•  12
    Kant’s Rationalist Account of Hope
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. forthcoming.
    Few fates seem worse than living without cause for hope. Yet what is it to have a cause for hope? And how is it related to having hope? Although these questions have received relatively little philosophical attention, I argue that Kant advances a rationalist account of hope that addresses them. My central thesis has two parts. First, hope is a rational attitude for Kant; certain rational conditions are needed to differentiate hope from other desiderative attitudes (such as mere wishing or fantas…Read more
  •  17
    In Leibniz’s Wake: Rationalist Paradise Lost
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (5): 517-539. 2022.
    The eighteenth-century German rationalist tradition is, broadly speaking, committed to (what I call) ‘the principle of rational cognition’: the grounded must be rationally cognizable from its sufficient ground. Whereas the prevailing view takes the fundamental challenge to rationalist paradise to stem from the principle of sufficient reason, I argue that it instead stems from this principle: How is it possible to rationally cognize anything at all from its ground? By investigating the opposing r…Read more
  •  28
    From dogmatic slumber to rationalist nightmares: Kant among the dreamers of reason
    European Journal of Philosophy 31 (4): 869-886. 2023.
    What awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber? On the traditional narrative, he was awakened by Hume's challenge to our cognition of causal connections. A more recent narrative claims that he was awakened by Hume's challenge to our cognition of non‐logical connections more generally. In this paper, I argue that a key part of Kant's awakening was far wider‐reaching: he came to realize that all dogmas must be abandoned. An oft‐overlooked technical notion, dogmas are non‐logical principles cognizabl…Read more
  •  115
    The End of Explanation: Kant on the Unconditioned
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (3): 507-532. 2021.
    Human reason demands ultimate explanation; it demands a Because that admits of no further Because –something unconditioned. Pace dogmatic rationalist metaphysics, Kant concludes that theoretical reason must remain modest; it cannot know or cognize the existence of particular unconditioned entities (e.g. God or Leibnizian monads). The prevailing view goes even further; it maintains that theoretical reason cannot even know that something or other unconditioned exists. Yet I argue that Kant’s criti…Read more
  •  26
    Kant’s Mathematical Antinomies and the Problem of Circular Conditioning
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273): 679-701. 2018.
    On the reading of Kant's resolutions of the first two antinomies advanced here, Kant not only denies that the empirical world has a ground floor of empirical objects lacking proper parts in the resolution of the second antinomy, but he also denies that it has a ceiling consisting in a composite whole enclosing all other empirical objects in the resolution of the first antinomy. Indeed, the order of explanation in the first antinomy runs from wholes to the proper parts they spatially enclose, whe…Read more
  •  123
    Kant, Grounding, and Things in Themselves
    Philosophers' Imprint 18. 2018.
    One of the central issues dividing proponents of metaphysical interpretations of transcendental idealism concerns Kant’s views on the distinctness of things in themselves and appearances. Proponents of metaphysical one-object interpretations claim that things in themselves and appearances are related by some kind of one-object grounding relation, through which the grounding and grounded relata are different aspects of the same object. Proponents of metaphysical two-object interpretations, by con…Read more