 Why might Kant characterize Leibniz as holding some version of the “transcendental realist” perspective that he also attributes to Newton? This characterization is puzzling, as we have seen. If we return to the conceptual matrix above, it is not merely that Leibniz considers space to be the order of the possible relations among objects, and therefore to be dependent upon objects and their relations; it is also the case that he explicitly adopts the common early modern view that relations are ideal in the sense that they are somehow dependent upon the  mind.[20]  So prima facie, if space is a relational order, or dependent upon relations, and relations, in turn, are dependent upon the mind, then it seems that space is itself dependent upon the mind. Thus Leibniz appears to deny that space is real in a Kantian sense. Denying that space is real can be equivalent to denying that space is absolute; but Leibniz’s relationalism, coupled with his familiar early modern view of relations (an independent metaphysical thesis), seems to entail that space is also not real in the sense that it is not independent of the mind. In what sense, then, can Leibniz be called a transcendental realist? Prima facie, it is unfair to interpret him in this way.