A PEDAGOGICAL CRITIQUE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON - REFLECTIONS ON THE CONTENT AND THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF HERBART,J.F. PEDAGOGICAL CRITIQUE OF KANT IN HIS AESTHETIC REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD AS THE MAIN OBJECT OF EDUCATION

J. F. HERBART is generally considered to have criticized KANT's and FICHTE'S transcendental philosophy for pedagogical reasons, - at least, this ist the predominant reading of HERBART. On the basis of his early treatise on ''The Aesthetic Representation of the World'' (1804), this assumption is examined in its historical context and it is shown that HERBART was by no means of the opinion that the critical theory of subjectivity could be disposed of by a mere reference to ''education''. Rather, in his discussion of KANT and FICHTE, he had recourse to the debates on Kantian versus anti-Kantian ethics and metaphysical conceptions of the 1790s. The ''pedagogical'' perspective is merely one of many lines of reasoning.