate, since it was impossible for a philosophical revolution that elevated the subjectivity as a principle not to consider in some form the philosopher of the “ego cogito”. This is confirmed by the writings of Kant and Fichte, although the mediation of Reinhold’s interpretation of Kant is also indispensable for this reception. At the same time, Cartesian philosophy is also partly misunderstood, and its influence is probably stronger than what the philosophers of that time want to admit. To explain this ambivalent role, the essay starts from Fichte’s clear synthesis, which inserts Descartes in contemporary philosophy, and then finds out some presuppositions and middle preliminary stages of this synthesis: i.e. some propositions on confutation of idealism in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; Reinhold’s essay to ground criticism through his theory of representation and the skeptical criticism of such theory; some further Fichtean statements concerning Descartes. Finally, the essay looks at the evolution of Descartes’ role at the beginning of the 19th century, when the importance of the principle of “cogito” seems to decline.