Abstract

Although Kant abandoned his early interest in the sciences in favour a new set of problems during his so-called critical period, cosmological motifs, in particular from Newtonian theory, did not disappear from his writings. On the contrary, one can speak of a consistent presence of these motifs in his work. The problems that Kant reflected on the basis of these motifs must therefore have occupied him particu- larly intensively. After the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, however, Kant used the cosmological motifs differently: as metaphors (or, to use his formulation: as symbols). He uses them to shape the specificity of the mutual relationship between theoretical and practical reason. By analysing the way in which Kant uses the key mo- tifs of Newtonian theory as symbols, it is possible to argue that he was guided by the intention of radically distinguishing the moral world from the order of nature, as it was produced by the modern mathematical natural science of his time.