Validity and Reason

1 Transcendental or Speculative Method?

Kant put it forcefully on the agenda of modern philosophy, the German idealists set about perfecting Kant’s contribution, the neo-Kantians and transcendental philosophers after 1945 positioned it against rampant reductions of the special sciences: the problem of validity, the validity of any object-related meaning. It is the quintessential fundamental problem of philosophy. Philosophy is the science of validity, seeking to determine the validity of human performances of meaning by determining the principles that underly these performances. What is, is grounded in the principles of validity.

In this, transcendental and speculative idealism agree. They also concur that philosophy, as a radical doctrine of validity principles committed solely to the conditions of reason – and not to an immanent or transcendent being beyond reason –, is a science of justification that includes its own validity: a science of ultimate justification. Transcendental and speculative idealism conceive of the basic discipline of this science as an “epistemology” understood in a validity functional sense, as a “logic,” which, as Hegel says, is the doctrine of comprehending thought, and as such prefigures both the basic concepts and the method of the subsequent philosophical disciplines.

Concerning the nature of this method, transcendental and speculative idealism diverge. They therefore also come to different solutions to the problem of validity.

Both Hegel and the neo-Kantians and later transcendental philosophers like Hans Wagner and Werner Flach clearly saw that the methodical difference is of decisive importance. Hegel repeatedly referred to transcendental philosophy as a “philosophy of reflection” and (dis)qualified its form of reflection as “external reflection” (GW 11, 252 ff.; cf. Krijnen 2024c; 2025a). Neo-Kantianism dealt intensively with Hegel. Wilhelm Windelband (1915) virtually welcomed a “renewal of Hegelianism.” It was no coincidence that the term “masquerade and discourse” was used to describe Hegel in neo-Kantianism (Holzhey 1991). Monographs like Die Dialektik in der Philosophie der Gegenwart (Marck 1929–31) or Die Hegel-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie (Levy 1927) paint a characteristic picture.

Typical of the neo-Kantian approach is Windelband’s dictum of any renewal Hegel’s: “dialectics as a whole” cannot serve as the “method of philosophy” (1915, 288).^[2] The neo-Kantians advocate for a Kantian-style correlation thinking. Moreover, they read Hegel’s philosophy as a metaphysics of spirit and criticize Hegel’s architectonics of the system, especially the distinction between objective and absolute spirit, while promoting a culturalization of spirit (Krijnen 2010). According to the neo-Kantians, Hegel did not interpret logic only as the whole of logical conditions for the validity of thought but also as the metaphysical actuality of spirit. In the neo-Kantian view, Hegel’s ultimate justification and self-grounding of philosophy restores a metaphysics of the transcendent. Consequently, they aim to correct the transcendent-metaphysical character of post-Kantian idealism by incorporating Kant’s critical points.

This is also the view of post-war transcendental philosophy. For Wagner (1980c, 39 f.), Hegel’s Logik is the exposition of the absolute in such a way that it develops its “‘categories’” as a doctrine of ideas and in this respect might be regarded as “transcendental logic”; yet it is simultaneously a “metaphysics” that abolishes Kant’s distinction between a transcendental science of justification and a metaphysics of the transcendent (Wagner 1980a, esp. 51–53), neglecting Kant’s “critical” point (Wagner 1980b, 439). Flach interprets it no differently: Hegel’s dialectic no longer takes grounding merely as a systematics of predication but as a method, so that the “constitution-theoretical relations of the constitution of judgement” are superimposed by the “methodological relations of the organization of knowledge,” and therefore logic by a philosophy of spirit (Flach 1994, 289). For Flach, it results in an “exaggerated concept of method”; Hegel’s Logik confounds constitutive and regulative principles of cognition (1994, 374).^[3]

In many respects, such spiritual-philosophical interpretations of Hegel no longer do justice to the current state of Hegel research. Hegel’s “ultimate justification” has neither the character of a philosophy of spirit nor is it a pre-Kantian metaphysics. Rather, Hegel’s speculative idealism radicalizes Kant’s critique of reason as the self-knowledge of reason and thus accomplishes the intention of transcendental philosophy (Krijnen 2024c).^[4]

The transcendental idealists essentially reject Hegel’s speculative concept development qua pervasive self-determination of thought through self-mediation. Instead, they orient themselves towards Kant’s framework of correlation thinking. Heinrich Rickert’s concept of heterology exemplifies this. Nevertheless, this orientation introduces a notable challenge for transcendental philosophy: formalism.

Hegel’s critique of formalism in no way fails to recognize the content-logical character of principles understood in transcendental philosophy as “conditions of possibility.” Rather, it concerns a methodical problem dealing with the correlation-theoretical constitution of transcendental philosophy itself as a doctrine of the possibility of the concrete. Hegel holds Kant’s return to the unity of self-consciousness to be insufficient, since “reality” qua “objectivity” is “contrasted” with the concept as “subjectivity” (GW 12, 19); the relationship between intuition and concept, understanding and sensibility, form and content is understood as a merely abstract relationship. This is the reproach of “formalism.” Kant lacks the Hegelian “principle of determination” (GW 20, § 508), i.e. the realization of the concept through its moments of the universal, the particular, and the individual, which abolishes all externality (cf. GW 12, 17).^[5]

For methodical reasons, this principle of determination is absent throughout transcendental philosophy. It offers merely an “external reflection.” Specifically, in Hegel’s discussion of external reflection within the Logic of Essence, the presupposed opposition of consciousness as reflective knowledge, reflection on something present, is critically examined and shown to be an external reflection. External reflection has its meaning only as a moment of absolute reflection. If it is absolutized – as in the “reflection of the understanding (Verstandesreflexion)” of transcendental philosophy –, it becomes a logical impossibility. In external reflection, the unity of immediacy and reflection enters into an external relationship to itself; it encounters itself as immediacy (GW 11, 252). It presupposes a being, an immediacy, in order to be able to comprehend itself as its immanent reflection, seeking to find the general (rule, principle, law, value) of this initial fact. Thus it is “only an external reflection,” reflection “in a subjective sense” (GW 11, 254), not a moment of absolute reflection as total mediation. Consequently, transcendental philosophy cannot produce true self-knowledge of reason: in considering itself, thought forgets itself.

