AUTHOR MEETS CRITICS Kant’s Wolffianism: Comments on Karin de Boer’s Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics Stefanie Buchenau Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis, Paris, France Email: stefaniebuchenau@hotmail.fr Abstract In her new book, Karin de Boer attempts to read Kant’s first Critique as a reform of a Wolffian project. My contribution contains several comments and questions that aim to further develop this stimulating approach to Kant. They concern (1) the affinities and disagreements between Kant and Wolff, regarding metaphysics, epistemology and method; (2) the place of Wolff’s students (in particular Mendelssohn) in De Boer’s narrative; and (3) the development of the dialogue between Wolff and Kant in the latter’s later writings. Keywords: Wolff; Mendelssohn; Baumgarten; epistemology; metaphysics De Boer’s thought-provoking book participates in a wider tendency of recent histori- ography to inquire into Kant’s historical sources. Wolff and his disciples, who have been suffering from a poor philosophical reputation for centuries, have finally begun to spark a wider interest, as can be seen from the publication of Wolff’s Gesammelte Werke by Jean École and other critical editions, the first International Wolff Kongress in 2004, the Wolff Handbuch recently edited by Robert Theis and Alexander Aichele, various research groups in Europe, the United States and Canada, and the foundation of the Internationale Christian Wolff Gesellschaft in Halle. One may also mention many important translations, edited volumes, the collection directed by Gideon Stiening and Frank Grunert on eighteenth-century thinkers, and studies on Wolff and the Wolffians by Paola Rumore, Clemens Schwaiger, Jean-Paul Paccioni, Corey Dyck and many others. So, undoubtedly, there have been a number of forerunners to De Boer’s book. But De Boer’s merit is to have formulated a hypothesis that concerns the very core of Kantian philosophy. She proposes to read Kant’s first Critique as a reform or rebirth of Wolff’s metaphysics, arguing that, notwithstanding the critical revolution, Kant himself remained at least to some extent a Wolffian and just undertook a kind of ‘detour’ in the Critique, as he puts it in a letter to Kästner dated August 1790. This perspective is indeed new and productive. It sets an end to a long tradition that has employed Wolff merely as a negative foil, picturing him as a one-eyed philosopher who was bound by too much conceptual armour to be able to overcome his pre- critical prejudices. © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review. Kantian Review (2022), 27, 113–117 doi:10.1017/S1369415421000522 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415421000522 Published online by Cambridge University Press