Kant’s picture of monads in the Physical Monadology

Many discussions of Kant’s picture of monads in his early Physical Monadology highlight the similarities between the view in it and Roger Joseph Boscovich’s view. Though I find this comparison interesting, I argue in this paper that Kant shows significant strands of having a fundamentally non-Boscovichian view in this work. Moreover, I trace the various strands that, I believe, pushed Kant to think about things in a non-Boscovichian way.

► I argue that, in his early monadology, Kant has a view that fundamentally differs from Boscovichian point-particle mechanics. ► I describe the intuitive pressures that push Kant in a non-Boscovichian direction. ► I suggest that Kant is very much on the way to his later view in which material substances are deformable continua.