Abstract

Drawing on recent Aristotelian readings of Kant's notion of natural causality with an emphasis on substances as causes, I will try to explain how persons can make a difference in the world of appearances by virtue of their rationality. For Kant, the clue is that the peculiar mode of a substance's natural causality supervenes on in-itself features, among which is the mode or character of the person's rationality. Thus, a wedge can be driven between natural necessity and metaphysical necessity, opening up space for a strategy both reminiscent of and superior to that of Leibniz.