Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76

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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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Natural history and the formation of the human being: Kant on active
forces
Anik Waldow
Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Main Quad, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In his 1785-review of the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Kant objects to Herder’s
Available online 25 June 2016 conception of nature as being imbued with active forces. This attack is usually evaluated against the
background of Kant’s critical project and his epistemological concern to caution against the “meta-
Keywords: physical excess” of attributing immanent properties to matter. In this paper I explore a slightly different
Kant; reading by investigating Kant’s pre-critical account of creation and generation. The aim of this is to show
Active forces;
that Kant’s struggle with the forces of matter has a long history and revolves around one central
Matter theory;
problem: that of how to distinguish between the non-purposive forces of nature and the intentional
Mechanistic explanations;
Cosmology;
powers of the mind. Given this history, the epistemic stricture that Kant’s critical project imposes on him
Anthropology no longer appears to be the primary reason for his attack on Herder. It merely aggravates a problem that
Kant has been battling with since his earliest writings.
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In his 1785 review of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der

Geschichte der Menschheit (1784),1 Kant objects to Herder’s specu-
lative method. More precisely, he claims that Herder is entirely
unjustified in conceiving of the power to reason as a force that has
evolved out of the principle of life that is common to all animate
beings. The problem with this conception is, he continues, that the
existence of life forces is dubitable, which means that they cannot
be cited in order to explain what reason is:
Yet what is one to think in general about the hypothesis of
invisible forces, effecting organization, hence about the endeavor
to want to explain what one does not comprehend from what
one comprehends even less (8:53-4, emphasis mine).2
E-mail address: anik.waldow@sydney.edu.au.
1
References to this work will be given in the text after the relevant quotes as
Ideen, page number. Quoted passages are taken from the edition Johann Gottfried
Herder (1989) Werke in Zehn Bänden, vol. 6. Edited by Martin Bollacher. Frankfurt
am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.
2
All references to Kant’s writings will be made in the body of the text and are as
follows: AA: Immanuel Kant (1900), Gesammelte Schriften. The English translation is
taken from Immanuel Kant (1995-), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant, indicated by page numbers after the reference to the Akademieausgabe.
In this passage Kant cites the invisibility of occult powers as the
reason for rejecting Herder’s account. The fact that he uses this
strategy is surprising. Kant was well aware of the debate on living
forces surrounding the publications of Georges-Louis Leclerc, the
Comte de Buffon and Albrecht von Haller’s works between 1740
and 1780.3 This debate focused on the question of whether life can
develop gradually as a consequence of a self-organising principle in
matter, as the so-called epigenesists claimed, or whether it must be
understood as having come into existence through an act of divine
creation at the beginning of history. Importantly, defenders of both
positions were committed to careful experimentation and
observation.
Given Kant’s familiarity with this debate, his charge against
Herder seems to be exaggerated: it ignores that it was part of the
observation-based science of his day to claim that living forces
exist. Moreover, in recent years scholars have argued that Kant was
3
Wubnig (1969); Genova (1974); Zöller (1988); Müller-Sievers (1997), pp. 45-64;
Roe (2002), pp. 50-88; Zammito (2002), p. 305; Riskin (2015).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2016.03.005
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68 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
not only familiar with this debate, but also deeply influenced by
it.4Thus, Phillip Sloan claims that in the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790)
Kant defends a quasi-epigenesist account by conceiving of pre-
formed “Anlagen. as dynamic, purposive predispositions that
function in relation to. [Blumenbach’s] Bildungstrieb.”5 Sloan
qualifies this claim by adding that Kant did not think of the Bil-
dunsgtrieb as operating in the noumenal realm. Yet he attributes to
Kant the view that “reason as well as experience suggests
[epigenesis] as the most defensible account.”6 On this epistemo-
logical reading, Kant objects to Herder primarily because of
Herder’s ontological commitment to the principle of life. Sloan’s
interpretation thus conforms to the standard account, according to
which Kant’s attack on Herder is driven by his attempt to caution
against “metaphysical excess”, which occurs when we ascribe
“immanent properties to matter,” as John Zammito has put it.7 Yet
in a later article Zammito goes further than this, arguing that Kant
himself was not entirely neutral in this regard as he “tacitly
admitted the objective actuality of forces throughout physical sci-
ence.”8 And this, he adds, is the position Kant also embraces in the
Opus postumum.
In this essay I want to explore what it could have meant for Kant
to accept that processes of generation involve forces, that is, not just
at the level of the phenomena but at the noumenal level as well.
Instead of focussing on the late Kant, however, I will offer an
analysis of his pre-critical account of creation and generation.9 The
aim of this is to show that the epistemic stricture that Kant’s critical
philosophy imposes on him is not the primary reason for his attack
on Herder. It merely aggravates a problem that Kant has been
struggling with since his earliest writings. This is the problem that
on the one hand we must distinguish forces operative in the realm
of nature from the intentional powers of the mind, while on the
other hand it is not clear how such a distinction can be established.
As we will see, this problem becomes particularly pressing after
the critical turn. Now Kant can no longer engage in those meta-
physical manoeuvres that once served him to specify what the
activity of matter consists in and how it differs from that activity we
attribute to free agents who act in accordance with their reason and
will. Yet at the same time much more hinges on the possibility of
establishing such a difference. Without it, Herder’s conception of
4 in concentric circles around the centre point of the universe (1: 313,
Zammito (2003); Mensch (2013); Riskin (2015).
5
Sloan (2002), p. 249.
6
Sloan (2002), pp. 249-50.
7
Zammito (2002), p. 302. Also see Beiser (1987), p. 152, for a similar interpre-
tation. The standard account is closely related to the question of the status of
teleological judgement in Kant. What crops up in this discussion is the question of
how to judge nature and more specifically the fact that organisms exist without
attributing teleological causes to nature. McLaughlin (1990), Ginsborg (2001),
Zuckert (2007) argue that for Kant teleological principles are heuristic tools
employed in judging organisms; and they all claim that these principles do not
inform us about the causal structure of the organism in re.
8
Zammito (2003), p. 82, emphasis added.
9 are freely unfolding in accordance with self-chosen purposes ulti-
See for instance Lord (2009) for Kant’s critique of Herder’s Spinozism after the
publication of the review of the Ideen. Also see Boehm (2014), for the claim that
Spinoza is one of the main targets of Kant’s critical philosophy.
10
Beiser (1987), p. 154; Zammito (1992); Sloan (2002). See Zöller (1988) and
(1989), especially pp. 231-232, for the view that the success of the critical project
depends on the conception of reason as being productive of its own principles and
the related claim that Kant had to oppose the idea (which Herder embraced) that
nature is able to generate reason out of its own accord.
