Although Kant’s view according to which our theoretical representation of nature “coheres” with our representation of nature from the perspective of our practical needs culminates with the third Critique and the notion of reflective judgment’s principle of nature’s purposiveness, this chapter demonstrates that the origins of this view can already be discerned in Kant’s discussion of nature’s systematicity in the first Critique, namely, in his discussion of the rationalist notion of the Transcendental Ideal and his account of nature as a unified system of laws in the Appendix to the Dialectic. While for some commentators reason’s need for the unconditioned is exclusively a reflection of its practical need, I argue that that the notion of the metaphysical ground of the unity of nature is a necessary notion for reason in both its theoretical and practical functions and, moreover, that reason’s practical ends are presupposed in every theoretical investigation of nature.

Chapter 9 examines Kant’s critique of metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason. We discuss transcendental realism and its relation to transcendental idealism and then argue that rejecting transcendental realism does not presuppose transcendental idealism. Next, we will see that even on its most general level, Kant’s critique of metaphysics does depends not on transcendental idealism but on the much more specific claim that human cognition is limited to sensible objects. Finally, we will distinguish between different interpretations of Kant’s account of transcendental ideas and argue for a radical reading according to which, when viewed in a purely speculative context, ideas of reason fail to represent (really possible) objects, which accounts for the third level of Kant’s critique of metaphysics. Our result will be that Kant develops a challenging critique of speculative metaphysics that does not presuppose his transcendental idealism.