Kimberley Hutchings re-evaluates Kant's work in terms of its significance for the writings of Habermas, Arendt, Lyotard and Foucault. This, however, is not an exercise in the history of ideas; through her clear presentation of Kant's critical philosophy, Hutchings reveals that the critique is in fact a complex and highly ambiguous political practice.

Hutching's reading traces a common Kantian heritage in theories thought to represent the different poles of the modernist postmodernist debate and sheds new light on the Kantian influence in political philosophy, international relations theory and feminist theory.