Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and Empirical Realism

Abstract

The core claims of transcendental idealism are examined, according to which empirical objects and empirical selves are appearances and not things in themselves, and pure space and time are nothing but forms of sensibility. Kant is shown to be a relationalist about empirical space and time in holding that empirical space and time are constituted by the spatial and temporal determinations of empirical objects. Furthermore, it is explicated how Kant can be both a transcendental idealist and an empirical realist about empirical objects, empirical selves, and empirical space and time, and how his idealism differs from transcendental realism, as well as from ordinary idealism such as Berkeley's.