Abstract

The Gedanken represents the first synthetic moment of the Kantian speculation, in which is addressed the famous ‘living forces’ debate, occasioned by Leibniz in 1686 against the cartesian philosophy on the law of conservation of quantity of motion (K: Dp = m . v or F = m.v 2 ?). Some paragraphs of this first Kantian work, Thoughts on the true estimation of living forces of 1746 (published in 1749), make reference to Aristotle’s and Leibniz’s construction of Nature. This article aims at showing the connection between the origin of this querelle and the Aristotle’s Mechanics, from a metaphysical and a mathematical point of view, through the notion of enteléchia and the equation of the force, estimated by Leibniz as m . v 2 .