User blog comment:Salnax/Kant vs Leibniz/@comment-1375165-20130501061857

Immanuel Kant attacks many of Leibniz's ideas. Leibniz was a thorougoing rationalist while Kant united the rationalist thesis that some knowledge was a priori with the notion that all knowledge had to come with experience (by showing how some facts are known with experience but justified from innate principles). Leibniz reduced reality to a composition from simple substances but Kant showed how there is an antinomy of reason (in his CPR) in positing either simple or infinitely divisible substances, such that neither can be justified. All predication is analytic according to Leibniz - since every predicate is contained within the concept of its subject - but Kant distinguishes that which is predicable by an analytic judgement (where the predicate is in the concept of the subject) from that which is predicable by a synthetic judgement (where either a matter of fact or principle of imagination unites ideas). In general, Leibniz goes further than Kant by accepting principles of metaphysics which Kant surveys with skepticism.

A few specific but less significant differences are that Leibniz was a pluralist (with his monads) and Kant a representational realist who considered ideas incomparable with that which causes them in the perceiver (i.e. things-in-themselves). Leibniz thought that God could be proven to exist and the problem of evil easily resolved, but Kant considered theological judgements beyond the bounds of possible experience, denying all theological proofs.

Sorry for my brevity! I just thought I'd give you as much as possible since I'm slightly late to the party. Am I in time to help with your paper?