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Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the
history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical
movement that followed him. This article focuses on his metaphysics and
epistemology in one of his most important works, The Critique of Pure Reason. A
large part of Kant’s work addresses the question “What can we know?” The answer, if
it can be stated simply, is that our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and
the science of the natural, empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to
extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics. The reason
that knowledge has these constraints, Kant argues, is that the mind plays an active
role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind’s access only
to the empirical realm of space and time.

Kant responded to his predecessors by arguing against the Empiricists that the mind
is not a blank slate that is written upon by the empirical world, and by rejecting
the Rationalists’ notion that pure, a priori knowledge of a mind-independent world
was possible. Reason itself is structured with forms of experience and categories
that give a phenomenal and logical structure to any possible object of empirical
experience. These categories cannot be circumvented to get at a mind-independent
world, but they are necessary for experience of spatio-temporal objects with their
causal behavior and logical properties. These two theses constitute Kant’s famous
transcendental idealism and empirical realism.

Kant’s contributions to ethics have been just as substantial, if not more so, than
his work in metaphysics and epistemology. He is the most important proponent in
philosophical history of deontological, or duty based, ethics. In Kant’s view, the
sole feature that gives an action moral worth is not the outcome that is achieved
by the action, but the motive that is behind the action. And the only motive that
can endow an act with moral value, he argues, is one that arises from universal
principles discovered by reason. The categorical imperative is Kant’s famous
statement of this duty: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law.”

Table of Contents

Historical Background to Kant

Empiricism
Rationalism
Kant’s Answers to his Predecessors
Kant’s Copernican Revolution: Mind Making Nature
Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
Kant’s Analytic of Principles
Kant’s Dialectic
The Ideas of Reason
Kant’s Ethics
Reason and Freedom
The Duality of the Human Situation
The Good Will
Duty
Kant’s Criticisms of Utilitarianism
References and Further Reading
1. Historical Background to Kant
In order to understand Kant’s position, we must understand the philosophical
background that he was reacting to. First, this article presents a brief overview
of his predecessor’s positions with a brief statement of Kant’s objections, then I
will return to a more detailed exposition of Kant’s arguments. There are two major
historical movements in the early modern period of philosophy that had a
significant impact on Kant: Empiricism and Rationalism. Kant argues that both the
method and the content of these philosophers’ arguments contain serious flaws. A
central epistemological problem for philosophers in both movements was determining
how we can escape from within the confines of the human mind and the immediately
knowable content of our own thoughts to acquire knowledge of the world outside of
us. The Empiricists sought to accomplish this through the senses and a posteriori
reasoning. The Rationalists attempted to use a priori reasoning to build the
necessary bridge. A posteriori reasoning depends upon experience or contingent
events in the world to provide us with information. That “Bill Clinton was
president of the United States in 1999,” for example, is something that I can know
only through experience; I cannot determine this to be true through an analysis of
the concepts of “president” or “Bill Clinton.” A priori reasoning, in contrast,
does not depend upon experience to inform it. The concept “bachelor” logically
entails the ideas of an unmarried, adult, human male without my needing to conduct
a survey of bachelors and men who are unmarried. Kant believed that this twofold
distinction in kinds of knowledge was inadequate to the task of understanding
metaphysics for reasons we will discuss in a moment.

a. Empiricism

Empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, argued that human knowledge
originates in our sensations. Locke, for instance, was a representative realist
about the external world and placed great confidence in the ability of the senses
to inform us of the properties that empirical objects really have in themselves.
Locke had also argued that the mind is a blank slate, or a tabula rasa, that
becomes populated with ideas by its interactions with the world. Experience teaches
us everything, including concepts of relationship, identity, causation, and so on.
Kant argues that the blank slate model of the mind is insufficient to explain the
beliefs about objects that we have; some components of our beliefs must be brought
by the mind to experience.

Berkeley’s strict phenomenalism, in contrast to Locke, raised questions about the

inference from the character of our sensations to conclusions about the real
properties of mind-independent objects. Since the human mind is strictly limited to
the senses for its input, Berkeley argued, it has no independent means by which to
verify the accuracy of the match between sensations and the properties that objects
possess in themselves. In fact, Berkeley rejected the very idea of mind-independent
objects on the grounds that a mind is, by its nature, incapable of possessing an
idea of such a thing. Hence, in Kant’s terms, Berkeley was a material idealist. To
the material idealist, knowledge of material objects is ideal or unachievable, not
real. For Berkeley, mind-independent material objects are impossible and
unknowable. In our sense experience we only have access to our mental
representations, not to objects themselves. Berkeley argues that our judgments
about objects are really judgments about these mental representations alone, not
the substance that gives rise to them. In the Refutation of Material Idealism, Kant
argues that material idealism is actually incompatible with a position that
Berkeley held, namely that we are capable of making judgments about our experience.

David Hume pursued Berkeley’s empirical line of inquiry even further, calling into
question even more of our common sense beliefs about the source and support of our
sense perceptions. Hume maintains that we cannot provide a priori or a posteriori
justifications for a number of our beliefs like, “Objects and subjects persist
identically over time,” or “Every event must have a cause.” In Hume’s hands, it
becomes clear that empiricism cannot give us an epistemological justification for
the claims about objects, subjects, and causes that we took to be most obvious and
certain about the world.

Kant expresses deep dissatisfaction with the idealistic and seemingly skeptical
results of the empirical lines of inquiry. In each case, Kant gives a number of
arguments to show that Locke’s, Berkeley’s, and Hume’s empiricist positions are
untenable because they necessarily presuppose the very claims they set out to
disprove. In fact, any coherent account of how we perform even the most rudimentary
mental acts of self-awareness and making judgments about objects must presuppose
these claims, Kant argues. Hence, while Kant is sympathetic with many parts of
empiricism, ultimately it cannot be a satisfactory account of our experience of the
world.

b. Rationalism

The Rationalists, principally Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, approached the

problems of human knowledge from another angle. They hoped to escape the
epistemological confines of the mind by constructing knowledge of the external
world, the self, the soul, God, ethics, and science out of the simplest,
indubitable ideas possessed innately by the mind. Leibniz in particular, thought
that the world was knowable a priori, through an analysis of ideas and derivations
done through logic. Supersensible knowledge, the Rationalists argued, can be
achieved by means of reason. Descartes believed that certain truths, that “if I am
thinking, I exist,” for example, are invulnerable to the most pernicious
skepticism. Armed with the knowledge of his own existence, Descartes hoped to build
a foundation for all knowledge.