In the following, I shall illustrate this problem of externality regarding some doctrines of transcendental philosophy. Particular emphasis will be placed on the contribution of the later generation of neo-Kantians like Bauch, Cassirer, and Cohn, but finally also on Fichte. Thematically, I elaborate on the beginning of philosophy (II), the concept of function (III), and the self-destruction of the concept (IV).

2 The Beginning of Philosophy

A fine starting point for demonstrating the problem of externality in transcendental philosophy is Heinrich Rickert’s doctrine of heterology. Rickert’s heterology proved to be groundbreaking not only for southwest German neo-Kantianism but also for the subjectivity-oriented transcendental philosophy of Wagner and Flach. Heterology determines basic relations of thought, including its structure of origin, dealing also with Hegel. Yet, it does so in the fashion of an external reflection.

The question about the origin, as it has arisen in the scholarly debate, would then amount to whether negation is conceivable as a principle of positing, i.e. of establishing a (thought-immanent) substratum of determination (Krijnen, 2022b, 2022c). Rickert denies this and offers a purely heterogeneous relational structure. Accordingly, the original relation is a relation of correlation, not of negative self-reference as according to Hegel’s speculative method: not a relation of negation.

However, the debate is muddled. To make progress, one should tackle the problem from the perspective of the problem of formalism. This is already evident in Rickert’s heterology.

In the context of the question about the origin of cognition, Rickert develops his doctrine of the theoretical object in general, thematizing the fundamental theoretical principles of validity (Rickert 1924, 8 ff., 1921, 50 ff.). At the same time, the constitutive meaning of thought for, so to speak, “being,” is originally grasped. By philosophically thinking of thought with regard to its content, the object is founded on the level of the origin of thought: It is determined what it means that something “is” at all. The origin proves to be structured heterothetically. The minimum of logical objectivity consists of the moments of the one and the other. All thinking involves relating the one to the other; all that is thought is a relationship. Pure heterogeneity constitutes thought as a relationship and forms the foundation of any object determination.

Rickert renders this primordial logical phenomenon, the original synthetic unity, also explicit as a correlation of form and content. Content does not come to thought from outside but belongs to the formal factors of the theoretical object: Thought involves a self-relation to content. The moments of objectivity are the (non-predicative) forms “form in general,” “and,” “content in general.” As a concept of the “world as a whole” (Weltganze) (Rickert 1934, 46), the heterothesis is effective in any thought. Nevertheless, just as for Hegel being as the beginning of logic and thus of the system of philosophy does not coincide with the absolute idea as the nature of thought, so does for Rickert heterology not coincide with the problem of the “beginning of the system of philosophy.” Basic disjunctive alternatives to think the world, like the correlations form and content or subject and object – which are themselves heterothetically related to each other – are special cases of the heterothesis.

Rickert (1939) even developed a differentiated critique of Hegel’s conception of the beginning of philosophy (GW 21, 53 ff.). Like Hegel, Rickert recognizes that the problem of the beginning is complex, and, as is common in Hegel criticism, he rejects the constitution of Hegel’s beginning – the “self-preserving foundation of all subsequent developments” (GW 21, 58).

Rickert’s criticism reveals a philosophical-methodical point that is important for formalism and typical of transcendental reflection. Namely that Rickert does not justify concepts such as form and content, subject and object, the one and the other – relevant for the entire system of philosophy – in the course of a validity-functional deduction. They do not result from a reflective-constitutive determination of cognition,^[6] i.e. of cognition constituting itself.

Rather, Rickert conceives the logical beginning of philosophy as the origin and does not specifically consider the beginning as the beginning of the determination of this origin. In this way, Rickert keeps alive a difference between the matter at issue and the representation of the matter at issue. This difference, typical of transcendental philosophy, is incompatible with the program of a self-constitution of reason. States of affairs are introduced beyond a pure validity-functional deduction.

In Rickert, it becomes apparent that the logical beginning in the epistemological sense is something immediate insofar as it concerns a determinacy that is presupposed by all others. The immediate qua fundamental structure of thought is exactly what Rickert discusses in his heterology. The beginning, i.e. the immediate in an epistemological sense, as far as its content is concerned, is thus conceived of as origin. Accordingly, Rickert begins to distinguish pairs of concepts that are meant to cover the beginning qua minimum of what constitutes objective thought as such. In his essay on the beginning of philosophy, he determines it as a subject-object relation (Rickert 1939, 31). This results from a reflection on the meaning of the immediate and, to that extent, from a reflection on pre-existing claims to validity (“cultural facts”). While Rickert argues from the meaning of “beginning,” he thinks of this beginning as the origin of all determinacy. Accordingly, he immediately emphasizes that the logical beginning as a whole is a “double” (Rickert 1939, 19), a duality. That is to say, he stresses the heterothetic structure of the beginning. Rickert explicitly refers to his heterology to explain the implicative nature of radical foundational concepts, i.e. their “correlation” (1939, 23, cf. 31, 35 f, 38 f.). He also characterizes the I as the “form” of the I, as “I-form” (I-ness) in distinction from the content of consciousness qua entirety of all contents, from the “I-content” (Rickert 1939, 32). With this, he uses another pair of concepts, quite decisive for his heterology: form and content.

Although Rickert knows that the duality of the beginning of the system of philosophy is effective in every step of the elaboration of the system of philosophy, he does not gain the determining dynamics of the advance from the concept of the beginning. The connection between the beginning of thought and the cognition of the beginning of thought remains external. Consistent with this, Rickert employs concepts that do not arise from the meaning of “beginning”; they are merely claimed in their validity. Apparently, Rickert already possesses fundamental philosophical concepts that are capable of qualifying the beginning – although the beginning is supposed to be the immediate, the non-mediated, that is, the still undetermined. Expressed differently and concerning the form of transcendental reflection, this reflection is a reflection on something present, an external reflection, not a self-reflection of the determination of the beginning.

According to its foundational role, the origin is the beginning of the advance too. Yet this advance does not result from the progress of the self-constitution of the origin. The advance of the determination is not at the same time a return to its ground. In contrast, it is an advance from it to logically subordinate relations of objective meaning. The matter of thought and the thinking of the matter of thought fall apart. A self-constitution of thought as the ground of all determinacy is lacking.

