The connections between Leibniz and Kant studied at unique, UK-hosted conference  

By Rebekah Tilley

Imagine a famous artist painting a portrait of another artist, long dead, based only on the description of someone who knew the person in life. Then imagine scholars hundreds of years later, attempting to determine the accuracy of the likeness and the origins of the artistic techniques of the portrait.

Now imagine that instead of artists, they are philosophers: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In an attempt to work out some of the mysteries of these two philosophers and their relationship to each other, the UK Department of Philosophy, in conjunction with the North American Kant Society, hosted the third annual meeting of the Leibniz Society of North America on September 25-27.

Kant is widely considered one of the most important and influential philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. Yet, when Kant was a young scholar, it was Leibnizian rationalism that dominated German philosophy through the work of Leibniz’s disciple Christian Wolff (1679-1754).

Kant’s contemporary, eighteenth-century French philosopher Denis Diderot, found Leibniz’s genius in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, law, history, geology and physics overwhelming at times, once saying that “When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.”

Kant eventually came across the writings of the empiricist David Hume (1711-1776), realized that Hume posed a huge skeptical challenge to rationalism, and then attempted to reconcile rationalism and empiricism.

“The very simple story is that Kant came along and took important insights from the empiricists and the rationalists, and came up with his own philosophy,” said Brandon Look, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at UK. “According to which we have no innate ideas per se, but rather we are born with certain a priori concepts that allow us to make experience possible,” Look explained.

Kant came to believe that Leibniz’s epistemology, or how we come to know something, was fundamentally flawed in that Leibniz did not conduct a “true critique” of human reason. Because of that, Kant thought that Leibniz was limited to what Kant calls “dogmatic assertions” about the existence of a soul as substance, the existence of a free will, and even the existence of God.

Look said that in that sense he is making a huge break, both from Leibniz and from traditional philosophy in general.

Though Kant and Leibniz were both integral figures in the history of philosophy, there are very few scholars who are experts in both men. The conference in September offered an exciting opportunity for this small handful of scholars to begin working through some of the important and interesting questions surrounding Leibniz and Kant.

“People who work on Leibniz generally call themselves historians of early modern philosophy, and they generally make the cut off point at Hume. So those early modernists tend not to work on Kant,” said Look.

“On the other hand, historians of Kant are in a world for themselves. Since Kant is such an important figure you can easily make a career out of just being a Kant scholar. So it’s rare for someone to know enough about both Leibniz and Kant to say something meaningful and interesting.”

Some of the meaningful work Look expected to take place at the conference included determining if Kant correctly interpreted Leibniz’s work.

“Very little of what Leibniz actually wrote was published in his lifetime and only a little bit more was published by the time Kant started writing about philosophy and about Leibniz,” said Look.

"What that means is many of the ways in which Kant saw Leibniz was filtered through Leibniz’s student Wolff, and that created a picture of Leibniz which may not have corresponded to reality. The ‘True Leibniz’ might turn out to be different from Kant’s Leibniz in important and interesting ways.”

The UK Department of Philosophy has long had a reputation for being strong in the history of philosophy, and particularly German philosophy through the work of Dr. Daniel Breazeale and Dr. Ron Bruzina.

“Professor Breazeale hosted the Fichte Society Annual Conference several years ago. There is a natural place in the Department for work in the history of German philosophy,” said Look, noting that the scholars that are presenting are some of the most knowledgeable in their fields and a great opportunity for students to be in contact with them.

The joint conference of the Leibniz Society of North America and the North American Kant Society had co-sponsorship from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Philosophy, theOffice of the Vice-President for Research, and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany Chicago.