Abstract

The present dissertation utilizes solipsism---the philosophical belief that I alone exist---to explore some of the inner tensions that can be appreciated in Kant's self-proclaimed revolution in metaphysics. Kant's attempt to conciliate idealism and realism in one brand of philosophical theory has been read as advocating a version of Berkeleian reductionism---the metaphysical view that objects of knowledge can be identified with some sort of subjective entities---and a radicalized form of Cartesian skepticism---the view that finds grounds to doubt about the existence of a world of ordinary objects and persons. I suggest that Kant's theory of empirical knowledge---taken as a theory of content---may answer those charges by maintaining, on the one hand, the independence of empirical content vis-a-vis the form of representation, and, on the other, by advocating transcendental invulnerability and empirical falliblilism. Finally, the paper explores Kant's theory of the self as another area where the inner tensions of his metaphysics become apparent; here the idea is that while his theory may be taken as a sound answer to the Cartesian claim to knowledge of "the thing which thinks in us," it nevertheless falls prey of the temptation to suppose the existence of a subject that transcends our human, conceptual framework