Abstract
This chapter argues against reductions of Kant’s ontology to materially extended bodies and the relations between them. The Leibnizian nature of Kant’s conception of “simple substances” is analyzed in order to show that they are beings capable of representational, internal, qualitative states of intensive magnitude that convey information about the world. Scholars seem to have been misled by the idea of a physical monadology and overemphasized Kant’s adherence to Newtonian mechanics. Substances exist in a reciprocally determining nexus, because their actions are coordinated through an innate (a priori) representation of the world-whole, which is given to and preserved in them by God. I then show that Kant thinks of these substances as being in space through the notion of “virtual presence,” whereas most scholars believe that he thinks of them as actually present as points in space similar to Boscovich or as impenetrable, deformable shapes. Thus, in opposition to trends that push the pre-Critical Kant toward Newtonianism, realism, materialism, and physical influence, I show how the idealistic division between things-in-themselves (metaphysically simple substances) and appearances (bodies in motion) is an ontological divide at the limits of human understanding even in his early thought.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“Kant’s overall pre-critical project pursued a synthesizing system of philosophy that aimed to integrate the claims of mathematical natural philosophy into a correct, but still purely conceptual, metaphysics” (Anderson 2015, p. 149).
- 2.
Jauernig mentions that the Newtonian influence in the pre-Critical works is exaggerated and that the major motivations come from metaphysical problems that derive from the Leibnizian tradition (Jauernig 2008, pp. 42–4).
- 3.
“Now since the monads are also simple like the soul, they can also have powers of representation <vires repraesentativae> and their influence can be merely the modification of powers of representations <modificatio virium repraesentativarum>. … Accordingly, the monads have power of representation of all parts of the world through which they are affected. But because they are not alone, but rather are always connected with other monads, they are hindered by this in their power of representation, and therefore have obscure representations, are slumbering monads. Thereby they are distinguished from the soul” (V-Met/Mron, AA 29:929).
- 4.
This is the start of mathematics according to Mendelssohn in the 1760s (Mendelssohn 1997, p. 257).
- 5.
Kant reiterates these ideas in the Inquiry from 1764 (UD, AA 2:294–5).
- 6.
Reuscher’s argument depends on importing ideas from the section on the principle of sufficient reason into the first section. He argues that because Kant believes that the predicates of possible things have ontological status (through God), then that means that analytic truth claims are existential in nature and, thus, are describing the ultimate nature of reality (Reuscher 1977, pp. 20–1). Yet, Kant is clear that it is only in the case of God that one can move from the mere idea to its existence (PND, AA 1:396). Reuscher attempts to argue that Kant holds the Leibnizian view that all truth is analytic, when all that Kant says is that truth requires “determination” that a subject has a predicate (not that it has it essentially) (Reuscher 1977, p. 20). He also attempts to argue that the principle of contradiction remains central to Kant’s conception of truth because a subject that has a predicate necessarily excludes its logical opposite. But Kant argues that what excludes a predicate from a subject is not the logical principle of contradiction but “the determining ground” (PND, AA 1:393).
- 7.
Buchdahl also describes this work as a deductive analysis rooted in the principles of sufficient reason and contradiction (Buchdahl 1969, p. 472).
- 8.
On the importance of causation for knowledge in the early Kant, see Heimsoeth (1967, pp. 162, 171).
- 9.
On this example, see Polonoff (1973, pp. 140–1).
- 10.
If one considers Kant to be establishing a deductively rational system of metaphysical truths, in which ontological claims about reality follow from the progressive specification of the principles of pure reason, then this introduction of a subjective, epistemological principle will appear as a “misfit” and the work will appear a patchwork (Reuscher 1977, pp. 25, 27).
- 11.
Clearly Kant thinks that light is instantaneous throughout the expanse of its reach in space regardless of the distance (PND, AA 1:393).
- 12.
Reuscher even points out that these two principles are not simply subtypes of a general type of Ratio Determinans (Reuscher 1977, p. 25).
- 13.