Kant’s Refutation of Material Idealism works against Descartes’ project as well as

Berkeley’s. Descartes believed that he could infer the existence of objects in
space outside of him based on his awareness of his own existence coupled with an
argument that God exists and is not deceiving him about the evidence of his senses.
Kant argues in the Refutation chapter that knowledge of external objects cannot be
inferential. Rather, the capacity to be aware of one’s own existence in Descartes’
famous cogito argument already presupposes that existence of objects in space and
time outside of me.

Kant had also come to doubt the claims of the Rationalists because of what he
called Antinomies, or contradictory, but validly proven pairs of claims that reason
is compelled toward. From the basic principles that the Rationalists held, it is
possible, Kant argues, to prove conflicting claims like, “The world has a beginning
in time and is limited as regards space,” and “The world has no beginning, and no
limits in space.” (A 426/B 454) Kant claims that antinomies like this one reveal
fundamental methodological and metaphysical mistakes in the rationalist project.
The contradictory claims could both be proven because they both shared the mistaken
metaphysical assumption that we can have knowledge of things as they are in
themselves, independent of the conditions of our experience of them.

The Antinomies can be resolved, Kant argues, if we understand the proper function
and domain of the various faculties that contribute to produce knowledge. We must
recognize that we cannot know things as they are in themselves and that our
knowledge is subject to the conditions of our experience. The Rationalist project
was doomed to failure because it did not take note of the contribution that our
faculty of reason makes to our experience of objects. Their a priori analysis of
our ideas could inform us about the content of our ideas, but it could not give a
coherent demonstration of metaphysical truths about the external world, the self,
the soul, God, and so on.

2. Kant’s Answers to his Predecessors

Kant’s answer to the problems generated by the two traditions mentioned above
changed the face of philosophy. First, Kant argued that that old division between a
priori truths and a posteriori truths employed by both camps was insufficient to
describe the sort of metaphysical claims that were under dispute. An analysis of
knowledge also requires a distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. In an
analytic claim, the predicate is contained within the subject. In the claim, “Every
body occupies space,” the property of occupying space is revealed in an analysis of
what it means to be a body. The subject of a synthetic claim, however, does not
contain the predicate. In, “This tree is 120 feet tall,” the concepts are
synthesized or brought together to form a new claim that is not contained in any of
the individual concepts. The Empiricists had not been able to prove synthetic a
priori claims like “Every event must have a cause,” because they had conflated
“synthetic” and “a posteriori” as well as “analytic” and “a priori.” Then they had
assumed that the two resulting categories were exhaustive. A synthetic a priori
claim, Kant argues, is one that must be true without appealing to experience, yet
the predicate is not logically contained within the subject, so it is no surprise
that the Empiricists failed to produce the sought after justification. The
Rationalists had similarly conflated the four terms and mistakenly proceeded as if
claims like, “The self is a simple substance,” could be proven analytically and a
priori.

Synthetic a priori claims, Kant argues, demand an entirely different kind of proof
than those required for analytic a priori claims or synthetic a posteriori claims.
Indications for how to proceed, Kant says, can be found in the examples of
synthetic a priori claims in natural science and mathematics, specifically
geometry. Claims like Newton’s, “the quantity of matter is always preserved,” and
the geometer’s claim, “the angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees” are
known a priori, but they cannot be known merely from an analysis of the concepts of
matter or triangle. We must “go outside and beyond the concept. . . joining to it a
priori in thought something which I have not thought in it.” (B 18) A synthetic a
priori claim constructs upon and adds to what is contained analytically in a
concept without appealing to experience. So if we are to solve the problems
generated by Empiricism and Rationalism, the central question of metaphysics in the
Critique of Pure Reason reduces to “How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?”
(19) (All references to The Critique of Pure Reason will be to the A (1781) and
B(1787) edition pages in Werner Pluhar’s translation. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996.)
If we can answer that question, then we can determine the possibility, legitimacy,
and range of all metaphysical claims.

3. Kant’s Copernican Revolution: Mind Making Nature

Kant’s answer to the question is complicated, but his conclusion is that a number
of synthetic a priori claims, like those from geometry and the natural sciences,
are true because of the structure of the mind that knows them. “Every event must
have a cause” cannot be proven by experience, but experience is impossible without
it because it describes the way the mind must necessarily order its
representations. We can understand Kant’s argument again by considering his
predecessors. According to the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions, the mind is
passive either because it finds itself possessing innate, well-formed ideas ready
for analysis, or because it receives ideas of objects into a kind of empty theater,
or blank slate. Kant’s crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world
as we have it is only possible if the mind provides a systematic structuring of its
representations. This structuring is below the level of, or logically prior to, the
mental representations that the Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed. Their
epistemological and metaphysical theories could not adequately explain the sort of
judgments or experience we have because they only considered the results of the
mind’s interaction with the world, not the nature of the mind’s contribution.
Kant’s methodological innovation was to employ what he calls a transcendental
argument to prove synthetic a priori claims. Typically, a transcendental argument
attempts to prove a conclusion about the necessary structure of knowledge on the
basis of an incontrovertible mental act. Kant argues in the Refutation of Material
Idealism that the fact that “There are objects that exist in space and time outside
of me,” (B 274) which cannot be proven by a priori or a posteriori methods, is a
necessary condition of the possibility of being aware of one’s own existence. It
would not be possible to be aware of myself as existing, he says, without
presupposing the existing of something permanent outside of me to distinguish
myself from. I am aware of myself as existing. Therefore, there is something
permanent outside of me.

This argument is one of many transcendental arguments that Kant gives that focuses
on the contribution that the mind itself makes to its experience. These arguments
lead Kant to reject the Empiricists’ assertion that experience is the source of all
our ideas. It must be the mind’s structuring, Kant argues, that makes experience
possible. If there are features of experience that the mind brings to objects
rather than given to the mind by objects, that would explain why they are
indispensable to experience but unsubstantiated in it. And that would explain why
we can give a transcendental argument for the necessity of these features. Kant
thought that Berkeley and Hume identified at least part of the mind’s a priori
contribution to experience with the list of claims that they said were
unsubstantiated on empirical grounds: “Every event must have a cause,” “There are
mind-independent objects that persist over time,” and “Identical subjects persist
over time.” The empiricist project must be incomplete since these claims are
necessarily presupposed in our judgments, a point Berkeley and Hume failed to see.
So, Kant argues that a philosophical investigation into the nature of the external
world must be as much an inquiry into the features and activity of the mind that
knows it.

