The Principle of Sufficient Reason in Kant's Nova Dilucidatio

Abstract This paper reassesses Kant's early treatment of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) in the Nova dilucidatio , situating it historically and in contemporary grounding debates. First, I lay out Kant's conceptual framework —his definition of a sufficient reason, and his distinction between antecedently and consequently determining reasons—relating it to Wolff and Crusius and to contemporary grounding theory. I argue that the framework yields valuable insights but also harbours instructive confusions. Second, I reconstruct Kant's distinction between two versions of the PSR and two of his proofs —the arguments from indeterminacy and from exclusion. I show that the arguments fail, chiefly by conflating epistemic with objective notions of reasons and by sliding from entailment to grounding. Third, I underscore Kant's emphasis on the groundedness of truth while separating his Aristotle‐inspired insight—that p is true because p —from any full PSR, and I use this distinction to resist a recent defence of the PSR by Della Rocca.