Kant’s Conclusions in the Transcendental Aesthetic

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertions about things in themselves, namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the neglected alternative problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. In this paper, I show in a new way how Kant’s view is not subject to this objection, by showing that Kant’s claim that things ‘in themselves’ are not in space means that space is not a necessary constraint on things as a kind . This claim does not involve the denial about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection.