A rightful condition, according to Kant, requires both a law to limit the freedom of each and a ruler to enforce that limit, a ruler who cannot himself be subject to the law’s enforcement without ceasing to perform his primary function. Kant placed his hopes, circa 1784, in a future ruler who combined worldly experience, a ‘correct conception’ of a possible constitution, and, above all, the good will to accept it. Subsequent historical events, along with the ‘completion’ in 1790 of Kant’s own critical system, suggested a new basis for confidence in civil progress no longer ultimately dependent on the ‘good will’ of rulers, while also making new demands on citizens themselves. I share the view of many others that Kant came to prefer the people’s actual consent to the laws over the merely hypothetical consent that he endorsed in the works of the mid-1780s. My reading of the Metaphysics of Morals Part One differs in treating the work not only as a theoretical treatise but also, and necessarily, a practical intervention in historical time. The resulting reading yields an internally coherent argument favouring representative democracy of a peculiar kind – one whose ‘organic’ character has not been fully appreciated.

We argue that scholars involved in debates on Kant’s writings on race and racism are deeply entangled with a tacit methodological debate about the use of a ‘priority principle’. We identify three variants of the priority principle in Kant scholarship. To illustrate, we focus on interpretations of Kant’s Physical Geography. The methodological approaches we analyse offer three opposite and mutually exclusive interpretative recommendations. We articulate a taxonomy of methods commonly employed and suggest that focusing on individual texts reveals value-laden methodological assumptions guiding the debate. To address substantive issues surrounding Kant’s raciology, we suggest commentators should carefully justify their methodological choices.

In the First Analogy of Experience in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues, on the ground that it is needed for a united time, that everything in the world is (permanent) substance or a determination thereof. In this paper, I advance what I call a representational reading of this text, and I explain how it addresses two concerns. The first is that Kant’s argument should have no leverage to establish (permanent) substance in experience, since pure intuition already represents a ‘united’ time. The second is that even if Kant can establish the existence of (permanent) substance, he cannot prove that this substance is the substratum for everything else.

Detailed analysis of the expression ‘things in general and in themselves’ reveals two further uses of ‘noumenon’ (and ‘thing in itself’) in addition to the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ senses distinguished by Kant himself. It follows (pace various ‘reductive’ interpretations) that Kant’s transcendental distinction comprises four different contrasts. On a new resolution of the long-running ‘one or two objects?’ dispute, there follows a complete re-interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction as a meta-metaphysical thought experiment. It has the ‘metaphysical density’ necessary to forestall charges of ‘innocuousness’ without giving purchase to the well-known objections that have dogged Kant’s transcendental distinction from its inception.

The concept of provisional possession in Kant presents a significant interpretative challenge. Scholars agree that prior empirical possession must be rationalized but have struggled to identify a form of omnilaterality within the state of nature. I propose understanding provisionality through the Pure Concept of Understanding of Possession (PUP) – a unilateral yet normative framework that rationalizes empirical possession based on temporal priority. Possession understood through PUP serves as a precursor to intelligible possession within the state of nature. To support this account, I first demonstrate that intelligible possession starts from empirical possession, thereby requiring an explanation of the transition from the latter to the former. I then argue that provisional possession unfolds in two distinct steps: first, prior empirical possession acquires an empirical title through the postulate of practical reason, which confers normative significance on temporal priority; second, PUP abstracts from empirical conditions, facilitating the progression towards a rational title.

Kant claims that we must Believe (or have faith, Glaube) in the attainability of our ultimate moral end – the Highest Good – and that God exists. According to a strand of orthodoxy, this claim rests on a rational principle, called Attainability: one can rationally will an end only if one thinks that it is attainable. However, this orthodox view faces four prominent objections concerning (1) acting as if, (2) the modal content of Beliefs, (3) approximation, and (4) withholding belief about Attainability. I show that Attainability should be read as a principle of willing simpliciter and that these objections do not withstand critical scrutiny. Kant’s critics, therefore, will need either to sharpen their objections or seek alternatives elsewhere.

This article provides a new reconstruction and evaluation of Kant’s argument in §IX of the second Critique’s Dialectic. Kant argues that our cognitive faculties are wisely adapted to our practical vocation since their failure to supply theoretical knowledge of God and the immortal soul is a condition of possibility for the highest good. This new reconstruction improves upon past efforts by greater fidelity to the form and content of Kant’s argument. I show that evaluating Kant’s argument requires settling various other issues in the interpretation of his moral philosophy, e.g. his account of moral psychology, motivation, education, and development.

This article uses Böckenförde’s dictum and Williams’s paradox of liberalism as a framework to critically analyse the current theoretical literature on democratic regression and rule of law backsliding in liberal democracies. It argues that the current literature is too strongly focused on (a) the problem of militant democracy (thereby neglecting militant constitutionalism) and (b) on the formal institutional safeguards that are needed to make liberal democracies resilient (thereby partially neglecting the need for a public ethos). In addition, it claims that such an ethos not only implies a democratic attitude but also a patriotic or constitutional attitude.

Kant’s aim in the Transcendental Deduction is to prove that the a priori categories of the understanding necessarily apply to objects of experience. He claims that he will do this simply by explaining how they could so apply. But the idea that a mere explanation of this possibility should provide a defence of the categories’ actual (let alone necessary) applicability is surprising. We argue that it can be understood by attending to the source of the scepticism that the Critique’s Analytic is supposed to overcome: Hume’s inability to explain causal knowledge in the Enquiry.

This paper focuses on the critical relation of reason and language in the work of Kant and Hamann. The biographical and intellectual relationship between Kant and Hamann is briefly outlined. The focus then shifts to Hamann’s essay ‘The Metacritique on the Purism of Reason’. The central themes of Hamann’s essay are unpacked. The discussion then considers the central, if ambiguous, role played by Hume in the whole Kant/Hamann debate. The discussion then moves to Hamann’s critique of transcendental idealism and finally to Kant and the question of language.

This article examines Immanuel Kant’s evolving ideas on race and inheritance, focusing on his early lectures on physical geography. It highlights his engagement with contemporary debates on physiological defects and adaptation. The notes of Georg Hesse, a student of Kant, are analysed to show how Kant’s ideas matured before his first published essay on race in 1775. The article also contextualizes Kant’s relationship with the works of Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis and Henry Baker, showing how their studies on hereditary anomalies influenced Kant’s ideas. Finally, it sheds light on how Kant navigated the challenges of explaining race and inheritance, balancing environmental and hereditary factors in his conceptualization of human variation.