Empiricism and Rationalism: The Failure of Kant’s Synthesis and its Consequences for German philosophy around 1800

Abstract

Kant's synthesis of empiricism and rationalism is often considered to be one of his most important contributions to philosophy. In this article I investigate the reception of this synthesis in the late 1780's and early 1790's. I show that during this early reception Kant's attempt at a synthesis, and its empiricist side in particular, proved to be a failure when it was confronted with a powerful challenge from the side of G.E. Schulze, Maimon and K.L. Reinhold. This failure, I argue, resulted in a break within the Kantian movement itself between a rationalist and an empiricist Kantianism.