Abstract

I explore Kant's claim that space is transcendentally ideal, limiting discussion to an argument to this effect found in the Transcendental Aesthetic in the $\underline{Critique\ of\ Pure\ Reason}$. It has been recently argued that, once thought deceased, transcendental idealism is capable of resuscitation. I argue that recent 'epistemological' attempts to revive this doctrine cannot satisfactorily answer the 'neglected alternative', fail to ground the critical notion of objectivity, and fail to eliminate the doctrine of transcendental realism. In revealing these shortcomings a new way of thinking about the relationship between appearances and things in themselves is developed which I argue succeeds where this recently promoted mode of reconstruction fails. ;I argue that Kant's intent in the argument grounded in the Metaphysical Exposition is to demonstrate the impossibility of the instantiation of the concept "object-in-itself" , the instantiation being the presentation of an object in space whose existence is independent of any conditions on our being aware of it. ;In a sense this falls in line with the recent epistemological interpretations of transcendental idealism , yet it does so in a way which generates a connection to the 'two-world' ontological reading of the distinction between things in themselves and appearances . Besides answering those problems which I argue plague the epistemological line of interpretation, this alternative reading also offers solutions to the traditional problems which follow on the ontological line of interpretation commonly found in Anglo-American commentaries on, and analyses of, the $\underline{Critique}$