Melissa Zinkin

This paper explores Kant's account of force, a topic that was of central philosophical concern in his day, but which he does not explicitly address in any of his Critiques. Just as with the nature of space and time and the nature of the human will, the nature of force was under dispute by the philosophers and natural scientists to whose legacy Kant was responding. Yet, Kant does not make force an explicit topic of his Critiques, and thus provides no explicit transcendental account of force. Nevertheless, I will argue that one can indeed find in Kant a transcendental account of force, one that is a synthesis of empiricist and rationalist accounts, but in an unexpected place; the third Critique, in the discussion of the principle of purposiveness.

Kant's discussion of the feeling of respect presents a puzzle regarding both the precise nature of this feeling and its role in his moral theory as an incentive that motivates us to follow the moral law. If it is a feeling that motivates us to follow the law, this would contradict Kant's view that moral obligation is based on reason alone. I argue that Kant has an account of respect as feeling that is nevertheless not separate from the use of reason, but is intrinsic to willing. I demonstrate this by taking literally Kant's references to force in the second Critique. By referring to Kant's pre-critical essay on Negative Magnitudes (1763), I show that Kant's account of how the moral law effects in us a feeling of respect is underpinned by his view that the will is a kind of negative magnitude, or force. I conclude by noting some of the implications of my discussion for Kant's account of virtue.