Kant's modal metaphysics / Nicholas F. Stang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stang, Nicholas Frederick, 1979- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.

Kant, Immanuel.

Modality (Logic).

Metaphysics.

Physical Description:

xv, 360 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

What is possible and why? What is the difference between the merely possible and the actual? In Kant's Modal Metaphysics Nicholas Stang examines Kant's lifelong engagement with these questions and their role in his philosophical development. This is the first book to trace Kant's theory of possibility all the way from the so-called 'pre-Critical' writings of the 1750s and 1760s to the 'Critical' system of philosophy inaugurated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Stang argues that the key to understanding both the change and the continuity between Kant's pre-Critical and Critical theory of possibility is his transformation of the 'ontological' question about possibility-what is it for a being to be possible?-into a question in 'transcendental philosophy'-what is it to represent an object as possible? The first half of Kant's Modal Metaphysics explores Kant's pre-Critical theory of possibility, including his answer to the ontological question about the nature of possibility, his rejection of the traditional ontological argument for the existence of God, and his own argument that God must exist to ground all possibility. The second half examines why Kant reoriented his theory of possibility around the transcendental question, what this question means, and how Kant answered it in the Critical philosophy. Stang shows that, despite this reorientation, Kant's basic scheme for thinking about possibility remains constant from the pre-Critical period through the Critical system. What had been an ontological theory of possible being is reinterpreted, in the Critical system, as a theory of how we must represent possible objects, given the nature of our intellect. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Kant's Pre-Critical Modal Metaphysics

1 Logicism and Ontotheism 13

1.1 Introduction 13

1.2 Logicist Metaphysics 14

1.3 Logicist Epistemoiogy 21

1.4 Ontotheism 26

1.5 Possibilism 31

1.6 Real Predicates 36

2 Is Existence a Real Predicate? 43

2.1 Introduction 43

2.2 Descartes' Ontological Argument* 43

2.3 Leibniz's Ontological Argument* 49

2.4 Baumgarten's Ontological Argument* 56

2.5 The Argument in Beweisgrund: Leibniz 65

2.6 The Argument in Beweisgrund; Baumgarten 72

2.7 The Argument in the Critique of Pure Reason 74

2.8 Absolute Positing 77

3 Real Conflict, Real Grounds, Real Possibility 80

3.1 Introduction 80

3.2 Logical Grounds 82

3.3 Real Grounds 88

3.4 Real Conflict 91

3.5 The Argument for Real Incompatibility 93

3.6 Real Possibility 97

4 Grounding Possibility 99

4.1 Introduction 99

4.2 Two Requirements on Possibility 100

4.3 Harmony, Power, and Intellect 107

4.4 "This thought rises far higher than a created being can reach" 116

4.5 Possibility, Thought, and Content 118

5 Kant's Modal Argument 121

5.1 Introduction 121

5.2 Absolute Necessity 122

5.3 The Only Possible Ground of Proof 128

5.4 Prior Replies to the Plurality Objection* 135

5.5 E Pluribus Unum 138

5.6 How (Not) to Represent God 144

5.7 Kant's Pre-Critical Modal Metaphysics 147

Part II Kant's Critical Modal Metaphysics

6 Real Possibility and the Critical Turn 153

6.1 Introduction 153

6.2 Modal Epistemology in the Prize Essay 154

6.3 Modal Epistemology in the Inaugural Dissertation 156

6.4 Relation to an Object 158

6.5 Intuition, Existence, and Possibility 162

6.6 Transcendental Philosophy and the Concept of an Object 166

6.7 A priori Cognition of Phenomena 171

6.8 No a priori Cognition of Noumena 183

7 Three Kinds of Real Possibility 197

7.1 Introduction 197

7.2 Critical Real Possibility 197

7.3 Formal Possibility 200

7.4 Empirical-Causal Possibility 214

7.5 Noumenal-Causal Possibility 219

8 Nomic Necessity 228

8.1 Introduction 228

8.2 What Nomic Necessity Is Not 230

8.3 Essences: Real and Logical 234

8.4 Essences, Natures, and Laws 238

8.5 Essentialism and Constructivism in Metaphysical Foundations 244

8.6 From Forms to Essences 252

8.7 Nomic Possibility as Real Possibility 254

8.8 Back to the Beginning 257

9 The Unity of Kant's Modal Metaphysics 260

9.1 Introduction 260

9.2 Categories and Real Definitions 263

9.3 Unschematized Modal Categories 267

9.4 Absolutely Necessary Existence 272

9.5 Postulates of Pure Theoretical Reason 280

9.6 The Necessary Ends of Theoretical Reason 288

10 The Antinomy of Kant's Modal Metaphysics 297

10.1 Introduction 297

10.2 Intuitive Intellect, Intellectual Intuition 300

10.3 Some (Unsuccessful) Attempts to Resolve the Antinomy* 302

10.4 Resolving the Antinomy 307

10.5 Noumenal Freedom without Noumenal Modality 313

10.6 Representing Noumenal Modality 317

10.7 Absolute Positing, Existence, and Actuality 321

10.8 Back to Beweisgrund 325.

ISBN:

0198712626

9780198712626

OCLC:

920734979