Chance argues that the categories are products of the understanding alone and introduce a purely intellectual content into cognition. He examines the differences between Kant’s conception of the understanding and the conception of the understanding endorsed by Wolff and his followers. Specifically, he argues that Kant’s assertion in the Inaugural Dissertation of a “real use” of the understanding is an overt rejection of the Wolffian conception of the understanding as the capacity to render distinct content that is already present in sense and a catalyst for the issues raised in the 1772 Herz Letter that Kant does not fully address until the first Critique. In defense of his reading, Chance also argues that Kant borrows the language he uses to describe the categories from the Wolffian tradition. The sense in which Kant affirms the purity of the understanding is precisely the sense in which Wolff and his followers deny it. And since Kant also identifies this purity with the understanding’s spontaneity, there is a continuity between Kant’s rejection of the Wolffian account of the understanding and his rejection of the Wolffian account of reason.