Anderson points to PND, AA 1:289, 391, 396–7, 398 as evidence for Kant’s acceptance of the Leibnizian notion of truth, but I do not see that there is any attempt by Kant to reduce metaphysics to purely analytic truth claims or to derive them from the principle of identity (Anderson 2015, p. 149). Anderson admits that Kant can make an “epistemic” difference between types of truths but that difference, he says, “does not go all the way to logical fundamentals” (Anderson 2015, p. 155). He also points to UD, AA 2:294 as proof of the “predicate-in-subject” theory of truth containment (Anderson 2015, p. 156). But there Kant says that these are merely the formal conditions on truth and that there are a number of indemonstrable, material propositions that provide the primary data of metaphysics (UD, AA 2:296). These material principles work as mediating concepts that can connect subject and predicate. The only standard that he gives for them is that they “obvious to every human understanding” (UD, AA 2:295). Anderson believes Kant holds that all truths reduce to analytic judgments of identity and there are only subjective difference in how we access them. I would argue that the mediating, indemonstrable, material concepts that connect subject and predicate (in either metaphysics or mathematics) and are universal to human understanding are not simply analytic. The notion of being compound is not contained in the notion of a body analytically. A body is just the notion of impenetrable material extension. Anderson seems to see this, but is so committed to the “predicate-in-subject principle” of truth that he says Kant is confused and unable to accept a distinction that he actually seems to make (Anderson 2015, pp. 157–8).
- 14.
- 15.
Kant’s view thus seems close to the one articulated by Mendelssohn in the 1760s who argues that we can only move from possibility to actuality, even in the case of mathematics, via “the testimony of the senses,” with the exception of God (Mendelssohn 1997, p. 266).
- 16.
So I do not believe that Kant rejects “ontotheism” in 1755 as Stang argues (Stang 2016, p. 28). He defines “ontotheism” as the idea God exists in virtue of his essence, and also argues that the rejection of that idea is also the rejection of “possibilism” or that there are “merely possible but non-existent objects” (Stang 2016, pp. 13–4). Stang believes that Kant holds this position because he sees it as an implication of the “existence is not a predicate” objection to some forms of the ontological argument. My present work is not focused on Kant’s rational theology and the development of his arguments for the existence of God, but I have discussed these elsewhere (Rukgaber 2014). In effect, my view is that Stang overstates what this objection is doing for Kant. I hold that it is being used to point out a circularity problem with the classic Cartesian ontological argument from the definition of God (Rukgaber 2014, pp. 97–8). I agree that Kant’s ultimate position in the Critical-era is the denial of ontotheism and possibilism, but I argue that is a unique development in the Critique of Pure Reason.
- 17.
Motivated by a force-based account of Kant’s entire early ontology, some scholars argue that he overlooks the fact that the mind can cause its own states in this way (Caranti 2004, pp. 287–8).
- 18.
Findlay notes Kant’s fundamental opposition to Crusius’s position but does so by seeing the New Elucidation as essentially Leibnizian and as offering nothing of “great consequence” (Findlay 1981, pp. 71–2).
- 19.
Rather than a pre-established harmony, Kant seems to call his own view an established harmony. “Thus all predicates must be produced by one’s own power, but since an external power is also required externally: then a third must have willed this harmony (established harmony <harmonia stabilita>)” (V-Meta/Herder, AA 28:52–3).
- 20.
Kanterian appears puzzled by these claims about ultimate reality and wonders how anything new could emerge (Kanterian 2018, pp. 137–8). But Kant’s point is that the realm of appearances and the natural world still have everything that we think of as “change.”
- 21.
- 22.
As Kant phrases it, change happens only “in virtue of an inner principle of activity” and not through an external connection to other substances alone (PND, AA 1:411). Kant’s idea is that change does happen through inner reason, but those inner reasons are not given by the substance, but as a result of representations that result from the substance’s connection to other beings.
- 23.
“If a substance suffers, then it must contain in itself by its own power the ground of the inherence of the accident, because otherwise the accident would not inhere in it. But the ground of this must also be in the efficient power of the substance, because otherwise it would not act” (V-Meta/Herder, AA 28:51–2).
- 24.
Hahmann sees the fundamental difference here between Kant and Wolff to be whether determinations (predicates) or powers are primary for substances, which suggests the influence of Baumgarten on Kant (Hahmann 2009, pp. 46–7).
- 25.
The problems with standard interpretations are clear when, for example, Watkins wonders how to characterize the mutual interaction of substances and concludes that we should interpret it through “the collision of two bodies” (Watkins 2005, p. 137). It is mistaken that “Kant is thinking primarily of the case of bodies in developing his metaphysical account of causality” (Watkins 2005, p. 137). Instead, the changes of the inner states of substances are thought of as responses of inherent powers that change in relation to representational information concerning external states of affairs.
- 26.
