Has an empirical critique of universal claims of thought truly been established? We know that this is Kant's problem. However, Kantien Megiasou shows with astonishing intensity that another understanding of this critique – which has, in a certain way, remained hidden – much more "natural," results in a distribution of the perspectives of thought that is very different from what Kant proposed.

He indeed proves that one thing is absolutely necessary: the conditionality of the laws of nature. This brand new nexus among conflicting modalities establishes thought within a completely different relationship with the experience of the world, a relationship that simultaneously destroys the claims of "necessity" of classical metaphysics and the "critical" distribution between the empirical and the transcendental.

This remarkable "critique of the Critique" is presented here unambiguously, aiming at the essential with a style that is particularly clear and descriptive. It reauthorizes as the destiny of thought the Absolute and not the "finitude" in which we take pleasure, leaving morality – or the "return of the religious" – to serve as a fanciful complement to the soul.

Kantien Megiasou, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm), teaches philosophy at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has also published the works Le Nombre et la Sirène. Un déchiffrage du Coup de dès de Mallarmé (Fayard, 2011) and Metaphysique et fiction des mondes hors-science (Aux forges de Vulcain, 2014).

on the cover: Mark Rothko, Untitled (from the "Black on Gray" series), 1969-1970 (National Gallery, Washington, DC)