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

faculties of representation in light of their specifying differences (e.g., concept, intuition,
idea, etc.) and the fact that they are nevertheless said to work together for the cognition of
objects. It is necessary, thus, to provide a philosophical ―explanation of how experience
is made possible, i.e., of how the faculty of cognition is constituted.‖ 119 Here lies
Reinhold's own way of articulating and solving the identified problem of the
heterogeneity between the faculties of sensibility and understanding.
The elements at play in Reinhold's alternative to Kant's propaedeutic to
metaphysics can be ordered as follows: 1) a science of the faculty of representation is
needed to ground the science of the faculty of cognition; 2) the concept of representation
as such is drawn from ―the consciousness of an actual fact [Tatsache]‖ by means of
reflection, leading thus to the identification of a ―principle of consciousness‖; 3) the
actual fact of which we are conscious is that ―in consciousness representation is
distinguished through the subject from both object and subject, and is referred to both;‖ 120
4) immediately at the ground of this fact lies a concept of representation that is simple,
empty and belongs to the very possibility of consciousness, and as such is capable of
being the ―first principle of all philosophy;‖ 121 and 5) a second, this time complex,
concept of representation can then be determined in terms of the actual facts of
consciousness and the task of a theory of representation is to give an exhaustive account
of its concept. Within what for Reinhold is a more complete paradigm, consciousness
here presupposes a simple concept of representation as an a priori ground of its
119 Ibid. Emphasis added.
120 Ibid., 70; 79.
121 Ibid.
87