It is tempting to read Kant through Hegel even when it comes to the triad of texts, written in Latin, which Kant submitted in the span of a single year (between April 1755 and March 1756) in order to fulfil the requirements of teaching at a university.[i] In keeping with a simple dialectical scheme, the first “dissertation” titled “Succinct Exposition of Some Meditations on Fire [Meditationum quarundam de igne succincta delineatio]” deals with an objective phenomenon from the physical world, the world of natural science. The second essay, “A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition [Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio]” turns away from the world of nature to consider the laws of cognition, the prima philosophia of the subject, rather than that of the object. The third essay, on “Physical Monadology [Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophia naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam]” returns to the philosophy of nature modified by the metaphysics of the subject to produce a synthesis that is a Kantian monadology.

Should we accept this view, the textbook narrative about Kant as the one who bridged the gap between radical empiricism and strict rationalism exclusively through the invention of transcendental idealism would no longer hold. If the first submission is a tribute to Newtonian physics (filtered through Euler, as well as Voltaire’s and Émilie du Châtelet’s studies of fire in their respective 1737 entries to an essay competition organized by the Académie des sciences), the second—an allusion to Descartes’ metaphysics of the subject, and the third—an amalgam of Leibniz and Spinoza, who have passed through the crucible of Newton and Descartes. Fire, cognition, and monadology (conceived as a physical metaphysics) would then be the triad of Kant’s pre-critical approach, which nonetheless surpasses the rigid limits of the critical project.

Schematic as it is, I am not quite satisfied with this preliminary reading of the early works Kant submitted to obtain a teaching and (unsuccessfully) an extraordinary professorial post at the university. I am skeptical for the most part because fire already contains all three moments of what seems to be a dialectical triad, and it does so not in a merely abstract, potential, or formal mode typical of a fledgling dialectical beginning. How so?

First, Kant stresses the negativity of fire, its force (vis) “manifested principally in the rarefaction of bodies and in breaking down their combination [in rarefaciendis corporibus et ipsorum nexu solvendo].”[ii] The starting point has nothing to do with the unmediated positivity of matter or nature; rather, fire is already imbued with negativity, which is its very force (vis). That said, fiery negativity is not pure either; Kant will, from the outset, reject the Cartesian approach to matter (above all, to liquid matter), which is not mechanically divisible: “The fluidity of bodies cannot be explained by the division of matter into smooth minute parts that loosely cohere, as most physicists, following the teachings of Descartes, think” (Prop 1).[iii] Instead, what liquid matter has in common with fire is its elasticity: “elastic matter [materiam elasticam], which is present between the elementary parts of a fluid body, is nothing other than the matter of heat” (Prop. 2).[iv] The negative force of fire is, thus, already a mediation between an elastic positivity and a rarefying negativity, synthetic and analytic; in other words, fire is both matter and force. Descartes and his followers, however, privileged the negative aspect of fire and of matter as such, conceived in terms of its infinite divisibility.

Second, ever since its pre-philosophical—mythical—origins, the metaphysics of cognition has operated with two fundamental processes: analysis and synthesis. In Plato’s dialogues (notably in Phaedrus), Socrates professes to be the lover of both synthesis and analysis that, jointly, comprise a dialectic. From Heraclitus to Novalis, fire has been not a metaphor but the embodiment of a cosmic or material mind, thinking the world into being by means of the two processes of breaking things up and joining the bits together. In this tradition, to which Freud also belongs with his recovery (in Beyond the Pleasure Principle) of eros and thanatos as the drives toward congregation and segregation, thinking and being are indistinguishable from one another in the heat and light of fire. Hence, a certain “physical monadology”—the subject of Kant’s third submission to the University of Königsberg is also folded into the ontology of fire.

