ivers can obtain a representation of space via the perception of spatial relations among objects without recourse to the view that space is ontologically independent of objects. This parallels Locke's attempt to show that one can obtain an Idea of space while having distinct ideas of space and of body. So the idea—popular among Newton's supporters like Locke—that the representation of space is empirical in origin is perfectly compatible with relationalism. Indeed, Locke's view may very well have been on Leibniz's mind when he argued for the compatibility of an empiricist conception of the representation of space with his relationalist conception of space's ontological status because of his considerable interest in Locke's theory of ideas. This is a clever tactic on Leibniz's part: when writing to Newton's most prominent defender in England, Samuel Clarke, he accepts an empiricist view of the representation of space in order to show that this acceptance does nothing to upset his defense of the relationalist conception of space's ontological status.
9. For differing accounts of this issue, see, for instance, Parsons 1992, 68 and Collins 1999, 68-9, 191 note 9.
10. On this point, see especially Leibniz's letter to Arnauld of 30 April 1687 in Leibniz 1890, 2: 101. See also New Essays, 110 and L5: 32. For an illuminating discussion of reification, see Cassirer 1902, 247, 254.
11. See “Vienna Logic,” Ak 24: 910-913 and “Jäsche Logic,” §§7-9, Ak 9: 95-98 and Ak 9: 40.
12. Of course, a Leibnizian would deny this point, and it is unclear that Kant has any argument against an alternate view—this may represent a bedrock disagreement. For discussion, see Friedman 1992, 62-8 and Posy 2000, 161-2.
13. See the so-called Physical Monadology at Ak 1: 479ff; for a discussion of this aspect of Kant's pre-critical views, see Friedman 1992, 7-9.
14. For a distinct interpretation, one according to which this may not be possible after all, see Buroker 1981, 8-9, 22.
15. On this point, see especially the “Amphiboly of the Pure Concepts of Reflection,” which serves as an Appendix to the Transcendental Analytic in the first Critique—A260-92/B316-49.
16. These ideas are discussed and clarified in Adams 1994, 181-2, 246-7 and Langton 1998, 93-121. Langton in particular attempts to provide a reading of Leibniz's metaphysics—especially its treatment of relations and of space and time—that helps to illuminate Kant's transcendental idealism.
17. Other passages corroborate the impression that this sentence leaves. For instance, in the first passage in the Aesthetic in which Kant claims that transcendental idealism is correct, he writes: “Space represents no property at all of any things in themselves nor any relation of them to each other, i.e., no determination of them that attaches to objects themselves and that remains even if one abstracts from all subjective conditions of intuition” (A26/B42; cf. A39/B56). And in a later passage in the Critique, after describing transcendental idealism, Kant adds (in a section of the text quoted above): “To this idealism is opposed a transcendental realism, which regards time and space as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)” (A369; the passage is retained in the second edition).
18. In a recent paper, Jauernig (2008) presents a markedly different interpretation, in part in an attempt to indicate that Kant's criticisms in the Critique are often intended to undermine various Leibnizian positions that Leibniz himself did not embrace. In the course of presenting this interpretive perspective, Jauernig provides a very helpful reading of the so-called Amphiboly, the text in which Kant discusses Leibnizian philosophical views in the most depth.
19. The contention that transcendental idealism and transcendental realism differ in their conceptions of the relation between space and intuition, rather than space and the mind, is significant. For as we have seen, Leibniz does not think that space is real in the sense of being independent of the mind per se; space is a relational order and relations ar