In this excellent book, Anja Jauernig provides an exceptionally clear and illuminating reading of Kant’s critical idealism. Jauernig is explicit from the beginning that she is concerned with Kant’s idealism as a metaphysical doctrine, with “Kant’s account of what there is in the world, understood as the sum total of everything that has reality, including, in particular, his account of appearances and things in themselves and their relation to one another” (xii). Thus, her approach stands in contrast to the more common practice of discussing Kant’s philosophy—especially the major themes of the first Critique—primarily from an epistemological angle. Her take on Kant’s idealism might raise the eyebrows of those who read Kant as a philosopher who completely abandons traditional metaphysical questions (in favor of purely epistemological or methodological inquiries). But Jauernig engages with and argues (to my mind, rather persuasively) against such deflationary interpretations. Her account of Kant’s critical...

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