Particularly fascinating in this respect is Kant’s main contribution to a theorization of fire, which is the hypothesis that fire is comprised of “elastic matter.” The notion of elasticity includes the positive and the negative vectors of force. On the one hand, it implies a drive, a propulsive action; on the other hand, it entails a reaction as a response to pressure or compression in one of the parts: “Matter that when pressed anywhere endeavors with the same force to expand in a different direction, is commonly called an elastic matter [materiae cuidam elasticae ipsis intermistae incumbant, cuius ope, quicquid desuper premit virium, versus latera eadem quantitate agat]” (Prop 2).[v] This formulation will have been recognizable as a restatement of one of Newton’s laws of motion (viz. that for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction), except that elastic matter allows Kant to de-formalize the Newtonian law, or better, to shift the categorial understanding of the relation between action and reaction from quantity to quality. More tellingly still, the same phenomenon of elasticity should apply to the domain of cognition, implied in the concept of fire. If there is pressure or contraction in one area of that domain, then it will strive “to expand in a different direction.” And doesn’t Kant’s critical project induce precisely such pressure, aiming at a contraction, upon finite human reason in order to put it within its proper boundaries? The elasticity of cognition is crucial here. Conceivably, the pressure of critique keeping the flight of reason in check would then result in its expansion with the same force “in a different direction,” thereby rendering the work of critique interminable.

When Kant postulates “elastic matter” as the common denominator of fire and of liquid bodies (which can maintain their liquid state thanks to their warmth), he is combining elements that are, physically and symbolically, taken to be mutually opposed. Elasticity performs the function of a complexio oppositorum, the immediate union of opposites. A further step is taken when Kant adds solid bodies to the mix; according to Proposition 3, “Solid bodies, like fluid bodies, are held together not by the direct contact of their molecules but by the mediation of an elastic matter [materia elastica pariter mediante cohaerentibus].”[vi] Elastic matter (which is none other than heat or fire) becomes a universal mediator, the in-between that makes possible the coherence of molecules not touching one another directly. While, in theology, the universally mediating role of fire raises it to the status of spirit, this step allows Kant to forge a shortcut to the physical monadology, with which he aims to complete his early draft of a metaphysical system.

The mediation of elastic matter varies depending on the degrees of heat and the corresponding distances between molecules. Kant observes that “metals and other bodies of this kind, when they solidify out of fluids, occupy smaller and smaller volumes as they become less and less hot.”[vii] The expansiveness of a body permeated by fire is then due to the greater distance between its molecules, at the same time separated and drawn together by elastic matter, whereas the withdrawal of heat is responsible for the contraction of a body, with the spaces occupied by elastic matter becoming smaller. The first pyropolitical implications of Kant’s conjectures come through in this very moment: fire not only mediates a multiplicity of semi-autonomous entities, drawing them together into a single body (here: body politic), but it also drives the rhythms of this body’s expansion and its inevitable contraction when heat diminishes. But what does this actually mean? It means that individual actors (represented by separate molecules) are further apart from one another, when the body politic they participate in is inflamed by revolutionary fervor, war, tumult, and the like. And, vice versa, the solidity and compactness of the cooled down body politic is due to the shrinking of fire’s elastic matter between individuals. Kant himself notes this inversion of common sense in Proposition 5: “What is ordinarily called compression in a solid body is more truly called by the name dilatation or extension [quae in corporibus duris compressiones vulgo vocantur, dilatationis verius s. extensionis nomine nuncupandae sunt].”[viii]

That said, elastic matter (hence, heat and fire) never evanesces entirely; every single body, for Kant, contains residual heat, which accounts for its resilience. The main effect of this perseverance is that solid bodies can stretch, when, for instance, extra weight is affixed to them, rather than tear. Hence, “it is clear that the elements of solid bodies, not being in immediate contact, attract each other at a definite distance by means of some mediating matter [elementa corporum durorum non immediato contactu, sed mediante materia quadam in definita etiam distantia semet attrahere]” (Prop 4).[ix] When it comes to attraction, elastic matter plays the role of another universal force, that of gravity. However weak, fire still articulates the multiplicity of bodies, without letting them either fuse with one another (nor even to be in immediate contact) or fall apart. Its function harkens back to the principle of reason, or the idea of reason, which Kant will later elevate to, among other things, the principle of the right governing our outer freedom—i.e., that no person can invade the space of the other, seen in light of the synthetic a priori axiom that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time—and the foundations of the social contract.

