James Messina

Hidden Dimensions: Kant on the Nature and Grounding of Space

My book aims to provide a systematic interpretation of the complex details of Immanuel Kant’s revolutionary theory of space; the evolution of his views; the alternative theories to which he was responding; and the justification he provides to support his theory.

Kant infamously claims that space is a “subjective form of intuition.” Existing interpretations of this claim—call it the Form Thesis—have failed to see that it is  positioned within a more wide-ranging metaphysics of space. In a work called “Negative Magnitudes,” published many years before his famous Critical works, Kant articulates his aspirations for a metaphysics of space: “Metaphysics seeks to discover the nature of space and establish the ultimate grounds, in terms of which its possibility can be understood.”I think that Kant is trying to do exactly this in his mature Critical works. To give an account of the nature of space, I take it, is to say what space is essentially, including what its essential properties are (whether for example it is essentially three-dimensional or not); how it relates to the objects that exist in it (does it, for example, depend on those objects or not?); what conditions and constraints there are on objects having determinate places and shapes; and how the space of geometry is related to the space inhabited by bodies (the space of physics). To give an account of the ultimate grounds of the possibility of space, I take it, is to explain how space is able to exist and have the properties that it does. I explore the ways that Kant’s answers to these questions developed over time, and I explain why Kant came to think they could only be satisficatorily answered in the context of his Critical philosophy and by accepting the Form Thesis.

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).