Abstract
We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics.
According to the first (and polemical) conception, critical metaphysics analyzes
nothing more than the form of thought and thereby misses the proper point of
metaphysics, namely to investigate the form of reality. According to the second
(and affirmative) conception, critical metaphysics starts from the supposed
insight that the form of reality cannot be other than the form of thought and is
thus not required to analyze anything but that form. We argue that the first
conception is too weak while the second is too strong. Then we sketch an alternative
conception of critical metaphysics, a conception we find expressed both
in Kant’s B-Deduction and in the way Barry Stroud has recently investigated the
possibility of metaphysics. According to such a conception, a properly critical
metaphysics needs to proceed in two steps: first, it needs to analyze the most
general and necessary form of any thought that is about an objective reality at
all; second, it needs to investigate how that form of thought relates to the reality
it purports to represent. But unlike Kant, Stroud remains sceptical regarding the
possibility of a satisfying transition from thought to reality in metaphysics. We
argue that this dissatisfaction can be traced back to a notion of objectivity and
reality in terms of complete mind-independence. Then we sketch an alternative
notion of objectivity and reality in terms of distinctness from subjects and acts
of thinking, and argue that it is that notion that allows Kant, with his Transcendental
Idealism, to make the transition required for any satisfying metaphysics,
namely that from the form of thought to reality.