Kant never makes it particularly clear why we are still allowed to say that a being with changing states is simple. He must hold that this is so and explains it in the 1770 Dissertation. “Modifications are not parts of a subject; they are what are determined by a ground” (MSI, AA 2:389).
- 27.
To be clear, I am using a modern notion of a machine and not the one that Baumgarten and Kant have. For Baumgarten, machines are “composite beings” that only move (Baumgarten 2013, §433). In other words, they are simply bodies and they are thought of as dead, as opposed to monads. So for Kant a machine is thought of simply as a turnspit or a watch (V-Meta-L1/Pölitz, AA 28:268). Machines do not have informational or representational capacities for Kant and Baumgarten. But following Simondon, we can say that the early conception of a machine as automaton has been overturned by increasing levels of indeterminacy and openness to information in machines and their states.
- 28.
In the lectures, he distinguishes between crude physical influence as an “original interaction <commercium originarium>” versus a “derivative interaction <commercium derivativum>” in which interaction relies on a “third ground” (V-Meta-L1/Pölitz, AA 28: 213–4). Original interaction only applies to God, so the crude view of influence simply being a result of the existence of objects in space is a mistake. This seems to be the mistake within Kanterian’s account (Kanterian 2018, p. 143).
- 29.
On the similarities between Kant’s view and pre-established harmony in 1747, see Kuehn (2001, pp. 25–6). In the lectures, he explains that he is thinking of pre-established harmony and occasionalism as being “hyperphysical influence <influxus hyperphysicus>” in which the acting power is the “third thing” itself, which is God for occasionalism or is an “automatic harmony <harmonia automatica>” in which objects are mere dead clockworks on pre-established harmony (V-Meta-L1/Pölitz, AA 28:215).
- 30.
Garnett argues that “if the action of the affecting substance is merely the occasion of the changes in the substance affected, the latter may be said to be the source of all its inner determinations. But in this case, there is no interaction” (Garnett 1939, p. 95). For Kant, I think it is a question of the nature of the occasion. If it is occasioned in substances who are receptive to states of affairs external to it, then even if the power to change state comes from the substance’s inner life, it counts as a sort of interaction that Kant thinks is different from pre-established harmony.
- 31.
This core idea of Kant’s metaphysics appears as incoherent to many. For example, Kanterian thinks of a cat as a substance and argues that it is incoherent to try and consider this substance “in abstraction from these spatio-temporal relations” (Kanterian 2018, p. 141). But that is not what Kant means by a substance.
- 32.
Kant is clear that “interaction <commercium> is thus possible not through space, but rather only through this, that they all are through One and depend on One” (V-Meta-L1/Pölitz, AA 28:214). Kanterian tries to say that the connection of substances happens simply through “space,” although Kant is clear that space and motion are merely appearances of this connection (Kanterian 2018, p. 141). In fact, Kanterian sees this remark of a divine schema or idea connecting substances and creating them as essentially saying that God himself cannot think of substances as anything but spatial and temporal (Kanterian 2018, p. 141).
- 33.
Laywine offers a similarly mistaken account of substantial interaction. She argues that Kant intends for a system of “real interaction” through “repulsion” and “acceleration” (Laywine 1993, pp. 4–5). She even applies this notion of “impressed force” to the soul (Laywine 1993, p. 5). There simply is no textual evidence to support the idea that the inner states of substances are mere physical force relations caused by pressure, collision, and repulsion.
- 34.
This idea is also found, for example, in Mendelssohn: “[1] The soul never ceases implicitly to represent to itself the entire world whole explicitly representing to itself only the world relative to the position of its body in it, [2] that sensuous impressions are merely the occasions and opportunities for the representations of the soul to unfold themselves and be perceived, and [3] that this unfolding of concepts in the soul perfectly harmonizes with the unfolding of concepts outside it” (Mendelssohn 1997, p. 260).
- 35.
In the lectures dated the mid-1770s, Kant explains how this picture relates to space. “As phenomenon, space is the infinite connection of substances with each other. Through the understanding we comprehend only their connection, to the extent they all lie in the divine. This is the only ground for comprehending the connection of substances through the understanding, to the extent we intuit the substances as though they lay generally in the divine. If we imagine this connection sensibly, then it happens through space. Thus, space is the highest condition of the possibility of the connection” (V-Meta-L1/Pölitz, AA 28:214).
- 36.
