Abstract

abstract:

Kant famously claims that space is merely subjective rather than a mind-independent feature of reality in itself (A 26/B 42). However, one would be wrong to think that Kant's commitment to the subjectivity of space would lead him to regard as idle the debate between relationalists and substantivalists that raged in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. To the extent that commentators have considered the question of Kant's position on this debate, they have typically highlighted his relationalist commitments, focusing especially on his views on motion. However, there has been a relative neglect of the question of where Kant falls on other issues regarding the metaphysical relationship between space, bodies, and spatial relations. And there has been practically no discussion of Kant's justification for particular theses, their justificatory relations to one another, and their relationship to the subjectivity of space thesis. In this paper, I take up these matters.

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