Stephen Howard

This chapter aims to shed new light on the arguments and philosophical significance of Kant’s Universal Natural History by examining the work’s natural-philosophical methodology. The 1755 cosmological treatise, Kant asserts, follows “the leading thread of analogy”. After introducing the work’s main cosmological analogy, I examine the historical context of Kant’s analogical method. The most relevant context, I argue, is not the prior tradition of cosmology and natural history but rather works of scientific methodology and logic. Next, to better understand and assess the principal analogy of the Universal Natural History, I outline Kant’s later theories of analogy. Kant distinguishes between analogies of similarity and fourfold analogies of proportion; the latter are concerned not with things but with relations. Analogies of proportion are further subdivided into inferential and non-inferential analogies. Based on these distinctions, I propose an interpretation of the kind of analogical reasoning that is employed in the Universal Natural History.

Kant's theory of the regulative use of ideas of reason has been clarified considerably in recent scholarship. Little attention has been paid, however, to the question of whether the three classes of transcendental ideas—psychological, cosmological, and theological—may differ with regard to their regulative use. This article argues that there is a fundamental difference between the classes of ideas in this respect and that an examination of this heterogeneity can provide much‐needed insight into Kant's account of the utility of the cosmological ideas. First, I set out Kant's distinction between the cosmological ideas and their psychological and theological counterparts. Second, I clarify the two distinct regulative uses of each cosmological idea. I argue that the two opposed sides of the cosmological antinomies provide two different heuristic functions, aligned with the theoretical and practical interests of reason.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic by Ian ProopsStephen HowardIan Proops. The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 512. Hardback, $105.00.Ian Proops's book is a substantial contribution to the thriving field of Anglophone scholarship on the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Across five hundred pages, Proops examines the whole of the Dialectic. The book is divided into three parts, following the disciplines of previous special metaphysics with which Kant critically engages in the Dialectic: rational psychology, cosmology, and theology. Discussions of transcendental illusion and the regulative use of ideas of reason are slotted into the rational psychology and theology parts, respectively.Methodologically, Proops aims to take a middle course between historical and reconstructive approaches (31–32). In historical and reconstructive modes alike, though, Proops is primarily concerned with accurately presenting and rigorously evaluating Kant's arguments in the Dialectic. These arguments come in two forms: either those of the imagined rational psychologist, cosmologist, or theologian, whom Kant ventriloquizes in order to reveal their errors; or those arguments that Kant makes in his own voice. The Fiery Test of Critique distinguishes itself from existing studies through the detail and care with which these arguments are scrutinized. Specialists will find numerous illuminating exegeses and links to a wide range of Kant's published and unpublished writings. Proops does not hesitate to identify where, in his view, Kant's arguments fail (or where those of Kant's ventriloquized metaphysicians fail in a way Kant does not intend), but he endeavors to interpret charitably and to make his own evaluative criteria explicit.The wide-ranging introduction to the book offers intriguing reflections on a metaphor Kant uses for his critique of pure reason: a "fiery test" (8; A 406/B 433). This test, Proops suggests, is best understood not as a religious ordeal by fire but as a "metallurgical assay": the testing of a coin or an ore to determine its precious metal content (9–10). This means that the test of critique "is not pass-fail" (12). Kantian critique identifies some precious metal to be retained alongside the dross (the base-metal bearer) to be discarded. The "gold" [End Page 525] and "silver" found by Kant's fiery test are, Proops contends, respectively the indirect proof of transcendental idealism that emerges from the Antinomy chapter, and the doctrinal beliefs in God and an afterlife that remain after the Paralogism and Ideal (13, 453–54).This application of Kant's metaphor indicates how far Proops diverges from the dismissive views of older Anglo-American studies of the Dialectic (the paradigm being Bennett's Kant's Dialectic [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974]). Proops's opening questions and goals show that he aims to clarify the precise character of the dogmatic metaphysical claims criticized by Kant, and to identify what of this previous tradition Kant considers worth saving and why (2–7). This focus on the positive contribution of the Dialectic to Kant's philosophy—an approach Proops shares with other recent commentators—is very welcome.For all his illuminating discussion of Kant's Feuerprobe imagery, Proops neglects to note that Kant does not simply identify worthwhile aspects of previous special metaphysics. Rather, the philosophical findings that Proops takes to be the precious results of the critical test are significantly developed in Kant's hands. That is, no pre-Kantian rational cosmologist claims that their debates provide an indirect proof of transcendental idealism (of course). Neither do pre-Kantian rational psychologists or theologians make Kant's move of conceiving of God and the immortal soul as matters of doctrinal belief, where the latter is an epistemic attitude distinct from knowledge and cognition. In the cases that Proops highlights, then, the relevant image seems to be not only a metallurgical test but also an alchemical transformation of previous metaphysical doctrines into positive "critical" results.The parts of the book on the Paralogisms and the Ideal, on which Proops has previously published, will no doubt stimulate further detailed debate among specialists. I leave these debates aside to consider the part of the...

