Intermission

Before turning to The Only Possible Ground, the major metaphysical work of the early period, I shall review the main writings after the New Elucidation. The first to mention is the Physical Monadology (1756), Kant’s third public defense in Latin, after the master thesis On Fire (De igne, 1755) and the New Elucidation. ¹ Its full title is telling: “The Joint Use of Metaphysics and Geometry in Natural Philosophy, the First Example of Which Contains the Physical Monadology”. This continues the project of establishing a new metaphysics, of Leibnizian descent, compatible with Newtonian physics, ‘to bring together metaphysics with geometry’ (1:475). ² While the status of natural science, with its combination of experience and mathematics, has become unassailable, Kant argues, it does not follow that there is no room for metaphysics. Metaphysics is still needed to explain the origin and rationale of nature’s laws. Whoever pursues only the appearances of nature, without aiming for its first principles, will be like somebody who climbs up a mountain, believing that he will thus reach the sky (ibid.). Kant’s metaphor suggests that there is a dissociation between the sensible and the intelligible world. His equally metaphorical conclusion is that we need to dare sail on the ‘high sea’, instead of merely along the coast.