This chapter continues the earlier one's project of outlining Hegel's critique of metaphysics, and distinguishing it from Kant's own. It does so by considering Hegel's relationship to Kant's Transcnendental Dialectic and its three main divisions: paralogisms, antinomies and Ideal. It explains the distinction between finite and infinite categories in Hegel, as well as its bearing on his dispute with Kant. It also finishes the task, begun in Chapter 2, of reconstructing Hegel's ontological proof and response to Kant's critique of this form of argument.

Chapter 8 is devoted to the positive goal of Kant’s reform of the theoretical part of metaphysics, namely, the system of pure reason he intended to elaborate on the basis of the propaedeutic investigation carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason. Drawing on the Architectonic, the Transcendental Dialectic, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant’s lectures on metaphysics, and other texts, the chapter maintains that the Critique paves the way not only for a reformed version of general metaphysics or ontology but also for a reformed version of special metaphysics, namely, rational physics, rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology. The chapter argues that the Critique does not preclude the possibility of a comprehensive account of the purely intellectual determinations of the ideas of reason themselves and, hence, is much less detrimental to former special metaphysics than is generally assumed. Thus, it seeks to bring out the common ground of Kant’s projected system and the metaphysical systems put forward by Wolff and Baumgarten. The chapter concludes by arguing that Kant’s later accounts of his intentions accord with his original plan.

This chapter shows that the antinomies of pure reason present an analogy between the critique and a civil trial in which reason in the narrow sense is challenged to prove that it can legitimately possess and use its ideas. In reconstructing the different parts of this image, Møller suggests reading the tribunal image as a second-order model of evaluation of judgements. In order to achieve this aim, Møller inspects the different roles and procedures mentioned in the juridical metaphors to see how they fit the different procedures in the antinomies. The chapter untangles the notions of the tribunal itself, the trial, the witnesses, the audience and the verdict. The image of the reader as judge is considered in its intellectual historical context, which shows an affinity between Kant’s use of this image and the project of enlightenment.

Chapter 7 turns to the first two of the three metaphysical disciplines whose inferences and conclusions Kant discusses in the Transcendental Dialectic, namely, rational psychology and cosmology. We show how the four transcendental paralogisms and the arguments underlying the four antinomies of pure reason can be read as ‘necessary inferences of reason’ and how they result in the corresponding transcendental ideas. The chapter considers the paralogisms and the psychological ideas, discusses the role of transcendental realism in the paralogisms, looks at the derivation of the cosmological ideas and the four antinomies, and reconstructs the role of transcendental realism in the antinomies. In doing so, we concentrate on those aspects that are relevant to understanding how Kant develops his Rational Sources Account in the Transcendental Dialectic.

The Introduction explains the two major aims of the book. First, the book will offer a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic that isolates its constructive side, Kant’s account of the rational sources of speculative metaphysics (concerning the soul, the world as a whole, and God), and distinguishes it clearly from its destructive side, Kant’s critique of this kind of metaphysics. Second, it will reconstruct, and where possible defend, a Kantian account of the rational sources of metaphysical thinking. In particular, it will argue that Kant is right in claiming that metaphysical speculation arises naturally out of principles that guide us in everyday rational thought. As the book will argue, Kant gives us good reason to think that discursivity, iteration, and striving for completeness are fundamental features of rational thinking and that, taken together, they give rise to a specific kind of metaphysical speculation. This is a distinctive and original perspective on metaphysics that deserves to be taken seriously in the current metaphysical and meta-metaphysical debates.

In the first part of Chapter 8, we push forward to the very heart of speculative metaphysics, its account of God and the alleged proofs of God’s existence. We will reconstruct Kant’s derivation of the ‘transcendental ideal,’ that is, the idea of an ens realissimum, and argue that there is only one (abductive) argument for God’s existence that Kant regards as springing from ‘universal human reason.’ In the second part of the chapter, we return to Kant’s discussion of the metaphysical presuppositions of science in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, where Kant explains the tendency to make constitutive use of transcendental ideas and principles in scientific investigations.