Rickert’s heterothesis as the principle of all principles qualifies thought and thus also that what is thought in its fundamental structure as a “relation of relata” (Rickert 1921, 56, 1924, 18). While Rickert rightly holds that the cognition of the fundamental structure of thought is mediated in multiple ways, he insufficiently considers that the concepts with which he qualifies the logical beginning must follow from the thought of the beginning itself. The agreement between Rickert and Hegel therefore ends with the fact that for both the logical beginning is the immediate. For Hegel, it is precisely the indeterminate immediacy of the beginning as a beginning that constitutes its determinacy; Rickert, in contrast, begins to qualify the beginning by concepts that are not such of the concept of beginning. His heterology is primarily concerned with the completeness of the concepts of the origin, which can only be achieved disjunctively (i.e. heterothetically). Nevertheless, it is not possible to “easily make the basic alternatives of logic in 10 different ways,” as Schelling (1861, 143) erroneously asserted against Hegel. This idea of a possible multiplicity and disjunctive completeness of basic alternatives to qualify thought has persisted up to the transcendental philosophy of our days. In contrast, the logical beginning can be made in only one way, generating its own dynamic of determination. Although Rickert’s model of a layered a priori typical of transcendental philosophy extends from the original synthesis of heterology via the logic of judgment to the concrete determination of the object through methodical principles, it is an “external reflection.”

This problem of beginning, origin, and heterology remains with younger neo-Kantians such as Bruno Bauch or Jonas Cohn.^[7] Rickert’s heterology is their framework.

At the level of origin, Cohn therefore does not think speculatively but heterothetically. In accordance with his spiritual-metaphysical reading of Hegel, he interprets “dialectical cognition” as “self-knowledge of God” and Hegel’s talk of the rationality of the actual and the actuality of reason only as a dogmatic, pre-Kantian ontological assumption; Cohn does not conceive of negativity as a “producer of determinacy” but merely as a “postulate of determination.” Accordingly, Cohn wants to capture the relationship between “form and content, what is produced by thought and what is alien to thought,” differently from Hegel (1923b, 38–42). He determines the basic relationship as dialectical in word but heterological in substance. Hegel’s “unipolar dialectic” is replaced by a “bipolar dialectic” (Cohn 1923b, 257, cf. 152 note 1, 1923a, 19). With Kant’s “critical attitude,” Cohn maintains that dialectic is not philosophizing “in the absolute” but “towards the absolute” (Cohn 1923a, 19, 1923b, 349).

Accordingly, Cohn points to an “essential deviation” from Hegel that is related to “basic logical insights”: “utraquism” (1949, 196 f.).^[8] This concerns the relationship between form and content. For Cohn, both constitute the original determinacy of cognizing thought. Like Rickert, he does not develop this utraquism from the idea of the beginning but through a reflection on the “conditions of cognition in general”; here, he aims to find the “origin of dialectics in general,” whereby Cohn then considers the “logical axioms” of contradiction, identity, and the excluded third as the “most general conditions of cognition”; furthermore, he is interested in the “judgment” as the “basic structure” of truth-referential thought, from which the origin of dialectics can be gained (1923b, 132 f. with 138 ff.). Cohn’s theory of judgment follows Rickert too. With Rickert, he distinguishes between two moments in the object of thought in general: form and content. Both are conceived of as a correlation; the content is not generated from the form (Cohn 1923b, 149 f.). Cohn’s dialectic is an “utraquistic” dialectic, not a “rationalistic” (Hegelian) one (1932, 429 f.). It is heterology, admittedly with all the consequences it entails for the development of the system of philosophy.

Also in Bauch, the sphere of origin is characterized by externality, since the origin is not reflective-constitutively derived from the beginning. Unlike Cohn, Bauch did not write a theory of dialectics. Nevertheless, it turns out that in the fundamental matters of “dialectic – negation – contradiction,” Bauch moves along the lines of Rickert’s heterology.

For Bauch, Hegel’s so-called antithesis, as far as it is correct, is Rickert’s heterothesis. Accordingly, he interprets negativity as limitation, i.e. as correlation. Insofar as negation does more than subjectively ward off error, it is not mere negation but involves otherness (Bauch 1923, 72 ff.; 1926, 77 ff.). Like Rickert (and Cohn), for Bauch too, negation does not capture the determinacy of truth. In the objective sphere of the purely logical object, negation plays no role; at best, it can find the other, not determine it in its otherness (1923, 80). Bauch wants to sublate the positive determining function of negation by the principle of limitation – which Hegel “so badly misunderstood” (1926, 188, 1923, 295 ff.). Limitation, as judgment, is the relation that “in itself relates relations to one another” and thus forms the element of coherence in the context of relations of validity (Bauch 1923, 299). Hegel, then, is reproached for depraving the logical meaning of the “concept” metaphysically, turning it into something “mystical” (Bauch 1929, 29).

In this respect, another aspect of heterology can be pointed out, also preserved in Cohn and Bauch. It is characteristic of transcendental idealism: In its attempts to overcome the consciousness-philosophical format of the doctrine of validity by a purely validity-functional structure, transcendental idealism remains caught up in the “opposition of consciousness.” Although content proves to be form and the relation of thought to content to be the self-reference of thought to content, Rickert feels compelled to distinguish from the form “content” the “content of content,” which we can only “experience” (Erleben), “see,” or otherwise “grasp alogically” (1921, 53 f., 62 f., 1924, 13, 15), even if form may belong to it because of its thinkability.

For Cohn, too, there is something “alien to thought” in every matter of judgment, which, as the “‘given’” (Vorfindbare), confronts thought with the task of integrating it into thought; as such, it is “non-negatable”; its first logical form (identity) remains inaccessible to negation (Cohn 1923b, 158). The content is considered alien to thought insofar as it cannot be derived from thought but is given to it; Cohn therefore refers to the content of experience as “irrational” (1923b, 149). Of course, in order to be conceivable, it must have form, which (as with Rickert) is the form of identity. In line with Rickert, negation is not a principle governing the sphere of origin of thought but pertains to the level of determination, i.e. of judgment. According to Cohn’s conception of dialectics, dialectics is first and foremost a relationship of judgments. Correspondingly, he regards contradiction, i.e. a relationship between two judgments, as the beginning (though not the origin) of a dialectical process (Cohn 1923b, 132, 211, cf. 117 ff.). It is heterologically founded.

