Kant's Regulative Cosmology

• Applicant: Dr. Stephen Howard
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548189338

This project explores an important but neglected feature of Kant’s critical philosophy, namely, how Kant takes up and transforms doctrines of earlier rational cosmology in his theory of the regulative use of ideas of reason. Recent scholarship has shed much light on Kant’s theory of ideas, in line with a growing interest in the ‘positive’ aspects of Kant’s critique of metaphysics. However, there is little consensus on how to understand Kant’s critique of rational cosmology from this new perspective. Indeed, many commentators have argued that rational cosmology has no positive role to play in the critical philosophy – unlike the other two branches of former ‘special metaphysics’, rational psychology and natural theology. The project argues that this interpretation, which results from the particular complexities of Kant’s mature views on cosmology, should be revised. The aim of the project is to elucidate how Kant positively appropriates rational cosmology in his critical account of the regulative use of ideas of reason. More broadly, the project seeks to determine the place of cosmology in Kant’s critical renovation of metaphysics. The aim is pursued through three objectives: 1. To reconstruct Kant’s account of the regulative use of the cosmological ideas, showing how this differs from the cases of the psychological and theological ideas. 2. To clarify Kant’s conception of ‘world’ and the way this concept functions in his theories of the sensible and intelligible worlds, with particular attention to the commonalities and differences between these two worlds. 3. To propose, on the basis of the above, an interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism that makes progress towards reconciling the ‘two-world’ and ‘two-aspect’ readings. The project outputs, through which the objectives will be met, are four peer-reviewed articles and a monograph to be submitted to a major academic press.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants