Making Sense of Du Châtelet on Physical Influx: Some Kantian Insights

Emilie Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique (1740) predates Kant’s pre-Critical texts, in which he develops his account of physical influx. This chapter draws on Kant’s pre-Critical account to shed light on how Du Châtelet might have responded to a central objection against physical influx raised by Leibniz. I first show that despite Du Châtelet’s explicit claim in the preface of the Institutions to be expounding Leibniz’s metaphysics, her metaphysical commitments diverge from Leibniz's in a striking way: unlike Leibniz, she seems to endorse physical influx for created substances, the view that created substances stand in transeunt causal relations to one another. I then reconstruct Leibniz’s objection that transeunt causation between substances is metaphysically incoherent because it involves the transfer of accidents. Finally, I argue that Du Châtelet, on the basis of her Institutions, has the resources to address this objection. The key insight, which Du Châtelet shares with the pre-Critical Kant, is that transeunt substantial causation requires the causal powers of both the substance that acts and the substance that is acted upon.