1st Edition

Kant and the Systematicity of the Sciences

Edited By Gabriele Gava, Thomas Sturm, Achim Vesper Copyright 2025
354 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

354 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

354 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book provides the first comprehensive discussion regarding the role that Kant ascribes to systematicity in the sciences. It considers not only what Kant has to say on systematicity in general, but also how the systematicity requirement for science is specified in different fields of knowledge. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. Part I is devoted to historical context.... Read more

Introduction: The Significance of Kant’s Account of Scientific Systematicity Gabriele Gava, Thomas Sturm, and Achim Vesper

Part I: Systematicity: Historical Backgrounds

1. Kant and Crusius on the Hierarchy of Human Ends Gabriele Gava

2. Lambert’s System of the Sciences Henny Blomme

Part II: The Systematicity of Special Sciences

3. Kant’s Early Cosmology, Systematicity, and Changes in the Standpoint of the Observer Fabian Burt and Thomas Sturm

4. Kant and the Idea of a System of Logic Clinton Tolley

5. Mathematics: Systematic Unity and Construction in the Theory of Conic Sections Katherine Dunlop

6. Kant’s Conception of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: Subject-Matter, Method, and Aim Thomas Sturm

7. Systematicity, the Life Sciences, and the Possibility of Laws Concerning Life Hein van den Berg

8. Kant’s Aethereal Hammer: When Everything Looks Like a Nail Michael Bennett McNulty

9. Systematicity and the Definition of a Science: Physics in Kant’s Opus postumum Stephen Howard

10. Systematicity in Kant’s Philosophy of History Andree Hahmann

11. Systematicity with a Worldly Orientation? On Kant’s Theory and Practice of Gazing with an “Eye of Philosophy” Huaping Lu-Adler

Part III: The Systematicity of Philosophy

12. The Systematicity of Natural Science: Logical and Real Eric Watkins

13. What is a System of Moral Philosophy For? Systematicity in Kant’s Ethics Stefano Bacin

14. Kant’s System of Systems Paul Guyer

Biography

Gabriele Gava is an Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Turin. He works on Kant, 18th-century German philosophy, pragmatism, and epistemology. He is the author of Peirce’s Account of Purposefulness: A Kantian Perspective (2014) and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (2023).

Thomas Sturm is ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He works on Kant, theories of rationality in philosophy and the sciences, and as editor for the new Academy edition of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Selected publications: Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (2009), articles in Kant-Studien, Kantian Review, and Synthese.

Achim Vesper is an Assistant Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt. He has published extensively on Kant's ethics and aesthetics. Together with Gabriele Gava, he wrote Kants Philosophie (2024). Another book, Kant über Schönheit und systematische Einheit der Natur, will be published in 2025.