Kant on the Nature of Space: Early Modern Debates about Space That Kant Be Ignored

James Messina

UW–Madison open-topic Resident Fellow (2025–2026)

Kant on the Nature of Space: Early Modern Debates about Space That Kant Be Ignored

According to a popular interpretation, Kant’s Critical philosophy—so-called because of the three famous Critiques he wrote in his old age—represents a radical break with the philosophical tradition, including the ideas of his earlier, pre-Critical self. Kant is the all-destroyer, the Robespierre of philosophy, doing to traditional metaphysics what the French revolution did to Louis XVI. As applied to the subject of space (the three-dimensional structure wherein bodies exist and move around), the popular interpretation says that the Critical Kant breaks completely with earlier views on the “nature of space,” that he is no longer offering anything like a “metaphysics of space,” in contrast to his benighted predecessors and earlier self.  As one commentator puts it, “rather than making an original move in the same game, Kant is playing a whole new game.”

That would be big if true. But I’m afraid it isn’t. In my book, Kant on the Nature and Possibility of Space, I show that the Critical Kant has a systematic, sophisticated metaphysics of space designed to address just the sorts of questions about space’s nature his predecessors and earlier self were interested in. To be sure, this metaphysics has its strange and radical elements, such as the idea that creatures like us only perceive objects in a spatial framework because of the constitution of our cognitive faculties—an idea that some have explained with the metaphor of “space spectacles” that we are born wearing and can’t remove. But despite its radical elements, Kant’s Critical metaphysics of space is also conservative; it is responsive to earlier debates about space, incorporates earlier ideas, and evolves gradually over the course of Kant’s very long career.

To go back to the game metaphor: while the Critical Kant’s Raumlehre contains some original moves, they are moves in a very old game. My presentation explores earlier debates about the nature of space—earlier moves in the old game, as it were. These debates, for instance the debate that unfolds in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, are crucial background for understanding the evolution of Kant’s theorizing about space. They Kant be ignored.

James Messina is a professor in the philosophy department at UW–Madison. Though he has published on various figures in early modern philosophy and German idealism, much of his research relates to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He is particularly interested in Kant’s views on space and time; philosophical methodology; the nature of perception; laws of nature; and on the possibility of metaphysics. He is currently working on a book on Kant’s theory of space—a topic which, fortunately, connects up with his other areas of interest! James likes to consider Kant’s views in the context of intellectual debates of his time period; he also likes to show how Kant’s mature “Critical” philosophy evolves out of his “pre-Critical” views. Some recently published, or soon-to-be-published, articles include: “Look Ma, No Hands!: A New Direction in Kant’s Metaphysics of Space Before Directions’ Incongruent Counterparts” (Journal of the History of Philosophy); “Kant on Transcendental Illusion and the Argument from Spinozism” (Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie); and “The Content of Kant’s Pure Category of Substance and Its Use on Phenomena and Noumena” (Philosophers’ Imprint).

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