Space, Time, and the Origins of Transcendental Idealism

This book provides an account of the unity of Immanuel Kant's early metaphysics, including the moment he invents transcendental idealism. Matthew Rukgaber argues that a division between two worldsthe world of matter, force, and space on the one hand, and the world of metaphysical substances with inner states and principles preserved by God on the otheris what guides Kant's thought. Until 1770 Kant consistently held a conception of space as a force-based material product of monads that are only virtually present in nature. As Rukgaber explains, transcendental idealism emerges as a constructivist metaphysics, a view in which space and time are real relations outside of the mind, but those relations are metaphysically dependent on the subject. The subject creates the simple now and here, thus introducing into the intrinsically indeterminate and infinitely divisible continua of nature a metric with transformation rules that make possible all individuation and measurement.

Provides a novel approach to Kant pre-Critical and Critical metaphysics Fills important lacunae in the English-language literature on the pre-Critical writings and on Kant's entire philosophy of space and time Offers a textually compelling narrative that engages Kant's physics and metaphysics

Autorentext

Matthew Rukgaber teaches at Eastern Connecticut State University and Gateway Community College, USA.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: An Overview of the Metaphysics of the Pre-Critical and Critical Kant.- 2. Space, Force, and Matter in the Early Natural Science Writings.- 3. Substances, Space, and Causality in the Early Metaphysical Writings.- 4. The Development of Kant's Pre-Critical Metaphysics from 1758 to 1766.- 5. The Asymmetry of Space: Kant's Theory of Absolute Space in 1768.- 6. The Moment of Transformation: Time and the Critical Turn in the Inaugural Dissertation.- 7. Kant's Theory of Space in the Inaugural Dissertation and the Birth of Transcendental Idealism.