The intermediate position of elastic matter does not make it inherently moderate, however. When elastic matter is extremely expansive—that is, when heat is increased beyond the fragile limits within which it can draw together molecules and hold them apart—then the burning body disintegrates. When it nearly fades, then the exceptionally cool body loses its elasticity and, becoming brittle, suffer a similar fate. That is why, if there is a Kantian pyropolitical art, it is that of moderating the fire of body politic, albeit not by controlling the intensities of revolutionary fire, in the manner of Lenin or Castro, but by seeking guidance from reason and its transcendentally indifferent heat (within the limits of its critique) for peaceful coexistence. In the concluding proposition of the first part of his treatise on fire, Kant expresses the variability of elastic matter in terms of its compression and distension.[x] In Hegelian terms, we might say that Kant’s fire is the determination of every determinate negation, however abstract the negated material might have been.

The immoderate character of elastic matter becomes apparent in the transition to Part II of Kant’s study on fire. If, in the general corollary to Part I, Kant claimed that “upon increase of the quantity or even of the elasticity of the matter, the body can increase in volume and the particles recede from each other without loss of cohesion in the body as a whole,”[xi] then in the opening salvo of Part II, he observes that “fire shows its presence first by rarefying a body, whether fluid or solid, in all directions, then, the cohesion of the body being weakened, by breaking down its structure, and, finally, by dissipating it in the form of vapor [debilitata sensim cohaesione, corporum compagem solvendo, postremo partes in vapores dissipando]” (Prop 6).[xii] The same elastic matter, which is the matter of fire (“materia ignis non est nisi […] materia elastica” [Prop. 7][xiii]), is supposed to account for the cohesion of other kinds of matter it interrelates and for the loss, or the weakening, of that very cohesion. The instability of elastic matter is its conceptual and effective undecidability, its oscillations between the extremes of keeping and losing the cohesion of what it interrelates.

The loss of cohesion in particular is a return to the negativity of fire—indeed, the return of fire as a negative force, rather than a special kind of matter. Though perhaps surprising, given the study’s previously reached conclusions, it is also understandable in light of what will have become a signature term of Kantian philosophy: the limit. Fire, writes Kant, “cannot grow without limit in any body [in nullo corpore in immensum crescere potest]; in growing hot to the point of seething, a body can never exceed its boiling point.”[xiv] More precisely, Kant negates the negation of a limit to fire, which cannot grow immensely within any body. Such a gesture will become crucial to the entire critical project with its assertion that human reason cannot grow immensely, reaching out to areas, to which it has no legitimate access.

Despite fire’s undeniable negativity and analytic effects, it is, for Kant, a great material synthesis of matter and energy, as well as of heat and light. The “elastic matter” of fire is heat and the latter, in turn, is light “compressed” (compressus), as Proposition 8 makes clear: “The matter of heat is nothing but the ether (the matter of light [lucis materia]) compressed by a strong attractive (adhesive) force of bodies into their interstices.”[xv] For Kant, heat is light compressed and absorbed by dense bodies, while light is heat reflected or refracted, scattered. In the proof of the proposition, he goes so far as to assert that “the matter of heat and the matter of light agree so closely as possible or, rather, that they are not different [nihil differre].”[xvi] Should this conclusion not hold for the light of reason, as well, which must “agree so closely as possible” with reason’s heat? Within the budding physical monadology of fire, another enlightenment is discernible, one that does not fetishize the cold and indifferent light of reason, in the manner of Kant’s later philosophy.

