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The purpose of this book is to legitimize the task of ontology within the strictures of critical philosophy and thus to confront the problem of critical ontology. That the prospect of an ontology validated by way of transcendental critique should be accorded the status of a problem is implicit in the way Kant's critique of metaphysics has influenced the apparent nature and scope of critical philosophy. More specifically, it is Kant's attempt to replace traditional ontology with an account of cognitive experience that separates epistemology from ontology and renders the task of ontology critically suspect. To this Kantian approach the present work opposes an appropriation of Roy Bhaskar's attempt to rehabilitate ontology in the philosophy of science through transcendental analysis and immanent critique. Thus the rationale behind the focus on these two philosophers: there are enough similarities to form a common context within which their differences can be assessed, while those differences are deep enough to be significant for that common context. In other words, Kant and Bhaskar represent two different approaches to the status of ontology from within the sphere of critical philosophy, and the aim of this book is to question, through Bhaskar's work, orthodox Kantianism's demarcation of that sphere's limits.¹

DOI: 10.1057/9781137002723_1

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