To Bauch basically applies the same, as can also be seen from an examination of his concept of the concept. In any case, none of the transcendental philosophers conceive of the content as a manifested self-relation; rather, it contains a perennial other that eludes form. In this respect, Kant’s stem dualism remains logically intact (Krijnen 2024a).

There is no such dualism in Hegel. Here, singularization is conceived of as a manifestation of the universal through the particular to the singular, not as a form of external foundation, how sublimated it may be, of reflection on something other. In general, the constellation of a content that “we” can only grasp alogically is not even of a logical but of a spiritual-philosophical nature. From a logical point of view, at the end of the Logic of Essence, the “concept” has emerged as absolute self-determination; everything else in the system of philosophy is a manifestation of the concept in the “elements” of the logical, nature, and spirit.

Indeed, the neo-Kantian conception of the concept merely reproduces the externality stemming from the heterological conception of the origin, as can be shown by scrutinizing its concept of the concept as a “function.”

3 The Concept as a Function

Within transcendental idealism, Cassirer and Bauch have made great efforts to conceive of principles as functions. I first discuss their conception of the concept as a “function” and subsequently criticize it with Hegel’s conception of the concept. It appears that the neo-Kantian conception of the concept thinks of the concept as mediation, not as self-mediation. Speaking with Hegel, the concept is thought of as an essence, not as a concept. Consequently, transcendental idealism fails to fulfill its claim of being self-knowledge of reason.

Conceiving of the concept as a function is a distinctive feature of the neo-Kantian understanding of philosophy as a transcendental-idealist theory of validity principles. Principles of validity (“forms”) are considered as conditions for the possibility of the conditioned: as principles for principiates and nothing detached from them. So they are not characterized by their abstract universality but by their function of making objects possible. The formality of the formal as understood in transcendental philosophy consists in this function of being the determining condition of the concrete.

The neo-Kantians succinctly discussed the reciprocal and well-ordered relationship between principle and concreteness. Rickert, for instance, overcomes a formalistic view of principles through his heterology; Cassirer and Bauch contributed extensively to a functional understanding of principles.^[9]

Cassirer, e.g., holds that all objectivation is “mediation,” having the “far-reaching idealist consequence” that the determination of the object of cognition can only be achieved through a “peculiar logical structure of the concept” (ECW 11, 4 f.). The idea of a “purely functional unity,” a “rule,” takes the place of the “unity of a substrate” or “substance,” so that a “new task” of a philosophical “critique of knowledge” arises (ECW 11, 5 f.). The “object” is not anymore a “given in itself”; rather, through certain “form-concepts,” “logical conditions,” does the “uniform mass of the given” become an object (ECW 10, 7). The “‘primacy’ of the function over the object” is the “basic principle of critical thinking” (ECW 11, 9).

Although the concept of function plays a programmatic role for transcendental idealism, it also has a particular validity function in the whole of validity functions. This concerns the meaning of the concept as a function. Logically, the concept is the “propositional function” F(x) (ECW 13, 375). The function “applies” to the singular values but it is not a singular value itself. The singular values “are” only insofar as they stand in the relationship expressed by the function: the “singular, discrete” exists only through some form of the “universal” (ECW 13, 376). Likewise, the universal only manifests itself in the “particular” (ECW 13, 376) and has no existence independent of it. The concept shows to be the “consciousness of the rule” that determines the manifold of intuition into unity; it expresses the necessity of the synthesis, which is the object (ECW 13, 362). Thus the concept is a “precondition of experience,” a “condition of the possibility of its objects”: the “question of the object” turns into a “question of validity” (ECW 13, 362).

Cassirer articulated the outlined opposition of object and validity in terms of substance-concept and function-concept. Since Kant, the concept is no longer a “concept of a thing” (ECW 13, 363) but relates to the object because it is the “precondition of objectification” (ECW 13, 364 f.). The concept is the function of the objectivity of the object. A “logical structure of conditions” (ECW 13, 365) replaces a subject-object ontic. The object is a “functional unity,” a unity that has its determinacy through a certain “form” or “function” of cognition (ECW 13, 369).

Seen more closely, the concept turns the “fragmentary data of perception” into the whole of an object (ECW 13, 370). Cassirer relentlessly emphasizes that a “manifold of perception is conceptually grasped and ordered” if its members do not stand next to each other without relation but emerge from a “generating basic relation” (ECW 6, 14); the connection between the members is created by a “law of assignment,” i.e. determined by the function F(x) (ECW 6, 16).

The same can be found in a systematically stricter mode of development and articulation in Bauch. Moreover, the function-concept presented above can be extended with some aspects that are found particularly succinctly in Bauch. They concern the unsaturation or need for supplementation of the function as a function of something.

The function is generally the “principle of determination, of belonging together, of assignment” (Bauch 1914, 323 ff., 1923, 283 ff., 1926, 131 ff.). Bauch denotes the concept also as the totality of the conditions of particularization.^[10] Hence, it has a specific validity function in the constitutional structure of objectivity (Krijnen 2008, ch. 5.3.2). Concerning the cognition of real objects, the object-giving order of the contents of sensation is, so to speak, the lowest level of constitution. For sensation itself to be a sensation at all, it must be placed in a context. For Bauch, this context is the objective validity function of the category. While a category does not constitute the whole object but only one aspect, the categories stand in turn in a relational context of categories that determine the object. This object-determining context is the concept. And in that Bauch conceives of intuition as the inclusion of the manifold material of cognition in the categorial context of validity according to the law of the concept (1923, 259), the concept “in the proper sense” is the “embedding of sensation in the context of categories for the particularity of the object of intuition” (1923, 275). Yet the concept is not only in need of supplementation towards the concrete but also regarding the encompassing context, i.e. the idea.

Bauch has articulated this interrelatedness of validity functions as “logical continuity” (1923, 289 ff.) The validity conditions form a “constant relationship, a continuum” (Bauch 1923, 290). As, in accordance with Rickert’s heterology, Bauch wants to avoid any strict dualism of form and content, they are a “unity a priori” (1923, 303). The concept is the “universal functional condition of the particularity of the objective intuition and the intuited object,” the object a whole of contents that are united in its concept (Bauch 1923, 303). The principle of logical continuity covers the affinity of the concepts in such a way that the contents are included in the system of categorial validity relations to the system of concepts in the manner of a serial order (Bauch 1923, 307). As a moment of cognition, sensation is that which is moved by the category and the concept towards objectivity (Bauch 1923, 308 f.).

The problem of this conception of the concept is its externality. The function-concept is conceived of as mediation: as a functionality in which function and variable, form and content, are joined to form a unity, i.e. cognition of the object. The concept as a function is thus determined in relation to something that it is not itself. In Bauch’s terms, the concept is unsaturated and in need of supplementation. In a critical departure from Hegel, for Bauch the concept as a universal condition of the concrete is not, “as Hegel said” (1926, 134),^[11] itself concrete but concrescent, i.e. determining, conditioning the concrete. There is no identity between concrescence and the concrete, the conditional and the conditioned. A “distance” remains (Bauch 1926, 134). Each requires the other but this other is not the other of itself: the concept is not the concrete, the concrete not the concept. Instead of an identity, there is a logical continuity, a bordering (Hingrenzung) towards a goal.

The neo-Kantian functional theory of the concept undoubtedly makes the constitutive performance of the concept for the cognition of the object transparent. However, it is unable to determine its own functionality. It is a determining function for something else. The concept is not self-mediation, absolute mediation. Consequently, it is characterized by a formalism that contradicts the idea of a strict systematics. It relies on an externality between form and content: From the outset, an other is introduced that does not owe itself to the form and therefore undermines its true autonomy. Regarding the function-concept, this can be demonstrated, for instance, by examining the relationship between intuition and concept, or, relatedly, between form and content, regardless of whether in Cassirer or Bauch. The content is never conceived of as a self-differentiation of the form, the relationship between function and variable(s) never as a manifestation of the function. For methodical reasons, the mediating power of the concept or form takes precedence over self-manifestation.

If the performance of the function-concept occurs entirely within the opposition of consciousness, then either way a pre-conceptual content comes into play, irrespective of whether this content, as with Cassirer and Bauch, is conceived of as a correlative moment of the concept or form, so that their relationship is not an ontic of mutually independent entities but of determinations of meaning.

Although in neo-Kantianism, Kant’s dualism of stems is rejected as abstract and replaced by an original connection, it is precisely in the case of Cassirer and Bauch that the constitutive role of the concept is articulated to such an extent that the unity of the object arises from the multitude and variability of impressions. The relationship between concept and object remains thought of in a Kantian fashion.

For Cassirer, cognizing an object implies that the “manifold of intuition” is subjected to a “rule” that determines its order (ECW 13, 362). There is a “strict and precise correlation” between concept and object, not as an ontic relation, a “thing-relation,” but as a “relation of conditioning” (ECW 13, 364 f.). The forms or functions also form a correlative relationship with one another (ECW 13, 369). The ground of validity of cognition is a whole of correlating functions of validity.

The lowest level of this whole of principles is the validity indifferent stream of consciousness of impressions. Cassirer never tires of emphasizing that even the “mere object of perception” is not directly given but only represented “mediated” by perception and can thus be assembled into an object: the determinations are determined as “belonging” to one another (ECW 13, 369 f.). Cognition establishes new connections between the “contents of perception” and expresses them conceptually (ECW 13, 370). The “world of the senses” becomes an “ideal” world, a “world of meaning” (ECW 13, 371).

This model of constitution of the object relies on the paradigm of consciousness, whose stream of consciousness is contained by the concept so that the object can be recognized as what it is. In Cassirer, the concept replaces the “original indeterminacy and ambiguity of the content of the concept” with an unambiguous “determination” (ECW 6, 4); conceptualizing a “manifold of intuitions” is ordering them according to a “generating basic relation” (ECW 6,14). Thus concepts are brought into play as principles of the synthesis of the manifold (whereby the manifold is not restricted to the sensually given). This dependence of the concept to what is given, to what is to be synthesized – and therefore the restriction of the concept and its mediating power for something else –, can hardly be expressed more memorably than in Cassirer’s view that the “logical nature” of pure function-concepts has found its “clearest expression” in the system of mathematics. The reason being that mathematics concerns a realm of “freest and universal activity” of the concept; mathematical objects are only ideal, all determinacy arises from the law of their construction (ECW 6, 121). Consequently, Cassirer holds that the mathematical concept cannot be regarded as the paradigm of the “concept as such”: it lacks a reference to being (ECW 6, 121). Accordingly, the function of the concept must be determined in a “final and completed” way in the “concepts of nature” (ECW 6, 122).

In short, in a doctrine of validity as rendered explicit in transcendental philosophy – caught up in the perspective of the opposition of consciousness – there is an unbridgeable distance between concept and being. Although the concept does not throw away “its own form and its own presuppositions,” it attempts to “prove itself” against the “resistance” that it experiences from the “‘given’” (ECW 13, 470, cf. 468 f.). The concept is not conceived of as pure self-determination but as mediation of the one and the other for the cognition of the object. Such mediation, however, presupposes the pure concept.

To Bauch, the same overextension of the concept’s mediating or determining function at the expense of its self-mediating or self-determining function applies. He conceives of the relationship between universality and particularity in a way that particularity is that which we “experience in immediate life” (1923, 225); the “basic characteristic” of particularity is that it stands in a relationship to “sensation” (1923, 227). Although the universal and the particular are correlatively related, they are not conceived of as self-differentiation. In contrast, they are thought to be an ordering of what is ultimately the content of sensation. In this fashion, the concept is the “condition of the possibility and the law of the unity of the universality of its particulars” (Bauch 1923, 258). Following this logic of presupposition or the conditions of the possibility, Bauch conceives of the relationship between intuition and concept: Intuition is the inclusion of the “manifold material in the categorial relationship of validity according to the law of the concept” (1923, 259, 268 f., 275 f., passim). The concept mediates it to cognition. Intuition or sensation and the concept both are subordinated to the one law of the validity of knowledge. Consequently, they are differentiated functions of validity: intuition embeds sensation in the universal relationship of categories for the determination of intuition by the concept.

