Mathis Koschel

Summary Statement of Research Interests

In my interpretation of Kant, I focus on his claim that the concept of nature is an “idea of reason”, i.e., a concept which guides us in our empirical cognition, but which does not have the “objective reality” (roughly: determinacy) of empirical concepts. Taking this claim seriously allows us to read Kant in a non-dualistic way, for example, regarding the problem of free will and determinism: nature is at bottom governed by event-event-causation yet human actions—events in nature—can have a conception of the good as their determining ground. Another example is Kant’s conception of organisms. According to the standard account, the purposiveness of organisms (e.g., that organs play a functional role within the larger unit of the organism) is extraneous to nature, because nature is at bottom a mechanical system. I argue that the conception of nature as a mechanical system is an idea of reason and that acknowledging this fact leads to a reading of Kant where organisms are genuinely—with their purposive structure—in nature. (A paper on the former issue is currently under submission. One paper on the latter issue, entitled “The Kantian Idea of Mechanistic Nature,” is forthcoming in: ‘The Concept of Nature in Kant, Schelling, and Hegel,’ edited by Christian Martin and Florian Ganzinger. De Gruyter.)

The core of Hegel’s philosophy lies in his philosophical method, I believe. In my “The Freedom of Solar Systems” (Hegel Bulletin 46 (1), 2025), I discuss the “mechanism” chapter of Hegel’s Science of Logic in order to give a concrete account of this method, according to which we “think through” one philosophical position and thus arrive at a successor position. For example, a metaphysics of nothing but wholly individual objects (Leibniz’ monads) cannot explain why the objects have the properties they have; it thus gives rise to a successor position in which this can be explained. I show how, using this method, Hegel takes up Kant’s argument against causal determinism but goes beyond Kant by arguing in the following way: even solar systems do not fit the mould of a standard mechanical determinism, because they are governed by an internal principle. Hence, one can consider solar systems to exhibit a very rudimentary form of freedom.

Now, as part of a book project, I am working on Hume’s skeptical challenge that the categories do not have objective reality. Properly understood, this skeptical challenge is uniquely helpful for getting Kant’s transcendental philosophy into view.
The overarching theme of my book project is Kant’s claim that there are only two sources of objective reality: sensibility and the moral law.

Research Keywords

History of Philosophy, esp. Kant and Hegel; therein: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science