A defense of Kant's transcendental idealism

Kant's transcendental idealism has come under attack after Peter Strawson's publication of The Bounds of Sense. Kant scholars have gone as far as claiming that Kant is not a transcendental idealist at all despite the fact that Kant labels himself a transcendental idealist. At the same time, defenders of transcendental idealism have given reasons why this type of idealism is still valuable. In my dissertation, I present some of the problems with transcendental idealism and also give an exposition of the commentators who argue against Kant's idealism. I end the dissertation by summarizing the most well known defense of transcendental idealism (Henry Allison's defense). I argue that Allison's defense is not satisfactory enough because it is a defense that focuses only on epistemology. Transcendental idealism is not just an epistemological thesis, it also has implications for ontology and even ethics and as such it needs an ontological defense. That transcendental idealism needs an ontological defense is made evident by the fact that the conceptual problems involved with it are ontological in nature. I make an attempt at such an ontological defense by showing the presuppositions involved in Kant's notion of objective validity.