The central arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason distinguish four fundamental metaphysical and epistemological claims, of which Kant rejects two and accepts two. However, the combination of empirical realism and transcendental idealism that he endorses seems at first sight to sit ill with the political realism that he endorses in some of his later writings on politics, history and human destiny. And yet, I shall argue, the combination makes good sense.

Basic Kant

Kant rejects transcendental realism – traditional metaphysical realism – arguing that its claims to show that we can have knowledge about things as they are in themselves, of that which transcends or lies beyond our experience, cannot be sustained. In denying transcendental realism he gives up the enterprise(s) of proving theism or atheism, freedom or fatalism. We have and can have no knowledge of these or other matters that lie beyond experience. However, he also rejects empirical or Berkeleian idealism, and its claims that we cannot know anything other than our own mental states.