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Kant’s ‘Newtonianism’ has been rightly highlighted by figures like Friedman. The follow-up debates led to a more adequate view on Kant’s natural philosophy and in particular his relation towards Newton. But the discussion that evolved did not point to the asynchronicity that takes place in Kant’s struggle with the central Newtonian concepts. Newtonian space and gravity, in revised form, are of central concern to Kant’s critical philosophy. But Kant adapted and re-evaluated these two concepts in an asynchronous way. While Kant tries to integrate a notion of gravity into his theory of matter in his very first published writing, he has at this stage no adequate notion of space. At this time, as in regard to space, he can neither be called a Newtonian nor a proper Leibnizian and misconceives the necessity of an independent space for the foundations of physics. This perspective changes under the influence of Euler at the end of the fifties of the eighteenth century and finally leads to his writing of 1768 and the adoption of transcendental idealism in 1770. In the following, I depict this asynchronicity by taking central pre-critical writings into account while discussing Kant’s concept of space and gravity. This sharpens the picture of Kant’s work and the different stages his philosophy of nature went through. Further, it helps to understand the influence of Euler on Kant’s development in natural philosophy and his critical philosophy in general, as Kant under the influence of Euler formed deeper-going reflections on Newton’s theory of space and these mark turning points of his development.

Deism as a substitute to revealed religion started as a strictly intellectualist system. Its aim was to banish superstition, miracles, and secrets from religion and to expose religion to the light of reason. The philosophic meaning of deism consists primarily in that it maintains a new principle in the formulation of its problem. It found its justification in the basic and principles of Locke’s theory of knowledge, and Bacon’s new method based on induction rather than deduction, and the triumph of Newton’s science based on analysis and mathematics. Kant at last tried to find a compromise between faith and reason.

The aim of this article is to unveil the ways of teaching new philosophical paradigms in Dutch Universities between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, by means of an analysis of the uses of illustrations in Cartesian and Newtonian natural-philosophical textbooks. This analysis allows to understand the overall functions of philosophical textbooks, where illustrations act as (a) conceptual means, filling the gap between the premise of a theory and its actual contents; (b) didactic means, aiming to help the reader in understanding scientific models fully explained in texts; (c) promoting or propagandistic instruments, useful to present theories in a fascinating way. Eventually, I argue for a positive correlation of the use of illustrations and the introduction of new philosophies, and for the existence of non-philosophical reasons for such use: as to the propagandistic function of illustrations intended as decorative means.

The following student contribution concerns Thomas Paine’s Newtonian concepts of society and government in the context of the Age of Enlightenment. Its aim is to demonstrate how Thomas Paine reinterpreted Enlightenment political thought as proposed by the empiricist theorist, John Locke, by using the principles of Newtonianism. Paine’s Newtonian politics is closely connected with his deistic faith. His political theory is devoted to the vision of a free society as a manifestation of the benevolent The Watchmaker. With this mission in mind, Paine attempted to devalue the contemporary models of the state of nature and social contract theory as interpreted by John Locke and to offer a more democratic version of these concepts. Paine’s key ideas in this respect are expressed in his most famous works Common Sense, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.