The Priority of Natural Laws in Kant's Early Philosophy

Abstract

It is widely held that, in his pre-Critical works, Kant endorsed a necessitation account of laws of nature, where laws are grounded in essences or causal powers. Against this, I argue that the early Kant endorsed the priority of laws in explaining and unifying the natural world, as well as their irreducible role in in grounding natural necessity. Laws are a key constituent of Kant's explanatory naturalism, rather than undermining it. By laying out neglected distinctions Kant draws among types of natural law, grounding relations, and ontological levels, I show that his early works present a coherent and sophisticated laws-first account of the natural order.One of the most influential innovations of Kant's Critical system is his emphasis on nonempirical laws, such as the moral law and transcendental principles of the understanding. Rather than advance a detailed theory of empirical laws, Kant generally tends to begin with their prima facie reliability and look for the conditions that make this possible. And even regarding the conditions for the necessity and objectivity of empirical laws, there is no consensus among commentators.But Kantian philosophy does not begin with the first Critique. Given the lack of agreement on his mature theory, it is natural to hope that Kant's earlier philosophical worksprior to his transcendental turn, and published while Kant was directly engaged in first-order scientific research-can shed light on the status of empirical laws.On a widely shared interpretation, however, such hopes are mostly misguided. This reading contends that, while Kant may frequently speak of laws in his early work, his underlying metaphysics in this period focuses not on laws but on the natures and causal powers of created things. 1 Natural necessities, as well as the general truths expressed by laws, are supposed to be grounded in powers and natures. Laws then bear little or no metaphysical weight, however convenient it may be to posit them. This is often called a necessitation account of laws, but the point is that laws are necessitated; they do not necessitate. Now, I do think this reading is on to something. Even early on, Kant insists on the active causal powers of material substances (unlike Cartesians), and sets strict limits on God's direct role in grounding causal patterns in nature (unlike Newtonians and Wolffians). Yet Kant's rejection of some laws-first ways of explaining the natural order need not involve rejecting all of