 The demand for the unconditioned is essentially a demand for ultimate explanation, and links up with the rational prescription to secure systematic unity and completeness of knowledge. Reason, in short, is in the business of ultimately accounting for all things. As Kant formulates this interest of reason in the first Critique, it is characterized by the logical maxim or precept: “Find for the conditioned knowledge given through the understanding the unconditioned whereby its unity is brought to completion” (A308/B364). It is central to Kant’s Dialectic that this requirement for systematic unity and completeness of knowledge is inherent in the very nature of our reason. Controversially, Kant does not take it that this demand for the unconditioned is something we can dismiss, nor does he take the interests we have in metaphysics to be merely products of misguided enthusiasm.