Epistemological Foundations of Andreas Rüdiger's "Synthetic Philosophy"

Abstract

The article aims to (1) reconstruct the epistemological foundations of Rüdiger's “synthetic philosophy"; (2) to reveal the main innovations of his view on the origin of ideas in comparison with the views of the representatives of English empiricism; (3) to identify the possible influence of his epistemological ideas on the further development of German philosophy of the 18th century. The article shows that Rüdiger's main innovation is the thesis that the final point of reliable knowledge is not external but internal sensation, free from all internal and external influences. Considering ideas as actions of the intellect, Rüdiger endows them with synthetic, formative functions. Having essentially expanded the idea concept from imaginative and conceptual to propositional and discursive, Rüdiger presents knowledge as a reflexive creative process of obtaining new knowledge, whose reality and reliability are based on internal sensation. These ideas, and his concept of knowledge as a reflexive process of successive synthesis of knowledge, could influence not only his followers (Chr. Crusius and J. N. Tetens) but also Kant and other representatives of German classical idealism.