Their relationship is not self-differentiation but “logical continuity” (Bauch 1923, 289 ff.). The conditions of validity form among themselves a “continuous relationship of relations of validity” (Bauch 1923, 290) that takes the form of what Bauch (1923, 300) calls “bordering” (Hingrenzung) qua direction towards a goal as a limit: limitation regulates the course towards continuity. The lowest level of constitution is sensation, which “supplements,” as “content,” thought qua the formal structure of validity relationships of a categorical and conceptual nature (Bauch 1923, 302 f.). If the affinity of concepts in logical continuity is “content-relatedness” (inhaltliche Verwandtschaft) (Bauch 1923, 303), then it is not identity or self-mediation, and as limitation it is certainly not self-mediation through self-referential negativity. In transcendental philosophy, concepts as laws of validity determine and govern the objects; as conditions of the possibility of the object, they are neither objects themselves, nor conceived of as a strict separation. The concept is a function, a relationship. The concept and the concrete form a reciprocal relationship of conditionality; a “distance” remains; “each requires the other,” which it is not itself; the concept is unsaturated and in need of supplementation (Bauch 1926, 134 f.).

For the sake of its own self-determinacy, the functional concept of the concept as a determination of an other presupposes the pure concept as self-determination. Correspondingly, Hegel conceives of the concept, as of all determinations in his Logik, free of any “substrata of representation” or otherwise pre-given. He considers them in their “nature and value in and for themselves” (GW 21, 49). “Forms” are not primarily conditions of the possibility for what is made possible but must first be determined in themselves in terms of their truth content. The determination of pure self-determination of the concept takes place without any recourse to external conditions. The concept is pure self-determination and in this determination of itself at the same time determination of the other of itself. It is precisely in its functionality for others that it proves itself to be self-determination. In Hegel’s terms, the essence passes over into the concept. Transcendental philosophy, in contrast, thinks of the concept as an essence, not as a concept. It is an absolutized logic of essence (Krijnen, 2022b, 2022d).

Since the concept as self-referential self-determination is the unity of being (logic of immediacy) and essence (logic of mediation), it is not only self-determination but determines itself as self-determination. The activity of determination is not carried out on others but on itself. If the determination of thought takes place in the manner of a reflective constitution – regardless of whether in transcendental or speculative idealism –, then this reflective constitution becomes thematic in the concept. The concept posits itself as what it is, and in this it remains entirely with itself. In this respect, the positing of a new determinacy of the concept is its concretion, self-development, absolute negativity. The self-relation that is the concept is a self-referential determination, a determination that mediates itself. Thus the reflective constitution that only happen in (thought as) being and essence is determined in the concept. The determinations of the concept are the determinations of the forms of its own realization.

In the apriority model of transcendental philosophy, the relationship of form to content remains characterized by externality, despite all attempts to overcome Kant’s dualism of stems through a pervasive structure of the validity of knowledge that is supposed not to be an abstract universality but a constituent of objectivity. The form does not determine itself to content, the concept itself not to reality. The content remains non-form regardless of its form-determinacy as content, the reality also non-form despite its form-determinacy. Hegel’s logic of the concept makes the self-determination of thought explicit, while transcendental philosophy cannot overcome its formalism. The methodical moment of the “realization of the concept” through its own moments of the universal, particular, and singular is missing.

4 The Self-Destruction of the Concept

The outlined externality of the concept or, generally speaking, of thought or subjectivity is methodologically induced. It can only be overcome by transforming transcendental idealism into speculative idealism. However, within transcendental philosophy there is another alternative worth considering that has recently attracted scholarly interest: Fichte’s transcendental philosophy, especially the doctrine of the self-destruction of the concept.^[12] This doctrine has, as far as I can see, no importance for southwest German neo-Kantianism, whereas in Marburg neo-Kantianism at least Paul Natorp, in his Philosophische Systematik, develops a positive reference to a prior undivided unity as the origin of everything,^[13] coming very close to Fichte. Indeed, the point of the doctrine of self-destruction is to overcome any externality in the conception of the origin of thought, in particular concerning the relationship between being and concept. However, the doctrine self-destruction shows to be a result of an external reflection too.

Natorp holds that all subjective determination of being (cognition) presupposes a ‘something’ that it can determine as what it is, i.e. the “primordial fact” of “it is”: that there is ‘something’ to recognize at all. This presupposition cannot be logically derived from any further presupposition. For Natorp, the origin of all determinate whatness is the “pure thatness” of being, the “naked ‘it is’,” the “absolute zero point,” the “in itself undivided totality of being” (1958, 50 f., cf. 34). This “true zero point” as the “immediacy of ‘it is’” functions as the ‘origin’ of being and thought, i.e. everything; it is the “point of indifference,” the “not-yet” of their separation (1958, 31–34).

In the critical examination of itself, cognition encounters the ultimate as “its own ultimate limit”; it becomes aware of its limit and thus of that which, as its limit, is “beyond,” namely “that it is” and is the ‘beyond’, the limiting, limiting us “from outside”; it is the “absolutely incomprehensible,” and we are utterly able to grasp only its “incomprehensibility”: the “unquestioning affirmation of the transcendent” (Natorp 1958, 45). For Natorp, this is the “unreserved recognition” of Kant’s “‘in itself’”: the precondition of appearance. The “whole” is there, “as primordial fact.” Transcendental philosophy has to “prove itself” on this “presuppositionless presupposition” (Natorp 1958, 46). Incomprehensible is the original “that” in the sense of being conceptually inaccessible, neither in need nor capable of being cognized (Natorp 1958, 49, cf. 8). Natorp articulates this origin not only as “original self-expression,” “word-uttering word” (1958, 33) but also as “that word which was with God, was God himself, … his self-expression” (1958, 45).^[14] This transcendent realm forms the logical basis of any transcendental determination of being.

It is the “unavoidable starting point of philosophizing” as “noting oneself in the midst of the existing totality,” as Natorp says, in the “pure immediacy of intuiting,” the complete “surrender” to the “it is” (1958, 34). Accordingly, the concept of (conscious) life becomes the basic concept of Natorp’s Philosophische Systematik.^[15] Life is the “whole and ultimate” (Natorp 1958, 4) as the totality of the relationship of being and meaning. Consequently, the origin is conceived of in terms of a philosophy of consciousness, and moreover in such a way that it is directly present to consciousness as an immediate “immersion” (Natorp 1958, 29), i.e. being within, “originally pure intuition” (Natorp 1958, 30). In line with this, Natorp, when he thematizes the “entry into difference,” i.e. the advance from the origin, immediately remarks that the dimension of the advance is that of the “dispute,” which implies the (logical) birth of the deciding agent, i.e. the “ego,” together with its freedom (1958, 35 f., cf. 37).