This paper examines Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s views of metaphysical cosmology and argues that these constitute an important context for Kant’s critical-period response to rational cosmology. D’Alembert is commonly taken to have dismissed cosmology from the roster of the legitimate sciences, and there is indeed evidence of his scepticism towards Maupertuis’ cosmology no less than towards Wolff’s cosmologia generalis. I argue, however, that a broadly Leibnizian cosmological perspective underpins d’Alembert’s accounts of our knowledge and of the task of the philosopher. D’Alembert’s work thus anticipates and helps bring into focus Kant’s own nuanced engagement with the cosmological tradition.

Abstract:Kant's 1770 Dissertation is surprisingly rarely read as a cosmological treatise about the "world." The few commentators who do so invariably claim that, in the fourth section of the work, Kant presents a purely intellectual cosmology, a relic of dogmatic, Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysics. This article aims to show that attention to some often-overlooked passages yields a very different picture. Key to how Kant conceives of the form of the world is his distinction between the relations of co-ordination and subordination of substances. On the basis of this distinction, the author argues that the "principle of the form of the intelligible world" does not pertain to a transcendent intelligible world. Instead, the principle concerns an intellectual perspective on the world of substances co-ordinated in space and time. This interpretation has various consequences for our understanding of the development of Kant's critical philosophy.

ABSTRACT This article speculatively reconstructs what I call Howard Caygill’s “unwritten book” on Nietzsche, based on the collection of Caygill’s philosophical essays, Force and Understanding. I propose that an engagement with Nietzsche’s thought runs throughout Caygill’s work, although it would be a mistake to label Caygill a “Nietzschean.” One particularly relevant aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is his conception of philological reading. After outlining this, I examine the Nietzsche who emerges from Caygill’s essays and thus the central themes of the “unwritten book.” I close by considering the implications of my account for the distinction between two philosophical forms: the treatise and the essay.

The literature on Dreams of a Spirit-Seer typically emphasises the ways that Kant’s complex 1766 work prefigures his critical turn. Kant indeed criticises Wolffian «dreamers of reason» and defines metaphysics as a «science of the limits of human reason». It has not been noted, however, that Kant’s first restriction on human knowledge in Dreams is targeted at knowledge of fundamental physical forces. Moreover, Kant criticises the ‘pneumatological’ laws of mental forces, insisting that these cannot be known through analogy with physical forces. This paper presents the historical context of Kant’s claims and argues that his critique of the philosophical concept of force (Kraft) is primarily in dialogue with one of Wolff’s most renowned critics, Crusius. On this basis, I contend that Kant’s examination of our capacity to know fundamental physical and mental forces is an important aspect of his early critique of metaphysics. I defend my account by contrasting it with Alison Laywine’s interpretation.

An ancient cosmological debate lies behind the spatial part of the first antinomy in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Against the Aristotelian conception of a finite universe, a thought experiment proposed we imagine ourselves situated on the boundary of the world: what happens if we stretch a hand beyond the boundary? This article first shows that aspects of this debate persist in the cosmological claims of Huygens, Wolff, and Crusius. With his presentation of opposing arguments in the first antinomy, Kant famously rejected both sides of the debate and asserted that we cannot meaningfully inquire into the spatial boundary of the world. I then argue that the critical-period Kant nevertheless does not simply dismiss the issue of an outer boundary of the world: he rather reconceives it as the question of the boundary of the legitimate use of our cognitive faculties. The cosmological question of the boundary of the world is transformed—from Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation through his Reflexionen of the 1770s to the first Critique—into the critical question of the boundary of reason.

