Kant often uses geographical and political ideas and images to articulate philosophical questions and their resolution. There has been a lot of discussion of his use of each range of images, but the links between them are less obvious and less explored. Here I shall consider some links he draws in his 1786 essay What Is Orientation in Thinking?, and their philosophical significance. The shift from geographical to political imagery within this essay, I shall argue, is no superficial matter of style. The extensive geographical images in the first part of the essay articulate problems that arise in the ordinary use of human cognitive capacities, which seem inadequate for addressing many questions to which we seek answers. The political images in its closing pages are used to articulate an approach to norms of reasoning that could be used to resolve some of those questions. This interplay of geographical and political imagery recurs in many of Kant's writings, but I shall concentrate on this essay, leaving aside other writings in which he uses geographical and political imagery, as well as works in which he addresses substantive geographical and political questions.

Even the discussion of What Is Orientation in Thinking? will have a limited focus. The essay is usually seen mainly as a discussion of rational theology. In it Kant disputes claims put forward by Moses Mendlessohn and others that human reason can deliver knowledge of God. Yet, profound as this theme is, it is not the fundamental issue at stake in the essay. What Is Orientation in Thinking? is mainly of interest not because it is a notable contribution to eighteenth-century debates about knowledge of God (which it is), but because Kant approaches this debate by trying to articulate and delimit the powers of human reason. Only if this task can be addressed successfully can we find reasons for accepting – or rejecting – the theological claims advanced by Mendelssohn and others. So it is with some daring that I offer an account of this essay that skirts its discussion of theological claims, including its adumbrations of Kant's own views which allow for reasoned faith but not for knowledge of God.

The essay approaches deep questions about the powers of human reason by way of an extended comparison between terrestrial orientation, orientation in an arbitrary space and orientation in thought.