Despite a detailed interpretation of the beginning of Hegel’s Logik (Natorp 1958, 55 ff.), Natorp fails to make Hegel’s conception of the beginning fruitful for his “system of basic categories” (1958, 72 ff.).^[16] Unlike Hegel, Natorp introduces from the beginning determinations beyond the determinacy of the beginning itself, so that the externality diagnosed in Rickert’s beginning also applies to him.

Natorp’s doctrine of the origin is systematically prefigured by the late Fichte, while Fichte seems attractive for recent attempts to update transcendental philosophy. As with Natorp, also in Fichte the profile of the philosophy of consciousness is apparent and leads to the sublation of transcendental idealism into speculative idealism. First, I discuss a contemporary attempt to rejuvenate transcendental idealism with Fichte.

In Fabian Völker’s conception of transcendental philosophy, philosophy and mysticism, the absolute as a problem of knowledge and as a problem of life, merge into one. In order to clarify the connection between philosophy and mysticism in a unified train of thought, a “trichotomic typology of self-destruction” comes in, the first stage of which is “transcendental self-destruction,” having Fichte’s conception of the self-destruction of the concept as its model (2024, 257 ff.). According to this, the absolute remains incomprehensible to conceptual thought. The latter must destruct itself in face of the unthinkable absolute. The absolute, due to its absoluteness, eludes any conceptual determination; determination requires opposition.

Concerning the transcendental self-destruction, Völker emphasizes that Fichte’s self-determination of knowledge results in a self-transcendence of knowledge to the unthinkable ground of its own being: in a “self-critical self-restriction and self-abandonment of knowledge, which has in itself no meaning and being, in relation to the absolute being” (2024, 261). Being is supposed to be the “indeterminable in itself” that cannot enter into knowledge and is nevertheless the real ground of knowledge, while knowledge is empty in itself (Völker 2024, 261 f.). Knowledge recognizes itself as a “mere schema” and thus that it is based on a pure reality; it is itself a reality, the “reality of knowledge” (GA II/13, 50 f.). Knowledge recognizes itself as an appearance of being, penetrates knowingly to its “absolute origin,” and comes through itself “to its end” (GA II/6, 195), to the inaccessible, unconditioned, reflectionless, absolute being on which knowledge knows itself to be dependent as its real ground: the absolute (Völker 2024, 263 f.). The transcendental self-destruction of the concept leads thought (the concept, knowledge, the ego) beyond itself to the truly real: the ultimate ground of validity of everything.^[17]

For Völker, Fichte’s conception fails because of the unconditionality of the absolute. The reason being that the absolute must be placed in a relationship to what is conditioned by it and thus destroyed in its absoluteness (Völker 2024, 267). This also makes the connection between being and (its existence in) knowledge, so to speak, the relationship between being and thought, incomprehensible. Fichte thinks of the absolute as a “self-contained singulum of life and being” that “can never get out of itself” (GA II/8, 242; Völker 2024, 267).

I do not share the conclusion that Völker draws from his fine analysis.

According to Völker (2024, 268), Fichte does not attempt to resolve the fundamental antinomy immanent in knowledge outlined above but accepts it as a “hiatus irrationalis” of knowledge. Although knowledge can destroy itself in the absolute as a self-contained being, it cannot comprehend how it emerges from it: a radical self-enlightenment fails (GA I/9, 88). Therefore, Völker (2024, 269 ff.) presents an affect-theoretical approach to the absolute, as it exists in Fichte’s philosophy of religion. This approach, however, does not fulfill its claim either (Völker 2024, 274 f.). Rather, it leads Völker to the doctrine of “mental self-destruction” (in Hinduism) as a methodical supplement to transcendental self-destruction (2024, 276 ff.).

Obviously, Völkler's sketched line of reasoning presupposes the validity of Fichte’s doctrine of self-destruction. It is an invalid presupposition.

In his late Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte conceives of knowledge as absolute knowledge. It is an appearance, an image of absolute being, not absolute being itself as the self-contained “bearer of all what” (GA II/8, 344 ff.), i.e. as the foundation of possible determinations. In this respect, the opposition of being and concept or knowledge remains.

In more detail, the absolute as absolute unity is “purely self-contained, the true unchangeable in itself” (GA II/8, 8 ff.). It does not go beyond itself but is sufficient unto itself. Hence, it is not, like knowledge, characterized by a relationship to others (GA II/8, 232 ff.). At the same time, however, absolute being is only in, for and through knowledge. The self-transcendence of knowledge can therefore only be of a transcendental nature and thus the result of a logic of presuppositions: critically reflecting on itself, the concept destructs itself in its ascent to the absolute.^[18] The absolute as non-knowledge arises as an implication of knowledge and, hence, as posited by the concept: the concept opposes being as a transgnoseological condition of itself. Although the original foundation of all knowledge is the positing of the concept, the self-determination of the concept prevents the concept from being able to capture the presupposed immediate unity of everything in its own nature. The concept presupposes the absolute without being able to comprehend it.

If this is the case, then in Fichte too the opposition is presupposed and remains intact. There is no original unity: the differentiation into being and concept does not emerge from the original unity. Such emergence can only occur as self-differentiation, arriving at an other that is the other of itself. The absolute is itself in its other, the other is the manifestation of the absolute; there is no fundamental inadequacy here. The self-destruction of the concept does not annihilate itself to being as non-concept but to the concept as being, i.e. to the beginning of Hegel’s Logik (which in its first part is the “Logic of the Concept as being”: GW 21, 45). Fichte’s conception of knowledge that differentiates itself into concept (image) and being is not a conception of knowledge as self-differentiation. Rather, the absolute as the presupposed principle of all principles is aseity: “from itself, in itself, through itself; this itself not taken at all as an opposition but purely internal” (GA II/8, 228).

