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119Proops, Ian. The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021, xiv + 486 pp (review)Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 106 (1): 137-140. 2024.
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521Kant's regulative essentialism and the unknowability of real essencesEuropean Journal of Philosophy 31 (4): 887-901. 2023.In his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, Kant distinguishes between logical and real essences. While the former is related to concepts and is knowable, the latter is related to things and is unknowable. In this paper, I argue that the unknowability is explained by the modal characteristic of real essences as a necessitating ground on which a priori knowledge is impossible. I also show how this claim is related to the unknowable necessity of particular laws of nature. Since laws of nature are co…Read more
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58Moses Mendelssohn's Original Modal Proof for the Existence of GodJournal of the History of Philosophy 61 (2): 237-256. 2023.Abstractabstract:In Morning Hours (1785), Moses Mendelssohn presents a proof for the existence of God from the grounding of possibility. Although Mendelssohn claims that this proof is original, it has not received much attention in the secondary literature. In this paper, I analyze this proof and present its historical context. I show that although it resembles Leibniz's proof from eternal truths and Kant's precritical possibility proof, it has unique characteristics that can be regarded as resp…Read more
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601The Dialectical Illusion in Kant’s Only Possible Argument for the Existence of GodKantian Review 25 (3): 339-363. 2020.The nature of Kant’s criticism of his pre-Critical ‘possibility proof’ for the existence of God, implicit in the account of the Transcendental Ideal in the Critique of Pure Reason, is still under dispute. Two issues are at stake: the error in the proof and diagnosis of the reason for committing it. I offer a new way to connect these issues. In contrast with accounts that locate the motivation for the error in reason’s interest in an unconditioned causal ground of all contingent existence, I argu…Read more
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29Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn, by Edward Kanterian. Routledge, 2017, xvii + 444 pp. ISBN 10/13: 9781138908581 hb £110; ISBN 10/13: 9780203729588 eBook £35.99 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 796-799. 2019.
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745Kant’s Regulative Metaphysics of God and the Systematic Lawfulness of NatureSouthern Journal of Philosophy 57 (2): 217-239. 2019.In the ‘Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic’ of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant contends that the idea of God has a positive regulative role in the systematization of empirical knowledge. But why is this regulative role assigned to this specific idea? Kant’s account is rather opaque and this question has also not received much attention in the literature. In this paper I argue that an adequate understanding of the regulative role of the idea of God depends on the specific metaphysical con…Read more
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633The Relation between God and the World in the Pre-Critical Kant: Was Kant a Spinozist?Kantian Review 21 (2): 185-210. 2016.Andrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described a…Read more
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353Kant’s Religion and the Reflective JudgmentIn Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca & Margit Ruffing (eds.), Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, De Gruyter. pp. 883-898. 2013.Kant's “Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason” seems an odd element in Kant's oeuvre. Parts of it seem like scholastic theology or an arbitrary effort to reconcile the Kantian philosophical system with the doctrines of Christianity1. One of the most troubling notions is that of radical evil. Not only is the motivation for introducing the notion unclear, it is also difficult to grasp the line of argumentation, and furthermore accept its conclusion that there must be an innate propensity f…Read more
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