11
Although arguing that for Kant intuitions and categories are acquired by being
produced through spontaneity and receptivity, Zöller (1989) stresses that the
formal aspects of this productive process are fixed. See Falkenstein (1990) for an
anti-nativist interpretation that also stresses the productive character of the
structures of time and space and yet acknowledges the fixity of these structures
once they have been produced. See Kitcher (1990), especially pp. 35-39, for a
detailed analysis of the various component parts of productive processes and the
fixity of the “laws of mind” operative in such processes.
reason as a power that develops out of a general force in nature is
only one step away, which is problematic as Herder’s account
dynamises the structures of reason in relation to a world that
perpetually evolves.10 It thereby dissolves the fixity and necessity of
the Kantian Apriori, on which the possibility of objective knowledge
depends.11
By working from Kant’s pre-critical acceptance of forces of
matter to the threat that this position poses for him during his
critical phase, we not only understand the vehemence of his
response to Herderdwhich is absent from his earlier critique of
mind-like forces in naturedbut we can also better comprehend
Kant’s decision to abandon the concept of active matter shortly
after the review. According to the account developed here, Kant’s
struggle with the forces of matter has a long history.12 The Ideen can
therefore not be seen as having pointed Kant to an entirely new
problem, namely that through Herder’s active forces it becomes
possible to derive reason from nature. Instead, the Ideen only made
clear to Kant that in order to achieve his long-held goal of keeping
the realm of matter free of mind-like agency, he had to dispense
with the notion of active matter altogether. In what follows I will
sketch this development in Kant’s thoughts.
1. Creation, generation and supernatural causes
From the start of his career Kant took a strong interest in
questions of creation and generation. Thus, A Universal Natural
History and a Theory of the Heavens (1755) presents an account that
sees comets, planets and solar systems as forming through the
influence of forces that perpetually drive creation forward form the
centre point of the universe to its periphery:
Millions and whole mountain ranges of millions of centuries will
pass within which ever new worlds and world-orders will from
and attain completion one after another in the remote distances
form the centre point that has become the first point of for-
mation and the centre of creation by the attractive capacity of its
pre-eminent matter. (1:314, 266)
Original particles of matter are here conceived as endeavouring
and striving towards the formation of greater lumps of matter,
while the forces of attraction and repulsion organise this formation
265-6).
Despite Kant’s frequent use of language that presents nature as
an active agent of an orderly production that pursues a certain
purposedsuch as the replacement of one maladapted species by
the production of better ones (1: 317, 26913)dhe is clear that all
creative forces follow general laws of motion, and in this sense
count as determined and blind, rather than as initiated by some
purpose-pursuing intentional forces (1:222, 194). The distinction
between blind forces bound by the laws of nature and those which
mately goes back to Kant’s physicotheology.14 During his pre-
critical phase Kant conceives of God as a supreme intelligence
who acts in line with understanding and will, and for specific
purposes when creating the universe in a specific way. However,
12
For other accounts that also stress continuities in Kant’s thinking about forces
see Watkins (2001) and (2003).
13
Within Kant’s pre-critical and critical framework organisms assume a special
status, since he believes that their existence is neither exhaustively explicable
through the mechanism of nature nor through the presence of a purposive, mind-
like force. I will say more about this presently when turning to the discussion of
Kant’s critique of the so-called naturalists.
14
Waschkies (1987), pp. 562-578; Zammito (2006).
 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
the created world itself is taken to lack all mind-like attributes, so
that the forces operative within this world must be seen as blind
and unable to give their actions a self-chosen direction.
Kant’s understanding of mind-like forces in opposition to blind
forces becomes most explicit in The Only Possible Argument in
Support of the Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763). He here
considers the question of “whether the properties of understanding
and will are to be found in the Supreme Being as determinations
inhering in it, or whether they are to be regarded merely as con-
sequences produced by it in other things” (2:89, 133, emphasis
mine). He rejects the second option for the reason that it depicts
God as “possessing neither cognition nor choice” which turns him
into a “blindly necessary ground of other things and even of other
minds” (2:89,133 emphasis mine).
Kant offers this argument to reveal the absurdity of the mate-
rialism he associates with Spinozism and the Epicureans.15 Con-
trary to this position, Kant argues that the “universe is no accident
of God” (2:90, 134); it is designed and because of its order, beauty
and perfection “presupposes relation to a being endowed with
cognition and desire” (2:90, 134). This argument in principle leaves
enough room for a conception of created matter as endowed with
powers that are similar in kind to those of its designer, the divine
being (Kant for instance mentions minds, which are typically
endowed with understanding and will). Yet we will see below that
Kant’s attack on occasionalism shows the contrary, namely that he
was strongly opposed to any attempt to conceive of the realm of
matter as being pervaded by mind-like forces. Before turning to this
discussion, the point that deserves our attention however is that for
Kant something counts as blind when its lacks “understanding and
will” and cannot act in line with “cognition and choice”; and, vice
versa, that for a force not to count as blind is to be mind-like, in the
sense that it actually has understanding and will and is able to
choose a specific course of action.
Although Kant acknowledges the existence of a supreme intel-
ligence as the ultimate “ground” of the universe, he deems it ille-
gitimate to conclude from the fact that the universe is orderly and
beautiful that “the direct hand of God” (1:347, 292) remains
involved in this universe after its creation. The temptation to
embrace this view is particularly strong whenever we discover
“arrangements in the constitution of the world that redound to the
reciprocal advantages of creatures” (1:347, 292). Kant finds this
view intolerable, as it turns free choice and intentional
actiondnamely those of the divine beingdinto major explanatory
principles that leave little room for the rigid order of nature that
acts in line with necessary laws. For this reason one of the major
argumentative goals of Kant’s Universal Natural History is to
establish that the first cause of the universe is strictly “mechanical”.
Setting up the theoretical foundations for his subsequent inquiry in
the preface to this work, Kant programmatically states that the
“order and beauty” of the universe need to be understood as a mere
“effect of matter left to its general laws of motion” (1:221, 194). And
in the concluding remarks Kant reemphasises that “the first cause
[of the universe] was tied to the mechanical rules of motion and did
not act by free choice” (1: 344, 290).
Kant’s own account thus sits in the middle of two extremes. It
dispenses with the Epicurean chaos view, according to which
beauty and order count as the products of randomly colliding
15
For Kant, Spinozism is a more sophisticated version of Epicureanism, as the
second half of the quoted passage indicates: “and it would differ from the eternal
fate postulated by some ancient philosophers in nothing except that it had been
more intelligently described” (2:89, 133). Kant articulates a similar view in the
Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790) where Spinozism is presented as the
position that conceives of “the supreme ground for the objectively purposive forms
of matter without conceding an understanding to it” (5:421, 289, emphasis mine).
69
particles (1:346, 291-2), as much as it opposes the conception of a
divine being who remains actively involved in the created world.16
It does so by making two related claims: first, that order and beauty
can in fact come into existence through ordinary processes in na-
ture; and, second, that this is possible only if we think of these
processes as being organised by divinely ordained natural laws. In
quintessence, this means that on Kant’s view the moment the
universe was created natural laws and the workings of blind forces
took the place of intentional divine action, that is, action that un-
folds in line with understanding and will and follows the principle
of choice, rather than determined patterns of cause and effect.
Clearly, keeping intentional actions out of the realm of created
matter enables Kant to secure the explanatory value of mechanistic
physics. However, one problem that emerges within this context is
the question of animal generation. In the Only Possible Argument
Kant concedes precisely this point, stating that with respect to or-
ganisms and the question of their original formation mechanistic
explanations are entirely useless: “It would be absurd to regard the
initial generation of a plant or animal as a mechanical effect inci-
dentally arising from the universal laws of nature” (2:114: 156). Due
to this absurdity, it would be common to assume that an “artificial
arrangement” (2: 98, 141) made for a specific purpose is the cause
of an organism’s existence. Here as already in the Universal Natural
History (1:346, 291), Kant thinks of “special arrangements” as the
purposive actions of a freely choosing agent who introduces con-
tingencies into the otherwise lawful mechanism of nature (2:96,
139-40).