Although Langton argues that Kant’s view of space is only “partly Leibnizian” and that space “supervenes upon” the “dynamical relations between substances,” she still essentially holds the standard view (Langton 1998, p. 98). For Langton, the whole of what transpires between substances is attraction and repulsion and so this is what connects them and is not contained in their mere existence (Langton 1998, p. 99). But Kant’s view is clearly that what God adds to substances is the power to reciprocally determine themselves vis-à-vis the states of other substances through a coordinating idea.
- 37.
Although it lacks details, Shell’s account at least sees the generative power of God’s idea (Shell 1996, pp. 3–4).
- 38.
“Somit ist dieser nur ein relationaler, kein absoluter Raum” (Hahmann 2009, p. 51).
- 39.
- 40.
Hahmann also finds Langton’s approach to the pre-Critical Kant questionable (Hahmann 2009, pp. 45–6).
- 41.
Kanterian talks of beatitude and revelation in these early works as quasi-mystical and enthusiastic (Kanterian 2018, p. 117). For example, he refers to Kant’s faith as “unwarranted” and a generalization based on mere local or empirical harmony in nature (Kanterian 2018, p. 119). But it is the underlying conception of substances and their connection of God which makes this neither empirically-based nor an act of faith as opposed to an act of reason.
- 42.
This idea is the basis for Langton’s exposition, which claims that Kant’s view is similar to Boscovich’s and that the monads are “unextended points” at the center of a field of force (Langton 1998, pp. 98–9). She uses the analogy of a planet and its gravitational field (the same analogy appears in Kanterian 2018, p. 171). The problem is that the monad qua simple substance or thing-in-itself is not present in space either like a point or like a planet. Langton does not seem to see that the unextended point reading is incompatible with the idea that “the physical world is the virtual and not the actual presence of monads,” which is Kant’s view (Langton 1998, p. 99). Laywine also thinks of the monad as a “point particle ideally situated at the center of this sphere of activity” (Laywine 1993, p. 6).
- 43.
See also Calinger (1979, p. 354).
- 44.
On the possibility of material expressions of monads being in space without filling it, see Heimsoeth (1956, p. 117).
- 45.
Pollok sees Kant as accepting Baumgarten’s notion of physical points (Pollok 2002, p. 67).
- 46.
Although Smith argues that a point-based Boscovichian reading runs into problems with passages that suggest a “deformable continuum” view, he believes that Kant is holding multiple views, shifting to a pointal view when considering simplicity and to a continuum view when discussing the composition of bodies (Smith 2013, p. 104).
- 47.
So contrary to Pollok’s claim, Kant’s solution in this work does not “remain within the field of geometry” and does venture “into the realm of metaphysics” (Pollok 2002, p. 70).
- 48.
Ferrini argues that Kant’s view is Cartesian, which is roughly a version of the doctrine of virtual presence: a substance’s essence is not affected by the “sphere of activity” and manifests due to the substance’s power to act upon bodies (Ferrini 2018, p. 44). Thus, there is a difference between being in place versus filling it in Descartes that seems close to Kant’s own view (Ferrini 2018, p. 26). Heimsoeth also attributes to Kant the doctrine of virtual presence (1956, p. 118).
- 49.
If one does not recognize this doctrine of virtual presence, then one must conclude that Kant only means to speak of monads as “physical substances” and to exclude minds within his monadology or to be a materialist with regard to them (Pollok 2002, p. 66). Because Pollok makes monads (simple substances) physically and actually present rather than virtually so, he is pulled in different directions, claiming that “the phenomena of force and matter in motion” are “mere accidents of material substance” and yet, paradoxically, forces are “constituents of things in themselves” (Pollok 2002, p. 64; MonPh, AA 1:482 on “accidents”). The problem here is that the notion of “accident” in Kant’s text refers to what we might call the fundamental contingency of a thing vis-à-vis God’s ability to superadd powers to a substance without changing its essential nature. Those powers are of course not “accidental” from our perspective or in the way of secondary qualities are. On this issue, see Buchdahl, in which the notion of what is “accidental” is said to require an additional teleological and theological explanation (Buchdahl 1969, pp. 490–1).
- 50.
Grant , following Henry More, who criticizes the doctrine, refers to this as Holenmerism or as the idea of the whole (of a spirit) being in every place, calling it a “truly incomprehensible explanation” (Grant 1981, p. 223). But Kant’s notion of virtual presence is not the idea that the whole of the spirit is in every part of the space.
- 51.
- 52.
