Thought.

Language, and Ontology I Chapter 14

Leibniz's Spark
of Kant's Great Light:
An Application of Castaneda's Darwinian
Approach to the History of Philosophy

Ricardo J. Gomez
Department of Philosophy
California State University, Los Angeles, CA 90032, U.S.A.
rgomez@calstatela.edu

Newton's influence upon Kant, especially about space and time, has been recently em-
phasized. At the same time, there seems to be an increasing tendency to diminish Leib-
niz's relevance for Kant's philosophical views (Jaakko Hintikka is perhaps the head-
master of this contemporary trend; see especially Hintikka 1959, 1965, 1967, and Hin-
tikka & Remes 1974). In the extreme case, it is even alleged that Kant's adoption of
his transcendental point of view was a consequence of his complete departure from
Leibniz's epistemology and metaphysics (see, for example, Buroker 1981).
Hector-Neri Castafieda's lectures and writings on Leibniz, on the one hand, and
his Darwinian approach to philosophy and its history, on the other, led me to conclude
that (i) such underestimation of Leibniz's influence was the outcome of an Athenian
approach by Kant's scholars to Kant's texts on space and time, mainly from 1768 to
1786, (ii) the lack of a detailed Darwinian view of Kant's development since he read
Leibniz's New Essays in 1768 up to his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
(1786), made them miss the great impact on Kant of that reading. That impact was the
origin of "the great light" that Kant himself acknowledged that illuminated his thought
in 1769, and, mainly (iii) the uncovering of unity and coherence behind different texts
recommended by Castaneda invited me to look for a central core of agreement between
Leibniz and Kant on space and time. I found that common ground in their endorsement

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© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Thought, Language, and Ontology

of space and time as analytic wholes, a subtle and usually forgotten Kantian notion that
can be traced back to 1764, through his Dissertatio (1770) and First Critique (1781), up
to his book on the foundations of natural science (1786), where he explicitly acknowl-
edged having inherited that view of space and time as analytic wholes from Leibniz.
All in all, this shows that Castaneda's views on Leibniz and philosophical method
have enlightened my approach to the criticism of Kant's recent commentators and al-
lowed me to discover a missed link between Leibniz and Kant.

14.1 Eliminating Athenian Reconstructions of Kant's

Development from 1768 to 1770
Kant's views on space and time are a paradigmatic example that a philosopher's cor-
pus is not a coherent, self-consistent immutable (i.e., Athenian), whole, but " ... a Dar-
winian fauna, with all sorts of species of views, theses, half-systems, some agreeable
and coherent, others opposing one another ... " (Castaneda 1978: 92).
As a matter of fact, Kant defended at the beginning-from 1747 to 1763-a Leib-
nizian view of space. He explicitly abandoned such a view in 1768 because he wrongly
assumed that the Leibnizian relationist conception of it could not solve a certain ge-
ometrical puzzle. Such a puzzle is the one about the so-called incongruent counter-
parts. The latter are things allegedly identical in size, shape, and structure. However,
although they are identical in all respects, they are not congruent (e.g., the right and
left hand, a thing and its mirror image). They cannot be made to coincide either by a
translation or a rotation or a combination of both that transforms one of them into the
other. The paradoxical aspect consists in the fact that an intuitively perceivable differ-
ence exists between identical structures.
Kant claimed that the solution of such a puzzle required an appeal to the whole of
space. The difference between the incongruent counterparts must rest upon an inner
ground that cannot be explained from a difference among parts in each body relative
to one another because, in the case of the incongruent counterparts, everything is com-
pletely identical, although there is a further perceivable difference. Kant concluded
that such a specific difference can only be accounted for by referring the objects to the
whole space: "It is ... clear that in the constitution of bodies differences are to be found
which are real differences, and which are grounded. .. in their... absolute, primary
space" (Kant 1768 [1929: 28]). Kant claimed that, if the above conclusion is true, then
we must reject "the conception held by many philosophers ... that space only consists
in the order relations of the part of matter existing alongside one another" (Kant 1768
[1929: 27]). Consequently, contrary to Leibniz, space should be conceived as a sub-
stance existing prior to the objects filling it. 1

1The detailed evaluation of Kant's argument is beyond the scope of this short study. However, I want
to emphasize that Lawrence Sklar has convincingly argued that "the existence and nature of incongruent
counterparts are irrelevant to the issue of deciding whether the relationist or the absolutist views provide the

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 14/ Leibniz's Spark of Kant's Great Light

