This essay examines some of the ways in which the assumption of the essential finitude of the human mind, in contrast to the infinitude of God’s mind, bears on Leibniz’s and Kant’s accounts of our representational capacities. This examination reveals several underappreciated similarities between their views, but also some notable differences that help us pinpoint where and in what ways Kant departs from his celebrated predecessor. The fruits of this examination are a better understanding of Kant’s conception of the discursivity (...) of our understanding, his account of the difference between concepts and intuitions, and the particular flavor of his idealism. -/- . (shrink)

A popular story about Kant's relation to Leibniz presents Kant as a Leibniz-Wolffian by education who, inspired by his encounter with the teachings of Newton and Hume, took on the project of reconciling Leibniz-Wolffian metaphysics with Newtonian science and of responding to epistemological skepticism, a project that led him further and further away from his Leibniz-Wolffian roots and culminated in the total rejection of the Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this essay, four shortcomings of the popular (...) story are identified and several suggestions are made about how to amend and expand the story in order to overcome these shortcomings. Furthermore, some of the most important Leibnizian doctrines that influenced Kant are collected and their role in Kant's philosophy is discussed. (shrink)

Response to critical comments by Edward Slowik on my article 'Leibniz on Motion and the Equivalence of Hypotheses' in The Leibniz Review 18 (2008).