The Doctrine of Self-positing and Receptivity in Kant's Late ...

epresenting.‖ 131
An important implication of this starting point is that it makes the thinker attend
to the different kinds of cognitive acts out of which one can understand how it is possible
―to generate for ourselves the representation of an object.‖ 132 In other words, in lieu of
attending to either the elements that are necessary for the possibility of the cognition of
an object, or of asking ―What joins the representation of an object with its object?,‖ the
thinker in transcendental philosophy stands upon the idea of an ―original representing.‖ 133
Attending to the acts, however, requires that Beck identifies thus the highest principle as
―represent to yourself an object originally;‖ but simultaneously limits the sphere of the
principle to that of ―the entire employment of the understanding.‖
As already proposed in the above interpretative thesis, the Selbstsetzungslehre is
not only a reordering of the presentation of the foundational elements of Kant‘s critical
philosophy, but it is simultaneously a set of acts by which the making of both the subject
and the object becomes possible. Indeed, there are many more points of intersection
between both thinkers worthy of investigating beyond mere historical curiosity, which
unfortunately will not be addressed here.
131 Beck, Jacob Sigismund. ―Explanatory Abstract of the Critical Writings of Prof. Kant,
in Consultation with the Same,‖ in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of
Post-Kantian Idealism, ed and trans. George Di Giovanni and H. S. Harris. Revised
Edition. Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Co., 2000, 212.
132 Ibid., 215.
133 Ibid.
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