Despite the problems that organisms pose for a strictly mech-
anistic explanatory framework, Kant does not think that this jus-
tifies the belief in supernatural causes. Kant raises this issue when
objecting to the practice of the so-called natural philosophers who
“toy around with the problem. of gradual propagation” (2:115,
157). He writes:
[W]hether the supernatural generation occurs at the moment of
creation, or whether it takes place gradually, at different times,
the degree of the supernatural is no greater in the second case
than it is in the first. The only difference between them relates
not to the degree of the immediate divine action but merely to
the when. (2:115, 157)
By temporalizing the concept of creation in this way, Kant treats
natural philosophers as occasionalists, as for him these philoso-
phers too seem to believe that a certain effect, namely the emer-
gence of life, is produced by something that is not part of nature
itself. Since for Kant this supernatural cause can only be a divine
being that remains actively involved in its creation, natural phi-
losophers turn into occasionalists.
Kant’s occasionalist take on the so-called natural philosophers is
interesting, as it reveals that establishing the mechanical origin of
the universe pursues a rather limited aim. Instead of ruling out that
there could ever be activity in created matter, he merely wants to
make sure that we do not conflate the activity of matter that is
necessarily bounded by the laws of nature with the activity char-
acteristic of a being who is able to act out of choice and in line with
his intentions and for specific purposes. That this is the direction in
which he wanted to push the debate also seems to follow from the
specific way in which he here engages with Maupertuis.
As Zammito has argued, Kant directly lifted his critique of the
so-called natural philosophers from Maupertuis’ System de la Na-
ture that “set[s] about elaborating a general theory of active matter,
16
In the Only Possible Argument and in the third Critique Kant refers to this view as
occasionalism (5:422-3, 291), as we will see further down.
70 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
a plausible theory of hylozoism.”17 However, although Kant did not
hesitate to employ Maupertuis’ argument in order to show that
there is no room for divine intervention in the created universe and
that for this reason the natural laws have to play a more funda-
mental role in the generation of organisms, he firmly rejected
Maupertuis’ vital materialism that was supposed to solve the
problem that the mechanism of nature fails to explain the emer-
gence of organised life-forms. This position, as Kant argues in the
third Critique, illegitimately infuses matter with “a property (hy-
lozoism) that contradicts its essence” (5:375, 246). This property, as
we can glean from the passages leading up to Kant’s critique of the
natural philosophers, is something mind-like that enables matter
to have memory, cognition and desire. Maupertuis intended his
language to be metaphorical, but Kant clearly ignored this.18 Thus
he writes:
The internal forms proposed by Buffon, and the elements of
organic matter which, in the opinion of Maupertuis, join
together as their memory dictate, and in accordance with the
laws of desire and aversion, are either as incomprehensible as the
thing itself, or they are entirely arbitrary inventions. (2:115, 157,
emphasis mine)
Rejecting this approach, Kant moves on to considering that
“either the formation of the fruit is to be attributed immediately to
a divine action, which is performed at every mating, or, alterna-
tively, there must be granted to the initial divine organisation of
plants and animals a capacity, not only to develop their kind
thereafter in accordance with a natural law, but truly to generate
their kind” (2:115, 157). Kant concludes this section by flagging that
“the purpose of these considerations has simply been to show that
one must concede to the things of nature a possibility, greater than
that which is commonly conceded, of producing their effects in
accordance with universal laws” (2:115, 157, emphasis mine).
Kant here explicitly states that it is a genuine possibility to
conceive of organic matter as capable of producing its own kind if
the relevant activity is thought of as complying with the laws of
nature. Moreover, I have argued above that acting in accordance
with the laws of nature is a formula that Kant typically uses to
describe an activity that is not governed by intelligence, cognition,
will and the principle of choice, and for this reason counts as blind.
Taken together these two claims suggest that Kant did not object to
Maupertuis’ vital materialism simply because it conceives of matter
as active. Rather, what Kant found objectionable was that, accord-
ing to his interpretation, Maupertuis attributed to matter an ac-
tivity that is mind-like, which, as we have seen above, meant for
him that matter can act in line with understanding and will and out
of the principle of choice. However, if such elements enter the
concept of matter, he reasoned, the prospect of naturalising phi-
losophy is entirely lost, as something that is not bound by the laws
of nature becomes acknowledged as a regular cause in natural
processes.
I will say more about what precisely it means to be a force that is
not mind-like and yet able to produce life presently, when dis-
cussing the difference between the forces of organic and inorganic
matter. Before this, however, I want to engage more closely with
Kant’s account of how the original particles of matter came into
existence. This will put us in a position to understand how it is
possible for Kant to do both, avoid occasionalism and hold on to the
idea that intelligent design plays a role in preparing matter in such
a way that organised beings can be formed.
17
Zammito (2006), p. 334; also see p. 343.
18
See Zammito (2006), p. 334, and Terrall (2002), p. 328.
2. Active forces
In the Universal Natural History Kant writes: “The basic matter
itself, the properties and forces, of which underlie all changes, is a
direct consequence of a divine existence” (1:309, 263). And he adds
that
[I]t is true that the formation, the shape, the beauty, and
perfection are relationships of the building blocks and of the
substances that constitute the material of the universe; and we
observe it in the measures that the wisdom of God is still taking
all the time; and it is most appropriate to it that they evolve by
an unforced succession from these universal laws implanted in
them.” (1:309, 263)
It is difficult to say what it precisely means when Kant says that
God has implanted the universal laws in the original particles of
matter. Michael Friedman’s interpretation of Kant’s pre-critical
concept of space as developed in the New Elucidations of the First
Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755) might help us to shed
further light on this question. According to Friedman, Kant thinks of
space as being constituted by the interaction of substances.19 These
substances are different from Leibniz’s monads in that they interact
with one another and through this interaction constitute space
(1:415, 43). Importantly, the laws structuring their interaction exist
in the “scheme of the divine understanding” (1:413, 41). God’s mind
thus becomes the common cause of the substances and the laws, as
both come into existence by “conceiving their existence as corre-
lated with each other” (1:413, 41).
It thus would appear that it is somewhat imprecise to say that
substances that constitute space through their interactions abide
by the laws of nature in the sense that they passively follow
something external to them. Kant’s substances have been placed in
relation to one another by God’s conceiving of them in precisely
this way.20 This means that the laws that structure the interaction
of substances come into being at the same time and through the
same divine act of conceiving that is also responsible for the
emergence of the substances themselves. Furthermore, Kant claims
that the interaction of substances manifests itself in the attractive
and repulsive forces through which material bodies are formed.21
On this account, the motion of matter becomes the outer appear-
ance of the lawful interaction of metaphysical forces that span from
one physical monad to another.22
Against this background, it emerges that for Kant natural laws
do not exist externally to the first particles of matter whose
attractive and repulsive forces account for the creation of the
19
Friedman (1992), pp. 27-34.
