The Need for Reform of Metaphysics in Early Modern Germany and the Impact of the Scientific Societies

Abstract In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Immanuel Kant famously diagnoses the poor condition of metaphysics at the time. While other disciplines, such as logic, mathematics, and natural sciences have sooner or later trodden the path of science, metaphysics has not been equally successful. Rather than reaching some kind of minimal scientific consensus, metaphysics is a notorious battlefield, and no proposition seems to be established beyond doubt. Kant is not the only one to diagnose the controversial status of metaphysics and its need for reform. We can find similar ideas in Leibniz, Wolff, and Meier. If this diagnosis is correct, it raises the question how metaphysics specifically in early modern Germany developed and what has led to its need for reform. Little is known about the development of the discipline of metaphysics in early modern Germany from the late sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. This article analyses how metaphysics in early modern Germany unfolded and argues that the call for reform stems from the increasing influence of a new scientific paradigm of practical usefulness and material progress codified in the Berlin Academy on the one hand, and a strong anti-metaphysical agenda outside the universities on the other hand.