Abstract

This paper sets Kant in the broader context of modern philosophy as a whole by suggesting that Kant not be understood primarily as attempting to i) defeat skepticism, ii) promote “scientism”, or iii) develop a radically new ontology. It suggests that Kant’s philosophy aims to take the claims of common sense at face value and then attempts to mediate between such claims and the apparently conflicting claims of science. Accordingly, philosophy is a systematic articulation of the sphere of conceptual frameworks that mediate between the extremely informal and the highly formal levels of judgment within our complex objective picture of the world. Thus, for Kant, philosophy lies in between common sense and science by attempting to mediate between them.