20
Yet Kant claims that “there could be if God so willed, a number of. substances,
free from any connection with our universe” (1:414, 42). This might suggest that
substances can be created without being placed in relation to one another that is
specified by a law. To refute this claim, one only needs to consider that even in this
specific passage Kant stresses that substances, while not necessarily related to “our
universe”, are nevertheless “linked with each other to produce place, position, and
space” (1:414, 42, emphasis added). Kant thus stresses what I have claimed above,
namely that substances that constitute a material world (ours or another one) do in
fact relate to one another.
21
Kant claims that attraction and repulsion are external expressions of in-
teractions of substances; on this account, Newtonian gravity tracks the movement
of substances that, as Kant puts it, gravitate towards one another “throughout the
whole realm of space” (1:415, 43).
22
Attraction here still counts as “a quality of matter”, as Kant stresses in the
Universal Natural History, while simultaneously explaining that “attraction is pre-
cisely that universal relationship that unites the parts of nature in one space” (1:
308, 262).
 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
universe.23 Rather, he regards these laws as the conditions neces-
sary for matter to constitute itself. So when Kant says that God has
implanted the universal laws of nature into the first particles of
matter, he quite literally seems to mean this, instead of just using an
awkward expression for saying that matter is externally con-
strained by the laws of nature.
One way of capturing this aspect of Kantian matter would be to
say that matter has been programmed to follow the laws of nature.
This way of putting it stresses that matter is not externally con-
strained, but internally configured to actively behave the way it
does. Yet, while being active in this sense, it still holds that matter is
deprived of mind-like forces characteristic of the freedom and
choice Kant attributes to the divine being: after all, matter follows
the universal laws of nature, thus driving out the divine plan, and
lacks the power freely to initiate actions of its own choice.
The question that emerges here is how the existence of organ-
isms fits into all of this. As discussed in the previous section, Kant
considers it a genuine possibility that “there must be granted to the
initial divine organisation of plants and animals a capacity, not only
to develop their kind thereafter in accordance with a natural law,
but truly to generate their kind” if this capacity is thought of as
“producing [its] effects in accordance with universal laws” (2:115,
157, emphasis mine). Kant states this point as part of his critique of
the so-called natural philosophers who smuggle into their
explanatory framework supernatural causes when thinking of
“immediate divine action” (2:115, 157) as responsible for the gen-
eration of life. Importantly, in this particular context divine action is
seen as a cause that stands against and supersedes ordinary natural
causes that figure in mechanistic explanations. Kant’s occasionalist
critique thus leaves untouched the status of divine action that es-
tablishes the natural laws themselves and the particles of matter
that then act in line with these laws. For strictly speaking such an
actiondeven if it included the “initial organisation of plants and
animals” (2:115, 157) e does not interfere with the order of natural
causation, but renders possible precisely the kind of framework
through which we can understand nature in mechanistic terms.
If we approach the question of species generation from this
angle, we can see that for Kant it was rather important to think of
nature as active. This is because only if nature is seen as able to
generate change and development out of its own resources can we
avoid the explanatory gap that invites reflections on the activity of a
divine being as a supplementary supernatural cause. The belief that
we must leave enough conceptual space for an activity of nature is
not only the message of Kant’s occasionalist critique in the Only
Possible Argument; it also ultimately informs Kant’s engagement
with the problem of animal generation in the third Critique.
Kant here writes that “if one assumes occasionalism of the
production of organic beings, then everything that is natural is
entirely lost” (5:422, 291). On this position, God is seen as imme-
diately involved in “commingling in every impregnation” (5:422,
291). An alternative position, Kant explains, is prestabilism, which
can be subdivided into two groups: “the system of generatings as
mere educts” that he calls “individual preformation” and the
“system of generatings as products” that he labels “generic pre-
formationism”. While for Kant the first position, similar to occa-
sionalism, attributes to the divine being an overly active role each
time life is formed, he positively acknowledges that the second “left
something to nature in order not to fall into complete hyperphysics,
23
Eric Watkins stresses that for Kant the sphere occupied by a physical body is
constituted by relational properties of intrinsically active substances; see Watkins
(2003), p. 24. Kant’s natural laws, as I conceive them, are the expressions of the
activity of monads and for this reason count as having their roots in a monad’s
intrinsic properties.
71
which could dispense with all natural explanation” (5:423, 292). To
ensure that nature is able to act out of itself and without the help of
supernatural divine action can thus be seen as a strong motive that
drives Kant’s attempt to carve up the conceptual landscape of the
eighteenth-century life sciences in his own particular way.
I have argued above that in the case of inorganic matter the
forces that make it possible for nature to act out of itself are best
conceived as blind in the sense that they lack understanding, will
and the ability to give their actions a self-chosen direction. Being
bound by nature thus seems to stand for the absence of those mind-
like powers that are characteristic of divine action. When dealing
with organic forces, Kant adopts a slightly different stance. In The
Dreams of a Spirit Seer (1766) Kant remarks, “all life is based on the
inner capacity to determine itself voluntarily” (2:328n, 315). This
suggests that Kant thinks of life as a force that enables living beings
to perform spontaneous action at will.
To be sure, with this reference to “natures whose own power of
will is capable of spontaneously determining and modifying itself”
(2:328n, 315) something mind-like enters Kant’s concept of force.
Yet Kant seems to back-pedal immediately after having articulated
this thought, stating “those immaterial beings which contain the
ground of animal life are different from those which comprise
reason in their spontaneous activity and are called spirits” (2:328n,
315). Kant thus suggests that there is a clear line to be drawn be-
tween the spontaneity of animals and that of human beings, who
are endowed with reason and for this reason also capable of per-
forming intentional action in line with their will and
understanding.
If we abstract from this rather specific context, however, it be-
comes clear that it is not the contrast between the ability to act at
will and the ability to act in line with reason that matters to Kant’s
conception of animal life. Rather, it is the manner in which the
concept of spontaneity becomes embedded in a structure that
limits the freedom of organic forces. Evidence for the claim that
Kant thinks of organic forces as constrained is provided by his use
of the concepts of “Keime” and “Anlagen”. Both concepts, as Sloan
has shown, essentially structure Kant’s intellectual trajectory from
a more rigid conception of fixed predispositions and germs that
constrain organisms in their capacity to propagate the species (as in
Kant’s three essays on race from 1775, 1785 and 1788) to a more
flexible conception that stresses the productive and purposive
character of organic forces in the third Critique. A figure that
crucially influenced this trajectory was Blumenbach. Sloan writes:
“In the wake of the Blumenbach encounter, what we see is that
Kant dramatically weakened his appeal to the preformation of
germs. This is immediately evident when we examine the word
frequencies of the Kritik der Urteilskraft of 1790.” The concepts of
“Anlage and Naturanlage. have now taken on a new dynamic role.
