Is Kant's critique of metaphysics obsolete?

Abstract I raise a problem about the possibility of metaphysics originally due to Kant: what explains the fact that the terms in our metaphysical theories (e.g., ‘property’, ‘grounding’) refer to entities and structures (e.g., properties, grounding) in the world? I distinguish a meta‐metaphysical view that can easily answer such questions (‘deflationism’) from a meta‐metaphysical view for which this explanatory task is more difficult (which I call the ‘substantive’ view of metaphysics). I then canvass responses that the substantive metaphysician can give to this Kantian demand for an explanation of reference in metaphysics. I argue that these responses are either inadequate or depend, implicitly or explicitly, on the idea of ‘joint carving’: carving at the joints is part of the explanation of referencefacts quite generally and our metaphysical terms in particular refer because they carve at the joints. I examine Ted Sider's recent work on joint carving and structure and argue that it cannot fill the explanatory gap. I conclude that this is reason ceterus paribus to reject the substantive view of metaphysics. Kant's critique, far from being obsolete, applies to the most cutting‐edge of contemporary meta‐metaphysical views.