Kant on Euclid: Geometry in Perspective Prof. Stephen Palmquist, D.Phil. (Oon! Department of "eli#ion and Philosophy $on# Kon# %aptist &niversity (stevepq'h)u.edu.h! Citation:Pal mqui st, St ep he n R.. "Kant On Eu cl id : Geometry in Perspective." Philosophia Mathematica II!.#$ %&&'(: ))*. *. +$E PE"SPE+*-/ *0 O1 +$E 1*"S+ "*+*2&E There is a common assumption among philosophers, shared even by many Kant-scholars, that Kant had a naive faith in the absolute validity of Euclidean geometry, Aristotelian logic, and Newtonian physics, and th at his prim ary goal in the Cri tiq ue of ur e !eason was to provid e a rational foundation upon which these classical scientific theories could be based" This, it might be thought, is the essence of his attempt to solve the problem which, as he says in a footnote to the second edition reface, #still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general#-- namely , #that the e$istence of things outside us"""must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thin%s good to doubt their e$istence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof# &K'($$$i$)" *This assumption, in turn, is frequently used to deny the validity of some or all of Ka nt +s ph ilos op hi cal pr oec t- -o r at le as t it s re leva nc e to mo de rn philosophica l understandings of scientific %nowledge" winburne, for