No longer are they static structural relations of parts. Anlagen have
become ‘inner purposive predispositions’ [inneren zweckmässigen
Anlagen]. Kant also has now deemed his new account of develop-
ment a theory of epigenesis.”24
Despite this move towards more flexibility concerning the
specific manner in which organic forces can articulate themselves
in their pursuit of specific purposes, it is important to note that
even in the account of the third Critique organic activity remains
essentially constrained. Commenting on the virtues of Blu-
menbach’s conception of a “formative drive”, Kant points out that
the “self-preserving purposiveness” of organic forces stands under
“the guidance and direction” of the “inscrutable principle of an
original organisation” (5:424, 292-3). What this means is that the
24
Sloan (2002), p. 248.
72 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
ultimate direction and scope of the changes produced by the forces
of organic life are preconfigured. And this explains why, according
to Kant, experience has so far not given any evidence of the capacity
of a species to morph into another (generatio heteronyma); all that
could be observed is that racial variation occurs within the confined
limits of one species (generatio homonyma).25
If we now return to the task of specifying what kind of forces
Kant is ready to grant to organisms, we can say that these forces are
spontaneous and productive in that they are able to produce racial
variations in line with the demands of a given environment. Yet
these forces are ultimately constrained: they act to preserve the
species as a whole despite all racial variations within that species.
The reason for this is that organic matter has originally been
configured to behave this way. Since this is so, the forces operative
in organic nature cannot be considered as mind-like in the sense in
which I have defined this term above. What counts as mind-like is
associated with the creative actions of a divine being endowed with
understanding and will; and, most importantly, with the manner in
which this being acts, namely in line with the principle of choice
which gives it freedom to realise its intentions at will. Organic
matter lacks all of this, even though it might appear purposive in its
goal directedness to preserve its own kind.26 Most significantly, it
has no ability to choose its course of action, which is manifested by
its inability to produce variations that take it beyond the confined
limits of its own species. What guides its activity instead is fixed
through the “inscrutable principle of original organisation”. Of
course, the fact that Kant invokes this principle straightforwardly
points us to an agency external to organic matter itself, which, if it
did not organise organic matter in a specific way, would make it
impossible for this matter to perform its reproductive purpose.27
With this conception of a hidden agency in place, we once again
come very close to the kind of occasionalism that Kant attacked in
his adaptation of Maupertuis’ argument. Yet, as has been suggested
above, Kantdat least during his pre-critical phasedcould counter
this objection by thinking of original configuration as the ground
that makes it possible for the universe to emerge. Original config-
uration then need not be seen as an intervention in the course of
nature, but as something that enables organic matter to behave in
line with the laws of nature, once its first particles have been
created with the capacity to produce life within the confined limits
of the relevant species.
Here, then, it turns out that for Kant there is no contradiction
involved in thinking of the blind mechanism of nature as the gov-
erning principle of the universe, while at the same time conceiving
25
See 5:419n, 288. In his first essay on race Of the Different Races of the Human
Beings (1775) Kant expresses the point like this: “This care of Nature to equip her
creature through hidden inner provisions for all kinds of future circumstances, so
that it may preserve itself and be suited to the difference of the climate or the soil, is
so admirable. In the migration and transplanting of animals and plants it creates the
semblance of new kinds; yet they are nothing other than variations and races of the
same species the germs and natural predispositions of which have merely devel-
oped on occasion in various ways over long periods of time” (2:434, 89).
26
As mentioned before, for Kant animals are endowed with the ability for
spontaneous, voluntary action. So it might be argued that for Kant animals do in
fact have mind-like forces. Yet it is clear that animals cannot perform the same kind
of voluntary actions as humans: animals follow their instincts and in this sense
merely follow the laws of nature rather than act out of the principle of choice and in
line with their intentions and beliefs. So if having a “mind-like” force essentially
means to be able to choose one’s actions (in line with practical reason), there is no
problem here.
27
It is interesting to note that in the first Critique Kant stresses that when we
ascribe to “some organs of an animal’s body an end” (A688/B716, 615), as some
anatomists would do, it is the idea of an intelligent creator God that enables us to
see purpose in nature (A687/B717, 615). Having reason and being able to act on
purpose (which are here identified as attributes of God) thus become enabling
conditions for the possibility of attributing purpose to nature.
of organic and inorganic matter as endowed with an active force.
Indeed, it is precisely this combination that enables him to offer an
account of creation that dispenses with divine interaction, on the
one hand, and avoid the chaos view of the Epicurean materialists, on
the other. This is because it is the activity of matter, and not the
presence of a divine or any other mind-like force, that explains how
processes of creation are continuously driven forward to realise the
order and beauty that Epicureans would be hard-pressed to explain.
Although Kant’s middle position successfully combines the
concept of orderly creation with a mechanistic account of nature,
one problem remains. If it is Kant’s intention to provide an account
of generation that keeps the realm of created matter free of mind-
like agency, Kant’s account of monadic interaction as the meta-
physical ground on which his concept of matter rests makes it hard
to see how this can be achieved. Monads are as immaterial as souls,
which makes it at least conceivable that they are organised upon
the same principles and exhibit the same kind of forces.28 Kant
himself concedes this point in the Inquiry Concerning the Distinct-
ness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (1764), where
he explains that without further proof it cannot be ruled out those
physical monads are different in kind from the monads that
constitute souls:
I admit that the proof that we have that the soul is not material
is a good one. But take care that you do not infer from this that
the soul is not of a material nature. For this latter claim is uni-
versally taken to mean not merely that the soul is not matter,
but also that it is not a simple substance of the kind which could be
an element of matter. (2:293, 267)
To achieve this proof, two things would need to be shown: first,
that a spirit “does not exist in space” and, second, that “when
combined with other thinking beings” it fails to “constitute some-
thing extended, a conglomerate” (2:293, 267). However, according
to Kant, such a proof does not exist.29
Only three years after this statement, Kant engages more pro-
foundly with the question of how to distinguish material and
immaterial substances. In The Dreams of a Spirit Seer (1766) he ex-
plains that a fundamental problem of dealing with spirits is that “the
influence of incorporeal beings. can at best be acknowledged to
exist” (2:331, 319), while “the nature” of the operation that the in-
fluence of incorporeal beings exerts “and the extent of its effects.
will never be explained” (2:331, 319). For Kant the aim of the Dreams
is therefore not to provide a positive account of the nature of spirits
and the principles upon which their interactions are organised, but
to illustrate what happens when we conceive of the soul’s actions in
analogy to the “universal activity of matter” (2:331, 319).
Two things are interesting about this approach. First, Kant’s use
of the method of analogy is mainly negative: far from trying to
establish that activity in the spirit realm is similar to the kind of
activity governing the realm of matter, Kant tells us that they are
distinguished by a fundamental difference. Thus he claims that, for
all we can tell, the forces of spirits are organised in accordance with
free “moral impulses” (2:335, 322) that follow the rule of the general
will (2:335, 322), while the activity of matter is conceived in rela-
tion to the natural law.30
28
Cf. Friedman (1992), p. 28.
29
See Redding (2009), especially chapter 5, for the claim that Kant’s difficulties to
think of the soul in substantial terms finally led him to develop a quasi-functionalist
account of mind.
30
Thus, Kant asks: “Are we, then, to suppose that it would not in the same way be
possible to represent the phenomenon of the moral impulses in thinking natures,
who are reciprocally related to each other, as the effect of a genuinely active force, in
virtue of which spirit natures exercise an influence on each other?” (2:335, 322).
