Descartes’s Legacy in Kant’s Notions of Physical Influx and Space-Filling: True Estimation and Physical Monadology

Autor: Cinzia Ferrini
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Kant-Studien. 109:9-46
ISSN: 1613-1134
0022-8877
Popis: This paper examines Kant’s pre-Critical distinction between the capacity of an immaterial simple substance to occupy space by having a spatial location and the sphere of its activity, in contrast to the power of material compound bodies to fill space by their extension and solidity. I highlight some important features of Descartes’ metaphysical and physical models of the contingent locality of simple unextended substances and challenge the recently articulated view that Henry More’s model of extended but metaphysically indivisible spirits is an archetype for, or at least a precursor to, Kant’s dynamic monads. I claim that, contra More and the Newtonians, Kant is indebted to Descartes for this idea of how simple substances take up space and can be extended in an ‘analogous’ way by means of the effects of their activity.
Databáze: OpenAIRE