Heimsoeth tends to speak of “God’s virtual omnipresence” more in terms of a spatio-temporal extension of power, making God present in a way similar to how simple elements of matter are definitively present (Heimsoeth 1967, p. 182). He also thinks of the doctrine of divine omnipresence continuing into the Critical era. But his evidence for that is largely based on Reflexionen and lectures.
- 53.
Watkins offers a similar criticism based on the idea that the monad is actually (circumscriptively) in space via its force (Watkins 2005, p. 111).
- 54.
- 55.
Thus, the doctrine of the Physical Monadology does not cast doubt on the idea that substances, as having metaphysically inner relations, might be thought of on the model of representational states of a mind. Watkins holds that it does (Watkins 2005, p. 177).
- 56.
Heβbrüggen-Walter seems to hold that until the 1760s that Kant basically accepted Knutzen’s view that the soul is locally, circumscriptively in space (Heβbrüggen-Walter 2014, p. 33). The argument here shows that is not true. I see Kant as holding the “virtual localism” that Heβbrüggen-Walter attributes to the Cartesians (Heβbrüggen-Walter 2014, pp. 29, 36).
- 57.
Some take the infinite divisibility of space argument to mean that he rejects “simple points” (Pollok 2002, p. 88). But the infinite progress of division does not conceptually rule out points that can never be reached. Nevertheless, Kant is not committed to the metaphysics of points because he retains simplicity through the metaphysically inner nature of substances. Yet, pointalism seems to remain for Pollok who continues to think of the monad as an actual presence at the center of the emanations of force (Pollok 2002, p. 89).
- 58.
More traditionally, scholars have just said that Kant’s view of space is relational or an accident that “has reality only in conjunction with corporeal elements” and is the “form of the appearance of outer relations of substances,” where the latter are thought of as physical (Pollok 2002, p. 67).
- 59.
Hahmann argues that Kant did not accept Newtonian absolute, empty space and sees space as a phenomenon even in 1756 (Hahmann 2009, pp. 54–6).
- 60.
This idea that there is a formal conception of space qua mathematical, divine idea is certainly related to Leibniz’s anti-Newtonian conception of absolute space. Gueroult describes four different conceptions of space in Leibniz corresponding to different levels of abstraction. He calls the present notion the most abstract notion of space as “an innate idea expressing the intellectual order of possibles (coexistents)” (Gueroult 1982, p. 284). See also Kaulbach (1965, p. 76) and De Risi (2007, p. 551).
- 61.
Schönfeld cites MonPh, AA 1:475 as if it were evidence of Kant endorsing such a view, but he is there clearly merely asserting what “geometry contends.”
- 62.
Ferrini suggests that this distinction continues in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science also and that there “space is prior to matter, and its emptiness is not conceived as a total lack or inactivity of matter” (Ferrini 2018, p. 41).
- 63.
Carrier uses this claim that space is not made of substantial subjects of composition to mean it is a relational theory (Carrier 1990, p. 173).
- 64.
I must admit that I find many accounts of Kant’s Critical metaphysics to be transcendentally realistic. For example, Allais states that “all ‘one-world’ interpretations” believe that “the very same things that appear to us as being a certain way have a certain way they are in themselves, which is unknown to us” (Allais 2004, p. 657). That strikes me as identical to what Kant is here calling (and rejecting) transcendental realism.
References
Allais, Lucy. 2004. Kant’s One World: Interpreting ‘Transcendental Idealism’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12: 655–684.
———. 2006. Intrinsic Natures: A Critique of Langton on Kant. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73: 143–169.
Anderson, R. Lanier. 2015. The Poverty of Conceptual Truth: Kant’s Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Limits of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. 1952. Summa Theologica, 2 volumes. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Incorporated.
Baumgarten, Alexander. 2013. Metaphysics. Trans. C. Fugate and J. Hymers. London: Bloomsbury.
Boscovich, Roger Joseph. 1966. A Theory of Natural Philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Buchdahl, Gerd. 1969. Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins Descartes to Kant. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Calinger, Ronald. 1979. Kant and Newtonian Science: The Pre-critical Period. Isis 70: 348–362.
Caranti, Lugi. 2004. The Problem of Idealism in Kant’s Pre-critical Period. Kant-Studien 95: 283–303.
Carrier, Martin. 1990. Kants Theorie der Materie und ihr Wirkung auf due zeigenössische Chemie. Kant-Studien 81: 170–210.
