Abstract

Kant is often incorrectly regarded as the father of objective mechanism, a theory of ontological realism in the 19th and 20th century. Nietzsche raised the objection that the notion of causality has its origin in the self‐experience of subjects ‐ so objectivity could not be claimed for mechanism at all. Physics as well as metaphysics is interpretation, not explanation of the world. Hegel likewise asserts the theoretical impregnance of „facts”︁, but here the difference between concept and thing is one which calls for its surmounting. Mechanism is one step in the development of the absolute idea; it is a necessary category, but, taken as the absolute, in itself contradictory. Ultimately the interpretation of nature is grounded in the way mankind wants to understand itself: as free or as a machine.