Castaneda would have claimed that this was a particular specious moment because,
on the one hand, it indicates that for the first time Kant abandoned Leibniz's relation-
ist view of space and time. On the other hand, from then onwards, space (and time)
will be conceived as an encompassing primary whole, "as a unity of which every ex-
tension must be regarded as a part" (Kant 1768 [1929: 20]). It has become a totum
analyticum, "one whose parts presuppose in their possibility their composition within
the whole," as Kant has explicitly stated in one of his Refiexionen in 1764 (Kant 1764
[1902, Refl. 3789]). The quoted text allows us to grasp the basic meaning of analytic
when applied to space (and time): Its priority makes it impossible to obtain it by the
additive synthesis of previously existing entities. 2
From my point of view, this analytic holistic character of space is the main legacy
of the 1768 treatise. However, it seems to run against my initial claim in so far as it
shows that Kant had conceived space as a totum analyticum before he read (in 1768)
Leibniz's New Essays. This is aggravated by the fact that Kant's first endorsement of
space as an analytic whole involved a radical departure from Leibniz's relationist view
of space.
The solution to my exegetical problem will come as a result of following one of
Castaneda's methodological recommendations: "Data must be collected in abundance
and subjected to careful and deep exegesis ... " (Castaneda 1980: 27).3
The study of those data shows that Kant's whole research on space in 1768 pursued
a Leibnizian program. Kant believed that he was going ahead with Leibniz's project
of analysis situ, although he did not know whether Leibniz had actually written a spe-
cific work devoted to that subject.4 Furthermore, although Kant endorsed an absolutist
view of space, he did not adopt Newton's view of it. On the contrary, he pointed out
that there were "no lack of difficulties surrounding the question of the reality of space,"
and obviously such reality was a distinguishing feature of Newton's space (Kant 1768
[1929: 20]). Moreover, for Kant, space was not, contrary to Newton, a concept of outer
sense: It is also clear that". .. absolute space. .. is rather a fundamental concept which

correct account of space" (Sklar 1974: 290). He has shown that the relational view can provide (contrary to
Kant's claim) the tools for referring to the whole of space in relational terms, and, in order to give an account
of the puzzle, all the crucial notions, like being left and right, being an intrinsic feature, and so forth, are
intelligible from a relationist point of view (Sklar 1974: 283-287).
2Therefore, space is not a totum syntheticum, that "one whose composition is grounded with respect to
its possibility, on the parts which can be imagined as not being compound" (Kant 1764 [1902, ReI!. 3789]).
3This is consistent with one of his methodological principles for devising philosophical theories that
1 consider applicable to the historical interpretation of philosophical claims, principles, and theories:
"Wittgenstein s admonition. One must philosophize, not upon few simple examples, but rather upon many
rich and complex data that can reveal many points and constraints on the patterns of reality or of experience
[or of interpretation of philosophical texts) (Castaileda 1980: 112).
4Kant 1768 [1929: 29]: "At least it seems probable that a certain body of mathematical teaching which
Leibniz called Analysis situs never existed save in intention." Kant was wrong about it. Leibniz had written
about the issue; see, for example, Leibniz 1976: 254-258. Kant actually thought that he was giving the
grounds for such analysis: "I am here seeking the first philosophical grounds of the possibility of that whose
magnitudes Leibniz proposed to determine in a mathematical manner ... (Kant 1768 [1929: 20]).