De Risi, Vicenzo. 2007. Geometry and Monadology: Leibniz’s Analysis Situs and Philosophy of Space. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Ferrini, Cinzia. 2018. Descartes’s Legacy in Kant’s Notions of Physical Influx and Space-Filling: ‘True Estimation’ and ‘Physical Monadology’. Kant-Studien 109: 9–46.
Findlay, J.N. 1981. Kant and the Transcendental Object. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Garnett, Christopher, Jr. 1939. The Kantian Philosophy of Space. Port Washington: Kennikat.
Grant, Edward. 1981. Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gueroult, Martial. 1982. Space, Point, and Void in Leibniz’s Philosophy. In Leibniz: Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. Michael Hooker, 284–301. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hahmann, Andree. 2009. Kritische Metaphysik der Substanz: Kant im Widerspruch zu Leibniz. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1956. Studien zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants: Metaphysische Ursprünge und Ontologische Grundlagen. Köln: Kölner Universitäts-Verlag.
Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1967. Metaphysical Motives in the Development of Critical Idealism. In Kant: Disputed Questions, ed. Moltke Gram, 158–199. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
Heβbrüggen-Walter, Stefan. 2014. Putting Our Soul in Place. Kant Yearbook 6: 1–21.
Holden, Thomas. 2004. The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant. Oxford: Oxford University.
Jauernig, Anja. 2008. Kant’s Critique of the Leibnizian Philosophy: Contra the Leibnizians, but Pro Leibniz. In Kant and the Early Moderns, ed. Daniel Garber and Béatrice Longuenesse, 41–63. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kaehler, Klaus Erich. 1985. Kants frühe Kritik an der Lehre von der “prästabilierten Harmonie” und ihr Verhältnis zu Leibniz. Kant-Studien 76: 405–419.
Kant, Immanuel. 1992. Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Trans. and ed. David Walford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1996. Religion and Rational Theology. Trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1997. Lectures on Metaphysics. Trans. and ed. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2012. Natural Science, ed. Eric Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kanterian, Edward. 2018. Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn. London/New York: Routledge.
Kaulbach, Friedrich. 1965. Der Philosophische Begriff der Bewegung: Studien zu Aristoteles, Leibniz und Kant. Köln/Graz: Böhlau Verlag.
Kuehn, Manfred. 2001. Kant’s Teachers in the Exact Sciences. In Kant and the Sciences, ed. Eric Watkins, 11–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Langton, Rae. 1998. Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Laywine, Allison. 1993. Kant’s Early Metaphysics and the Origins of the Critical Philosophy. Atascadero: Ridgeview.
Leibniz, G.W. 1996. New Essays on Human Understanding. Trans. P. Remnant and J. Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mendelssohn, Moses. 1997. Philosophical Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pollok, Konstantin. 2002. “Fabricating a World in Accordance with Mere Fantasy…”? The Origins of Kant’s Critical Theory of Matter. Review of Metaphysics 56: 61–97.
Polonoff, Irving. 1973. Force, Cosmos, Monads and Other Themes of Kant’s Early Thought, KantStudien Erganzungshefte 107. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.
Reuscher, John. 1977. A Clarification and Critique of Kant’s Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidatio. Kant-Studien 68: 18–32.
Rukgaber, Matthew. 2014. Kant’s Criticisms of the Ontological and Onto-Theological Arguments for the Existence of God. Kant Yearbook 6: 87–114.
Sarmiento, Gustavo. 2005. On Kant’s Definition of the Monad in the Monadologia physica of 1756. Kant-Studien 96: 1–19.
Schönfeld, Martin. 2000. The Philosophy of Young Kant: The Precritical Project. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shell, Susan. 1996. Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Slowik, Edward. 2016. Situating Kant’s Pre-critical Monadology: Leibnizian Ubeity, Monadic Activity and Idealist Unity. Early Science and Medicine 21: 332–349.
Smith, Sheldon. 2013. Kant’s picture of monads in the Physical Monadology. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44: 102–111.
Stang, Nicholas. 2016. Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Cleve, James. 1988. Inner States and Outer Relations: Kant and the Case for Monadism. In Doing Philosophy Historically, ed. Peter Hare, 231–247. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
Watkins, Eric. 2005. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2013. Kant’s (Anti-) Newtonianism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44: 429–437.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rukgaber, M. (2020). Substances, Space, and Causality in the Early Metaphysical Writings. In: Space, Time, and the Origins of Transcendental Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60742-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60742-5_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60741-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60742-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)