Abstract

This chapter argues that transcendental philosophy is, while sometimes taken to be strictly anti-metaphysical and sometimes an unacceptable form of metaphysics, a metaphysical (or ontological) project in a critical sense. This does not make it dogmatic or philosophically suspect; on the contrary, transcendental philosophy offers us a way of engaging in metaphysical inquiry in a reflexively critical and fallibilist spirit. Its ontological relevance has been clear since Kant himself. After having clarified the way in which transcendental philosophy is, or can be reconceived as, a form of ontology, the chapter further defends its twofold nature as a project which is both metaphysical and critical of metaphysics through a comparison with pragmatism. There is, arguably, a way in which transcendental philosophy can be “naturalized” in a pragmatist context. This, it is suggested, is the proper way of engaging in transcendental metaphysical inquiry in the contemporary philosophical situation.