Unsnarling the Metaphysical Knot

Kant and Whitehead on the Real

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to compare Immanuel Kant and Alfred North Whitehead on the nature of the real.  The focus will be on Kant's 1766 essay "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics."  This essay, in contrast to the first critique, brings Kant and Whitehead together in that the former claims that if we had to give a plausible account of what reality is in itself, Leibniz points the way in his panpsychism, a view that is similar to Whitehead's in certain key respects.  Kant and Whitehead together can help to untangle the metaphysical knot created by a confused mixture of dualism and reductionistic materialism.