in the first Critique, Kant claims to refute Moses Mendelssohn’s argument for the immortality of the soul. But some commentators, following Bennett (1974), have identified an apparent problem in the exchange: Mendelssohn appears to have overlooked the possibility that the “leap” between existence and nonexistence might be a boundary or limit point in a continuous series, and Kant appears not to have exploited the lacuna, but to have instead offered an irrelevant criticism. Here, we argue that even if these commentators are correct, an argument against the leapaslimit possibility is implicit in claims that Mendelssohn accepts. Moreover, Kant’s criticism of Mendelssohn adapts naturally into a response to this argument, though Mendelssohn endorses further claims which enable him to address this Kantian response. To illustrate the philosophical issues in play, we conclude by noting the affinity between the Mendelssohnian argument we develop and several prominent arguments in contemporary metaphysics: david Lewis’s argument from vagueness for unrestricted composition, Ted Sider’s argument from vagueness for perdurantism, and Peter unger’s argument from the problem of the many for substance dualism. in short, we argue that the philosophical issues involved in the MendelssohnKant exchange are much richer than previous commentators have believed, and that there is a Mendelssohnian argument for the immortality of the soul (or anyway, the permanence of simples) that does not suffer from any obvious flaw.

中文翻译：

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门德尔松，康德和永生的拓扑

在第一次批判中，康德声称驳斥了摩西·门德尔松关于灵魂永生的论点。但是，在Bennett（1974）之后，一些评论员发现了交换中的一个明显问题：门德尔松似乎忽略了存在与不存在之间的“跨越”可能是连续序列中的边界或极限点的可能性，而康德则出现了。不是利用漏洞，而是提出了不相关的批评。在这里，我们认为，即使这些评论员是正确的，孟德尔松所接受的主张也隐含了反对跨越极限的论点。此外，康德对门德尔松的批评自然而然地适应了这一论点，尽管门德尔松赞同了进一步的主张，使他能够解决这种康德响应。为了说明正在发生的哲学问题，我们在总结时指出了我们发展的门德尔松理论与当代形而上学中的几个著名论点之间的亲和力：大卫·刘易斯的论点是模糊的无限制成分，泰德·西德的论点是模糊的顽强主义，彼得·昂格的论点来自实质二元论的许多问题。简而言之，我们认为MendelssohnKant交换所涉及的哲学问题比以前的评论员所认为的要丰富得多，并且存在Mendelssohnian的论点，即灵魂的永生性（或无论如何简单性的持久性）都不会遭受任何明显的缺陷。大卫·刘易斯（David Lewis）的论点是模糊不清的无限制成分，泰德·西德（Ted Sider）的论点是模糊不清的持久主义，彼得·安格（Peter unger）则从物质问题二元论的许多问题出发。简而言之，我们认为MendelssohnKant交换所涉及的哲学问题比以前的评论员所认为的要丰富得多，并且存在Mendelssohnian的论点，即灵魂的永生性（或无论如何简单性的持久性）都不会遭受任何明显的缺陷。大卫·刘易斯（David Lewis）的论点是模糊不清的无限制成分，泰德·西德（Ted Sider）的论点是模糊不清的持久主义，彼得·安格（Peter unger）则从物质问题二元论的许多问题出发。简而言之，我们认为MendelssohnKant交换所涉及的哲学问题比以前的评论员所认为的要丰富得多，并且存在Mendelssohnian的论点，即灵魂的永生性（或无论如何简单性的持久性）都不会遭受任何明显的缺陷。