 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
The second interesting point about Kant’s approach is that
through his use of the method of analogy, he in principle does
exactly what he later criticises in his reviews of Herder’s Ideen. As
we have seen, Kant here objects to Herder’s attempt to explain
what reason is by invoking invisible powers that can nowhere be
observed to exist. This objection is followed by the consideration
that “at least with respect to the former [that is, forces affecting
organisation] we can become acquainted with its laws through
experience, although their causes will remain unknown” (8:54,
132). In the Dreams Kant himself becomes guilty of overstepping
the boundaries set by the realm of experience. Based on vague
analogies and deprived of the possibility to study the principles of
interaction of invisible spirits, he claims that these principles are as
lawful as those organising the interaction between physical bodies
in that they follow the rule of the general will.31
Certainly, Kant takes himself to be ironic when speculating
about the interactions of spirits. As mentioned before, his professed
aim is to reveal the absurdity of a dualist conception of body and
mind (2: 327, 314), which, according to Kant, is based on the
mistaken form of analogical reasoning that he himself employs in
the Dreams. More precisely, the problem would be that by extrap-
olating from the behaviour of matter to the actions of the mind, it
becomes impossible to “recognise with certainty any distinctive
characteristic mark of the soul, which distinguishes it from the raw
elementary matter of corporeal natures” (2:326-7, 314).
Kant here clearly returns to the problem that he already artic-
ulated in the Inquiry, that is, the problem that we cannot rule out
that souls are composed of the same metaphysical material that
also constitutes matter. However, without being able to establish
such a difference, Kant warns, “the idea jokingly proposed by
Leibniz that in drinking our coffee we may perhaps be swallowing
atoms destined to become human souls” is no longer “a laughing
matter” (2:327, 314). This is because the “I” becomes “subject to the
common fate of material nature” (2:327, 314). For Kant this not only
means that the immortality of the soul can no longer be defended,
but also that we can no longer understand how we have come into
existence in the first place: “Just as [the “I”] had by chance been
drawn from the chaos of all the elements in order to animate an
animal machine, why should it not in some time in the future, when
the contingent combination has been dissolved, return once more
to that chaos of the elements?” (2:327, 314).
Despite all irony, this passage clearly shows that Kant is serious
about one thing: he does not want the mind to be absorbed into the
realm of matter, because this would engender a conception of hu-
man beings as having evolved out of contingent chaos. Note that in
this context contingency and chaos are not simply invoked in order
to criticise the Epicurean view, which according to Kant fails to
acknowledge the lawfulness of the created universe. Rather, the
problem for the conception of the “I” is constituted by the fact that
it is not organised by an ordering principle that is specifically
different from the organisational principle of matter.
3. Formation of the human being
The same thought, namely that it is wrong to see the existence
of human life as a mere product of the organisational principles of
31
It is true that the critical Kant changed his mind about the manner in which we
can reconstruct the laws that govern the use of reason and will. Yet what he keeps
arguing is that there are these laws. Thus in the first Critique he suggests that reason
follows the so-called “laws of freedom” (A802/B830, 675-6), which tell us “what
ought to happen” (A 801/B829, 675) rather than what actually happens. He therefore
seems to remain committed to the dual realm conception of the Dreams that
conceives of the laws structuring human mental activity in analogy to the laws of
nature.
73
matter, is already present in the final chapter of the Universal
Natural History. Kant here experiments with the idea that human
life could have emerged in other parts of the universe. Although
this thought experiment is apparently intended to offer an inte-
grated account of the place of human beings in the world of created
matter, Kant never goes as far as to claim that human reason could
have evolved out of the bare movements of matter. He writes that
there is an “infinite distance between the capacity to think and the
motion of matter, between the reasoning mind and the body”
(1:355, 298).
The reason for this distance has to do with the process through
which humans come into existence, which, according to Kant,
happens when God joins the immortal soul to a particular lump of
matter. Through this joining, the soul is not only bound to a certain
place within the space-time coordinates of the universe, but also
constrained in how well it can exercise its rational powers. He
writes: “The powers of the human soul are restricted and hemmed
in by the obstacles of the coarse matter to which they are most
intimately bound” (1:358, 300).32
Since in the Kantian universe the quality of matter varies in
proportion to its distance to the sundwhich in turn determines the
forces of attraction and repulsion through which bodies with a
specific density are formeddthis account suggests that the “ability
to think rationally” (1:355, 298) is regulated by environmental
conditions, namely those in which the human body finds itself
when being attached to the soul (1:358, 300). Interestingly, Kant’s
analysis here already relies on the principles taught in his course on
physical geography (regularly taught from 1756 until his retirement
in 1796), parts of which were later recast as the lectures on an-
thropology (between 1772 and 1773).33 Thus he regards climate,
soil, light conditions, and in this specific case the density of matter,
as shaping influences on human beingsdnot only on their physical
constitution, but also their mental powers due to the constraints
that the body imposes on the soul’s functioning.
For our purposes, this account matters as it clearly historicises
human reason in relation to the space-time coordinates of the body.
Of course, this historicisation operates within well-defined limits,
since the environment of a given human being only determines
how well reason functions, but not that a particular lump of matter
can think rationally.34 In this way, Kant’s account groups flexible
elements around the fixed kernel of a soul that, by God’s provi-
dence, has been placed into specific spatiotemporal conditions
which in turn set the parameters for the development of the power
to think.
It is well known that Kant’s Universal Natural History served
Herder as a model for his This too a Philosophy of the History of
Formation (1774), which is commonly seen as a condensed version
of the Ideen, that is, the very work that Kant criticises for the claim
that reason has evolved from a force present in all animate and
inanimate objects of the universe. As we can now see, in the Uni-
versal Natural History Kant himself experimented with the thought
that the power of to think rationally can be enhanced by environ-
mental conditions. However, as has been pointed out, for him
environmental conditions can only regulate the powers of the soul
in that they determine the properties of the human body, but they
fall short of enabling rationality as such.
In the Ideen Herder approaches the relationship between body
and mind from the opposite direction. While suggesting that nature
32
Also see 1:355, 298.
33
This account also figures in Determination of a Concept of a Human race (1785).
34
Kant’s historical account of reason in his Conjectural Beginning of History
(1786) offers a slightly different story.
74 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
formed humans after everything else had been created (Ideen, 115),
35
he stresses that this last act of creation was completed only at the
moment that nature commanded, “Stand up on the Earth! Left to
yourself, you would be a beast among beasts; but through my
special aid and care, walk erect and be the God of beasts” (Ideen,
115).36
Although this myth of creation purports to tell us that human
beings come into existence by design and all at once, that is,
without gradual developments taking place after their first for-
mation, it is crucial to note that Herder describes nature as creating
human beings out of precisely those materials out of which it had
already formed all other beings. This, as well as the temporal
dimension invoked when comparing the not-yet reasonable ape to
the already rational human being, indicates an important conti-
nuity (Ideen, 128-9). Rather than suggesting that one act of creation
carried out at one point in time is responsible for the division of the
species, Herder insinuates that matter can continue to form itself,
and thereby ultimately give way to something as unique as the life
of rational agents.37
The claim that continuities between humans and the rest of
creation play a major role in Herder’s thinking is supported by the
consideration that for Herder it is not the upright posture itself that
renders “humans human”, but the “new organisation of forces”
(Ideen, 115). Implied in this account is that even before humans
stood up, their existence was governed by forces similar to those
found in other animals: after all, what changes with the ability to
walk upright is the organisation of forces, and not that there are
such forces.38
For Herder, forces are “organisational principles” (Ideen, 115) of
nature that, similar to Caspar Friedrich Wolff’s vis essentialis,
constitute the so called “Lebensprinzip”.39 Importantly, for Herder
this principle of life is observable not only in organic matter but in
the entire universe as it actively drives forward on-going creation
(see for instance Ideen 21-32 and 166).40 And even though he
stresses that the principle of life is different from the force of
reason, Herder is clear that all forces connect and communicate
with one another [in Verbindung stehen] (Ideen, 273). This once
again stresses that in the Ideen Herder thinks of reason in conti-
nuity with the forces of matter and organic life rather than in op-
position to them.