The idea that the mind plays an active role in structuring reality is so familiar
to us now that it is difficult for us to see what a pivotal insight this was for
Kant. He was well aware of the idea’s power to overturn the philosophical
worldviews of his contemporaries and predecessors, however. He even somewhat
immodestly likens his situation to that of Copernicus in revolutionizing our
worldview. In the Lockean view, mental content is given to the mind by the objects
in the world. Their properties migrate into the mind, revealing the true nature of
objects. Kant says, “Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must
conform to objects” (B xvi). But that approach cannot explain why some claims like,
“every event must have a cause,” are a priori true. Similarly, Copernicus
recognized that the movement of the stars cannot be explained by making them
revolve around the observer; it is the observer that must be revolving.
Analogously, Kant argued that we must reformulate the way we think about our
relationship to objects. It is the mind itself which gives objects at least some of
their characteristics because they must conform to its structure and conceptual
capacities. Thus, the mind’s active role in helping to create a world that is
experiencable must put it at the center of our philosophical investigations. The
appropriate starting place for any philosophical inquiry into knowledge, Kant
decides, is with the mind that can have that knowledge.

Kant’s critical turn toward the mind of the knower is ambitious and challenging.
Kant has rejected the dogmatic metaphysics of the Rationalists that promises
supersensible knowledge. And he has argued that Empiricism faces serious
limitations. His transcendental method will allow him to analyze the metaphysical
requirements of the empirical method without venturing into speculative and
ungrounded metaphysics. In this context, determining the “transcendental”
components of knowledge means determining, “all knowledge which is occupied not so
much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this
mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori.” (A 12/B 25)

The project of the Critique of Pure Reason is also challenging because in the
analysis of the mind’s transcendental contributions to experience we must employ
the mind, the only tool we have, to investigate the mind. We must use the faculties
of knowledge to determine the limits of knowledge, so Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason is both a critique that takes pure reason as its subject matter, and a
critique that is conducted by pure reason.

Kant’s argument that the mind makes an a priori contribution to experiences should
not be mistaken for an argument like the Rationalists’ that the mind possesses
innate ideas like, “God is a perfect being.” Kant rejects the claim that there are
complete propositions like this one etched on the fabric of the mind. He argues
that the mind provides a formal structuring that allows for the conjoining of
concepts into judgments, but that structuring itself has no content. The mind is
devoid of content until interaction with the world actuates these formal
constraints. The mind possesses a priori templates for judgments, not a priori
judgments.

4. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

With Kant’s claim that the mind of the knower makes an active contribution to
experience of objects before us, we are in a better position to understand
transcendental idealism. Kant’s arguments are designed to show the limitations of
our knowledge. The Rationalists believed that we could possess metaphysical
knowledge about God, souls, substance, and so forth; they believed such knowledge
was transcendentally real. Kant argues, however, that we cannot have knowledge of
the realm beyond the empirical. That is, transcendental knowledge is ideal, not
real, for minds like ours. Kant identifies two a priori sources of these
constraints. The mind has a receptive capacity, or the sensibility, and the mind
possesses a conceptual capacity, or the understanding.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the Critique, Kant argues that

sensibility is the understanding’s means of accessing objects. The reason synthetic
a priori judgments are possible in geometry, Kant argues, is that space is an a
priori form of sensibility. That is, we can know the claims of geometry with a
priori certainty (which we do) only if experiencing objects in space is the
necessary mode of our experience. Kant also argues that we cannot experience
objects without being able to represent them spatially. It is impossible to grasp
an object as an object unless we delineate the region of space it occupies. Without
a spatial representation, our sensations are undifferentiated and we cannot ascribe
properties to particular objects. Time, Kant argues, is also necessary as a form or
condition of our intuitions of objects. The idea of time itself cannot be gathered
from experience because succession and simultaneity of objects, the phenomena that
would indicate the passage of time, would be impossible to represent if we did not
already possess the capacity to represent objects in time.

Another way to understand Kant’s point here is that it is impossible for us to have
any experience of objects that are not in time and space. Furthermore, space and
time themselves cannot be perceived directly, so they must be the form by which
experience of objects is had. A consciousness that apprehends objects directly, as
they are in themselves and not by means of space and time, is possible—God, Kant
says, has a purely intuitive consciousness—but our apprehension of objects is
always mediated by the conditions of sensibility. Any discursive or concept using
consciousness (A 230/B 283) like ours must apprehend objects as occupying a region
of space and persisting for some duration of time.

Subjecting sensations to the a priori conditions of space and time is not

sufficient to make judging objects possible. Kant argues that the understanding
must provide the concepts, which are rules for identifying what is common or
universal in different representations.(A 106) He says, “without sensibility no
object would be given to us; and without understanding no object would be thought.
Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.” (B 75)
Locke’s mistake was believing that our sensible apprehensions of objects are
thinkable and reveal the properties of the objects themselves. In the Analytic of
Concepts section of the Critique, Kant argues that in order to think about the
input from sensibility, sensations must conform to the conceptual structure that
the mind has available to it. By applying concepts, the understanding takes the
particulars that are given in sensation and identifies what is common and general
about them. A concept of “shelter” for instance, allows me to identify what is
common in particular representations of a house, a tent, and a cave.

The empiricist might object at this point by insisting that such concepts do arise
from experience, raising questions about Kant’s claim that the mind brings an a
priori conceptual structure to the world. Indeed, concepts like “shelter” do arise
partly from experience. But Kant raises a more fundamental issue. An empirical
derivation is not sufficient to explain all of our concepts. As we have seen, Hume
argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot empirically derive our concepts of
causation, substance, self, identity, and so forth. What Hume had failed to see,
Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making judgments about objects, to
which Hume would assent, presupposes the possession of these fundamental concepts.
Hume had argued for a sort of associationism to explain how we arrive at causal
beliefs. My idea of a moving cue ball, becomes associated with my idea of the eight
ball that is struck and falls into the pocket. Under the right circumstances,
repeated impressions of the second following the first produces a belief in me that
the first causes the second.

