Abstract: To many critics, Kant’s refutation of Descartes’s problematic idealism seems like an explicit adoption of Berkeley’s dogmatic idealism. My exposition intends to show that this is not the case. The discussion of externality, reality and objectivity is intended to demonstrate that the question regarding the status of external objects can only be considered within the realm of appearances. The discussion of actuality is intended to show how we can indeed distinguish the genuine from the illusive within this realm (and only within it). I intend to show that Kant’s refutation of idealism succeeds specifically because it does not assign any role to the thing-in-itself within this refutation and focuses entirely on the inherent features of phenomenal objects.