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The present paper explores the complex relation between Kant and Post-Kantian German Idealism and more specifically the relation between Kant and Fichte. What is German Idealism? What kind of ‘idealism’ is meant to be characteristic of the so-called German Idealists? How did Hegel and Fichte read Kant? To what extent was Fichte faithful to the Kantian philosophical motives? Is transcendental philosophy a representationalist or constructivist philosophy? In order to answer these questions I begin with an analysis of how Marxism and Analytical philosophy have understood ‘idealism’. Then I examine the polysemy of the term ‘idealism’ in the history of western philosophy from Plato to 19th Century British Idealism. The last four sections are dedicated to German Idealism’s reception of Kantian philosophy and the development of my thesis about constructivism, transcendental philosophy and German Idealism. I will suggest that German idealism came up with the Copernican revolution of Kant, whose constructivist insight permeates the views of Kant and his German idealist successors. Furthermore, I will suggest that the idealism of Fichte is a version of Kantian constructivism, or, put another way, the argument that we only know what we have built.

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