The problem that Kant points out is that a Humean association of ideas already
presupposes that we can conceive of identical, persistent objects that have
regular, predictable, causal behavior. And being able to conceive of objects in
this rich sense presupposes that the mind makes several a priori contributions. I
must be able to separate the objects from each other in my sensations, and from my
sensations of myself. I must be able to attribute properties to the objects. I must
be able to conceive of an external world with its own course of events that is
separate from the stream of perceptions in my consciousness. These components of
experience cannot be found in experience because they constitute it. The mind’s a
priori conceptual contribution to experience can be enumerated by a special set of
concepts that make all other empirical concepts and judgments possible. These
concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are only manifest as the form which
particular judgments of objects take. Kant believes that formal logic has already
revealed what the fundamental categories of thought are. The special set of
concepts is Kant’s Table of Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with
a few revisions:

Of Quantity
Unity
Plurality
Totality
Of Quality Of Relation
Reality Inherence and Subsistence
Negation Causality and Dependence
Limitation Community
Of Modality
Possibility-Impossibility
Existence-Nonexistence
Necessity-Contingency
While Kant does not give a formal derivation of it, he believes that this is the
complete and necessary list of the a priori contributions that the understanding
brings to its judgments of the world. Every judgment that the understanding can
make must fall under the table of categories. And subsuming spatiotemporal
sensations under the formal structure of the categories makes judgments, and
ultimately knowledge, of empirical objects possible.

Since objects can only be experienced spatiotemporally, the only application of

concepts that yields knowledge is to the empirical, spatiotemporal world. Beyond
that realm, there can be no sensations of objects for the understanding to judge,
rightly or wrongly. Since intuitions of the physical world are lacking when we
speculate about what lies beyond, metaphysical knowledge, or knowledge of the world
outside the physical, is impossible. Claiming to have knowledge from the
application of concepts beyond the bounds of sensation results in the empty and
illusory transcendent metaphysics of Rationalism that Kant reacts against.

It should be pointed out, however, that Kant is not endorsing an idealism about
objects like Berkeley’s. That is, Kant does not believe that material objects are
unknowable or impossible. While Kant is a transcendental idealist–he believes the
nature of objects as they are in themselves is unknowable to us–knowledge of
appearances is nevertheless possible. As noted above, in The Refutation of Material
Idealism, Kant argues that the ordinary self-consciousness that Berkeley and
Descartes would grant implies “the existence of objects in space outside me.” (B
275) Consciousness of myself would not be possible if I were not able to make
determinant judgments about objects that exist outside of me and have states that
are independent of my inner experience. Another way to put the point is to say that
the fact that the mind of the knower makes the a priori contribution does not mean
that space and time or the categories are mere figments of the imagination. Kant is
an empirical realist about the world we experience; we can know objects as they
appear to us. He gives a robust defense of science and the study of the natural
world from his argument about the mind’s role in making nature. All discursive,
rational beings must conceive of the physical world as spatially and temporally
unified, he argues. And the table of categories is derived from the most basic,
universal forms of logical inference, Kant believes. Therefore, it must be shared
by all rational beings. So those beings also share judgments of an intersubjective,
unified, public realm of empirical objects. Hence, objective knowledge of the
scientific or natural world is possible. Indeed, Kant believes that the examples of
Newton and Galileo show it is actual. So Berkeley’s claims that we do not know
objects outside of us and that such knowledge is impossible are both mistaken.

In conjunction with his analysis of the possibility of knowing empirical objects,

Kant gives an analysis of the knowing subject that has sometimes been called his
transcendental psychology. Much of Kant’s argument can be seen as subjective, not
because of variations from mind to mind, but because the source of necessity and
universality is in the mind of the knowing subject, not in objects themselves. Kant
draws several conclusions about what is necessarily true of any consciousness that
employs the faculties of sensibility and understanding to produce empirical
judgments. As we have seen, a mind that employs concepts must have a receptive
faculty that provides the content of judgments. Space and time are the necessary
forms of apprehension for the receptive faculty. The mind that has experience must
also have a faculty of combination or synthesis, the imagination for Kant, that
apprehends the data of sense, reproduces it for the understanding, and recognizes
their features according to the conceptual framework provided by the categories.
The mind must also have a faculty of understanding that provides empirical concepts
and the categories for judgment. The various faculties that make judgment possible
must be unified into one mind. And it must be identical over time if it is going to
apply its concepts to objects over time. Kant here addresses Hume’s famous
assertion that introspection reveals nothing more than a bundle of sensations that
we group together and call the self. Judgments would not be possible, Kant
maintains, if the mind that senses is not the same as the mind that possesses the
forms of sensibility. And that mind must be the same as the mind that employs the
table of categories, that contributes empirical concepts to judgment, and that
synthesizes the whole into knowledge of a unified, empirical world. So the fact
that we can empirically judge proves, contra Hume, that the mind cannot be a mere
bundle of disparate introspected sensations. In his works on ethics Kant will also
argue that this mind is the source of spontaneous, free, and moral action. Kant
believes that all the threads of his transcendental philosophy come together in
this “highest point” which he calls the transcendental unity of apperception.

5. Kant’s Analytic of Principles

We have seen the progressive stages of Kant’s analysis of the faculties of the mind
which reveals the transcendental structuring of experience performed by these
faculties. First, in his analysis of sensibility, he argues for the necessarily
spatiotemporal character of sensation. Then Kant analyzes the understanding, the
faculty that applies concepts to sensory experience. He concludes that the
categories provide a necessary, foundational template for our concepts to map onto
our experience. In addition to providing these transcendental concepts, the
understanding also is the source of ordinary empirical concepts that make judgments
about objects possible. The understanding provides concepts as the rules for
identifying the properties in our representations.

Kant’s next concern is with the faculty of judgment, “If understanding as such is
explicated as our power of rules, then the power of judgment is the ability to
subsume under rules, i.e., to distinguish whether something does or does not fall
under a given rule.” (A 132/B 172). The next stage in Kant’s project will be to
analyze the formal or transcendental features of experience that enable judgment,
if there are any such features besides what the previous stages have identified.
The cognitive power of judgment does have a transcendental structure. Kant argues
that there are a number of principles that must necessarily be true of experience
in order for judgment to be possible. Kant’s analysis of judgment and the arguments
for these principles are contained in his Analytic of Principles.

