This paper examines Du Châtelet’s and Kant’s responses to the famous vis viva controversy –
Du Châtelet in her Institutions Physiques (1742) and Kant in his debut, the Thoughts on the
True Estimation of Living Forces (1746–49). The Institutions was not only a highly influential
contribution to the vis viva controversy, but also a pioneering attempt to integrate Leibnizian
metaphysics and Newtonian physics. The young Kant’s evident knowledge of this work has
led some to speculate about his indebtedness to her philosophy. My study corrects such
speculations as well as misunderstandings of the Living Forces. This corrective result has
implications for how to investigate Kant’s relation to the ever-evolving landscape of Leibniz
exegeses