At the same time, though again doubly negative, material resistance to fire’s elastic matter is what defines the possibility of measuring heat, according to Kant’s reinterpretation of Guillaume Amontons’ principle. If “the force of fire is principally manifested in the rarefaction of bodies, one could correctly measure its quantity by the compressive force required to withstand the endeavor of rarefaction” (Prop 9, note).[xvii] Matter that is not elastic is “the compressive force required to withstand the endeavor of rarefaction”; it is this compressive force that lends matter its density, as the opposite of the expansive elasticity of heat. When the quantity of compressive force is insufficient, the matter of bodies is rarefied by fire’s elastic matter, which acts as anti-matter and as the intermediate guarantor of cohesion with respect to the materials it permeates.

The concluding propositions of Kant’s brief treatise on fire deal with vapors, air, and flames viewed from the perspective of elasticity. When it comes to vapor, its “wonderful elasticity” (admirandam elasticitatem) consists in its explosive potential: “aqueous vapor, activated by fire, breaks the strongest container, and all vapors, each according to its own nature, often exhibit a wonderful elasticity” (Prop. 10).[xviii] In Proposition 11, Kant defines air as such as “an elastic fluid, almost a thousand times lighter than water [fluidum elasticum, millies fere aqua levius],”[xix] observing that fire extracts this elastic fluid from the bodies it incinerates, such that “the matter expelled from the interstices of the body, which was not then elastic, shows elasticity only when liberated.”[xx] In turn, following Proposition 11, the flame “consists of ignited vapor,” which derives from elastic matter found within a material body.[xxi] In the ignited body, “only the surface burns [nisi in superficie ardet flammaeque],” but as the burning moves down to the surfaces beneath the enflamed surface, “the elastic ether no longer holds it [a material body] bound together,”[xxii] which explains the disintegration of the burnt in ashes and cinders and the radiation of light and heat in the form of the ether that has been liberated from its material confines.

Fire becomes, for Kant, a purveyor of elastic matter, the vehicle for transferring it from the interiority of a material body to the air outside, which is itself an elastic fluid, and therefore one that is flammable. That is why the surface becomes so important: it is the plane, on which the inside and the outside communicate; it is in the in-between position even at the outer limits of a body. What holds bodies together is what leads to their demise; the very elastic matter that binds together its molecules facilitates its disintegration. Animation and death, cohesion and breakdown, hinge on the vicissitudes of fire, which, rather than merely dematerialize material entities, draws another matter out of them.

Lest we forget, the dynamics of cognition and a broad monadological ontology are also at stake in Kant’s notes on fire. One of the implications, for instance, is that instead of a deep analysis of reality, thinking ought to operate on the surfaces of the world, at the interfaces between the inside and the outside. Another is that to extract meaning from an entity is to destroy it, given that it has been internally interlaced and held together by the very meaning, corresponding to elastic matter, extracted from it. Further, if fire is not only symbolically related to cognition but if it is material cognitive activity (according to a philosophical line extending from Heraclitus—via Kant—to Novalis and, perhaps, Nietzsche), then cognition, too, boasts “a wonderful elasticity,” which prevents it from being confined in mental containers, not least in Kantian categories and schemata: it breaks through them. Finally, a pyrological and pyropolitical reading of the world and of thought focuses on the interstices within and between bodies and concepts. That is where thinking-being happens, not in static routines but in the animating and potentially deadening, dissipating and condensing, coherency- and incoherency-laden effects of fiery elasticity.

 

Notes:

[i] Immanuel Kant, “Succinct Exposition of Some Meditations on Fire.” In Natural Science, edited by Eric Watkins (Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 309.

[ii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 312.

[iii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 312.

[iv] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 313.

[v] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 313.

[vi] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 313.

[vii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 313.

[viii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 315.

[ix] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 314.

[x] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” pp. 315-316.

[xi] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 317.

[xii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 317.

[xiii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 317.

[xiv] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 317.

[xv] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 318.

[xvi] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 319.

[xvii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 320.

[xviii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 321.

[xix] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 323.

[xx] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 324.

[xxi] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 326.

[xxii] Kant, “Succinct Exposition,” p. 326.