Research

Research Grants

• “Kant’s Regulative Metaphysics” (ISF 2907/21)
  Short description

  The goal of this project is to develop an interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of regulative ideas as an account about the meaningfulness of certain metaphysical theories. The upshot of the proposed account is that certain metaphysical theories are meaningful not because they express beliefs about determinate facts, but rather because they express rational norms of how we ought to explain reality. I label this account Regulative Metaphysics. The project has both an exegetical objective in uncovering overlooked aspects in Kant’s doctrine of regulative ideas, as well as a philosophical objective in presenting a novel way to assess contemporary debates in metaphysics. Kant claims that human reason has an interest in ultimate explanations and possesses regulative principles directing progress towards such explanations. In his criticism of rationalistic metaphysics, Kant contends that these interests result in the illusory pretensions to attain knowledge of God, the world-whole and the soul. But those entities are appropriated to receive a new role as regulative ideas of reason. The role of the regulative principles of reason for scientific inquiry has been discussed in great lengths in the literature. But the relation between the regulative principles of reason and the specific metaphysical content of the ideas of reason is yet to be fully appreciated. In this project I aim to show that understanding this relation is central for a comprehensive explication of the doctrine of the regulative use of reason and for Kant’s view on metaphysics in general. The central claim is that those metaphysical conceptions are meaningful in virtue of their being an expression of the regulative principles. Therefore, the metaphysical content has a bearing on the correct interpretation of the principles. The project is divided into the following three sub-projects. In the first I will develop the account of regulative metaphysics from Kant’s doctrine of the ideas of reason. This includes both an exegetical thesis about the roots of the doctrine in the pre-critical period, as well as a reconstruction of the expressive nature of the use of regulative ideas in Kant’s critical works. In the second I will use this account to interpret other metaphysical issues in Kant’s later works, mainly in the philosophy of natural science and practical philosophy. In the third subproject I will apply my account to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics related to truthmaking, grounding, and fundamentality, showing how controversies express differences in explanation norms. The main methodology of this project is a combination of historical contextualization and systematic reconstruction of the relevant historical texts. Additionally, parts of this project will make use of digital humanities methodologies and will involve developing tools for visualizations of cross references in the corpus and analysis of historical trends in Kant scholarship.

Publications

• “Kant’s Teleology as the True Apology to Leibniz’s Pre-Established Harmony”, in Edgar Valdez (ed.). Rethinking Kant Volume 7. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming

  Abstract

  Should we take seriously Kant’s claim that his critical philosophy is the ‘true apology for Leibniz’? By exploring Kant’s attitude towards Leibniz’s doctrine of pre-established harmony, I argue that we should take it seriously because it sheds light on the development of Kant’s view about the role of teleology in science in general and in the life sciences in particular. I first present the general framework through which Kant appropriates Leibnizian doctrines as regulative ideals. I then address Kant’s pre-critical engagement with pre-established harmony. While he rejected it as an account of causal relations between substances, he made extensive references to harmony between laws of nature. I argue that the critical development of this type of harmony allows Kant to appreciate one of Leibniz’s motivations in arguing for pre-established harmony, the compatibility of mechanistic and teleological causal laws. Finally, I show how this affinity becomes explicit in the Critique of the Power of Judgment in Kant’s novel position on the legitimacy of teleological explanations of organisms. I demonstrate this by pointing to Kant’s complex attitude towards 18th century theories of epigenesis.

• “Kant’s Regulative Essentialism and the Unknowability of Real Essences” European Journal of Philosophy forthcoming

  Abstract

  In his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics Kant distinguishes between logical and real essences. While the former are related to concepts and are knowable, the latter are related to things and are unknowable. In this paper, I argue that the unknowability is explained by the modal characteristic of real essences as a necessitating ground of which a priori knowledge is impossible. I also show how this claim is related to the unknowable necessity of particular laws of nature. Since laws of nature are conceived as grounded in real essences, the unknowability of the latter is equivalent to Kant’s other claim that there can be no knowledge of the necessity of particular laws of nature. Necessity can only be known a priori, and therefore, the necessity of particular laws is only assumed and conceived as grounded in something unknowable, a real essence. This conclusion will allow me to attribute to Kant a position I label as ‘regulative essentialism’, meaning that real essences have an indispensable role of in accordance with the rational interest to explain nature as a system of laws and natural kinds, combined with an epistemic humility about the correspondence of our empirical concepts to real essences.

