jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pIn his jats:italicKant on Laws</jats:italic>, Eric Watkins presents an account of reason on which the principles of specification and continuity are regulative instructions to search for different kinds of the unconditioned. I suggest that we correct Watkins’ account in two ways. First, we need to complete Watkins’ claim to the plurality of the unconditioned: reason aims for three kinds of the unconditioned, associated with the jats:italiclowest</jats:italic>, jats:italicnext</jats:italic> and jats:italichighest</jats:italic> concepts. Second, we need to look beyond reason’s search for the unconditioned in order to properly understand the nature of the aim of reason. I argue that we construe reason’s aim as the systematic unity of cognition considered as a whole or, in Kant’s teleological terms, as the realization of an ‘idea’, or a ‘purposive unity’.</jats:p>