Indeed.

I don't think that it is possible to translate Vorstellung precisely.

@@obviativ123 yes it is. Ernst von Glasserfeld has written a sharp critical essay about this problem in his book on Radical Constructivism.

@@amadeuskabala7755 I have book edited by Glasersfeld which is a compilation of essays on radical constructivism. I haven't read it yet, maybe the essay you mean is in it? Thanks for the hint. It's an interesting question. Schopenhauer certainly was a pre-thinker of radical constructivism.

@@obviativ123 Glasersfeld, Ernst von 2007. Key works in radical constructivism, edited by Marie Larochelle, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam. Chapter 2

@@obviativ123 one must first of all consider what Simmel intended when he spoke of ‘the forms of thinking that produce the world as an idea’. He used the German word Vorstellung, a word which, since English has no proper equivalent, is often translated as ‘representation’. ‘Representation’, however, is the proper translation of the German word Darstellung. Thus a confusion is created that happens to be of crucial importance in the context of epistemology. The second German term refers to an item that depicts something else, an item that has an iconic or isomorphic relation to an original. This is precisely what English speakers have in mind when they say ‘representation’, and it is very far from the meaning of Vorstellung. That word was used by German theorists of knowledge, such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and indeed Simmel. The item they were referring to, is not a replica of something else, but simply a product of the individual experiencer’s imagination. Die Welt als Vorstellung, therefore, is not the world as l depict it, but the world as l conceptualize it. The difference between the two expressions is enormous [page 25] …