This thesis presents an interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s theoretical philosophy in which the notion of ‘force’ is of central importance. My analysis encompasses the full span of Kant’s theoretical and natural-scientific writings, from the first publication to the drafts of an unfinished final work. With a close focus on Kant’s texts, I explicate their explicit references to force, providing a narrative of the philosophical role and significance of force in the various periods of the Kantian oeuvre. This represents an intervention into Kant scholarship that seeks to correct the marginal role accorded to ‘force’. The central problem that emerges through the thesis’ attention to force is: how to interpret the simultaneous separation and connection of physical and psychological forces in Kant’s mature, critical philosophy? Physical and psychological forces are strictly separated, and yet a common, ontological conception of force underpins these two domains. I show that this issue has its basis in a tradition of philosophical ‘dynamics’ stemming from Leibniz, which is examined in part one. The three parts of the thesis proceed chronologically through the Kantian oeuvre. Part one reconstructs the historical context of Leibnizian and Newtonian conceptions of force, and presents a narrative of the employment of force in Kant’s pre-critical writings, in their relation to the broad problematic of Leibniz’s dynamics. Part two explores the account of physical and psychological forces, and the common, ontological notion of force, in the major critical-period discussions. Part three presents the late works, namely the third Critique and the Opus postumum, as a ‘philosophy of force’, in which force, with all its necessary ambiguities, plays central roles in Kant’s late systematising endeavours. I conclude that the perspective of this thesis makes possible a new understanding of the nature and unity of Kant’s philosophical project.

While we endorse Heidegger’s effort to reclaim Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a work concerned with the possibility of metaphysics, we hold, first, that his reading is less original than is often assumed and, second, that it unduly marginalizes the critical impetus of Kant’s philosophy. This article seeks to shed new light on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and related texts by relating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant to, on the one hand, the epistemological approach represented by Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience and, on the other, the metaphysical readings put forward by Heimsoeth, Wundt and others in the 1920s. On this basis, we argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant remains indebted to the methodological distinction between ground and grounded that informed Cohen’s reading and was transferred to the problem of metaphysics by Wundt. Even if Heidegger resists a ‘foundationalist’ mode of this distinction, we argue that his focus on the notions of ground and grounding does not...

This article addresses a simple question that has rarely been asked of Kant’s philosophy of nature: why are attraction and repulsion the two fundamental forces of matter? Where proposals can be found in the literature, they are divergent. I provide a new answer, which has strong support from the historical context: Kant pursues a modified version of what I call the ‘reduction method’ that was much debated in the German metaphysical tradition. To this, Kant crucially adds his critical doctrine of regulative ideas, revealing an overlooked way that the Appendix to theCritiqueinforms his philosophy of nature.

Recent literature on Kant’s Opus postumum has typically focused on two parts of the drafts: the ether proofs and the Selbstsetzungslehre. Eckart Förster’s interpretation is representative of this tendency and, moreover, presents the Selbstsetzungslehre as the culmination of Kant’s late project. By contrast, I argue that the drafts of fascicles X/XI, written in between the ether proofs and the Selbstsetzungslehre, are of primary importance for understanding the Opus postumum. Through a close reading of a page from fascicle XI, I show that Kant attempts to resolve problems internal to the Selbstsetzungslehre and the ether proofs by presenting a transition from the former to the latter. I advocate a renewed appreciation of the centrality of fascicles X/XI, insofar as the Opus postumum drafts aspire to a science of transition.

Leibniz’s ‘new science of dynamics’ is typically taken to have been completed in the late monadological metaphysics. On this view, stemming from Martial Gueroult and continuing in the recent interpretations of Robert Adams and Pauline Phemister, Leibniz accomplished his dynamics in his later account of physical forces as merely phenomenal modifications of monadic, metaphysical forces. This paper argues, by contrast, that Leibniz considered the dynamics to be an unfinished project: this is evident in statements from throughout his mature period until his final months. Two possible reasons for the non-completion of the dynamics are discussed. The first is that his encounter with the superior physics of Newton’s Principia caused Leibniz to continually defer his own contribution. I argue, however, in favour of a second reason: that there are philosophical difficulties inherent in the science of dynamics that prevented its completion. These difficulties are found in the relation of dynamics to metaphysics, and in the more fundamental split within dynamics, into the doctrine of primitive and derivative forces. Through three late exchanges with de Volder, Wolff and Des Bosses, I show that the relation of primitive and derivative forces remained an unsolved – although not in principle unsolvable – problem for Leibniz.

It is commonly claimed that Kant's critical philosophy aims to limit reason's speculative use and its metaphysical pretensions. This paper argues that such claims should be amended in light of a technical distinction between negative limits and positive boundaries that Kant held throughout his career. Kant's only extended discussion of this distinction appears in §§57–60 of the Prolegomena, a division entitled “On pure reason's boundary‐determination”. I examine these sections in detail in order to elucidate the account of the limits and boundaries of the activity of different cognitive faculties in the Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that once we understand a key ambition of the Critique to be the positive determination of the boundary between objects of experience and things in themselves, we gain insight into the essential contribution that Kant's theory of the positive utility of ideas of reason makes to the critical philosophy.