Answering Aenesidemus: Schulze's Attack on Reinholdian Representationalism and Its Importance for Fichte

According to a standard story about the genesis of Fichte's Jena Wissenschaftslehre, the early Fichte was largely sympathetic to Gottlob Ernst Schulze's attack on the validity of Reinhold's principle of consciousness and the definition of representation that he derives from it. I argue that the standard story is unacceptable, insofar as it distorts Schulze's true objections to Reinholdian Representationalism and the real nature of their influence on the early Fichte. I offer a new account of the nature of Schulze's critique of Reinholdian Representationalism and its role in the genesis of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre.