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Magnitude, Matter, and Kant’s Principle of Mechanism

  • Aaron Wells
Published/Copyright: November 6, 2024
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Abstract

For Kant, inquiry into nature requires seeking to explain all material wholes merely mechanically, in terms of their parts. There is no consensus on how he justifies this Principle of Mechanism. I argue that Kant seeks to derive this claim about part and wholes neither from his laws of mechanics, nor from the mere discursivity of our understanding (two standard options in the literature), but instead from a priori principles laid out in the first Critique, which govern parts, wholes, and magnitudes. These principles are also fundamental to Kant’s account of mathematics. Therefore, Kant’s Principle of Mechanism and his philosophy of mathematics have common foundations.

Acknowledgments

For comments and discussion over the years, I’m grateful to Dimitri Apostolopoulos, Katharina Kraus, Daniel Lindquist, Jil Muller, several anonymous referees, and audiences at Bilkent University and a North American Kant Society study group (in particular Emily Carson, Hannah Ginsborg, Monica Solomon, and Saniye Vatansever). I also thank Marius Stan and Daniel Sutherland for kindly sharing unpublished work.

References

All translations are quoted from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (1996) and the quotation rules followed are those established by the Akademie-Ausgabe (AA). Kant, Immanuel (1900 ff): Gesammelte Schriften. Hrsg.: Bd. 1 – 22 Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. 23 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, ab Bd. 24 Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin.

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Published Online: 2024-11-06
Published in Print: 2024-11-06

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