Despite the contemporary interest in Fichte’s doctrine of self-destruction, its conception of the absolute as aseity is unthinkable. The “power of negation” destructs the self-destruction of the concept. There is nothing, “nothing in heaven or nature or spirit or anywhere else that does not contain immediacy as well as mediation” (GW 21, 54). The opposition is “void.” Fichte’s movement of the concept finally arrives at absolute being as aseity, unity without relation, but unlike Hegel at the beginning of the Logik, he does not think of this unity as the pure self-determination of thought. In contrast, it is conceived of as the other of the concept. Being, from the perspective of consciousness supposedly without opposition or relation, in Hegel, turns out to be logically the absolute idea (i.e. the concept of the concept), which contains all determinacy within itself. The absolute was never without opposition; as an absolute unity, it is a unity differentiated in itself. The absolute unity, to which all manifoldness and thus every opposition is to be traced back (GA II/8, 8), does indeed not, as Fichte demands, go beyond itself; apart from the “undivided being” nothing can be; in the absolute, there is only “self-contained unity,” no “duality” (GA II/8, 230), only “inner being” (GA II/8, 208). For Fichte, such absoluteness excludes relationality.

This is what the absolute looks like from the standpoint of consciousness.^[19] Reflection in the mode of understanding (Verstandesreflexion) fails to recognize the constitutive role of negativity for determinacy: negativity only exists in the opposition between being and thought (concept). From the perspective of thought, this opposition can be formulated as a contradiction between form and content: the content, which is absolute being as a unity without relation, stands in the form of the concept, and has thereby become an object for cognizing thought – comprehension and what is comprehended, what is comprehended as dependent on the concept, a result of positing of the understanding, no pure “in-itself,” absolutely independent, unrelated. Fichte explicitly remarks that the objectification means nothing “for us”; rather, “we” comprehend the absolute only through “our own forceful destruction of comprehension,” which “imposed itself upon us here in fact” (GA II/8, 230). The absolute is not incomprehensible in itself but only when the concept attempts to capture it (GA II, 8, 58). The absolute is pure immediacy, “immediate, actual life itself.” As such, it cannot enter into the form of the concept. The concept comprehends itself as limited (GA II/8, 124, passim).

According to Fichte, the insight that results from the destruction of the concept can only be made plausible by an immediate evidence. In a methodical reflection on the presupposed immediate unity, the distinction made in it “illuminates as being invalid”; it has its ground of validity in an “immediate illumination” that produces itself in us in an “absolutely self-creating and self-presenting evidence.” This evidence annihilates the validity of the distinction in the unity and at the same time posits the unity incapable of any “inner disjunction.” The principle of separation as the principle of the concept is destroyed by the evidence (GA II/8, 78, cf. 56 ff, 96 ff., passim).

Fichte’s staying on the standpoint of consciousness can hardly be illustrated more impressively, notwithstanding the fact that the point of his considerations is to overcome the separation of truth (validity) in itself and truth (validity) for us or to emphasize that the validity of a determination is not dependent on the conceptual activity of the cognizing subject (which does, however, not at all imply that it is independent of the concept). The result of Fichte’s reflective advance of consciousness is an absolute unity in which the difference between being and thought has disappeared: pure knowledge, truth. Against Fichte, this has the consequence that with pure or absolute knowledge the standpoint of consciousness itself has disappeared. Therefore, in Hegel’s words, it is only to absorb what is present: unity as pure immediacy, in which all relation to others and mediation is abolished: pure being, being without further determination (GW 21, 55). This being is the beginning of thought itself; consequently, it has to be determined what it is (GW 21, 60).

Then it becomes possible to deliver what for Fichte is the task of the Wissenschaftslehre: “the truth,” the truth as “absolute unity,” the “absolute” (GA II/8, 8, cf. 20, 24), pure knowledge as the unity of thought and being (GA II/8, 14, 20). At this level of reflection, it makes no sense to introduce in all kinds of presuppositions about the relationship of truth itself, for example, that it is not only truth through the concept. This is because the opposition of validity and concept has also disappeared. Present is the beginning of a pure logic of thought; a beginning that is only through itself, in itself, and of itself. All further determination arises exclusively from it. This advance of the determination of the beginning is a progress that at once is a return to its ground as the origin (GW 21, 57): self-determination of the initial unity, of the opposition-being-overcome, undivided, self-contained unity without relation, truth as the unity of thought and being, pure knowledge, the absolute ground of validity.^[20] Transcendental idealism’s logic of presuppositions considers itself insufficiently as a presupposition. It fails as a philosophy that pretends to be a science of unity or the absolute.

As an absolutized logic of essence, for methodical reasons, it lacks both a logic of being and a logic of the concept. Fichte too does not overcome what is absolute knowledge in Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes. In Hegel’s conception of “absolute knowledge,” consciousness has overcome the subject-object opposition, the opposition of consciousness (GW 11, 422–433). The appearing knowledge comes into being as philosophical knowledge. This knowledge is to be developed in the system of philosophy. Overcoming the standpoint of consciousness phenomenologically results in knowledge of the absolute as something that is to be determined and in this respect is immediate knowledge of the absolute.

Hegel himself constantly pointed out the limits of transcendental philosophy. In the Encyclopaedia, transcendental philosophy belongs to the second position of thought to objectivity. Here, philosophy has not yet reached the standpoint of speculative idealism (GW 20, §§ 40 ff.). According to Hegel, Kant, Reinhold, and Fichte offer a “theory of consciousness”; they, therefore, neither come to the “concept” nor to “spirit” as they are “in-and- for-themselves” (GW 20, § 415 N). Philosophy of consciousness is characterized by the opposition of consciousness (GW 20, §§ 413 ff.). Thought or reason remains characterized by the reference to a residue of externality, by the “relation to an other” (GW 20, § 415 N), an other that is not determined by thought but proves to be given. For Hegel, the “ego” or “pure self-consciousness” is not at all the pure concept but at most the pure concept that has come into a “determinate being” (Dasein), into a “free existence” (GW 12, 17): thought as the thought of an existing subject (agent), of a thinker (GW 20, § 20). Thought as spirit. The logical, however, is the “foundation and … the inner sustaining structure” of the forms of spirit (GW 12, 19 f.).^[21] Just as little as Kant, Fichte’s philosophy would, strictly speaking, offer a philosophical logic. On the contrary, it would make use of logical concepts in an uncritical manner, only presupposing them, instead of demonstrating their determinacy and validity through the process of reflection.^[22]