Fichte's Critique of Reinhold

In his book All or Nothing, Paul Franks makes a very strong claim about how many Anglo-American scholars have misunderstood and wrongly interpreted Schulze and Fichte's understanding of Reinhold's 'Principle of Consciousness' [1]. The Principle of Consciousness says: “[I]n consciousness representation is distinguished through the subject from both object and subject and is related to both” [2]. The problem many scholars like F. Neuhouser, T. Pinkard and W. Martin note is that this appears to lead into an infinite regress of subjects. Franks convincingly argues that this was never claimed by Fichte or Schulze. I have been thinking about this a good bit, and have wondered why so many scholars seem to have made this so-called mistake. I wonder if there is in Fichte's "Aenesidemus Review" a claim that appears to resemble the idea that Reinhold's principle leads to a regress. Here is one point Fichte makes in his "Aenesidemus Review":

What kind of principle is [the Principle of Consciousness]? Aenesidemus answers: ‘It is (1) a synthetic proposition, one in which to a subject there is added a predicate (viz., consciousness) which is not already included in the concept of the subject, but rather, is first annexed to it in experience.’ It is well know that Reinhold claims that this principle is merely analytic. We will here overlook the fact that Aenesidemus denies the universal validity of the Principle of Consciousness, thereby assuming that there is a type of consciousness for which this principle does not hold. But there is a deeper reason for Aenesidemus’s and Reinhold’s differing assertions regarding this question, one which lies in the difference between two ways of regarding the Principle of Consciousness. If no consciousness is conceivable apart from these three elements, then they are of course all included in the concept of consciousness, and of course the proposition which asserts this is, with respect to its logical validity a proposition based upon reflection, an analytic proposition. Yet since it involves distinguishing and relating, this very action of representing, the act of consciousness itself, is obviously a synthesis, and indeed, the highest synthesis and the foundation of all other possible syntheses. This raises the very natural question: How is it possible to trace all the action of the mind back to an act of connecting? How is synthesis conceivable without presupposing thesis and antithesis? [3]

There is a good bit to say about this quotation. I am wondering how others might read this. It is important to remember that the Principle of Consciousness is meant to be a foundational principle that expresses the necessary conditions or analytic marks that constitute the genus representation found in Kant’s Stufenleiter. Furthermore, the principle is meant to be a principle that expresses the structure of transcendental apperception, the form of apperception that enables self-conscious thought and empirical apperception or empirical self-conscious thought. That being said, if there is something outside the structure of the principle, something conditional for it, then the principle cannot be foundational. Schulze’s critique of the principle is based on his belief that the principle is a synthetic principle. Schulze’s (or Aenesidemus’s) claim is that ‘consciousness’, ‘consciousness of’ ‘a representation being related to a subject’ is not an analytic mark found in the concept ‘subject’ but is added to the subject when there is some experiential data to be synthesized. A subject, it would follow, need not have consciousness. Being consciousness might be a contingent fact about some subjects.

But this point about analytic and synthetic principles does not seem related to how the quotation ends: "Yet since it involves distinguishing and relating, this very action of representing, the act of consciousness itself, is obviously a synthesis, and indeed, the highest synthesis and the foundation of all other possible syntheses." At this point, it appears Fichte has moved on to an issue that concerns a distinction Kant makes in his B-deduction between the synthetic unity of apperception and the analytic unity of apperception. With this distinction, Kant argues that an analytic unity requires a synthesis, which entails that the synthetic unity conditions the analytic unity of apperception. The claim Fichte would appear to be making, and I recognize I am being incredibly quick here, is that what Reinhold's principle does not account for is how consciousness requires the kind of activity involved in the synthetic unity of consciousness.

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[1] Paul Franks, All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 221ff.

[2] Karl Reinhold, "The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge" in Between Kant and Hegel, (trans.) George di Giovanni and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), p. 70.

[3] Fichte, "Aenesidemus Review" in Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, (trans.) Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell, 1998), pp. 62-63.