Recent literature on Kant’s Opus postumum has typically focused on two parts of the drafts: the ether proofs and the Selbstsetzungslehre. Eckart Förster’s interpretation is representative of this tendency and, moreover, presents the Selbstsetzungslehre as the culmination of Kant’s late project. By contrast, I argue that the drafts of fascicles X/XI, written in between the ether proofs and the Selbstsetzungslehre, are of primary importance for understanding the Opus postumum. Through a close reading of a page from fascicle XI, I show that Kant attempts to resolve problems internal to the Selbstsetzungslehre and the ether proofs by presenting a transition from the former to the latter. I advocate a renewed appreciation of the centrality of fascicles X/XI, insofar as the Opus postumum drafts aspire to a science of transition.

It is commonly claimed that Kant's critical philosophy aims to limit reason's speculative use and its metaphysical pretensions. This paper argues that such claims should be amended in light of a technical distinction between negative limits and positive boundaries that Kant held throughout his career. Kant's only extended discussion of this distinction appears in §§57–60 of the Prolegomena, a division entitled “On pure reason's boundary‐determination”. I examine these sections in detail in order to elucidate the account of the limits and boundaries of the activity of different cognitive faculties in the Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that once we understand a key ambition of the Critique to be the positive determination of the boundary between objects of experience and things in themselves, we gain insight into the essential contribution that Kant's theory of the positive utility of ideas of reason makes to the critical philosophy.

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Kant's final drafts, known as his Opus postumum, attempt to make what he calls a 'transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics.' Interpreters broadly agree that in this project Kant seeks to connect the general a priori principles of natural science, as set out in the major critical works, to the specific results of empirical physics. Beyond this, however, basic interpretative issues remain controversial. This Element outlines a framework that aims to combine the systematic ambition of early twentieth-century readings with the rigor of more recent studies. The author argues that a question that has animated much recent scholarship – which 'gap' in Kant's previous philosophy does the Opus postumum seek to fill? – can be profitably set aside. In its place, renewed attention should be given to a crucial part of the manuscript, fascicles X/XI, and to the problematic 'arrival point' of the transition, namely, Kant's question: What is physics?