Spontaneity before the Critical Turn: The Spontaneity of the Mind in Crusius, the Pre-Critical Kant, and Tetens

Abstract

The introduction of a spontaneity proper to the understanding in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft is often thought to be one of the central innovations of Kant’s Critical philosophy. Yet a number of thinkers within the eighteenth-century German tradition in the time before the KrV had already developed a robust conception of the spontaneity of the mind. In this paper, I consider three influential accounts of the spontaneity of the mind—those of Crusius, the pre-Critical Kant, and Tetens—which, while distinct, nonetheless relate to and explicitly draw upon one another in important ways, forming the interconnected and, thus far, largely overlooked pre-Critical context for Kant’s discussion of the spontaneity of the understanding.