The Legacy of Salomon Maimon

Salomon Maimon decisively influenced the development of post-Kantian German Idealism, but there is little consensus on how to interpret most aspects of his thought, including the nature and philosophical significance of his skepticism and the reasons why he challenged Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this chapter, Nisenbaum argues that the two ideas that define Fichte’s doctrine of science, or Wissenschaftslehre—the necessity of a common derivation of all a priori knowledge from one principle, and the idea that philosophy should be based on freedom—can be traced back to Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. It is also argued that, by emphasizing the regulative role of the ideas of pure reason in Kant’s account of empirical cognition, Maimon enables a rereading of the argumentative structure of the first Critique that reveals the relationship between sensibility, understanding, and reason. This rereading of the first Critique shows that Kant has the resources to address Maimon’s key challenges, but it also puts pressure on Kant’s discursive account of human cognition.