The New International Encyclopædia/Reinhold, Karl Leonhard

REINHOLD, Karl Leonhard (1758-1823). A German philosopher, born in Vienna. In 1772 he entered the Jesuit College of Saint Anna, but upon the suppression of this Order in 1774 he joined the Barnabites, and was for some years an inmate of their College of Saint Michael. His religious zeal in the meantime had cooled considerably, and in 1783 he left the Order and went to Leipzig, where he devoted himself to philosophy. Afterwards he settled in Weimar. His contributions to the Deutseher Merkur attracted much attention, and in 1787 his Briefe über Kantsche Philosophie appeared in this periodical. His clear and eloquent exposition of Kant's doctrines, which at that time were being combated, resulted in his being appointed to a professorship of philosophy in Jena. In 1789 he published his chief work, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, in which he attempts to broaden the teachings of Kant. He then for a time identified himself with Fichte's doctrines and even tried afterwards in his Paradoxien der neuesten Philosophie to find a middle way between Fichte and Jacobi in order to satisfy his religious sentiments, but when Bardili's logic appeared he deserted both and joined the latter's rational idealism. The reason for this change he gives us in his treatise Wahrheit (1820).