Within the Analytic, Kant first addresses the challenge of subsuming particular
sensations under general categories in the Schematism section. Transcendental
schemata, Kant argues, allow us to identify the homogeneous features picked out by
concepts from the heterogeneous content of our sensations. Judgment is only
possible if the mind can recognize the components in the diverse and disorganized
data of sense that make those sensations an instance of a concept or concepts. A
schema makes it possible, for instance, to subsume the concrete and particular
sensations of an Airedale, a Chihuahua, and a Labrador all under the more abstract
concept “dog.”

The full extent of Kant’s Copernican revolution becomes even more clear in the rest
of the Analytic of Principles. That is, the role of the mind in making nature is
not limited to space, time, and the categories. In the Analytic of Principles, Kant
argues that even the necessary conformity of objects to natural law arises from the
mind. Thus far, Kant’s transcendental method has permitted him to reveal the a
priori components of sensations, the a priori concepts. In the sections titled the
Axioms, Anticipations, Analogies, and Postulates, he argues that there are a priori
judgments that must necessarily govern all appearances of objects. These judgments
are a function of the table of categories’ role in determining all possible
judgments, so the four sections map onto the four headings of that table. I include
all of the a priori judgments, or principles, here to illustrate the earlier claims
about Kant’s empirical realism, and to show the intimate relationship Kant saw
between his project and that of the natural sciences:

Axioms of Intuition
All intuitions are extensive magnitudes.
Anticipations of Perception Analogies of Experience
In all appearances the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude,
i.e., a degree. In all variations by appearances substance is permanent,
and its quantum in nature is neither increased nor decreased.
All changes occur according to the law of the connection of cause and effect.
All substances, insofar as they can be perceived in space as simultaneous, are in
thoroughgoing interaction.
Postulates of Empirical Thought
What agrees (in terms of intuition and concepts) with the formal conditions of
experience is possible.
What coheres with the material conditions of experience (with sensation) is actual.
That whose coherence with the actual is determined according to universal
conditions of experience is necessary (exists necessarily)
6. Kant’s Dialectic

The discussion of Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology so far (including the

Analytic of Principles) has been confined primarily to the section of the Critique
of Pure Reason that Kant calls the Transcendental Analytic. The purpose of the
Analytic, we are told, is “the rarely attempted dissection of the power of the
understanding itself.” (A 65/B 90). Kant’s project has been to develop the full
argument for his theory about the mind’s contribution to knowledge of the world.
Once that theory is in place, we are in a position to see the errors that are
caused by transgressions of the boundaries to knowledge established by Kant’s
transcendental idealism and empirical realism. Kant calls judgments that pretend to
have knowledge beyond these boundaries and that even require us to tear down the
limits that he has placed on knowledge, transcendent judgments. The Transcendental
Dialectic section of the book is devoted to uncovering the illusion of knowledge
created by transcendent judgments and explaining why the temptation to believe them
persists. Kant argues that the proper functioning of the faculties of sensibility
and the understanding combine to draw reason, or the cognitive power of inference,
inexorably into mistakes. The faculty of reason naturally seeks the highest ground
of unconditional unity. It seeks to unify and subsume all particular experiences
under higher and higher principles of knowledge. But sensibility cannot by its
nature provide the intuitions that would make knowledge of the highest principles
and of things as they are in themselves possible. Nevertheless, reason, in its
function as the faculty of inference, inevitably draws conclusions about what lies
beyond the boundaries of sensibility. The unfolding of this conflict between the
faculties reveals more about the mind’s relationship to the world it seeks to know
and the possibility of a science of metaphysics.

Kant believes that Aristotle’s logic of the syllogism captures the logic employed
by reason. The resulting mistakes from the inevitable conflict between sensibility
and reason reflect the logic of Aristotle’s syllogism. Corresponding to the three
basic kinds of syllogism are three dialectic mistakes or illusions of transcendent
knowledge that cannot be real. Kant’s discussion of these three classes of mistakes
are contained in the Paralogisms, the Antinomies, and the Ideals of Reason. The
Dialectic explains the illusions of reason in these sections. But since the
illusions arise from the structure of our faculties, they will not cease to have
their influence on our minds any more than we can prevent the moon from seeming
larger when it is on the horizon than when it is overhead. (A 297/B 354).

In the Paralogisms, Kant argues that a failure to recognize the difference between
appearances and things in themselves, particularly in the case of the introspected
self, leads us into transcendent error. Kant argues against several conclusions
encouraged by Descartes and the rational psychologists, who believed they could
build human knowledge from the “I think” of the cogito argument. From the “I
think” of self-awareness we can infer, they maintain, that the self or soul is 1)
simple, 2) immaterial, 3) an identical substance and 4) that we perceive it
directly, in contrast to external objects whose existence is merely possible. That
is, the rational psychologists claimed to have knowledge of the self as
transcendentally real. Kant believes that it is impossible to demonstrate any of
these four claims, and that the mistaken claims to knowledge stem from a failure to
see the real nature of our apprehension of the “I.” Reason cannot fail to apply the
categories to its judgments of the self, and that application gives rise to these
four conclusions about the self that correspond roughly to the four headings in the
table of categories. But to take the self as an object of knowledge here is to
pretend to have knowledge of the self as it is in itself, not as it appears to us.
Our representation of the “I” itself is empty. It is subject to the condition of
inner sense, time, but not the condition of outer sense, space, so it cannot be a
proper object of knowledge. It can be thought through concepts, but without the
commensurate spatial and temporal intuitions, it cannot be known. Each of the four
paralogisms explains the categorical structure of reason that led the rational
psychologists to mistake the self as it appears to us for the self as it is in
itself.

