In the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant laments that

it still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted on faith, and if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof. (B xl n.)

The two editions of the Critique each contain a celebrated refutation of epistemological scepticisms like those of Descartes and Hume. The first edition refutation has been widely decried as relying on an objectionable sort of idealism. The refutation of the second edition, though rather more difficult to interpret than the first, has usually been read as a mere reworking of the first.

Interpreters of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism face a dilemma: it seems to either beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic or else offer a disappointingly Berkeleyan conclusion. In this article I offer an interpretation of the Refutation on which it does not beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic. After defending a principle about question-begging, I identify four premises concerning our representations that there are textual reasons to think Kant might be implicitly assuming. Using those assumptions, I offer a reconstruction of Kant’s Refutation that avoids the interpretative dilemma, though difficult questions about the argument remain.

In recent decades a great deal of attention has been given to Kant’s writings on politics as presenting a possible path to lasting peace. In this literature too high an expectation is created over what Kant’s cosmopolitan thinking might achieve. Caranti’s book provides an excellent antidote to these speculations by spelling out clearly the implications of Kant’s peace theory. I suggest there may even be better ways for understanding the guarantee of perpetual peace, the role of religion and the ideal of the moral politician than Caranti maintains.

Kant claims that Aristotle’s logic is complete. He defends this claim from the nature of a strictly scientific logic, and rejects as futile the attempts by some modern philosophers at extending it. I analyse what it means for Kant to regard Aristotle’s (formal) logic as complete, explain the historical and philosophical considerations that commit him to proving the completeness claim and sketch the proof based on materials from his logic corpus. The proof will turn out to be an integral part of Kant’s larger reform of formal logic in response to a foundational crisis facing it.

In this critical review, I focus on two things. First, I respond to Stang’s interpretation of Descartes, according to which Descartes’ endorsement of his ontological argument commits him to possibilism, the doctrine that there are, or at least could be, non-existent individuals. My response consists in presenting a version of Descartes’ argument the acceptance of which does not require the acceptance of possibilism. The second thing I focus on is Stang’s claim that Kant distinguishes several kinds of real possibility. I raise worries about Stang’s formulations of various doctrines of real possibility, and I preliminarily explore how real essence and ground are connected with the various kinds of real necessity Stang’s Kant recognizes.

A core thesis of Kitcher's is that thinking about objects requires awareness of necessary connections between one's object-directed representations ‘as such’ and that this is what Kant means by the transcendental unity of apperception. I argue that Kant's main point is the spontaneity or ‘self-made-ness’ of combination rather than the requirement of reflexive awareness of combination, that Kitcher provides no plausible account of how recognition of representations ‘as such’ should be constituted and that in fact Kant himself appears to lack the theoretical resources to clearly distinguish between (first-level) consciousness and self-consciousness or apperception properly so-called.

The indispensability of the ‘postulate of practical reason with regard to Right’ to Kant's property argument in the Rechtslehre is now widely recognized. However, most commentators continue to focus their attention on the relation between the postulate and the deduction of the concept of intelligible possession. The nature of this relation remains a matter of dispute in part because the precise position of the postulate within chapter one of the Rechtslehre remains undecided. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that the related question has been neglected, as to why Kant should characterize the postulate of Right as a postulate of practical reason. Yet the fact that he does so is of some significance – especially if one recalls the definition in the Critique of Practical Reason of postulates of practical reason as practically necessary but theoretically indemonstrable propositions. What is of interest about this definition is not just the fact that it designates postulates as practically necessary and as theoretically indemonstrable at the same time – even more intriguing is the intimated relation between practical necessity and theoretical indemonstrability. Kant does not think the postulates' theoretical indemonstrability morally insignificant. To the contrary, their moral significance for us appears to be a function, in part, of their theoretical indemonstrability.

Marcus Willaschek’s new book Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics: The Dialectic of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a penetrating analysis of the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In his comments, the author first raises some questions concerning the structure of the Transcendental Dialectic (and Willaschek’s reconstruction of it) and then proposes that looking at the second Critique and continuing on into the third Critique will reveal more roles for the idea of God in Kant’s reconstruction of traditional metaphysics than Willaschek’s treatment suggests.

Both Rousseau and Kant wrote their works with the intention of contributing to the well-being of humans. The ways in which Kant followed Rousseau to achieve this aim were many and go beyond those easily recognized. This article presents evidence for Rousseau’s influence in the Discipline of Pure Reason chapter of the Doctrine of Method in the First Critique. Both Rousseau and Kant emphasized discipline as a necessary part of a proper education that leads to a well-ordered life. Kant’s form of discipline is modeled on the education given to Emile. This approach to the Discipline chapter also affords an enlightening view of Kant’s position in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer.