Two 18th century concepts of construction (Kant and Fichte)

Abstract

The author proposes to explore the role of the principle of construction in the writings of Kant and Fichte. Kant brought to attention the activity of cognisant reason: in 18th century he was the first European philosopher who demonstrated that no cognition at all is possible in the absence of active reason. Later Marx would arrive to the same conclusion, though with a different outcome: while for Kant this vision of the role of active reason meant that knowledge must needs be limited to phenomena, for Marx it was the indication that we know the world as it actually is. Activity, according to what Kant writes in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, has the form of experiment, the real experiment being determined by the thought experiment in which the object of pure sensual contemplation is created. The model of universal object, a scheme, exists only in thought, and it is only in relation to it that a singular object can be known. The schematism is actually where the act of constructing and cognizing of the objects by reason is manifested. In Fichte, the constructive role of reason attains even greater importance: according to him, conscience traverses the same path twice, first when from the given states of conscience it creates the object of knowledge, and the second time when, parting from the constructed object, it creates, again by way of constructing, the image of the object. For Fichte, at the origin there always is practical activity of the spirit which dictates the subsequent course of actual practical activity.