A Kantian Found Poem

English: Unknown, possibly Elisabeth von Stägemann (Anton Graff school)
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Opus postumum is the common title for the work that Immanuel Kant was trying to complete before his years of illness at the end of his life. The original working title would have been something like, “Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics”, and toward the end he is playing around with titles like “The Highest Standpoint of Transcendental Philosophy in the System of Ideas”. The full work as it exists consists of many, many notes and argument-drafts collected together through many years. Because of this, the Opus postumum has more of the air of a Romantic book of aphorisms than a typical Kantian work. Philosophically, it’s fascinating because, unlike any of Kant’s earlier works, we see Kant actually thinking through tangled philosophical problems, going back, revising, restating (many times) principles and arguments in the attempt to find the best form. It is also fascinating, however, because its fragmentary character gives it an allusiveness and suggestiveness usually lacking in Kantian works. Thus it is unsurprising that it sometimes has an almost poetic quality. So here is a found poem from the Opus postumum:

Light-Matter

Light-centers (suns);
eccentric planets (comets)
and their appearance by their tails
which, like the zodiacal light,
render visible
the scattered particles,
these atoms,
in the sky.

[Immanuel Kant, Opus postumum, Eckart Förster and Michael Rosen, translators, Cambridge University Press (New York: 1998), p. 190 (22:84). The title and the line breaks are ours.]