Abstract

The current dissertation, which is based on documented sources, elucidates the fact that the Kantian claim of the legitimacy of the cognitive process, as this claim is expressed in the Kantian “Transcendental Philosophy”, had its precursor in three major elements of the philosophical evolution in the German Enlightenment: a)The shifting of the philosophical problematic in the German Enlightenment from the “harmony”-thinking of the Wolffians and their detractors, to Tetens’ posit of the “realization” of concepts, according to which a human being is proven as a meaning-establishing entity; b) The “empiriorationalistic” element in Thomasius, which finds parallels in Kantian formulations, remains active during the whole controversy surrounding the Wolffian teaching, and then acquires a new form in Lambert (a priori through experience); c) The understanding of “conceivability” as “communicability”, which is already present in the early German Enlightenment, implicitly in Thomasius and explicitly in Tschirnhaus, does not come under discussion in the era of Wolff. However, this element comes under the spotlight by Kant’s contemporaries, especially highlighted in Tetens’ question of intersubjectivity (the objective as the “unchangeably subjective”). The representatives of German Enlightenment Philosophy after 1760 freed from the metaphysical shudder caused by the “scientific revolution”, are the very first to comprehend the human intellect, not as “intellectus ectypus”, but as the legislator of nature. In this way, German philosophical thought is to abandon once and for all the baroque world-view. The systems of Lambert and Tetens show clearly that Kant elaborated on questions that they had already posed in an elementary form.