We have already mentioned the Antinomies, in which Kant analyzes the methodological
problems of the Rationalist project. Kant sees the Antinomies as the unresolved
dialogue between skepticism and dogmatism about knowledge of the world. There are
four antinomies, again corresponding to the four headings of the table of
categories, that are generated by reason’s attempts to achieve complete knowledge
of the realm beyond the empirical. Each antinomy has a thesis and an antithesis,
both of which can be validly proven, and since each makes a claim that is beyond
the grasp of spatiotemporal sensation, neither can be confirmed or denied by
experience. The First Antinomy argues both that the world has a beginning in time
and space, and no beginning in time and space. The Second Antinomy’s arguments are
that every composite substance is made of simple parts and that nothing is composed
of simple parts. The Third Antinomy’s thesis is that agents like ourselves have
freedom and its antithesis is that they do not. The Fourth Antinomy contains
arguments both for and against the existence of a necessary being in the world. The
seemingly irreconcilable claims of the Antinomies can only be resolved by seeing
them as the product of the conflict of the faculties and by recognizing the proper
sphere of our knowledge in each case. In each of them, the idea of “absolute
totality, which holds only as a condition of things in themselves, has been applied
to appearances” (A 506/B534).

The result of Kant’ analysis of the Antinomies is that we can reject both claims of
the first two and accept both claims of the last two, if we understand their proper
domains. In the first Antinomy, the world as it appears to us is neither finite
since we can always inquire about its beginning or end, nor is it infinite because
finite beings like ourselves cannot cognize an infinite whole. As an empirical
object, Kant argues, it is indefinitely constructable for our minds. As it is in
itself, independent of the conditions of our thought, it should not be identified
as finite or infinite since both are categorical conditions of our thought. Kant’s
resolution of the third Antinomy (A 445/B 473) clarifies his position on freedom.
He considers the two competing hypotheses of speculative metaphysics that there are
different types of causality in the world: 1) there are natural causes which are
themselves governed by the laws of nature as well as uncaused causes like ourselves
that can act freely, or 2) the causal laws of nature entirely govern the world
including our actions. The conflict between these contrary claims can be resolved,
Kant argues, by taking his critical turn and recognizing that it is impossible for
any cause to be thought of as uncaused itself in the realm of space and time. But
reason, in trying to understand the ground of all things, strives to unify its
knowledge beyond the empirical realm. The empirical world, considered by itself,
cannot provide us with ultimate reasons. So if we do not assume a first or free
cause we cannot completely explain causal series in the world. So for the Third
Antinomy, as for all of the Antinomies, the domain of the Thesis is the
intellectual, rational, noumenal world. The domain of the Antithesis is the
spatiotemporal world.

7. The Ideas of Reason

The faculty of reason has two employments. For the most part, we have engaged in an
analysis of theoretical reason which has determined the limits and requirements of
the employment of the faculty of reason to obtain knowledge. Theoretical reason,
Kant says, makes it possible to cognize what is. But reason has its practical
employment in determining what ought to be as well. (A 633/B 661) This distinction
roughly corresponds to the two philosophical enterprises of metaphysics and ethics.
Reason’s practical use is manifest in the regulative function of certain concepts
that we must think with regard to the world, even though we can have no knowledge
of them.

Kant believes that, “Human reason is by its nature architectonic.” (A 474/B 502).
That is, reason thinks of all cognitions as belonging to a unified and organized
system. Reason is our faculty of making inferences and of identifying the grounds
behind every truth. It allows us to move from the particular and contingent to the
global and universal. I infer that “Caius is mortal” from the fact that “Caius is a
man” and the universal claim, “All men are mortal.” In this fashion, reason seeks
higher and higher levels of generality in order to explain the way things are. In a
different kind of example, the biologist’s classification of every living thing
into a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species, illustrates
reason’s ambition to subsume the world into an ordered, unified system. The entire
empirical world, Kant argues, must be conceived of by reason as causally
necessitated (as we saw in the Analogies). We must connect, “one state with a
previous state upon which the state follows according to a rule.” Each cause, and
each cause’s cause, and each additional ascending cause must itself have a cause.
Reason generates this hierarchy that combines to provide the mind with a conception
of a whole system of nature. Kant believes that it is part of the function of
reason to strive for a complete, determinate understanding of the natural world.
But our analysis of theoretical reason has made it clear that we can never have
knowledge of the totality of things because we cannot have the requisite sensations
of the totality, hence one of the necessary conditions of knowledge is not met.
Nevertheless, reason seeks a state of rest from the regression of conditioned,
empirical judgments in some unconditioned ground that can complete the series (A
584/B 612). Reason’s structure pushes us to accept certain ideas of reason that
allow completion of its striving for unity. We must assume the ideas of God,
freedom, and immortality, Kant says, not as objects of knowledge, but as practical
necessities for the employment of reason in the realm where we can have knowledge.
By denying the possibility of knowledge of these ideas, yet arguing for their role
in the system of reason, Kant had to, “annul knowledge in order to make room for
faith.” (B xxx).

8. Kant’s Ethics

It is rare for a philosopher in any era to make a significant impact on any single
topic in philosophy. For a philosopher to impact as many different areas as Kant
did is extraordinary. His ethical theory has been as influential as, if not more
influential than, his work in epistemology and metaphysics. Most of Kant’s work on
ethics is presented in two works. The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
(1785) is Kant’s “search for and establishment of the supreme principle of
morality.” In The Critique of Practical Reason (1787) Kant attempts to unify his
account of practical reason with his work in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant is
the primary proponent in history of what is called deontological ethics. Deontology
is the study of duty. On Kant’s view, the sole feature that gives an action moral
worth is not the outcome that is achieved by the action, but the motive that is
behind the action. The categorical imperative is Kant’s famous statement of this
duty: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that
it should become a universal law.”

a. Reason and Freedom

For Kant, as we have seen, the drive for total, systematic knowledge in reason can
only be fulfilled with assumptions that empirical observation cannot support. The
metaphysical facts about the ultimate nature of things in themselves must remain a
mystery to us because of the spatiotemporal constraints on sensibility. When we
think about the nature of things in themselves or the ultimate ground of the
empirical world, Kant has argued that we are still constrained to think through the
categories, we cannot think otherwise, but we can have no knowledge because
sensation provides our concepts with no content. So, reason is put at odds with
itself because it is constrained by the limits of its transcendental structure, but
it seeks to have complete knowledge that would take it beyond those limits.