• “Moses Mendelssohn’s Original Modal Proof for the Existence of God” Journal of the History of Philosophy 61:2 (2023)

  Abstract

  In his 1785 book Morning hours, Moses Mendelssohn presents a proof for the existence of God from the grounding of possibility. Although Mendelssohn claims that this proof is original, it has not received much attention in the secondary literature. In this paper, I will analyze this proof and present its historical context. I will show that although it resembles Leibniz’s proof from eternal truths and Kant’s pre-critical possibility proof, it has unique characteristics which can be regarded as responses to deficiencies Mendelssohn identified in these earlier proofs. I argue that by analyzing the semantics of judgments about dispositions, Mendelssohn provides a novel explanation for the basic premise shared by these proofs, namely that possibility is grounded in actuality. Additionally, this analysis simplifies the inference to a unique infinite mind grounding all possibility. Thus, the proof is worth studying both for historical reasons and for its original account of modal concepts.

• “The Dialectical Illusion in Kant’s Only Possible Argument for the Existence of God” Kantian Review 25:3 (2020)

  Abstract

  The nature of Kant’s criticism of his pre-Critical ‘possibility proof’ for the existence of God, implicit in the account of the Transcendental Ideal in the Critique of Pure Reason, is still under dispute. Two issues are at stake: the error in the proof and diagnosis of the reason for committing it. I offer a new way to connect these issues. In contrast with accounts that locate the motivation for the error in reason’s interest in an unconditioned causal ground of all contingent existence, I argue that it lies in reason’s interest in another kind of unconditioned ground, collective unity. Unlike the conception of the former, that of the latter directly explains the problematic ontological assumption of the possibility proof, the existence of intelligible objects as the ground of possibility. I argue that such Platonic entities are assumed because they are amenable to the kind of unity prescribed by reason. However, since the interest in collective unity has a legitimate regulative use when applied to the systematic unity of nature, the conception of God entailed by the possibility proof is retained as a regulative idea of reason.

• “Kant’s Regulative Metaphysics of God and the Systematic Lawfulness of Nature” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 57:2 (2019)

  Abstract

  In the “Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic” of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant contends that the idea of God has a positive regulative role in the systematization of empirical knowledge. But why is this regulative role assigned to this specific idea? Kant’s account is rather opaque, and this question has also not received much attention in the literature. In this article, I argue that an adequate understanding of the regulative role of the idea of God depends on the specific metaphysical content Kant attributes to it in the Critique and other writings. I show that neither a heuristic principle of conceptual systematicity, nor conceiving God as a hypothesis of an intelligent designer, can satisfy the demands of reason to make the unity and necessity of the laws of nature intelligible. Regarding the positive account about the metaphysical content of the idea of God, I support my argument by referring to Kant’s pre-critical discussion of the usefulness of the conception of God for the project of science, and by expounding Kant’s critical account of the necessity of the laws of nature. Thus, my account sheds light on the continuity of Kant’s conception of God and his appropriation of his own rationalistic metaphysics.

• “The Relation between God and the World in the Pre-Critical Kant: was Kant a Spinozist?” Kantian Review 21:2 (2016)

  Abstract

  Andrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described as Platonic ideas intuited by God). I show that this view about the distinction between God’s cognition of essences as the ground of possibility and the actual world is not only explicitly stated by Kant, but is also consistent with his metaphysical picture of teleology in nature and causality during the pre-Critical period. Finally, I suggest that the distinction between the conceptual order of essences embodied in the idea of God and the order of the objects of experience plays a role in the transition into the Critical system, where it is transformed into the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible worlds.

• “Kant’s Religion and the Reflective Judgment” In Margit Ruffing, Claudio La Rocca, Alfredo Ferrarin & Stefano Bacin (eds.), Kant Und Die Philosophie in Weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des Xi. Kant-Kongresses 2010. De Gruyter. (2013)

Book Reviews

• Review of Ian Proops, The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant’s Dialectic (OUP 2021), Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (2023)
• Review of Edward Kanterian, Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn (Routledge 2017), The European Journal of Philosophy 27:3 (2019)

Work in progress

• “Reconciling Best-System and Necessitation accounts of Kant on particular laws of nature”
• “A Norm-Expressivist Account of Kant’s Regulative Ideas”
• “Collective Hope and Political Activism”

