Abstract

This article explores Fichte’s double strategy of critique and assimilation of Reinhold’s and Bardili’s Rational Realism. Rational Realism’s twofold argument: thinking is not mixed with sense data and thinking expresses the mere identity of what is affirmed in every affirmation and is repeated within that, implies the thesis that even the affirmation of the independence of ontology from epistemology must be able to be justified and be justifiable on the epistemological level. This setting of Rational Realism drives Fichte to review the perspective of the WL and to rethink it as an extra-subjective theory of reason. It is argued that through the introduction of the concept of representant, Fichte deepens a reflection on the relationship between philosophy, as an artificial science far removed from life, with that of life itself, that is, with the reality from which philosophizing arises.Whereas Fichte purports that abstraction and reflection are not elements of thinking, but instruments through which it is possible to show this within a relative and discursive structure, this position of the Wissenschaftslehre is abandoned by Reinhold who, in turn, tries to maintain an intermediate position between Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and Bardili’s realism. Finally, this article discusses the question as to whether the understanding of this discussion may lend to the contemporary debate on realism.