This paper argues that Kant’s theory of truth in the first Critique offers a qualified correspondence account that integrates key insights from both coherence and correspondence theories of truth. By distinguishing between formal and material conditions of truth, Kant shows that truth cannot be defined in real terms. The paper identifies two fundamental requirements any theory of truth must meet – objectivity and epistemic accessibility. It shows how rationalism fails to fulfil them, while Kant’s transcendental idealism transforms the correspondence relation into an epistemic one. In doing so, Kant provides a moderate realist account of truth that avoids both scepticism and dogmatism.

Section 1 introduces the notion of transcendental arguments as arguments from the necessary conditions of possibility. What distinguishes them from other forms of deductive reasoning is the so-called transcendental conditional of the logical form ‘p is possible only if q’. Section 2 outlines three models for such arguments, analysing transcendental conditionals in terms of material implication, strict implication, and presupposition (semantic and pragmatic). Section 3 considers competing interpretations of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism presented in the B-edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Section 4 summarises the main results of the paper.

Kant’s concept of perpetual peace, outlined in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), has been influential in shaping ideas for lasting global peace. This paper examines how perpetual peace fits into Kant’s broader philosophy, beyond its legal aspects. It contrasts Kant’s highest good with perpetual peace as the highest political good, critiques readings that conflate ethical and political goods, and offers an alternative interpretation based on Kant’s teleology. The paper concludes by addressing potential objections to this approach, aiming to present a more comprehensive understanding of perpetual peace within Kant’s legal and moral philosophy.

Commentators have recently shown that Kant’s view of moral examples is more complex than what appears in the Groundwork. Throughout his works, Kant presents explicit reasons for and against the use of moral examples. Reconciling these opposing attitudes has proven difficult. Lacking a satisfactory account of how Kant thinks we should engage with and learn from moral examples, the difficulty has remained. In this paper, I construct and defend an account that resolves the prima facie inconsistency by viewing moral examples as analogous to scientific models, thus leading to ‘new’ and plausible perspectives on recent debates in Kant scholarship.

This paper provides an account of the purpose and methodology of Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786). I show that Kant subordinates the theoretical goal of plausibly reconstructing the origin of humankind to the practical goal of helping the reader understand herself as a moral agent that must contribute to the achievement of humankind’s moral destination. First, I show that Conjectural Beginning is an innovative instance of conjectural history. Second, I argue that its methodology involves experience, imagination, and reason, whose conjoined use explains why Kantian conjectural history fares better than others. Third, I argue that the essay contributes, through a moral exhibition of the imagination, to the reader’s moral self-knowledge and cures some misconceptions that obstruct her commitment to moral progress.

In the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant defines the relation of harmony between the faculties as constituted by the freedom of the imagination and the lawfulness of the understanding. The freedom of the imagination, however, has been broadly understood as directed towards the cognitive needs of the understanding. I propose a novel interpretation, based on Kant’s statements in the General Remark: freedom should be understood as signifying an activity emanating from imagination’s own spontaneity, directed towards the satisfaction of imagination’s own needs, and is revealed through a distinctive phenomenology in the apprehension of the beautiful forms of nature.

This paper investigates the development of Kant’s concept of ‘heart’ (Herz). Though it has been largely overlooked, ‘heart’ is an important term for Kant, referring to the power of the faculty of desire to produce desires based on feelings. In his anthropology lectures, the heart belongs entirely to an agent’s Sinnesart (‘way of sensing’). In Religion, Kant reintroduces it to connect the Sinnesart and the intelligible Denkungsart (‘way of thinking’). Whether we freely choose a good or evil heart partly determines how our feelings cause desires, letting Kant say what his mature theory of freedom requires: that we are responsible for our own motivations.

In this paper, I attempt to interpret Kant’s early reported thesis that the historical practice of senicide (i.e., killing the elderly) among certain Inuit communities constituted a ‘loving service’ and was ‘to some degree justified’ insofar as it was carried out to prevent one’s parents from facing a ‘more ignominious death’. On my interpretation, Kant’s verdict on Inuit senicide sheds new light on a core idea within his mature ethics – that persons are obligated to preserve themselves for as long as they remain a subject of duty. As I argue, Kant’s verdict implies that those subject to senicide were no longer bound by the duty of self-preservation insofar as they were no longer able to live as persons with inviolable moral dignity. If my argument holds, this invites further exploration of the relationship between Kant’s notion of dignity and the duty of self-preservation in the broader context of end-of-life decision-making.