In his doctoral dissertation, Benjamin argues that the philosophical relationship between the Idea of art and particular artworks posited in Romantic aesthetics must be understood in relation to Fichte’s theory of reflection. This sought to ground the possibility of a certain and immediate type of cognition without recourse to the problematic notion of an intellectual intuition. For Fichte, reflection indicates the free activity of consciousness taking itself as its own object of thought: its capacity for thinking of thinking. In doing so, the initial form of thinking is transformed into its content. In such reflection, thought seems capable of immediately grasping itself as a thinking subject and therefore of possessing a certain kind of immediate and foundational knowledge. Although Benjamin introduces a number of specific criticisms of Fichte’s philosophical position in his dissertation, he nonetheless values the Fichtean concept of reflection for providing the epistemological foundation of Friedrich Schlegel’s and Novalis’ understandings of the metaphysical function of art criticism. Some scholars have, however, questioned the accuracy of Benjamin’s interpretation of Fichte’s concept of reflection and the importance he accords to it in Romantic epistemology (Bullock 1987, 78–93; Menninghaus 2005, 29–44). 