35
In the preface to the Ideen Herder specifies that “Natur” is not distinct from God
but that “Gott ist Alles in seinem Werken,” Ideen 17. See Lord (2009), especially pp.
55-58, for an analysis of Herder’s concept of God as an active dynamic being
immanent in nature.
36
My own translation. Here is the original: “Steh auf von der Erde! Dir selbst
überlassen, wärest du Tier wie andere Tiere; aber durch meine besondere Huld und
Liebe gehe aufrecht und werde der Gott der Tiere.”
37
The contrast to Kant’s position here becomes most apparent, as Reinhard
Brandt notes: “Kant all through his life rejected the effort in the sphere of natural
history to discern a natural transition from merely mechanical to organic nature,”
Brandt (1980), p. 81.
38
In Herder’s 1772-account of the origin of language, he claims that humans are
endowed with a special kind of innate awareness that then evolves into fully-
fledged reason through the acquisition of language. Herder here also denies the
continuity between animal expressions and the human use of linguistic signs; cf.
DeSouza (2012) and Lifschitz (2012), pp. 1-6 and chapter 7. The early Herder thus
seems to be much closer to Kant who understands reason as an innate principle (or
germ) implanted in us by God than the Herder of the Ideen who gestures towards a
conception of reason that evolves out of the general forces of nature.
39
See Roe (2002), pp. 46-50, and Zammito (2003), p. 87, for an analysis of Wolff’s
influence on Herder.
40
As Sloan notes, this is a crucial difference between the HerdereWolff version of
epigenesis and the version Blumenbach puts forth when restricting the efficacy of
the Bildungstrieb to the living domain; see Sloan (2002), p. 248. See Wolff (1764) for
an account of the vis essentialis as capable to produce organic matter out of inor-
ganic matter.
In Kant’s “Review of Moscati’s Of the Corporeal Essential Differences
between the Structure of Animals and Humans” (1771) we find impor-
tant parallels to Herder’s account of the Ideen. Similar to Herder, Kant
claims that our posturedKant here refers to our two-footednessdhas
important implications for our lives in nature and society. However,
different from Herder, Kant argues that the fact that humans have
reason cannot be explained through a change in their posture alone,
but must be seen as a result of the presence of a specific germ:
The first foresight of nature was that the human being as an an-
imal be preserved for himself and his kind; and for that the position
for which is most suited to his internal build, the situation of the
fetus and the preservation in dangers is the four-footed one; but
that there also has been placed in him a germ of reason through
which, if the latter develops, he is destined for society, and by
means of which he assumes permanently the most suitable po-
sition for society, viz. the two-footed one. (2:425: 80-1)
With this conception of reason as a germ, Kant in principle
denies those continuities Herder is keen to stress. Since beings
come into existence with or without the relevant germ, there is no
way for them to develop out of themselves and by way of a reor-
ganisation of an already present force the power of reason, which
then enables them to live a life in society.
Furthermore, by invoking germs, Kant gestures towards a model
of development that we have already encountered in the Universal
Natural History. As we have seen, he here thinks of development
and change as effects of the motion of matter that has been
configured in such a way that it only drives out determinations in
line with the divine plan. The point of this account is, as I have
argued, to make sure that activity that resembles the purposive,
free action of a divine creator mind cannot enter into the realm of
created matter.
Now, the same logic seems to underlie Kant’s account of reason
as a germ. Germs, similar to Kant’s programmed parcels of matter,
ensure a development that unfolds in accordance with the de-
terminations that God has originally implanted in the human body.
The conception of reason as a germ therefore ensures that reason
can emerge only in those creatures that God has chosen, but cannot
evolve out of the forces of nature itself.41 Kant’s germ of reason thus
contributes to the conception of the species borders as having been
established once and for all at the beginning of history, namely
when all the relevant germs were originally distributed among the
various parcels of matter. It thereby blocks the possibility that
animalsdwhich, as we have seen in the previous section, also
received a specific kind of germ that makes it possible for them to
reproduce life within the confined limits of their own spe-
ciesdcould morph into human beings due to unforeseeable cir-
cumstances produced by freely unfolding dynamics of generation.42
To be sure, humans endowed with the germ of reason infuse
into the realm of created matter precisely the kind of activity that
Kant’s argument for the mechanical origin of the universe is
intended to rule out. This is because reason enables free action in
line with one’s intentions and in this sense resembles the agency
characteristic of a divine being that acts on the principles of
41
Kant makes the same point in his lectures on metaphysics, stressing that God is
the creator of the soul: “All generation of substance is produced ex nihilo, creation;
because before the substance there was nothing. A creature itself, however, does
not itself have a creative, but only a developmental [bildende] force, i.e., [the ability
to divide or compound things that are already given. There is no alternative,
accordingly, but to assume the soul is preformed [praeformiert], however it may be
with the creation of the body,”(29:760-1).
42
Cf. Zammito (2003), p. 79; Sloan (2002), p. 245.
 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
freedom and purpose.43 However, on Kant’s account, it is not nature
but God that gave humans the ability to reason and act freely, such
that he can still maintain that nature is devoid of the particular kind
of activity that can produce out of its own accord human reason.44
By referring to germs rather than forces that arise independently of
such germs, Kant is thus able to explain how it is possible that
humans are capable of an activity that is very different from any
other kind of activity in the universe, however without thereby
attributing free agency that is organised around intentions and the
principle of choice to nature itself.45
Bearing these connections in mind, we can now see that in
Kant’s review of the Ideen more is at stake than the complaint that
Herder believes in life forces, although such forces are invisible.
Kant seems to be particularly concerned about the fact that Herder
conceives of forces as freely creating agents. Herder’s account thus
directly counteracts Kant’s sustained attempt to keep the forces of
matter locked in the general dynamics of the mechanism of nature
by conceiving of them as gaining their determination from a divine
being the moment they were created. So strictly speaking, Kant’s
forces do not determine themselves; and this crucially distin-
guishes them from Herder’s forces. As we have seen, Herder argues
that forces produce out of their own accord, and without having
been configured to do so, lifedand even the capacity for rational
thought when they enable humans to adopt an upright position.
