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There is an immense recent literature on issues concerning the development of Kant’s philosophy and the relation between theoretical and practical grounds for asserting absolute freedom. One important recent contribution to this issue is a series of writings by Patricia Kitcher. In this context I focus on three closely related works, namely, Chapter 14 from her book, Kant’s Thinker , “Is Kant’s Thinker (as Such) a Free and Responsible Agent?” and two later essays, “A Kantian Argument for the Formula of Humanity,” and “Kant’s Practical Proof of the Fact of Freedom.” See Kitcher (2011), Kitcher (2017), and Kitcher (2023). It is not possible on this occasion to discuss her other work on related topics, such as Kitcher (2004). I argue in support of Kitcher’s general position that Kant shifts away, quite properly, from an emphasis on purely theoretical grounds. In view of the importance and complexity of the notion of transcendental freedom, however, I also point out some remaining problems in Kitcher’s work as well as in Kant’s final position.

When discussing ‘representations’ ( Vorstellungen ) in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, many authors default to one of two basic approaches: (1) anything Kant calls a Vorstellung has some sort of semantic representational content (the Content Reading), or (2) Vorstellungen which do not have representational content are an exception to the rule, and present a puzzle to be solved (the Incongruity Reading). I argue that both these positions are mistaken. I approach the topic of Kant’s notion of representation by first clarifying the connotations of Vorstellung in the post-Leibnizian context from which Kant inherited the term. I argue that Leibniz’s notion of representational ‘expression’ and historical debates about the mind-body relationship illuminate Kant’s use of this term of art, while showing that the Content Reading and the Incongruity Reading falter in attributing to Kant a contemporary sense of ‘representation’ linked to semantic content. As an alternative, I develop the view that Kant’s Vorstellungen are mental forms of unity proper to the mind’s different faculties, which unify multiplicities in their respective ways. ‘Representations’ are ways of unifying multiplicities first and foremost, and it is a further question how features of these forms of unification could support an account of semantic representation.

I take a new approach to the problem of interpreting the controversial footnote on B160 – 1 of Kant’s first Critique , focusing on philosophical considerations about conditions under which synthesis is required for the representation of properties of space, and I argue for the following position. The form of outer intuition, which does not involve synthesis, represents the three-dimensionality, continuity, holism and uniformity of space; but it cannot represent space’s singularity, because the form of outer intuition is perspectival and so cannot connect spaces represented by different empirical intuitions. As this suggests, the singularity of space must be the unity which Kant means to attribute to the formal intuition in the footnote. The formal intuition’s representation of singularity can be explained on the basis of dynamical syntheses implemented through empirical syntheses. But it still qualifies as a priori because it depends ultimately on the transcendental syntheses which those empirical syntheses exemplify.

In what follows, I argue that given a Kantian conception of the capacity of reason, possession of that capacity entails possession of an implicit understanding of what understanding or intelligibility itself is. I show that this follows from Kant’s conception of reason as the power or capacity for understanding or comprehension ( Begreifen ), together with several basic Kantian commitments about the nature of rational capacities. Through this argument, I hope to show that the core of the Kantian conception of reason is an implicit understanding of intelligibility itself. This represents a first step towards a Kantian defense of the rationalist idea that the essence of reason consists precisely in the capacity to understand intelligibility.

This paper focuses on Kant’s conceptions of synthesis and spontaneity in cognition. On a popular interpretation, Kant takes judgments and other cognitive acts to be spontaneous in the sense that all judgments, thoughts, etc., are inherently self-reflexive. Yet, when it comes to synthesis, the combination of representations presupposed by all cognition, this interpretation seems only partly correct: while Kant states that all synthesis is an act of the understanding, and therefore a self-activity of the subject, he also defines synthesis in general as an effect of the blind faculty of imagination. I argue that, given Kant’s opposing yet programmatic claims about synthesis, the self-reflexivity of cognitive acts does not reflect his complete position on spontaneity. In the paper, I propose an alternative interpretation of spontaneity, arguing that central to Kant’s theory is the fundamental openness of the relation of spontaneity to the self-conscious subject: although the subject necessarily represents itself as spontaneous, the subject ultimately cannot know whether it is the agent of the spontaneous acts that it represents as its own. This interpretation, I argue, better accounts for Kant’s notion of blind synthesis: the latter preserves the openness of his conception of the agent of spontaneous acts. The paper offers a novel perspective on spontaneity, differing from the often debated question of whether the spontaneity of thought is absolute or relative. It offers a new way of understanding and resolving the tension in Kant’s account of synthesis.