What is possible and why? What is the difference between the merely possible and the actual? In Kants Modal Metaphysics Nicholas Stang examines Kants lifelong engagement with these questions and their role in his philosophical development. This is the first book to trace Kants theory of possibility all theway from the so-called pre-Critical writings of the 1750s and 1760s to the Critical system of philosophy inaugurated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Stang argues that the key to understanding both the change and the continuity between Kants pre-Critical and Critical theory of possibility is his transformation of the ontological question about possibility-what is it for a being to be possible?-into a question in transcendental philosophy-what is it to represent an object as possible? The first half of Kants Modal Metaphysics explores Kants pre-Critical theory of possibility, including his answer to the ontological question about the nature of possibility, his rejection of the traditional ontological argument for the existence of God, and his own argument that God must exist to ground all possibility. The second half examines why Kant reoriented his theory of possibility around the transcendental question, what this question means, and how Kant answered it in the Critical philosophy. Stang shows that, despite this reorientation, Kants basic scheme for thinking about possibility remains constant from the pre-Critical period through the Critical system. What had been an ontological theory of possible being is reinterpreted, in the Critical system, as a theory of how we must represent possible objects, given the nature of our intellect.

What is possible and why? What is the difference between the merely possible and the actual? In Kant's Modal Metaphysics Nicholas Stang examines Kant's lifelong engagement with these questions and their role in his philosophical development. This is the first book to trace Kant's theory of possibility all the way from the so-called 'pre-Critical' writings of the 1750s and 1760s to the Critical system of philosophy inaugurated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Stang argues that the key to understanding both the change and the continuity between Kant's pre Critical and Critical theory of possibility is his transformation of the 'ontological' question about possibility--what is it for a being to be possible?--into a question in 'transcendental philosophy'--what is it to represent an object as possible? The first half of Kant's Modal Metaphysics explores Kant's pre-Critical theory of possibility, including his answer to the ontological question about the nature of possibility, his rejection of the traditional ontological argument for the existence of God, and his own argument that God must exist to ground all possibility. The second half examines why Kant reoriented his theory of possibility around the transcendental question, what this question means, and how Kant answered it in the Critical philosophy. Stang shows that, despite this reorientation, Kant's basic scheme for thinking about possibility remains constant from the pre-Critical period through the Critical system. What had been an ontological theory of possible being is reinterpreted, in the Critical system, as a theory of how we must represent possible objects, given the nature of our intellect.

Nicholas F. Stang explores Kant's theory of possibility, from the precritical period of the 1750-60s to the critical system initiated by the 'Critique of Pure Reason' in 1781. He argues that the key to understanding the relationship between these periods lies in Kant's reorientation of an ontological question towards a transcendental approach.

Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality is a comprehensive study of Immanuel Kant's views on modal notions of possibility, actuality or existence, and necessity. Abacı locates Kant's views on these notions in their broader historical context, establishes their continuity and transformation across Kant's precritical and critical texts, and determines their role in the substance as well as the development of Kant's philosophical project. He makes two overarching claims. First, Kant's precritical views on modality, which appear in the context of his attempts to revise the ontological argument and are critical of the tradition only from within its prevailing paradigm of modality, develop into a revolutionary theory of modality in his critical period, radicalizing his critique of the ontotheological and rationalist metaphysical tradition. While the traditional paradigm construes modal notions as fundamental ontological predicates, expressing different modes or ways of being of things, Kant's theory consists in redefining them as subjective and relational features of our discursivity, expressing different modes in which our conceptual representations of objects are related to our cognitive faculty. Second, this revolutionary theory of modality is not only a crucial component of Kant's critical epistemology and his radical critique of rationalist metaphysics, but it is in fact directly constitutive of the critical turn itself, as Kant originally formulates the latter in terms of a shift from an ontological to an epistemological approach to the question of possibility. Thus, tracing the development of Kant's understanding of modality comes to fruition in an alternative reading of Kant's overall philosophical development.

The Actual and the Possible presents new essays by leading specialists on modality and the metaphysics of modality in the history of modern philosophy from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It revisits key moments in the history of modern modal doctrines, and illuminates lesser-known moments of that history. The ultimate purpose of this historical approach is to contextualise and even to offer some alternatives to dominant positions within the contemporary philosophy of modality. Hence the volume contains not only new scholarship on the early-modern doctrines of Baruch Spinoza, G. W. F. Leibniz, Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, but also work relating to less familiar nineteenth-century thinkers such as Alexius Meinong and Jan Lukasiewicz, together with essays on celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger and Bertrand Russell, whose modal doctrines have not previously garnered the attention they deserve. The volume thus covers a variety of traditions, and its historical range extends to the end of the twentieth century, addressing the legacy of W. V. Quine's critique of modality within recent analytic philosophy.

Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of ‘redemption’. He intended to provide a fortress protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, from the new mathematical science of nature, and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience, an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by his religious faith. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it). It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground (1763), one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. The present book takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thought-provoking interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics, set against the background of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy.

Highlighting Hegel's conceptual realism Hoffmann focuses on an undervalued move in his dialectic: inversion (μεταβολή). Easily proving completeness for Kant's table of categories, Hoffmann shows how metabolic dialectic substantiates Hegel's claim for his Logic: it is indeed the science of absolute form!