Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses a potted history of the reception of Kant in the traditions to which Wilfrid Sel-lars and Quentin Meillassoux belong- the analytic and the continental one, respectively- and explains how and why these two philosophers are relevant to Kant and to each other. It is hardly original to argue that the split between continental and analytic philosophy can be explained as deriving from two different approaches, or responses, to Kant's critical project. Meillassoux crucially proposes a revival of materialism and rationalism, but both terms need to be understood in their distinctively French form. For Meillassoux, mathematical ideation secures its grasp of reality thanks to an elaborate link he traces between the contingency of mathematical formalism and the contingency of Being.