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makes all the sensations possible" «Kant 1768 [1929: 20]). As we see, Kant's view
seems to anticipate his conception of space as the fonn of sensibility rather than fol-
lowing Newton's objectivism.
Nevertheless, in 1768, Kant's space, though conceived as an analytic whole, does
not yet have all the distinguishing features that it will have once Kant adopted his tran-
scendental approach to knowledge. Kant's first transcendental work was his Dissel1a-
tio (1770). It clearly shows all the brightness provoked by the great light of 1769. And
the fundamental change, the outcome of that great light, was a particular conception
of space and time as analytic wholes, with an obvious Leibnizian flavor.
On the one hand. Kant distinguished there, in 1770, as did Leibniz in his New Es-
says, between the phenomenal and intelligible worlds. On the other hand, the primal
holistic character of space and time follows (already in 1770 as well as in the First
Critique) from Kant's doctrine of limitation, consisting in the thesis that parts of space
and time are boundaries or limits represented within the pre-given wholes of space and
time respectively: "For it is only when both infinite space and time are given, that any
definite space and time are assignable by limiting" (Kant 1770 [1929: 72]). Besides,
the main notes ascribed by Kant to space and time are totally consistent with the an-
alytic character of both space and time: (i) Space (time) are intuitions (not concepts),
because analytic wholes have parts in them (and not examples under them), and this is a
defining characteristic, according to Kant, of pure human intuitions. (ii) Space (time)
can function as fonns of sensible intuition because they are analytic wholes. There
must apriorily be assumed a single whole to which one can refer any position in space
(instant oftime) related to other positions (instants): "For what you speak of as several
places are only parts of the same boundless space related to one another by a fixed po-
sition" (Kant 1770 [1968: 68]). Finally, (iii) if space and time are fonnal, they must be
internal to the knowing subject (subjective): "For the objects do not strike the senses
in virtue of their fonn .... So for the various things an object which affect the sense to
coalesce into some representational whole. there is needed an internal principle in the
mind" (Kant 1770 [1968: 55]).
Let us remember that, up to 1768. space and time were objective relational wholes.
In 1768, they became analytic wholes, but conceived as absolute. After the great light
of 1769, they are conceived, because they are analytic wholes, as the fonn of the phe-
nomenal world and as pure intuitions. As a consequence, they became subjective and
constitutive of the phenomenal world.
Now I can make sense of Kant's dictum: "The year of 1769 gave me a great light"
(Erdmann 1884, Refl. 4). First, that light was sparked by Kant's reading in 1768 of
Leibniz's New Essays. Second, that light shed new brightness on his conception of
space and time.
Leibniz (New Essays) explicitly linked the part-whole relation with the concept of
space: "Indeed my view is rather that the idea of extension is posterior to those of
whole and part" (Leibniz 1768 [1981, §103]). The explicit connection between space
(time) and analytic wholes was made by Leibniz in a letter to Remond (July 1714):

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 141 Leibniz's Spark of Kant's Great Light

"Space, far from being a substance, is not a being .... Within the ideal or the contin-
uum the whole precedes the part" (Leibniz 1714 [1887: 622]). Furthermore, Leibniz
made the specific relation between whole and part (the key element that, according to
Kant, differentiates analytic from synthetic totalities) the basic mark for differentiating
what is continuous and ideal from what belongs to the world of substance: "Among the
real, i.e. substantial things, the simple precedes the aggregate, and the parts are given
actual and prior to the whole" (Leibniz 1714 [1887: 622]).
In fact, in the New Essays, Leibniz had already made the precedence of the sim-
ple over the aggregate the distinguishing feature of real entities: "any real aggregate
presupposes simple substances or real entities" (Leibniz 1768 [1981, §378]). Then, ev-
erything that Leibniz was saying about space and time in his letter to Remond (1714)
was consistent with his views on the issue in his New Essays (1768). For example, in
both writings, Leibniz preserves the distinction between the ideal domain of the con-
tinuum and the real domain of substances: in both, the archetypical cases of continu-
ous entities (space and time) are made dependent upon the whole-part relation; in both,
space and time are ideal entities; and, in both, the explicit distinguishing feature of real
aggregates is to be synthetic wholes composed of prior simple substances.
None of these features were present in Kant's writings before 1769. And all of them
were present in Kant's Dissertatio (1770). 5

14.2 The Darwinian Approach and the Existence of Conflicting

Data
It is obvious that to claim that there was a crucial influence of Leibniz upon Kant on
space and time does not imply that there were not fundamental differences between
both philosophers about that issue.
For example, Kant, even in that first work (1770) in which he endorsed Leibniz's
view of space and time as analytic wholes, dismissed Leibniz's relationist conception
of them. There, Kant evaluated Leibniz's view as one that "is in headlong conflict with
phenomena themselves, the most faithful interpretation of all phenomena, geometry"
(Kant 1770 [1968: 21]).
Furthermore, Kant conceived space and time as intuitions, contrary to Leibniz's
view of them as concepts. By the way, Kant's reflections from 1768 to 1770 reveal
how he was gradually abandoning Leibniz's view of space and time as being simple
concepts. Thus, in one of them, we read: ''The idea of space is a notio intellectus Pun'"
(Kant 1764 [1902, Refl. 513]). This shows that space is no longer, as it was in 1768,

SThere is a final and ovelWhelming feature shared by both the Leibnizian and Kantian views of space
and time as analytic wholes: Leibniz and Kant (around 1770) agreed that to conceive space and time as
analytic and not substantial wholes allowed them to solve certain fundamental puzzles: the Labyrinth of the
continuum (Leibniz) and the antinomies dealt with by Kant mainly since 1767. However, the complexity of
those issues puts them beyond the scope of this short study.

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conceived as a substance, although it is obvious that Kant has not yet distinguished, as
in 1770, between sensible intuitions and intelligible concepts. But it is also clear that
they are already conceived as internal to the mind. Here, Kant's reading of the New Es-
says seems to play the major role. Once Kant subjectivized them and acknowledged
that we become conscious of them through sensations, he called them general princi-
ples of synthesis in order to differentiate them from the other concepts of the under-
standing insofar as space and time are only related to the simultaneous and successive
ordering of the sensible data. Accordingly, in Refl. 514 (Kant 1764 [1902]), Kant dis-
tinguished between the logical principles, the principles of synthesis (space and time),
the principles of qualitative synthesis (those ruling the subordination of concepts of
phenomena), and the material principles (e.g., the principle of causation). However,
the discovery of space and time as analytic, formal, and subjective wholes showed Kant
that they were not general, like concepts (having examples under them), but singular
(having parts in them). For this reason, he characterized them first as singular concepts
and then as concepts of intuition (insofar as for Kant the notion of intuition involved
the notion of singularity). The final break with the system of the concepts of the under-
standing and, consequently, with Leibniz's system is accomplished in the Dissertatio
when Kant related space and time to sensibility, and characterized them as pure intu-
itions and as forms of intuitions.
However, these Kantian disagreements with Leibniz are consistent with the exis-
tence of that fundamental influence on space and time as analytic wholes that I am try-
ing to emphasize in this study.
Nevertheless, something is lacking: So far, Kant has not explicitly acknowledged
around 1770 his agreement with Leibniz's views on space and time as continuous an-
alytic wholes. A final touch on the issue is needed.

14.3 Looking for Coherence and Unity: Kant's Final Touch in the
Anfangsgrunde
Castaneda advised us to always look for a unity behind different texts (and/or stages
of the development of a philosopher). His Darwinian approach does not mean that a
corpus, a set of texts, or a single text lacks unity and coherence. The tenet is just that
"the unity is to be found" (Castaiieda 1978: 93).
The unity that we are looking for is that one underlying those texts that we interpret
as providing us with evidence of Leibniz's influence upon Kant on space and time. I
have claimed that that unity consists in the constant endorsement by Kant after 1769
of the thesis that space and time are analytic, formal, and subjective wholes. It would
be wonderful to have Kant himself explicitly acknowledging that Leibniz had already
defended the view that space and time are analytic wholes insofar as they are the form
of the phenomenal world.
This was accomplished by Kant in the Anfangsgrunde (1786), in a remarkable se-

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ries of texts. I will briefly systematize them as follows:

First, Kant claims that someone who has not been understood had already given an
explanation of the divisibility of space with which Kant agrees:
A great man who perhaps contributes more than anyone to maintain the
reputation of mathematics in Germany has several times repulsed meta-
physical presumptions of overturning the propositions of geometry con-
cerning the infinite divisibility of space by the established reminder that
space belongs only to the appearance of external things, but he has not
been understood. (Kant (1786) 1970: 54.)
Second, Kant had already claimed that "matter and space have not to be made things
in themselves but only subjective modes of representation" (Kant (1786) 1970: 53).
Finally, Kant reveals who was that great but not understood man:
It was not Leibniz's intention [so Leibniz was the one who had not been
understood] to explain space by the order of simple entities side by side
[to explain space by conceiving it as a synthetic whole of simple entities].
And this is to assert nothing other than what was pointed out elsewhere
[i.e., Leibniz's true intention was to defend a view sharing a basic feature
with the one endorsed by Kant already in the Dissertatio and in the First
Critique (Kant 1781 [1965: B553])], namely that space together with mat-
ter, whose form space is, comprises not the world of things in themselves
but only the appearance of such a world .... (Kant (1786) 1970: 56.)
To conclude: Kant in the Anfangsgrunde explicitly interpreted Leibniz as endors-
ing a view of space sharing some basic features with his own one: It is a continuous
analytic whole belonging to the domain of appearances; in Leibniz's own terminology:
not being a real, but an ideal, whole.
The moral I want to stress is: Follow Kant's advice; i.e., do not misunderstand
Leibniz. In order to achieve such a goal, I have found it rewarding to interpret Leib-
niz's and Kant's texts according to Castaneda's Darwinian approach to philosophy and
its history.

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