4. The death of active matter
The problem with Kant’s account of course is that we cannot
know whether, metaphysically speaking, the activity of matter is
really different in kind from the activity we find in humans, who in
virtue of having reason and will can act for certain purposes and in
a self-determined way. In order to establish this difference, it could
perhaps be argued that there are two different kinds of substance
that, as Kant claims in the Dreams, accord with two different sets of
laws: that of the general will and that of nature. However, Kant
himself denounces this argument as an absurd outgrowth of the
attempt to think of the soul in analogy to matter. He thus remains
with next to nothing in his hands to defend the claim that the ac-
tivity of matter is of an entirely different nature than the activity
characteristic of free, purposive agency.
Kant’s decision to drop the concept of active matter in The
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) removes this
problem. He now defines matter as movable in space and unable to
determine its own motion and rest. On this account, activity and life
go together, while desiring, thinking, and feeling pleasure and
paindas well as having representations more generallydare
invoked to specify what this activity is:
Life is the faculty of a substance to determine itself to act from an
internal principle, of a finite substance to change, and of a material
substance [to determine itself] to motion and rest, as change of its
43
Reinhard Brandt calls this capacity for free agency “the vocation (Bestimmung)
of the human being” to emancipate itself “from nature through self-determination
(Selbst-Bestimmung),” Brandt (1980), p. 94.
44
As we have seen, in his essay On the Use of Teleological Principles (1788) (also see
Determination of the Concept of a Human Race from 1785 and On the Different Races
of the Human Species from 1775) Kant also invokes “Keime” to explain the purpo-
siveness of organisms and their ability for variation and adaptation. However, since
for Kant “Keime” are divinely ordained and cannot be seen as the products of an
evolving nature, here too nature is seen as unable to produce out of itself the ability
to pursue ends.
45
C. Zumbach characterises Kant’s account of the causality of reason as a play of
free, teleological causes, and he contrasts this system of causality with “the me-
chanical conception of nature which lacks this idea of a free cause,” Zumbach
(1984), p. 83.
75
state. Now we know no other internal principle in a substance for
changing its state expect desiring, and no other internal activity at
all except thinking, together with what depends on it, the feeling
of pleasure and displeasure, a desire or willing. (4:544, 251-2)
Importantly, activity is now quite generally taken to stand for
mind-like, voluntary activity that follows one’s own desires and
thoughts. This is precisely the kind of activity that Kant was already
at pains to rule out as a cause of creation in the Universal Natural
History and the Only Possible Argument. Yet in contrast to his earlier
writings, Kant no longer allows for a second kind of activity, that is,
an activity that blindly unfolds as a result of the fact that matter has
appropriately been configured by a divine creator. After all, for the
Kant of the Foundations all matter is dead, and for this reason
cannot act, not even in the sense that it drives out the programme
that the divine being has implanted in it. He writes: “The inertia of
matter is, and means, nothing else than its lifelessness, as matter in
itself” (4: 544, 251).
The reason for this change might well be, as Eric Watkins has
argued, that Kant’s conception of internal magnitude challenges
the claim that space is infinitely divisible.46 A further reason might
be, as Beiser has claimed, that through Kant’s engagement with
Herder’s Ideen, he could no longer ignore the “thorny issue of
teleology”47, since Herder’s forces are able to freely create for
certain purposes. These two interpretations can be connected if we
return to the worry that Kant articulated in the Inquiry and
repeated in the Dreams. That is, the worry that we cannot establish
that there is a fundamental difference between physical monads
and souls, and that we therefore cannot rule out that in drinking
our coffee we “swallow atoms destined to become human souls”
(2:327, 314). This possibility emerges because, by being composed
of the same kind of material, it is conceivable that something
physical can generate out of itself the features we take to be char-
acteristic of souls. 48
Approached from this angle, the pressing problem is not to rule
out that nature is purposive per se; nor merely to explain how the
internal magnitude of something unextended like the physical
monad can constitute infinitely divisible space. On the reading
developed here, both accounts have a deeper motivation, namely to
block a conception of reason, rationality and the ability to act freely
and for certain purposes as having evolved out of the dynamics of
matter. After all, if souls and physical monads are granted the same
kind of internal magnitude, they are granted the same kind of force.
And this renders it possible to think that the purposiveness and
rationality characteristic of human action have developed out of
something which is perhaps not yet a fully-fledged principle of
rationality and purposiveness in itself, but which already contains
the seeds of it.
As we have seen, Kant’s early writings already show a good deal
of determination in ruling out that mind-like, intentional forces that
operate upon the principle of choice are at work in created matter.
Such forces would introduce contingencies into nature that would
render it as unpredictable and chaotic as the Epicurean universe. For
the critical Kant, the need to rule out the possibility of freely acting
forces that pervade nature becomes even more pressing. If reason
developed out of the universal dynamics present in the realm of
46
See Watkins (2001), p. 142-145.
47
Beiser (1987), p. 153.
48
Of course, Kant cannot accept an account that leaves open the possibility of
inanimate matter continuously evolving to become organic and eventually human.
Zammito notes: “Nothing was more important to him, metaphysically or method-
ologically, than to police the boundaries between the organic and the inorganic,
and, again, between man and animal,” Zammito (2002), pp. 306-307.
76 A. Waldow / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 58 (2016) 67e76
matter, it would be formed by a world that could have been different,
so that reason could have been different too. Moreover, given that
the Kantian universe perpetually evolves, reason’s structure would
never stop changing in its communication with the particular space-
time coordinates of the ever-evolving universe within which it finds
itself. Reason would thus turn into a contingent product and could
no longer serve as a fixed point of reference, thereby undermining
the supposedly necessary structure of the Kantian Apriori on which
the possibility of objective knowledge depends.49
With these considerations in mind, it looks like Kant is not
exaggerating when claiming in the Foundations that hylozoism is
“the death of all natural philosophy” (4:544, 252). This position
admits of internal forces as constituents of matter, thereby leading
straightforwardly into the problem that ultimately undermines the
plausibility of Kant’s entire critical project.50 Given this funda-
mental threat, it seems less troublesome indeed to let go of the idea
that there are such things as active forces in nature. All the more so
at a point in Kant’s career when the principles of his critical phi-
losophy prevent him from invoking a divine being in order to flesh
out what it means for something to be active and yet to lack the
capacity for free purposive agency.
5. Conclusion
In the literature this last point is well acknowledged: that for the
critical Kant in order to prevent the collapse of his epistemological
project it is of utmost importance to rule out that reason could have
its origin in nature.51 Yet what is often overlooked is that there is an
important continuity between Kant’s pre-critical efforts to keep
nature free of mind-like, intentional powers and his later claim that
nature is devoid of active forces and purposes. This essay has tried
to bring into focus this continuity, while acknowledging that Kant’s
critical stance complicates his position. What is gained by this
interpretation is that we can better understand why it is, as Zam-
mito has put it, that even the critical Kant “tacitly” accepted the
existence of forces in nature. Based on the analysis of his early
writings we can say that Kant typically attacks the conception of
one specific kind of force: a force that behaves as an active, pur-
posive agent. Forces that operate within the fixed patterns of nat-
ural causation thus emerge as principally unproblematic and
therefore can be accepted in the non-committal way that is
compatible with Kant’s critical stance.
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If reason’s organisational structure were dependent on external circumstances,
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