The course will be structured as a close reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, couched in the question of enlightenment universalism--and its critique. We will be evaluating Kant's political and ethical motivations, alongside his theory of knowledge and metaphysics-- including the claim that science, freedom and ethics can be defended if and only if transcendental idealism is true; Kant's claim that space, time and causality are forms in which our mind constitutes experience (rather than features given by the world “itself”); his analysis of the ideas of God, World and Self as rational illusions, and his claim that enlightenment universalism and rational "thinking for oneself" is only possible by overthrowing these illusions. We will be reading Spinoza and Descartes as close interlocutors of Kant's Critique on the notions of Self, God and Freedom.