Freedom plays a central role in Kant’s ethics because the possibility of moral
judgments presupposes it. Freedom is an idea of reason that serves an indispensable
practical function. Without the assumption of freedom, reason cannot act. If we
think of ourselves as completely causally determined, and not as uncaused causes
ourselves, then any attempt to conceive of a rule that prescribes the means by
which some end can be achieved is pointless. I cannot both think of myself as
entirely subject to causal law and as being able to act according to the conception
of a principle that gives guidance to my will. We cannot help but think of our
actions as the result of an uncaused cause if we are to act at all and employ
reason to accomplish ends and understand the world.

So reason has an unavoidable interest in thinking of itself as free. That is,

theoretical reason cannot demonstrate freedom, but practical reason must assume it
for the purpose of action. Having the ability to make judgments and apply reason
puts us outside that system of causally necessitated events. “Reason creates for
itself the idea of a spontaneity that can, on its own, start to act–without, i.e.,
needing to be preceded by another cause by means of which it is determined to
action in turn, according to the law of causal connection,” Kant says. (A 533/B
561) In its intellectual domain, reason must think of itself as free.

It is dissatisfying that he cannot demonstrate freedom; nevertheless, it comes as

no surprise that we must think of ourselves as free. In a sense, Kant is agreeing
with the common sense view that how I choose to act makes a difference in how I
actually act. Even if it were possible to give a predictive empirical account of
why I act as I do, say on the grounds of a functionalist psychological theory,
those considerations would mean nothing to me in my deliberations. When I make a
decision about what to do, about which car to buy, for instance, the mechanism at
work in my nervous system makes no difference to me. I still have to peruse
Consumer Reports, consider my options, reflect on my needs, and decide on the basis
of the application of general principles. My first person perspective is
unavoidable, hence the deliberative, intellectual process of choice is unavoidable.

b. The Duality of the Human Situation

The question of moral action is not an issue for two classes of beings, according
to Kant. The animal consciousness, the purely sensuous being, is entirely subject
to causal determination. It is part of the causal chains of the empirical world,
but not an originator of causes the way humans are. Hence, rightness or wrongness,
as concepts that apply to situations one has control over, do not apply. We do not
morally fault the lion for killing the gazelle, or even for killing its own young.
The actions of a purely rational being, by contrast, are in perfect accord with
moral principles, Kant says. There is nothing in such a being’s nature to make it
falter. Its will always conforms with the dictates of reason. Humans are between
the two worlds. We are both sensible and intellectual, as was pointed out in the
discussion of the first Critique. We are neither wholly determined to act by
natural impulse, nor are we free of non-rational impulse. Hence we need rules of
conduct. We need, and reason is compelled to provide, a principle that declares how
we ought to act when it is in our power to choose
Since we find ourselves in the situation of possessing reason, being able to act
according to our own conception of rules, there is a special burden on us. Other
creatures are acted upon by the world. But having the ability to choose the
principle to guide our actions makes us actors. We must exercise our will and our
reason to act. Will is the capacity to act according to the principles provided by
reason. Reason assumes freedom and conceives of principles of action in order to
function.

Two problems face us however. First, we are not wholly rational beings, so we are
liable to succumb to our non-rational impulses. Second, even when we exercise our
reason fully, we often cannot know which action is the best. The fact that we can
choose between alternate courses of actions (we are not determined to act by
instinct or reason) introduces the possibility that there can be better or worse
ways of achieving our ends and better or worse ends, depending upon the criteria we
adopt. The presence of two different kinds of object in the world adds another
dimension, a moral dimension, to our deliberations. Roughly speaking, we can divide
the world into beings with reason and will like ourselves and things that lack
those faculties. We can think of these classes of things as ends-in-themselves and
mere means-to-ends, respectively. Ends-in-themselves are autonomous beings with
their own agendas; failing to recognize their capacity to determine their own
actions would be to thwart their freedom and undermine reason itself. When we
reflect on alternative courses of action, means-to-ends, things like buildings,
rocks, and trees, deserve no special status in our deliberations about what goals
we should have and what means we use to achieve them. The class of ends-in-
themselves, reasoning agents like ourselves, however, do have a special status in
our considerations about what goals we should have and the means we employ to
accomplish them. Moral actions, for Kant, are actions where reason leads, rather
than follows, and actions where we must take other beings that act according to
their own conception of the law into account.

c. The Good Will

The will, Kant says, is the faculty of acting according to a conception of law.
When we act, whether or not we achieve what we intend with our actions is often
beyond our control, so the morality of our actions does not depend upon their
outcome. What we can control, however, is the will behind the action. That is, we
can will to act according to one law rather than another. The morality of an
action, therefore, must be assessed in terms of the motivation behind it. If two
people, Smith and Jones, perform the same act, from the same conception of the law,
but events beyond Smith’s control prevent her from achieving her goal, Smith is not
less praiseworthy for not succeeding. We must consider them on equal moral ground
in terms of the will behind their actions.

The only thing that is good without qualification is the good will, Kant says. All
other candidates for an intrinsic good have problems, Kant argues. Courage, health,
and wealth can all be used for ill purposes, Kant argues, and therefore cannot be
intrinsically good. Happiness is not intrinsically good because even being worthy
of happiness, Kant says, requires that one possess a good will. The good will is
the only unconditional good despite all encroachments. Misfortune may render
someone incapable of achieving her goals, for instance, but the goodness of her
will remains.

Goodness cannot arise from acting on impulse or natural inclination, even if

impulse coincides with duty. It can only arise from conceiving of one’s actions in
a certain way. A shopkeeper, Kant says, might do what is in accord with duty and
not overcharge a child. Kant argues, “it is not sufficient to do that which should
be morally good that it conform to the law; it must be done for the sake of the
law.” (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Akademie pagination 390) There is
a clear moral difference between the shopkeeper that does it for his own advantage
to keep from offending other customers and the shopkeeper who does it from duty and
the principle of honesty.(Ibid., 398) Likewise, in another of Kant’s carefully
studied examples, the kind act of the person who overcomes a natural lack of
sympathy for other people out of respect for duty has moral worth, whereas the same
kind act of the person who naturally takes pleasure in spreading joy does not. A
person’s moral worth cannot be dependent upon what nature endowed them with
accidentally. The selfishly motivated shopkeeper and the naturally kind person both
act on equally subjective and accidental grounds. What matters to morality is that
the actor think about their actions in the right manner.

