| The Critique of Pure Reason is commonly understood as Kant's attempt to lay the metaphysical foundations for non-logical, metaphysically necessary truths about reality. In this thesis I argue, however, that The Critique of Pure Reason is also fundamentally a treatise on the individuation of objects. Insofar as Kant's central aim of The Critique of Pure Reason was to account for the metaphysical foundations necessary for Newtonian physics to be possible, I submit that Kant was also concerned with how objects can exist. I find that Kant actually has a full-bodied theory of wholes and parts that entails the thesis that objects are numerically distinct from their parts. I argue further that The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, when read along with The Critique of Pure Reason , entails that, for Kant, objects are akin to Aristotelian composites of matter and essential, structural form. |
