In this essay, I call attention to Kant’s and Whewell’s attempt to provide bridging principles between a priori principles and scientific laws. Part of Kant’s aim in the Opus postumum (ca. 1796-1803) was precisely to bridge the gap between the metaphysical foundations of natural science (on the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) see section 1) and physics by establishing intermediary concepts or ‘Mittelbegriffe’ (henceforth this problem is referred to as ‘the bridging-problem’). I argue that the late-Kant attempted to show (...) that the concept of ‘moving force’, an intermediary concept derived from a priori principles, could be given empirical content so that concrete scientific knowledge is arrived at. Thus, the late-Kant wished not only to show that proper scientific laws are necessary a priori (as he had shown in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) but also that intermediary concepts could be derived from a priori principles which, when interpreted empirically, resulted in the specific forces as established by physics (see section 2). Of course, William Whewell never knew about Kant’s Opus postumum and his attempt to bridge the gap between the metaphysical foundations of science and physics. However, it is striking that Whewell had similar concerns about the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science as Kant himself. According to Whewell, the Kantian project was incomplete because it did not show how ‘modifications’ (in the sense of concretizations) of a priori principles could result in empirical laws (section 3). Next, it will be argued, by taking into account several of Whewell’s philosophical notebooks which have scarcely been studied systematically, that Whewell’s doctrine of Fundamental Ideas grew out of his dissatisfaction with the Kantian project with respect to the bridging problem and that his own philosophical position should be seen as an attempt to bypass the bridging-problem. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This dissertation’s contribution consists in providing a novel interpretation of the role time plays in Kant’s transcendental idealism. A significant part of Kant scholarship on the Critiques tends to assume that time, as understood in transcendental philosophy, is solely a formal property of intuition. This assumption has led several commentators to overlook a fundamental feature of transcendental idealism, namely, that in being the most basic form of intuition time is, also, a provider of content in and for experience. In looking (...) attentively at such feature this dissertation shows that time is the activity of the self that grounds the possibility of objectivity and explores the philosophical implications of such an interpretation. In the first Chapter I conduct a comprehensive survey of relevant literature and show that it is impossible to separate general metaphysics from transcendental logic in the context of Kant’s transcendental philosophy without making serious philosophical sacrifices. I then argue, in the second Chapter, that time is not merely a formal property of intuition but is, rather, the fundamental form of intuition and that, even if space is in no way reducible to, or derivable from it, time has nonetheless primacy over space on both logical and ontological grounds. From this I argue that by time, or self-affection, Kant understands the activity of subjectivity that brings about the possibility of relating to objects through the power of imagination. In the third Chapter, I show that such relation is not left wholly undetermined and that, instead, it occurs in accordance with the layout presented by Kant in the Table of Judgments, the Table of Pure Concepts of the Understanding, the Schemata and, importantly, in the System of Principles of the Understanding. I show that only an interpretation that acknowledges the systematicity found in the Analytic section of the Critique of Pure Reason can justify the distinction drawn by Kant between the mathematical and the dynamical and conclude, from that, that time does indeed provide a specific content in and for experience to be found in the Schematism doctrine. Finally, in the fourth Chapter I broaden the philosophical scope and inquire as to whether Kant has the theoretical means to articulate something like an uncategorized schema or time-determination. I conclude that, although in the Critical period Kant can do so only problematically, in the post-Critical period there are means to do so categorically: system, as such, is a time-determination for which the understanding lacks a pure concept. (shrink)