Dissertation

Title: Kant’s Theoretical Conception of God

The full dissertation is available here. ​

Research plans

Selected presentations

• “The Only Possible Proof”, The Young Kant Conference, Northwestern University, May 23-25 2024
• “Explanatory Harmony” (Panel on Leibniz’s pre-established with Uri Eran, Reed Winegar and Ohad Nachtomy)
  • Israeli Philosophical Association Conference, Hebrew U Jerusalem, 30 Jun 2022
  • Leibniz Congress 31.7-5.8 2023, Hanover Germany
• “The Unity of Kant’s Attitude Toward Leibniz’s Pre-Established Harmony”
  • Workshop on Teleology, Mechanism, and the Mind-Body Problem between Leibniz and Kant, Technion, 23-25 May 2022
• “Collective Hope and Political Activism”
  • Israeli Philosophical Association Conference, Open-U Raanana, 8 Jul 2021
• “Kant’s Regulative Essentialism and the Unknowability of Real Essences”
  • 5th Biennial Meeting of the North American Kant Society, Binghamton University, 5-8 June 2020 (online)
• “Mendelssohn’s Unique Proof for the Existence of God”
  • Israeli Philosophical Association Conference, Bar-Ilan, 13 Feb 2019
  • 2021 APA Pacific Division Meeting, online 5-10 Apr 2021
  • Berlin-Hamburg Workshop in Early-Modern Philosophy, 12-13 May 2022
• “The Critique of the Power of Judgment as the ‘True Apology’ to Leibniz”
  • North American Kant Society Eastern Study Group, Columbia University NYC, May 4-5 2018
  • Leuven Kant Conference, KU Leuven, May 31-Jun 1 2018
  • Jerusalem, ‘Teleological Explanations between Leibniz and Kant’, June 25-27 2018
  • 2019 APA Eastern Division Meeting, New York, 7-10 January 2019
• “Kant’s Regulative Metaphysics of God"
  • 3rd Biennial Meeting of the North American Kant Society, Emory University, 27-29 May 2016
  • 2017 APA Central Division Meeting, Kansas City MO, 1-4 March 2017
  • Israeli Philosophical Association Conference, Haifa 20 Feb 2018
  • Bar-Ilan Philosophy Department Colloquium, 17 April 2018
• “Dialectical Illusion in the Only Possible Argument”,
  • North American Kant Society Mid-west Study Group, McGill University Montreal, Oct 21-23 2016
• “Kant on the Idea of God - a Case for Metaphysical Imagination” (invited paper)
  • Tel Aviv University, ‘Moral Imagination’ Conference, 3-4 June 2015
• “Systematicity in Kant’s Moral and Theoretical Ideas of God”
  • London, Annual UK Kant Society Conference, 28-30 August 2013
• “The Systematicity of Nature, Ideas of Reason and Reflective Judgment”
  • 1st Biennial Meeting of the North American Kant Society, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2-4 June 2011
• “Kant’s Religion and the Reflective Judgment”
  • Pisa, 11th International Kant Congress, 22-26 May 2010
• “The Aesthetics of the Interesting”
  • Seoul, The XXII World Congress of Philosophy, 25 July – 1 August 2008

Teaching

Teaching Experience

Bar-Ilan University

• History of Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Kant: undergraduate, Every year since 2020
• Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Advanced undergraduate / graduate seminar
• Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Advanced undergraduate tutorial
• Conceptions of God in Early Modern Philosophy: Advanced undergraduate / graduate seminar (Syllabus)
• Kant’s practical philosophy: Ethics, Religion and History: Advanced undergraduate / graduate seminar
• Kant’s ethics: Advanced undergraduate / graduate seminar
• Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Advanced undergraduate / graduate seminar
• Metaphysical Disputes in Early Modern Philosophy: Advanced undergraduate / graduate seminar

Levinsky College of Education

Philosophical Perspectives in Education / mandatory undergraduate, Fall 2019, Spring - Summer 2020

Indiana University

​Instructor (full course responsibilities):

• Introduction to Social/Political Philosophy, Fall 2016 (Syllabus)
• Introduction to Ethics, Spring 2014 (Syllabus)

Associate Instructor (leading discussion sections and grading):

• Introduction to Philosophy, Spring 2017 (Frederick Schmitt)
• Introduction to Existentialism, Fall 2013 (Allen Wood)

Grader:

• Introduction to Symbolic Logic, Fall 2012 (Leah Savion), Spring 2013 (Mark Kaplan)

Tel-Aviv University

Instructor (full course responsibilities):

• Bounds of Hope – Kant’s Philosophy of Religion: Fall 2008 (Syllabus)
• Intermediate Aesthetics (Kant & Schopenhauer): Fall 2006

Teaching Assistant (leading discussion sections, designing assignments and grading):

• Guided Reading B (Hume’s Treatise): Fall 2010
• Guided Reading A (Descartes’ Meditations): Fall 2004, Fall 2005
• Introduction to Logic: Fall 2002, Fall 2003 (Anat Biletzki)

Grader:

• 19th Century Philosophy: Spring 2008 (Eli Friedlander)

Proposed Courses

• Ethics, Justice and Activism (Syllabus)
• Introduction to Aesthetics (Syllabus)