Rationalist EmpiricismHonorable Mention, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies, Modern Language Association Twenty first century philosophy has been drawn into a false opposition between speculation and critique. Nathan Brown shows that the key to overcoming this antinomy is a re engagement with the relation between rationalism and empiricism. If Kants transcendental philosophy attempted to displace the opposing priorities of those orientations,