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This essay argues that the key to understanding Kant's transcendental idealism is to understand the transcendental realism with which he contrasts it. It maintains that the latter is not to be identified with a particular metaphysical thesis, but with the assumption that the proper objects of human cognitions are “objects in general” or “as such,” that is, objects considered simply qua objects of some understanding. Since this appears to conflict with Kant's own characterization of transcendental realism as the view that (mistakenly) regards appearances as if they were things in themselves, the essay explicates the connection between the concepts of an object (or thing) considered as such and a thing considered as it is in itself. In light of this, it maintains that Kant's transcendental idealism is compatible with a robust empirical realism and that many of its critics are tacitly committed to a misguided transcendental realism.

This chapter examines Kant's much-criticized views on mathematics in general and arithmetic in particular. It makes a case for the claim that Kant's theory of arithmetic is not subject to the most familiar and forceful objection against it, namely, that his doctrine of the dependence of arithmetic on time is plainly false, or even worse, simply unintelligible. It is argued that Kant's doctrine about time and arithmetic is highly original, fully intelligible, and with qualifications due to the inherent limitations of his conceptions of arithmetic and logic, to an important extent defensible. The most philosophically striking thing about Kant's doctrine is the fact that arithmetic turns out to be a paradigm of the exact sciences (exacten Naturwissenschaften) only by virtue of its ultimately being one of the human or moral sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).

The Transcendental Dialectic portion of the Critique of Pure Reason poses a potential obstacle to the realist interpretation. The elementary worry is that empirical realism may be vulnerable to Immanuel Kant's own attacks on transcendental realism expressed most clearly in the Dialectic portion of the Critique. The chief task of the Dialectic is to delineate the legitimate boundary conditions for knowledge. It is therefore expected that it is within the framework of the Dialectic that the empirical realist conception of truth, and the determinacy of nature, will be subjected to scrutiny. This chapter looks at Kant's claim that all knowledge is restricted to the framework of possible experience and that the reality of the intrinsic causal relations of the phenomenal world can transcend the idiosyncratic limits of what experience reveals.

This chapter outlines a strong version of ‘realism’ against what Meillassoux labels ‘correlationism’. It suggests, however, that the critiques made by certain realists of the Kantian noumenal can be answered. It begins by defending Kantian ‘empirical realism’ against the critiques of some realists. Then it moves on to claim that Kant’s arguments for transcendental idealism are stronger than those for Bhaskar’s transcendental realism. The chapter suggests, more controversially, that if one takes seriously Kant’s notion of ‘spontaneous causation’, it is possible to offer a Kantian defence of the ‘grounding’ of the phenomenal in the noumenal. Finally, it argues that Kant offers a stronger form of realism than is generally supposed by his critics.

This chapter situates the Spanish Civil War narrative into modernism and politics. It examines the works of Spanish writer Max Aub, whose six-novel Civil War cycle El laberinto mágico (The Magic Labyrinth, 1943–1968) is a narrative innovation of chronicling war. This type of modernist narrative serves as a politically committed hyper-verisimilitude—or what Max Aub calls “transcendental realism”—that produces fiction which inscribes the war's chaos, disruption of temporal order, and challenge to social and familial relationships within the narrative proper. These narratives develop particular modernist strategies to respond to the extraordinary events of the conflict, while at the same time displaying their partisanship. The chapter then questions this partisanship during the Civil War by exploring the role of multimedia propaganda. It looks into the films The Spanish Earth (1937) directed by Joris Ivens and L'espoir (1945) directed by Andre Malraux.

This chapter lays out a methodology of transcendental realism and new materialism based on motion. Transcendental realism is the study of the real minimal ontological conditions for the actual emergence of the historical present. The purpose of this method is to give a description of what previous being must at least be like given that it appears as it does today: in motion. The chapter offers critiques of constructivism, empiricism, metaphysics, and transcendental idealism. It also offers a critique of vitalist new materialism, negative materialism, object-oriented ontology, formalism, and all ahistorical methods of thinking about matter and materialism. It concludes with a theory of “process materialism.”

The chapter examines Kant’s conception of the phenomenon of ‘antinomy’. It argues that his classification of antinomies is grounded in his trichotomous division of oppositions (into contraries, sub-contraries, and contradictories). According to Kant’s diagnosis, while all the antinomies consist of pairs of propositions that appear to be contradictories, the mathematical antinomies are merely contraries and the dynamical antinomies sub-contraries. The chapter makes a case for the centrality of the phenomenon of antinomy to Kant’s diagnosis of dogmatic speculative metaphysics. The general form of an antinomy is discussed, along with Kant’s notion of infinity. The arguments for the thesis and antithesis position of the first two antinomies are presented in detail.

Immanent realism is the view that some fundamental properties are immanent universals, entities that can exist wholly in different places at the same time that yet only exist when instanced. This chapter develops the proper immanent realist account of the basic properties and relations that appear in our experience. It includes a new understanding of the relation between determinate and determinable universals. Another novelty involves determinable structural universals constituting one fundamental substantial form of ordinary concrete particulars. Various other complexities of modal structure are developed. Cases discussed include phenomenal color, other sensory properties, spatial and temporal relations, causal powers, and substantial forms. Some affinities but also differences with transcendental realism are considered.

This chapter attempts to provide a sympathetic reconstruction of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and to save it from the more common objections raised against it. Central to the reconstruction is the reinterpretation of the Kantian thing-in-itself, according to which it is the essence or inner nature of the things of experience as opposed to the relations in which these things stand to other things. This reinterpretation allows Schopenhauer to claim that his metaphysics does not transcend experience but simply uncovers the meaning of what is given in experience. It is also argued that Schopenhauer’s system was not simply one of transcendental idealism but that it also involved a transcendental realism, according to which things exist independent of our consciousness of them. His system was more like Schelling’s philosophy of identity, which postulated the unity of the ideal and real.

Drawing heavily on market examples and transcendental/critical realism, this chapter switches the focus from knowing and ambiguities to unexpected happenings and contingencies, and from past to future events. The central theme of this chapter is that concrete reality is composed of a myriad of interrelated open systems subject to underlying causal forces and contingencies. This perspective is similar in a way to modern chaos theory in being skeptical of our ability to predict future outcomes, but differs in embracing an ontologically rather than an empirically based view of causality. Reality is seen to entail a flow of often conflicting currents of various sorts, rather than an ordered structure.

Being and Motion puts forth a new conceptual and ontological framework of analysis that begins with the primacy of motion. Indeed, the early twenty-first century has already shown itself to be an age defined increasingly by motion—by migration and global mobility, by kinetic theories of quantum fields, and by the mobility of the digital image. This short conclusion highlights the main theses put forward by this book and reviews what we have gained from them, their limitations, and what directions they have opened for future research. The conclusion looks at the five main theses of the book, the consequences of these theses, the limitations of the book as a whole, and the areas of future research.