We might be tempted to think that the motivation that makes an action good is
having a positive goal–to make people happy, or to provide some benefit. But that
is not the right sort of motive, Kant says. No outcome, should we achieve it, can
be unconditionally good. Fortune can be misused, what we thought would induce
benefit might actually bring harm, and happiness might be undeserved. Hoping to
achieve some particular end, no matter how beneficial it may seem, is not purely
and unconditionally good. It is not the effect or even the intended effect that
bestows moral character on an action. All intended effects “could be brought about
through other causes and would not require the will of a rational being, while the
highest and unconditional good can be found only in such a will.” (Ibid., 401) It
is the possession of a rationally guided will that adds a moral dimension to one’s
acts. So it is the recognition and appreciation of duty itself that must drive our
actions.

d. Duty

What is the duty that is to motivate our actions and to give them moral value? Kant
distinguishes two kinds of law produced by reason. Given some end we wish to
achieve, reason can provide a hypothetical imperative, or rule of action for
achieving that end. A hypothetical imperative says that if you wish to buy a new
car, then you must determine what sort of cars are available for purchase.
Conceiving of a means to achieve some desired end is by far the most common
employment of reason. But Kant has shown that the acceptable conception of the
moral law cannot be merely hypothetical. Our actions cannot be moral on the ground
of some conditional purpose or goal. Morality requires an unconditional statement
of one’s duty.

And in fact, reason produces an absolute statement of moral action. The moral
imperative is unconditional; that is, its imperative force is not tempered by the
conditional “if I want to achieve some end, then do X.” It simply states, do X.
Kant believes that reason dictates a categorical imperative for moral action. He
gives at least three formulations of the Categorical Imperative.

“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law.” (Ibid., 422)
“Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law
of nature.” (Ibid)
Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another,
always as an end and never as a means only.” (Ibid., 429)
What are Kant’s arguments for the Categorical Imperative? First, consider an
example. Consider the person who needs to borrow money and is considering making a
false promise to pay it back. The maxim that could be invoked is, “when I need of
money, borrow it, promising to repay it, even though I do not intend to.” But when
we apply the universality test to this maxim it becomes clear that if everyone were
to act in this fashion, the institution of promising itself would be undermined.
The borrower makes a promise, willing that there be no such thing as promises. Thus
such an action fails the universality test.

The argument for the first formulation of the categorical imperative can be thought
of this way. We have seen that in order to be good, we must remove inclination and
the consideration of any particular goal from our motivation to act. The act cannot
be good if it arises from subjective impulse. Nor can it be good because it seeks
after some particular goal which might not attain the good we seek or could come
about through happenstance. We must abstract away from all hoped for effects. If we
remove all subjectivity and particularity from motivation we are only left with
will to universality. The question “what rule determines what I ought to do in this
situation?” becomes “what rule ought to universally guide action?” What we must do
in any situation of moral choice is act according to a maxim that we would will
everyone to act according to.

The second version of the Categorical Imperative invokes Kant’s conception of

nature and draws on the first Critique. In the earlier discussion of nature, we saw
that the mind necessarily structures nature. And reason, in its seeking of ever
higher grounds of explanation, strives to achieve unified knowledge of nature. A
guide for us in moral matters is to think of what would not be possible to will
universally. Maxims that fail the test of the categorical imperative generate a
contradiction. Laws of nature cannot be contradictory. So if a maxim cannot be
willed to be a law of nature, it is not moral.

The third version of the categorical imperative ties Kant’s whole moral theory
together. Insofar as they possess a rational will, people are set off in the
natural order of things. They are not merely subject to the forces that act upon
them; they are not merely means to ends. They are ends in themselves. All means to
an end have a merely conditional worth because they are valuable only for achieving
something else. The possessor of a rational will, however, is the only thing with
unconditional worth. The possession of rationality puts all beings on the same
footing, “every other rational being thinks of his existence by means of the same
rational ground which holds also for myself; thus it is at the same time an
objective principle from which, as a supreme practical ground, it must be possible
to derive all laws of the will.” (Ibid., 429)

9. Kant’s Criticisms of Utilitarianism

Kant’s criticisms of utilitarianism have become famous enough to warrant some

separate discussion. Utilitarian moral theories evaluate the moral worth of action
on the basis of happiness that is produced by an action. Whatever produces the most
happiness in the most people is the moral course of action. Kant has an insightful
objection to moral evaluations of this sort. The essence of the objection is that
utilitarian theories actually devalue the individuals it is supposed to benefit. If
we allow utilitarian calculations to motivate our actions, we are allowing the
valuation of one person’s welfare and interests in terms of what good they can be
used for. It would be possible, for instance, to justify sacrificing one individual
for the benefits of others if the utilitarian calculations promise more benefit.
Doing so would be the worst example of treating someone utterly as a means and not
as an end in themselves.

Another way to consider his objection is to note that utilitarian theories are
driven by the merely contingent inclination in humans for pleasure and happiness,
not by the universal moral law dictated by reason. To act in pursuit of happiness
is arbitrary and subjective, and is no more moral than acting on the basis of
greed, or selfishness. All three emanate from subjective, non-rational grounds. The
danger of utilitarianism lies in its embracing of baser instincts, while rejecting
the indispensable role of reason and freedom in our actions.

10. References and Further Reading

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowden. Southern
Illinois University Press, 1996.
The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary Gregor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1992.
Correspondence. ed. Arnulf Zweig. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.
Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. ed. Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Kant’s Latin Writings, Translations, Commentaries, and Notes, trans. Lewis White
Beck in collaboration with Mary Gregor, Ralf Meerbote, John Reuscher. New York:
Peter Lang, 1986
Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759-1799, ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig. Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1967.
Logic, trans. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz. New York: Dover Publications,
1974.
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, trans. James Ellington. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1975.
The Metaphysics of Morals. trans. Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Opus Postumum, ed. Eckart Forster, trans. Eckart Forster and Michael Rosen.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. Gary Hatfield. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. trans. T.M. Greene and H.H. Hudson. New
York: Harper and Row, 1960.
Theoretical Philosophy, trans. David Walford and Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and
Wolff?(1804). trans. T. Humphrey. New York: Abaris, 1983 (Ak. XX).
Author Information

Matt McCormick
Email: [email protected]
California State University, Sacramento
U. S. A.

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